Tumgik
big-dumb-fish · 1 month
Note
Hey, I know this blog has been inactive, but I think of it often, thank you for collecting this group of very silly very bad magic cards for us to enjoy! There is a new legend from bloomburrow, Arthur, Marigold Knight. He has a sort of Ilharg the Rage Boar effect, but it has blue! It actually uses the BDF's really well, I played this with some friends last night, and managed to kill someone by flinging leviathan at them. Named in your honor, he's all about Big Dumb Fish : )
It means a lot to hear that people are still thinking about this blog! Honestly, I wish I could continue it. But life has been _very_ busy for a variety of reasons, and I just ran out of steam on this specific side project.
Which leviathan did you use? The original one?
4 notes · View notes
big-dumb-fish · 4 months
Text
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
445 notes · View notes
big-dumb-fish · 2 years
Text
Will it Jon? Part 4
Apologies for the late post! Been a bit busy lately.
Anyway, on to the rest of the Jon ratings. By my count, there are 27 eligible cards left to evaluate, plus all the ones in my inbox that I haven't finished the ratings for. Let's see if I can put a dent in those today.
Polar Kraken
Original rating: Big 5 / Dumb 5 / Fish 4.5 (link)
Jon rating: Nobody you give this to will ever feed it any lands, because even if they choose not to pay the upkeep, Jon still won't let it die. Once this is on someone else's side of the field, it's a 13/13 with trample and no other abilities. Intimidating, but at least they're required to attack you with it last. 3/5
Storm Crow
Original rating: Big 1 / Dumb 2 / Fish 2 (link)
Jon rating: Somehow, Jonnability is one of the few places where the humble Storm Crow and the grossly over-limited Polar Kraken can find some common ground. (Well, that and also the fact that they are blue creatures that have been mocked by decades of Magic players, but for very different reasons.) More specifically, common ground in the form of not having any abilities that would make them good or bad to give away with Jon other than a little bit of built-in evasion. This is another 3/5.
Tolarian Serpent
Original rating: Big 4 / Dumb 3 / Fish 4.5 (link)
Jon rating: In a normal, non-Commander setting, the risk of Tolarian Serpent is that it would mill enough cards from your library that you would die from decking out. In a Commander game, however, it would take twelve turns to die with this out (minus any additional cards you're drawing). And if your Commander game continues on for twelve whole turns after you give someone a Tolarian Serpent with Jon, I'd like to offer my condolences for having to stay up all night playing a card game. With a larger starting deck size, the mill from this is all upside to a deck that can use its graveyard as a second hand. 2.5/5
Bog Serpent
Original rating: Big 3 / Dumb 3 / Fish 4 (link)
Jon rating: The original post for Bog Serpent noted that it is identical to the card Sea Serpent in all but color, which affected its Fishness but not its Bigness or Dumbness. Well, the color doesn't affect its Jonnability either, so it gets the same rating of 2/5.
Icehide Golem
Original rating: Big 1 / Dumb 1 / Fish 1 (link)
Jon rating: Icehide Golem is a vanilla 2/2 for 1, a creature that is incredibly above-curve by most standards. But to Jon, there is no difference between this and a Storm Crow: each is just a small creature that does nothing but be forced to attack your opponents while drawing you cards. 3/5
Jokulmorder
Original rating: Big 5 / Dumb 4.5 / Fish 5 (link)
Jon rating: This is another one that falls into the Sky Swallower category of things that screw you over as an ETB trigger. Once it's on someone else's field, it's a massive beatstick that won't untap unless they're playing blue (and even then, infrequently)... and you, meanwhile, have just put almost all your lands in your graveyard. This is probably not worth it most of the time. And by "probably not worth it most of the time" I mean "an objectively terrible idea". 1/5
2 notes · View notes
big-dumb-fish · 2 years
Text
Will it Jon? Part 3
Another week, another Jon Irenicus post. It turns out that a lot of Big Dumb Fish are surprisingly useful when their downsides and their attack power are both pointed at someone who's not you. And, on the other hand, a lot of them are still bad. The ratings are as follows:
0/5 is something that loses you the game if you try to play it and then give it away with Jon
1/5 is better for your opponent(s) than for you
2/5 either is situational or does absolutely nothing
3/5 is moderately useful but not more than if you had given away a large vanilla creature
4/5 is a creature that is better when given away with Jon than it is when kept for oneself
5/5 is a creature that is completely debilitating to its recipient
Last week, basically everything got 2/5. Let's see what this week's look like...
