Pointed Discussion

Ummm... What do you do with it?
But really, you lose a land a turn to a creature who can be chump blocked or blocked by Wall of Denial?

"Put this piece of crap into play to ruin Koth's entire gameplan."

It's not terrible in Koth's deck, as the Venser deck doesn't have creatures naturally as big as this one. Lithophage beats hard if Venser can't do anything about it. However, it just isn't very good in general, and probably would best be swapped out with a firebreathing dragon of some sort, if you want to keep the decks tuned to each other.

EDIT: Never mind, I forgot Venser has Wall of Denial. Kill it with fire!

I see what Wizards is thinking:

'Use Mountain ramping engines....to feed this.'

And if it were just a little better, say if it had First Strike or Haste, I'd go for that.

Wall of Denial ruins the point of playing it though, because as soon as they realize that card stops this one cold, they'll make sure to run 4. Also the art is ugly. And the flavortext isn't funny.

the reason I don't like it because it's not big enough/doesn't have keywords. The sacrifice mountains thing though? Koth CAN generate enough for it-- provided you make him want to.

Doesn't that creature have a little too many legs to be called an insect? I mean, the scientific name for insects is literally "six-foots" (hexapoda).

Eh. I still prefer Cosmic Larva.

The power creep since Mercadian Masques may make this card look outdated, buuuuut, after taking a quick gander at Mercadian Masques for a second, I've found that creatures aren't THAT much weaker.

Two-Headed Dragon, Delraich, Thrashing Wumpus, Rushwood Elemental, Tidal Kraken... I mean, these cards aren't too powerful now, but back then, they put Lithophage to shame.

And shame on you Lithophage for including Phage in your name. That is reserved for Carnophage and the dastardly queen herself.

Why have this in a Koth deck when you could have something like Devastating Summons?

You do not want to play this on turn 5 with Koth's deck.

Looking at this card makes me feel a bit sick. 5 red heavy CMC would nearly be fair for a red rare... without an insane drawback. A couple of chumpblocks, a combat trick, let hit once he's chewed their mana, then remove it after his final meal... game over.

Even when they chump block there's no card advantage! I actually like the ballsy mechanic and would like to see more of it... but even as a weak rare you'd need trample at 7/7 to justify ever using this.

If he had 8 power would be better.

Would be better at 8/8. Would be even better at 9/9. Would be even better at 10/10. Would be worse at 11/11 because people would be too busy talking about the numbers to notice that they had to sac a Mountain.

-Swag_Crow