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Moxonomy

Tar Fiend

Creature — Elemental5 generic manaBlack mana

Devour usually pays out in stats: throw the table into the maw, swing with a fattened body, win on the back of raw board investment. This one bends the mechanic toward a different resource. The discard trigger turns every sacrificed creature into a card stripped from an opponent's hand, so the question shifts from "how big can it get" to "how empty can I leave them." A board of expendable tokens becomes a hand-wide Mind Rot, and the 4/4 frame is almost incidental to that calculation. The tension is the one Devour always carries: you are spending permanents you already control to reload a single threat, and here the reload is information denial rather than damage. That makes the card most at home in decks already generating fodder for other reasons, where sacrificing five tokens to empty a hand is upside rather than a tempo loss. The body lands as a clock; the discard lands as the actual play. It is a reminder that Devour was never strictly an aggro keyword, and that "twice the counters" is only the most obvious thing you can scale off a pile of dying creatures.

Tar Fiend (ala)
ALA · #89rare
Pricing
Normal: $0.31
Foil: $0.50
Oracle Text

Rules text

Devour 2 (As this creature enters, you may sacrifice any number of creatures. It enters with twice that many +1/+1 counters on it.) When this creature enters, target player discards a card for each creature it devoured.
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
N/A
Standard Brawl
N/A
More formats
Old School
N/A
Premodern
N/A
PreDH
Legal
Pauper Commander
N/A
Oathbreaker
Legal
Gladiator
N/A
Penny Dreadful
Legal
Duel Commander
Legal
Future Standard
N/A
COMPETITIVEBRAWL
N/A
TLR
N/A
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