Taniwha
Original rating: Big 4 / Dumb 4.5 / Fish 4.5 (link)
Jon rating: Taniwha may, in fact, be the funniest thing to give away with Jon so far. Among the creatures that cause mana deprivation, it's the first one where that's not optional. Leviathan gives you the choice to leave it tapped and not sacrifice four islands, Elder Spawn tries to get sacrificed but ends up stubbornly remaining due to Irenicus's ability, but Taniwha is unconditional. Your opponent ends up alternating between two kinds of turns: turns where they play the game, and turns where the only agency they are allowed is whether they want to attack with creatures that aren't Taniwha. (Unless they have mana rocks.) 5/5
Grozoth
Original rating: Big 4 / Dumb 2.5 / Fish 3 (link)
Jon rating: Well, you get to use the ETB trigger to grab some other fish to give away, but once Grozoth hits someone else's board the usefulness is surprisingly low. The fact that Grozoth has defender unless someone pays 4 to remove it means that Jon's goading does not affect it. Instead, this sits as an impenetrable nine-toughness wall on someone else's board, presumably killing off the smaller things that you gave your other opponents, and it will only attack people (thereby drawing you cards and weakening your opponents) if it's profitable to do so. 1/5
Octavia, Living Thesis
Original rating: Big 4 / Dumb 1 / Fish 3 (link)
Jon rating: The single card you draw when it attacks isn't worth the many 8/8 creatures that its recipient will be attacking you with. Octavia is the kind of card that it's better to keep around than to give away to your opponents, which may be a rarity here at Big Dumb Fish but I've heard that many of the best cards in the game fit that description. 1/5
Wormfang Manta
Original rating: Big 2.5 / Dumb 4 / Fish 3 (link)
Jon rating: Here's how this goes: first, you play the Wormfang Manta. You skip your next turn. You give the Manta to someone else. They use their own kill spell on it. They take an extra turn. That's a net advantage of two turns. Don't play this with Jon. 0/5
Scornful Egotist
Original rating: Big 2.5 / Dumb 2 / Fish 1 (link)
Jon rating: Okay, sure, you gave someone a 3/3. Or maybe a 4/4 if you left it face-down. Who cares? 2/5
Stormtide Leviathan
Original rating: Big 4 / Dumb 2 / Fish 5 (link)
Jon rating: This one is tough to evaluate, because it entirely depends on the board state. In the best-case scenario, you give this to someone who was about to kill you with non-flying creatures and you prevent them from attacking you at all; in the worst-case scenario, you end up preventing all of your own stuff from attacking. If you build around this, making sure anything you want to attack with has flying, it's strong, but not really much stronger than keeping the leviathan for yourself. 3.5/5
4 notes · View notes
big-dumb-fish · 2 years
Note
Dreamwinder
Tumblr media
(I wrote up this post many months ago, waiting to post it until I had more of a buffer of scheduled posts in place. Then I forgot about this blog for an extended period of time, which is why it's only now seeing the light of day.)
Dreamwinder is identical in almost every way to Kukemssa Serpent. There are only two differences: one, Dreamwinder doesn't die when you don't control any islands; and two, Dreamwinder can turn your own lands into islands as well (not just your opponent's). These are both upgrades. In fact, the subtle difference between how the two serpents' activated abilities works opens up some interesting possibilities for using this card to filter your own mana. (Of course, this is somewhat difficult to achieve in practice, since turning lands into islands for the purpose of getting blue mana requires, y'know, spending blue mana—at least without putting a second card such as High Tide into the mix.)
Big: Same as Kukemssa Serpent. 2/5
Dumb: Only slightly less than Kukemssa Serpent. 2.5/5
Fish: Same as Kukemssa Serpent. 5/5
2 notes · View notes
big-dumb-fish · 2 years
Text
Will it Jon? Part 2
There's been a lot of cards rated on this blog, and all of them need Jon ratings! (Except the three I did last week. And the ones that aren't creatures, like Mystic Remora and Moonring Island.)
The basic idea here, for anyone who didn't see last week's post, is to reevaluate every Big Dumb Fish from the perspective of what happens if you give it to someone else using Jon Irenicus, Shattered One. Irenicus's abilities are as follows:
At the beginning of your end step, target opponent gains control of up to one target creature you control. Put two +1/+1 counters on it and tap it. It’s goaded for the rest of the game and it gains “This creature can’t be sacrificed.” Whenever a creature you own but don't control attacks, you draw a card.
In practice, what this means is:
Any hilarious downsides that make the creature die when it's not in its favorite preferred habitat can be ignored.
