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Moxonomy

Orcish Bowmasters

Creature — Orc Archer1 generic manaBlack mana

Punishing card advantage was always the theoretical downside of card advantage: draw too much, too fast, and something should make you pay. What this design gets right is where it puts the trigger. The clause excludes the first card of each draw step, so it never taxes the natural draw everyone takes; it fires on the extra draws, the wheels and cantrips and Brainstorm loops that fill fair blue decks with velocity. Flash is the load-bearing decision here. Held up on the opponent's turn, the body arrives in response to a draw spell already on the stack, converting the enters trigger and every subsequent draw into a stack of pings that also grows an Orc Army with each one. The 1/1 body barely matters to the card's function; this is a punisher that also blanks a one-toughness attacker on the way down, then leaves an amassing Army that snowballs off future draws. And because the damage goes anywhere (face, planeswalker, or the mana dork that was going to enable the very engine it punishes), it stops being a mere hatebear and starts dictating how greedily an opponent can afford to draw. It answers a question black had struggled to ask cleanly, which is how to make an opponent's raw card quantity into a liability without a symmetric cost to yourself.

Orcish Bowmasters (pltr)
PLTR · #103srare
Pricing
Normal:
Foil: $73.36
Oracle Text

Rules text

Flash When this creature enters and whenever an opponent draws a card except the first one they draw in each of their draw steps, this creature deals 1 damage to any target. Then amass Orcs 1.
Legalities

Format Status

Standard
N/A
Pioneer
N/A
Modern
Legal
Legacy
Legal
Vintage
Legal
Commander
Legal
Pauper
N/A
Brawl
N/A
Historic
N/A
Alchemy
N/A
Timeless
Legal
Standard Brawl
N/A
More formats
Old School
N/A
Premodern
N/A
PreDH
N/A
Pauper Commander
N/A
Oathbreaker
Legal
Gladiator
Legal
Penny Dreadful
N/A
Duel Commander
Legal
Future Standard
N/A
COMPETITIVEBRAWL
N/A
TLR
Legal
Printings elsewhere

Other printings

3 sets
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