So you're back, huh? Yeah, me too. I don't know. Maybe all the writers who actually know something were busy this week. Good to see you too. Is that a new stain on your shirt? Yeah, I know the nights are lonely. Anyway, enough of this mushy stuff, let's get on with why we're here. You want to be less terrible.

What are we going to talk about today? Well, kids, this week Uncle Davie is going to tell you about creatures. Remember the monster that used to live under your bed? Guess what, through the magic of, well, Magic, that ugly, four-armed, foul-smelling troglodyte works for you now. What about that spider that likes to ambush your mother in the basement? You'll find the screams of the opposing Hoverguard Observer much more pleasant. That bully down the street with an IQ of thirteen who likes to bench press school buses? He's really not a bad guy once you get to know him. Just point him in the right direction and say kill.

Why talk about creatures? Big ones are good, right? Yes, Timmy, big creatures are good, but there is more in this wide world than is yet dreamed in your philosophy.

Riddle me this, Tim. Juggernaut and Malachite Golem are both 5/3's. Juggernaut has a drawback. It has to attack every turn. Malachite Golem has an ability. It can gain trample for the cost of a couple of mana. Why then can you pick up twelfth pick Malachite Golems in drafts when you rarely see a Juggernaut after fifth? No, it doesn't have anything to do with the fact that Juggernaut can't be blocked by walls. No, it isn't because everyone else in the world is stupid. If you said casting cost, four for Juggernaut versus six for Malachite Golem, you get a gold star.

Here's another one to chew on... with your mouth closed, please. Cathodion is a 3/3 for three mana which usually causes you to mana burn for three when it dies. Myr Moonvessel is a 1/1 for one mana that usually causes you to mana burn for one when it dies. Pray tell, why is Cathodion generally considered to be a solid creature while Myr Moonvessel is known to be a piece of crap? If you said that three mana is a really good price for a 3/3 and one mana isn't an impressive price for a 1/1, you get another gold star.

Anyway, so size matters? Yeah, sorry man, she lied. Casting cost matters. Anything else? Oh, I don't know. Let's compare Spikeshot Goblin to Omega Myr. They have the same power and toughness. Omega Myr costs one Red mana less to cast. I'll even give it bonus points for having a better flavor text. Final analysis: Omega Myr sucks, and Spikeshot Goblin is a bomb. Huh? Spikeshot Goblin has an ability which helps his owner to control the board, and when he combos with power pumping equipment, he become a force to be reckoned with. Great, so abilities matter too. All you have to do is draft big, cheap creatures with powerful abilities, and you'll be in good shape. Yep, and all I have to do is seduce her with my stunning good looks and razor sharp wit, and I can sleep with Angelina Jolie. You guessed it. Some things aren't as easy as they sound.

Owing to my deep store of self-confidence or my profound lack of anything better to do, it was at this point that I received the email from our beloved editor telling me that I should write more but use fewer jokes about the male anatomy and the autoerotic stimulation thereof. Popular opinion subsequently agreed. I actually laughed thinking that would be easy. Reading back through what I'd already written, I discovered that I'd already made several in this article. I apparently have some issues about which I need to speak with someone. I'll look into that before the next article.

My personal problems aside, if you're really going to understand what makes one creature better than another, you're going to need some firm criteria. I came up with six. I actually started out with five, and when I sat down to think about it, I wound up with nine categories, a three-page outline, and one hundred fourteen footnotes about format considerations. After about three seconds of consideration, I decided that if given the choice, I'd rather write an article called"Why I Love Groffskithur," so I simplified things considerably.

You theory guys stop right there. I can see you all out there licking your lips at the opportunity to deconstruct my rating system and argue every point for its lack of mathematical perfection. I'm about to spoil all your fun. Ready? Here it comes. It isn't perfect. I don't have any interest in arguing whether or not Caller of the Claw is an exception. I don't care whether imposing a numerical rating scale on the categories results in the need to add a negative sign to one of them and gives similar scores for Spikeshot Goblin and Nim Replica. I'm a scrub. These are simple, qualitative rules of thumb which allow me and other scrubs to make equally simple choices about what cards go in our decks. Go have a sandwich. I'm sure some poor, brave schmuck will come up with another card advantage theory soon.

Here they are in an order dictated only by the wandering and random nature of my mind:

1. Combat
This one seems pretty simple, but it actually may be the most complicated of them all. How well does a particular creature do when it's blocking or being blocked. How likely is it to survive? How likely is it to kill the opposing creature?

Many times this is just a question of size. Yes, Timmy, your first love, the reason you built a Krosan Cloudscraper deck. Here's the thing. There's more to it than power and toughness. I agree with you. A 13/13 is really cool, but if it gets stalled by their 1/1 Coast Watcher all day, how smart was it to invest all that mana?