Any hilarious downsides that screw up all your lands during your upkeep or whatever will be inflicted on someone who isn't you, and they can't easily get rid of this.
All of the creature's big dumb attack points will be also inflicted at someone who isn't you, and you even get to draw a card when this happens.
The baseline effect here is pretty good; giving away any reasonably-sized creature with Jon that isn't also a value engine tends to be a good idea. But what about giving away a Big Dumb Fish? Picking up where we left off last week...
Sea Serpent
Original rating: Big 3 / Dumb 3 / Fish 5 (link)
Jon rating: Islandhome interacts weirdly with Jon. Jon's anti-sacrifice clause obviates the necessity of having an island to keep the creature around, but not the prohibition against attacking someone without one. And goading puts two restrictions on a creature: one is that it has to attack if it can, and the other is that it has to attack someone other than the person who goaded it. But if the only person it can legally attack is the one who goaded it, there's no choice but for it to attack them. Meaning that if you use Jon to give someone a big dumb fish with islandhome, and you're the only blue player at the table, it's going to be attacking you, which is generally not desirable even if you do get to draw a card for it. So this can be anywhere from a 1 (when the creature attacks you) to a 3 (when there's another blue player for it to attack and it acts like any other beatstick). Averaging it out, this gets a Jon rating of 2/5, and so does every other creature whose only abilities are islandhome.
Dandân
Original rating: Big 2 / Dumb 3 / Fish 5
Jon rating: Like the previous paragraph says, a creature whose only abilities are islandhome has a Jon rating of 2/5.
Island Fish Jasconius
Original rating: Big 4 / Dumb 4 / Fish 5
Jon rating: Yet another islandhome one. But this one has more text! Something with islandhome and no other abilities can result in either you getting attacked which rates 1/5, or someone else getting attacked which rates 3/5, averaging out to 2/5. But Jasconius has the additional clause that it will not untap unless its controller pays three blue mana. This introduces a third scenario, where you give it to someone who never bothers untapping it, a scenario that is definitionally a 2/5. Averaging that out with the existing scores for an islandhome creature gives this an overall rating of 2/5.
Kukemssa Serpent
Original rating: Big 2 / Dumb 3 / Fish 5
Jon rating: And here we have our fourth consecutive islandhome creature! What fun. In practice, someone who hasn't built their deck around very specific synergies probably won't bother to sacrifice their own islands just to be able to turn someone else's lands into islands, even if it means being able to attack with the serpent. 2/5
Sky Swallower
Original rating: Big 4 / Dumb 4.5 / Fish 3.5
Jon rating: This is almost extremely cool, but it just doesn't work out. If you had Jon out at the same time that its effect happens, you could give someone all of your creatures with all their various downsides and draw a multitude of cards from all their attacks. But its enter-the-battlefield trigger will give away Jon himself, and you can't even wait until after the sky gets swallowed to play him because you just gave away all your mana sources. 0/5
(This is our first example of a Big Dumb Fish whose Dumbness mostly hurts you when you first play it, meaning that by the time Jon has time to gift-wrap it and send it off to its new forever home, it will already be too late to weaponize its downsides. And it's the only one that I have anything interesting to say about, since its downside involves control-changing effects specifically. For the rest of them, their Jon rating is just 5 minus their Dumb rating. This includes Lord of Tresserhorn, Boldwyr Heavyweights, Wood Elemental, Eater of Days, Tempting Wurm, and Denizen of the Deep.)
Zhou Yu, Chief Commander
Original rating: Big 4 / Dumb 3 / Fish 2.5
Jon rating: After the interesting diversion that was Sky Swallower, we're back to islandhome variants. Since Jon prevents sacrificing his presents, this is no different from something that explicitly has islandhome. 2/5
4 notes · View notes
big-dumb-fish · 2 years
Note
How would a "Moonring Island" score on the big dumb fish scale? On the one hand, it's a 0/5 big in terms of stats and cost, on the other hand, it's an island. I assume that's the size of a 3/5? I'd guess for fish it's 0.5-1.5, since it has something to do with islands, but is definitely not a fish - but if you keep penalizing fish for not caring about islands, then an island should get a half point for being an island.
Tumblr media
Big: Undefined/5, since like you said there's no numbers to rate it based on, nor is it even remotely clear what the scale is supposed to be from the artwork. That could be an entire landmass, or it could be an overturned hat that someone dropped in the ocean. There's just no way to tell. I have rated noncreature cards before (Mystic Remora and also one that I started a writeup for like a year ago and never got around to posting, which will probably go out next week), but while Mystic Remora can easily be explained as "a magic fish that is too small to fight", this one-third-of-a-sideways-traffic-light is very hard to rate in terms of Bigness.
