Welcome all to the Daily Dose of Core 2019, and the end of another preview week. Today I’ll be talking about three more of my favourite new creatures before we head into the final stretch leading up to Prerelease.
Today's creatures might not all be Standard playable, but the opportunity to play with them is a strong draw for me. I do think they're all strong Magic cards, and might even see some play with the right deck.
First I want to talk about a Dragon that wants to keep coming back after it dies - for a price. Let's take a look at Bone Dragon:
To start off, you get a 5/4 Flying creature for five mana. Those are some pretty average stats, though having five power instead of four does make it a little bit better. Bone Dragon's real value comes with its ability to come back from the dead later in the game. It’s great that this is instant speed, since you can bring it back at the end of your opponent's turn.
I wouldn’t recommend playing more than one of Bone Dragon, since the chances of bringing multiple copies of it back are slim. Getting seven cards in your graveyard will already take some work, but 14 would be very hard to do. You could build your deck around this card by adding spells that put cards into your graveyard... But even then, I don’t think I'd want to play multiples copies.
Next, we have a dinosaur that some might see as a sideboard card, but I see as fitting in the main deck. Here is Runic Armasaur:
I like this creature right off the bat because it has five toughness. Five toughness is hard to get through in combat. This makes it a great defensive creature to have on the battlefield.
However the juicy part of this card is its card draw ability. Let’s have a look at some top Standard decks, and some cards in them that would trigger this ability:
Mono-Red Aggro – Bomat Courier, Earthshaker Khenra, and Hazoret the Fervent all use abilities that would trigger Ruric Armasaur's ability.
Blue / White Control – Field of Ruin, Memorial to Genius, and Search for Azcanta will all allow you to draw some extra cards.
Red / Black Aggro – Pia Nalaar, Bomat Courier, Hazoret the Fervent, and Scrapheap Scrounger will let you draw an extra card.
Lastly, I want to talk about a Hydra. Hydra creatures have been around for years, and it seems like Wizards of the Coast is always tweaking the power level they want these creatures to have. I’m quite happy with what they’ve come up with for Core 2019. Here is Hungering Hydra.
This card works for me on so many levels. It starts off as a versatile creature that you can cast early, or wait until later to get a much larger version of it. It’s also tough to kill because you need to make sure you do enough damage to kill it all at once or else it’ll just get larger and larger.
To help with that, it can only be blocked by one creature at a time. This means that if your opponent tries to chump block it every turn, it will just keep getting bigger. If your opponent can’t block and kill it with one creature, you'll either be getting in some damage or having a larger Hungering Hydra. Either is a fine scenario in my books. I think this creature could have some potential in a ramp deck of some kind.
Is there a creature card that I haven’t talked about yet that you are looking forward to playing at your local prerelease?
Thanks again for reading the Daily Dose of Core 2019. It’s been another strong week of preview cards here on the Daily Dose, but there is still some work to do next week. Join me next week as I start prerelease week on the Daily Dose to help you get prepared for your first look at Core 2019 packs.