When you're thinking about combat, it's important to think about more than just size. Does the creature, like Coast Watcher, have some ability that will allow it to survive combats that might otherwise send it to the graveyard? Besides Protection, these abilities include Regeneration, Indestructibility and First Strike.

Does the creature have some ability that will allow it to kill creatures it otherwise couldn't? Examples of this would be Double Strike or an ability like Ogre Leadfoot's.

The real question you have to ask yourself here is"When I send this guy into the red zone, how likely is it that my opponent is going to have a creature that can beat him?"

For example, in MMM draft there was one uncommon and no common creature that could block a Skyhunter Patrol, kill it, and survive to talk about it, there was one common creature that could trade with it, and there were two commons that could block it and survive without killing the Patrol. I don't know how often you had one of those four cards on the table or in hand when the Patrol came down on turn 3, but I know I didn't have them very often. As a result, I was pretty sure that when I played a Patrol on turn 3 my opponent wasn't going to have the answer, and I started to be reasonably happy to pick them first or second.

2. Smashing Face
The goal in Magic is to kill your opponent, right? You do that by reducing his life total to zero. The most likely way that a creature is going to reduce that life total is by attacking and tearing out chunks. A Pewter Golem rips out much bigger hunks of your opponent's flesh with every attack than a Wizard Replica. You have to remember this when you're building your decks. If you don't have any creatures in there with more than two power, you might be in trouble. Several times in drafts, I've had some kid play Steel Wall and put Slagwurm Armor and a Neurok Hoversail on it. Now that, ladies and gentlemen, is the wall that all little walls hope they will one day grow up to be. It can block very nearly any creature in the format and survive to block them again the next turn, and it only cost them eight mana and three cards. They should be unbeatable now, right? Sure, except that while they were doing that, I used my eight mana and three cards to play two Nim Replicas and an Alpha Myr. Now, every turn one of my Nim Replicas gets blocked harmlessly by the super wall, and I'm only doing them five damage. Four turns from now they will be... anyone... anyone? Dead.

Unless you are playing a control deck, you must be aggressive. In Limited it is very unlikely that you will ever find yourself able to build a decent control deck. For that reason, nine times out of ten Pewter Golem is going to be the pick over Yotian Soldier.

As usual though, there's a bit more to it. What if the creature has an ability that makes him more likely to be able to do your opponent damage? Evasion creatures like Neurok Spy are the simplest example. The vast majority of the time Neurok Spy cannot be blocked. That means that he'll be beating your opponent for at least two every single turn. Seems like a good place to be, huh? Flying and Fear are very similar evasion abilities. They just happen to be a bit easier to deal with in this format.

There's one other ability that is a little less obvious, but could also be called evasion. How about Trample? A Slith Bloodletter can stop all eight damage from a Plated Slagwurm every turn and Regenerate afterward. What happens if you try to use that same Slith to block a Fangren Hunter? Congratulations, you still take three damage.

3. Constitution
No, not the one that says you're free to extol the virtues of Lumengrid Warden even if the President says he has weapons of mass destruction hidden under that funny looking hat. I'm stealing a term from roleplaying games. Put simply, constitution is how difficult it is neutralize a creature with removal.

So it's just toughness, right? No, a lot of things go into it besides toughness, but that's usually the first place to look. Creatures with high toughness are always going to be harder to destroy. They require you to move your Viridian Longbow more often or pump your Spikeshot Goblin's power more times.

Sometimes just dealing a creature lethal damage isn't enough. Some, like Pewter Golem, can regenerate. Others return to their owner's hand with the damage still on the stack such as Neurok Prodigy. There are even a few creatures, Nim Devourer and its ilk, so bold as to return from death itself, an annoying habit if ever there was one. Then there are the indestructible creatures which never die at all. Seven mana seems like a lot to pay for a 3/3 flier until the Darksteel Gargoyle arrives and begins to calmly smash your opponent, heedless of removal and enemy creatures.

Besides simply being resilient, a creature can have Protection from any of the colors or from artifacts which keep it from being targeted at all. Believe me, there are few things more painful than being beaten to death by a creature carrying the Sword of Light and Shadow when you're holding Murderous Spoils.

There are also a couple of more subtle points that need to be made here. In most formats a creature which is Black or an artifact is at an advantage in constitution, since there are usually several removal spells which only target non-artifact, non-Black creatures. In MMD, being an artifact has gone from an advantage to a disadvantage. Why? Every deck has artifact hate in it. Being Black is now less of an advantage than it was before as well. Terror is, of course, in the format, but it now has a quite playable, though uncommon, twin in Purge. Besides those spells, only Murderous Spoils is color specific in what creatures it can destroy, so being Black isn't quite as much of a reason to get excited these days.