Dumb: It enters tapped, no other downsides. 2/5
Fish: Yeah, being an inanimate geographic feature pretty much counterbalances the fishiness it gains from the Island type. When there are actual aquatic creatures that only rate a 2, this can't get more than a 1/5.
2 notes · View notes
big-dumb-fish · 2 years
Text
Will it Jon? Part 1
Tumblr media
@stickology pointed out that the card Jon Irenicus, Shattered One from the recent set Commander Legends: Battle for Baldur's Gate could be a good way to use Big Dumb Fish cards: by forcing your opponents to take them from you, attack your other opponents with them, and not sacrifice them.
So, with that in mind, I am going through every card ever reviewed on that blog and rating each of them based on whether it's a good idea to use Jon Irenicus to give it to an opponent. I'm only going to include cards that 1.) are creatures, and 2.) are the right color identity to fit in a Jon Irenicus deck (at least for now), and I'm going to be using the following rating scale:
A card with a Jon rating of 5 will either completely screw over whoever receives it, or will inconvenience that player and/or your other opponents while giving you advantages.
A card with a Jon rating of 4 will severely inconvenience its recipient or your other opponents, or moderately inconvenience them while benefiting you.
A card with a Jon rating of 3 will inconvenience its recipient without giving you advantages, or will give you advantages without affecting its recipient. Any creature that's reasonably large or that has some evasion will go here by default, because it will attack your other opponents every turn and make you draw a card by doing so.
A card with a Jon rating of 2 won't do much, affecting neither you nor its recipient. A creature with low stats and no evasion will go here by default unless it has more interesting effects.
A card with a Jon rating of 1 will benefit its recipient more than giving it away benefits you.
A card with a Jon rating of 0 is something that will end in disaster for you if you try to give it away.
That said, let's look at some Jon ratings! I'm going to be doing these weekly until I run out (possibly interspersed with some brand-new BDF ratings); most weeks I'll do more than this, but I'm cutting this one short to balance out that long intro. So here are my thoughts on the first three Big Dumb Fish I ever reviewed:
Leviathan
Original rating: Big 5 / Dumb 5 / Fish 5 (link)
Jon rating: Unfortunately, despite being the Platonic ideal of Big Dumb Fish, Leviathan does not work well with Irenicus. If your opponent attacks with it, they do twelve damage to another one of your opponents and you draw a card, which sounds pretty great until you realize that that's only going to happen if your victim is willing to sacrifice four islands. In practice, I think you'd be lucky to ever see this untapped after you give it away, let alone attacking, so it only gets a score of 2/5.
Segovian Leviathan
Original rating: Big 2 / Dumb 2 / Fish 5 (link)
Jon rating: This fits solidly into the "just a beatstick" category. If someone else at the table is in blue, they'll take 5 every turn, which is reasonable, especially since you're also drawing cards off it. It's still a boring choice, though. 3/5
Elder Spawn
Original rating: Big 3 / Dumb 4.5 / Fish 4 (link)
Jon rating: Originally, I expected this one to be bad with Irenicus: the recipient would choose to not feed it an island, so it would die and hit them on the way out... but Irenicus is an insistent giver, preventing his gifts from being sacrificed. So instead, this is very strong: every turn, it will inflict six damage to whoever gets stuck with it and eight to someone else, and you get to draw a card. Maybe not worth seven mana, but definitely worth including if you can cheat its cost. 4/5
6 notes · View notes
big-dumb-fish · 2 years
Note
https://archidekt.com/decks/3347179#Fish,_Free_of_Charge
Regarding the last ask, I made a deck inspired by this blog, the fish are usable and annoying
This is a cool list, thank you!
(Unfortunately, even Jon Irenicus can't make Leviathan good: its recipient can just choose not to sacrifice the islands to untap it. But some of your other inclusions, like Taniwha, are hilarious and I love them. Now I want to go through every fish I've rated and assess what happens if you use them with Jon.)
3 notes · View notes
big-dumb-fish · 2 years
Note
Hey you havent posted in a while so idk if this blog is still active but I wanted you to know theres now a Dimir commander introduced in the baldurs gates sets that's all about giving your opponents creatures, goading them, and making them unable to be sacrificed. His name is Jon Irenicus, Shattered One (the villain of the second game if you havent played it) and I think he has some serious potential to make the ultimate BDF deck, provided you're okay with gifting those whales and krakens to your friends.
