Pointed Discussion

This card played very well when Judgment just came out, seeing how Torment made Black an overwhelming favorite. This was like a 5/3 triple persist that became invincible when enchanted.

Not Bad At All Seems Real Playable Plus Centaurs Are Really Cool

Five power for four mana is awesome in itself. Elephant guide is almost perfect for it. It will be an 8/6 (swinging on turn 5), and will lose a +1/+1 counter whenever it would have taken damage, so it will be a 7/5, 6/4 and finally a 5/3...but since there will be no further counters to remove, you've got yourself a creature that is invulnerable to damage. This makes it immune to burn. Unfortunately, it won't stop removal...but protection from black will. White removal like wrath of god leaves you with a 3/3 (thanks to elephant guide) and your opponent with nada. Path to exile gives you land and an elephant to plow it with.

All bounce does is reset the counters for another go-round, and possibly nets you a free turn courtesy of seedtime (a staple in every odyssey block green mage's sideboard).

Stunningly beautiful artwork, too.

Pull ou a glorious/gaea's anthem with a "phantom" deck with these guys and your creatures can take unlimited damage =)

5/3 protection from black and burn for 4 mana is a good deal. I miss him...

Direct removal is pretty much the only efficient way to get rid of Phantom creatures, but black protection makes a good amount of removal useless: Doom Blade, Terminate, Maelstrom Pulse, Unmake, Mortify, Vindicate, Terror, etc.. On top of that, it's 4 for a 5/3 with the Phantom ability that remains fairly strong even after shrinking.

Actually Path to Exile wouldn't give you the elephant, since it's not being put into the graveyard. So white removal is basically the only thing this guy is vulnerable to.

A 5/3 creature with protection from black for 4? Superb!

still dies to mutilate

Yet another amazing card rendered obsolete by Aaron Forsythe's development regime. I have half a mind to send him pictures of all the cards in this category every day - this, Rumbling Slum, Skeletal Vampire, Flametongue Kavu, Ohran Viper, Spiritmonger - and hassle him to address the issue both publicly and in future design.

Great card.
Immune to black and red killspells, immune to infect, immune to deathtouch, first strike to a certain degree...

A pretty big winner from Judgment. Plays well with auras and equipment and dodges most nonwhite removal. Competitive even with today's 3-5 mana fatties, I'd say.

It's really easy to look at this and say "damn that's a good card"..

without noticing the 2/0 instead of 0/0 on the bottom. This guy is *really* good. I mean like... impressively "don't *** about powercreep to me" good.

Do not underestimate this card like I did. It's really hard to get rid of this guy especially with the pro black, and if they are using an effect to pump his toughness, he'll be even more annoying. This guy will eat through multiple creatures/removal spells no problem and starts aggressively costed as a 5/3 for four. I got wrecked by this card in cube draft.

Judgment was around the time I quit buying new cards for a long time, because there was a lot of garbage in it, and it seemed to be regressing further from Mercadian Masques that had a lot of cards I liked, and a lot of stuff I wouldn't even play as a joke. If there was a bit of jank in Masques, there were eight bits of jank in Judgment. Yes, Hunting Grounds was awesome, but so was Hymn to Tourach in Fallen Empires. All that cool stuff was reaction to imbalance in the previous sets, and this was the beginning of the weakening of .

This, however, would be excellent today at uncommon as it was in its set and would fit in well both with the centaurs and spirits in recent releases, plus other cards like Bred For The Hunt as of late that give perks for creatures with +1/+1 counters.

Run with Leyline of Punishment if you want it to take damage normally. Can still be proliferated. Pro-black in green is always great. Mind, running that Leyline will allow black sources to damage it, but it will still be shrouded from black.

Drawback? He hits the board gift-wrapped for Cytoplast Manipulator, I suppose.