4. Relevant Abilities
What is a relevant ability? How do I tell a relevant ability from an irrelevant ability? What the hell does relevant even mean? Easy, Timmy, you know what stress does to your bladder control.

Remember when I said I simplified the article. The discussion of abilities is what got cut. I could write a whole article about them, and as long as the Kanoot keeps publishing my stuff I'll keep writing it, so stay tuned.

For the moment, we'll get by with some gross generalizations. Anything that kills a creature or otherwise allows you to control the board is good. This group includes tappers like Loxodon Mystic and Auriok Transfixer. If your opponent is trying to win with creatures, killing them or rendering them harmless has to be good for you, right?

Mana abilities which allow you to accelerate out your other creatures are usually good. Ever play a turn 3 Vulshok Warboar? I hope you get the opportunity just once, so you can see the look on the face of the poor bastard across the table. You can see it in his eyes. He's thinking,"He played a Myr, and so I played a Myr, and then he played a 5/5, so now he has a 5/5 and I have a Myr... Sniffle... Mommy!"

Abilities that allow creatures to pump other creatures or themselves are good. Why? They make it very difficult for your opponent to attack or block while you have access to the ability as well as making it harder to otherwise kill your creatures. Ever try to figure out combat math while there's an Auriok Bladewarden with a Bonesplitter on it across the table? It's actually very easy.

Bladewarden + Bonesplitter + Multiple Attacking Creatures = You Lose

There's a great deal more to this discussion. For example, why is Neurok Transmuter an excellent card? What makes Sparksmith better than Spikeshot Goblin? Does Goblin Archeologist's ability make it playable or not? I don't know, but I'll see if I can figure it out before next time.

5. Drawbacks
Remember when you first looked at Sparksmith and thought,"Ugh, why would you want to deal damage to yourself?" What about Zombie Cutthroat? You thought,"Why would anyone pay five life to morph a 3/4?" Yeah, me too. We suck, but what we can learn from this is that it's okay if a creature hurts us as long as we're pretty sure it's going to hurt our opponent more.

It turns out that, as long as it isn't too extreme, life loss is one of the better drawbacks a creature can have. If there was a 5/5 creature with Haste and Trample that only cost one to cast, but forced you to pay ten life, you think Spike over there might play it? Well, if you ever want to wipe that smug grin off his face, you're going to have to play it too.

So what other drawbacks are there? How about when a creature can't block? That's got to be terrible, right? Not really. I once heard someone ask a pro how he could play Scavenging Scarab since it was so terrible and couldn't block. With a glimmer in his eye, the pro replied,"Well, at least I know what this guy is doing every turn." As long as your deck is aggressive, a few creatures that don't block shouldn't be the end of the world since you want them all attacking every turn anyway.

What about walls? They can't attack. Is that okay too? Usually that's a little less okay. If it's taking up a creature slot in your deck, it's usually a good idea to have it do something. Sitting there stopping their Myr from attacking usually isn't sufficient. I'm not saying that you should never play a wall just that you should think carefully about what might work better in your deck.

There are something like a hundred more possible drawbacks that creatures can have. I'm not going to discuss them all, and you don't need it. Use your common sense, and experiment. I get laughed at for running strange things in my decks all the time. Now that I've built a deck around triple Dross Harvester, I know that in limited that is never likely to work, and I can skip that idea next time.

6. Efficiency
Are you paying more or less mana than your opponent for the same amount of effect on the game? If you want to win, you'd better be paying less. If you can pay four for a Juggernaut or six for a Malachite Golem, pay the four and get that guy start smashing face two turns faster. Why? That gives your opponent two fewer turns to live, two fewer turns to find an answer, and two fewer turns to kill you.

What should things cost? I could go through a long list of what you should hope to pay for creatures of different sizes, but that would be boring and require you to memorize a list. I hate memorizing lists, and I'm sure you do too. With time and play, you'll develop a list like that on your own. When the next block gives us a 3/3 flier for four, you'll think,"Wow, Hoverguard Observer was really good. I'll bet this guy is too."

Between now and then just remember a couple of things. If you're paying seven or more mana for a creature, it should probably win you the game if it survives its summoning sickness. It's almost never okay to pay more than eight mana for any creature. On the other end of the scale, having a turn 1 creature to play is nice, but unless you have enough Bonesplitters that you can be fairly certain you can play and equip one on turn 2 or the creature does something cool besides attacking, you might be better served by an off-color spellbomb.

That's it. Until next time, have fun, crush skulls, and good luck making Spike cry for his mommy.

Dave Luebke
Scrub Extraordinaire