Thank you for this recommendation! Yeah, I had a lot of stuff come up and I wasn't able to make my weekly update schedule any more (trying to make an entire tactical JRPG as a solo dev is, to put it mildly, a lot of work), so there's a whole bunch of cards in my inbox I haven't written up yet. Maybe in a month or so I'll be able to start doing these again; I have at least one written up that I was waiting to post until I had more of a backlog.
(But if I do revive this blog: ratings for a dozen or so more Fish, more Undumbening articles, a guide on how to do stupid things with Panglacial Wurm, and now that you've recommended this, maybe a Jon Irenicus decklist concept.)
4 notes · View notes
big-dumb-fish · 3 years
Note
Zhou Yu, Chief Commander
Did that one a while ago: https://big-dumb-fish.tumblr.com/post/659603445899247616/
0 notes
big-dumb-fish · 3 years
Note
Cephalid Vandal
Tumblr media
Big: Nope. 1/5
Dumb: This is basically cumulative upkeep (see Polar Kraken), except not quite. When I first saw this card, I thought that it was a precursor to cumulative upkeep, but this was in fact printed years after Ice Age; in Torment, a set specifically themed around graveyard interactions (including plenty of cards with flashback). This explains why something that feels so much like a downside would be on a 1/1 for 2: the entire point of this card is to fill your graveyard in the early game, then hopefully you can get rid of it before it starts threatening to make you deck out—unlike something with actual cumulative upkeep, this doesn’t give you the option to sacrifice it. 2/5
Fish: Cephalids are octopus people, made during the stretch of time when “person who looks like an [animal]” was a separate type from [animal]. (For examples of cards that don’t follow this pattern, just look at anything with the typeline “Cat Warrior”.) Being an invertebrate doesn’t help the fishiness here, and I’m not quite sure if that art’s supposed to be underwater, but everything else seems to be in order. 4/5
2 notes · View notes
big-dumb-fish · 3 years
Note
Gulf Squid
Tumblr media
Big: Nope. 2/2 for 4 is, in fact, small. 1/5
Dumb: As far as doing things to lands goes, tapping isn't terribly impactful, compared to sacrificing them (like Leviathan) or giving them away (like Sky Swallower), since it only sets the victim back by a turn. And so, if you play this "on-curve"—that is, spending all of your mana on it—there's no downside.
...wait, what? I've just been informed that while, technically speaking, you can target yourself with that ability, you are, in fact, supposed to target an opponent.
So, tapping down someone's lands when it isn't their turn isn't terribly useful. If they were holding up mana to do something on your turn, this forces them to do it immediately, in response to the trigger, instead; and if they weren't, their lands will still untap at the start of their next turn. In practice, what Gulf Squid actually does is prevent other spells you cast later from being countered, or maybe ensure that there won't be any defensive combat tricks. It's a fun tactical piece, although its usefulness is somewhat limited (and probably not worth four mana, even if it does leave behind a 2/2). 2/5
Fish: The printed typeline is the incredibly vague "beast". This has since been errata'd to "squid beast", even though the art depicts a cephalopod with an exterior shell and "nautilus" is a valid creature type. (To be fair, the non-shell parts of the creature do resemble a squid more than they do a nautilus due to the long arms and sophisticated eye, and of course the word "squid" is right there in the name.) As an unambiguously aquatic invertebrate that has no specific interaction with islands, this gets a Mostly Fishy rating of 4/5.
3 notes · View notes
big-dumb-fish · 3 years
Text
Bimonthly Summary Post, Nov-Dec 2021
Finding time to do things is hard, and this blog is no exception, which is why I barely rated anything in december. I'm starting to run out of cards that would make good posts, so please, if you have suggestions, send them in! I have a handful of writeups to post in january, and I'm not sure what the plan is after that. Hopefully I can figure out the specifics of a new scale to provide a few more months of content.
The real reason I do these summary posts, though, is because a lot of the ratings are relative to other cards or cross-reference other cards and so it's nice to have everything all together in one place for that purpose.
Card name Big Dumb Fish Total Marjhan 4.5 4 5 13.5 Jokulmorder 4 4 5 13 Denizen of the Deep 5 3.5 4.5 13 Eater of Days 4 5 3.5 12.5 Lochmere Serpent 4 2 5 11 Inkwell Leviathan 4.5 2 4.5 11 Phyrexian Dreadnought 5 4 1.5 10.5 Draco 4.5 3 1 8.5 Wood Elemental 2 5 1 8 Fruitcake Elemental 3.5 3.5 1 8 Thassa, God of the Sea 3 2 3 8 Vizzerdrix 3 2.5 2 7.5 Great Whale 3 1 3 7 Kozilek, the Great Distortion 5 1 1 7 Krothuss, Lord of the Deep 2 1 4 7 Runo Stromkirk 1.5 1 2 4.5 Slippery Bogle 1 1 2 4 Slidshocking Krow 2 ? 2.5 4.5 + ? Endless One ? 2 1 3 + ?
No new Undumbening posts this time around, but I'll be sure to get some out in january. As always, keep the suggestions coming, I'd love to rate them!
0 notes
big-dumb-fish · 3 years
Text
Fruitcake Elemental
Tumblr media
This card was the first in a series of annual silver-bordered Christmas-themed promotional cards that were given to WotC employees.
Big: 7/7 is a pretty sizeable statline, but its low mana cost of 3 brings it down to 3.5/5.
Dumb: This is... really hard to evaluate. Basically, there are three options. First, you could play it and never give it to your opponent. If you're not up by 7 or more life, you lose in about three turns; and if you are, you'd better hope they don't have blockers. So, much like in real life, keeping all the fruitcake for yourself is rarely a good idea.
Second, you could give it to your opponent only for them to give it back on their next turn. This means that both players have unlimited access to a large indestructible blocker, which is a situation colloquially referred to as "nobody wants to attack ever again". Great for mill decks, I suppose, but when was the last time someone actually lost by milling out besides in limited? (Since the ability can be activated at instant speed, two people could even spend all their mana repeatedly regifting the fruitcake to each other, if for some reason they had nothing better to do.)
Third, you could give it to your opponent and they keep it. This is probably beneficial for you, since you can block its damage and they can't—but this is nevertheless contingent on them wanting to keep it, which they'd probably only do if they actually had a use for it.
Of course, if you can give it lifelink, it's a downside-free indestructible 7/7 for 3. 3.5/5
Fish: Yeah, no. 1/5
4 notes · View notes
big-dumb-fish · 3 years
Text
Draco
Tumblr media
Big: Draco has held the record for the highest printed mana cost of any non-Un card for twenty years. But despite its exceptional cost, its statline is not setting any records. 4.5/5
Dumb: Draco has an upkeep cost that could be anywhere from zero to ten mana. It doesn't cause any lasting damage to your mana production or the rest of your board state, but that's still a steep price. Let's suppose this is being played in a three-color deck, since any more than that requires significant effort to build around. That would result in a ten-mana creature that requires a four-mana upkeep cost. Which is... expensive. If you're not cheating it into play somehow, this is just too slow to do anything in a deck with less than four colors. Of course, there are ways to get around all of the downsides, such as Dryad of the Ilysian Grove, which will let you play this as a respectable 9/9 flyer for 6. 3/5
Fish: The artwork seems to depict some sort of dragon made of scrap metal. I tried to look up the lore of this card, but couldn't find anything significant, so I'll just give this a Fish score of 1/5 for being primarily reptilian in a dry landscape.
3 notes · View notes
big-dumb-fish · 3 years
Note
Runo Stromkirk // Krothuss, Lord of the Deep!
(Or just Krothuss if that's easier)
Tumblr media Tumblr media
(Sorry for the low image quality—I don't think Scryfall has gotten HD scans of Midnight Vow yet. Also sorry for the unexpected two-week hiatus; the askbox ran out and I had already worked through most of the cards I was planning to review)
Big: Innistrad's oceans must not be very deep, if the so-called Lord of the Deep is only a 3/5. 1.5/5 for Runo, and 2/5 for Krothuss.
Dumb: Runo by himself is an okay but small creature with a passable recursion effect. Krothuss, however, creates permanent copies of your other creatures, and makes more if said creatures are giant sea monsters. This means that Krothuss is potentially the dumbest Big Fish ever printed: making copies of your other Big Dumb Fish means having to sacrifice ever-increasing numbers of islands to keep alive both the originals and the copies.
...Of course, you could also make copies of sea monsters that don't have ridiculous downsides. But where's the fun in that?
(Honestly, though, this is an interesting card with a unique effect that could be a very fun commander for a sea monster tribal deck. 1/5)
Fish: Runo is a weird vampire cultist who hangs around near the ocean a lot and gets a 2/5. Krothuss is quite possibly the most human-shaped kraken I've ever seen, earning at least a 4/5.
6 notes · View notes