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Moxonomy

Tidal Kraken

Creature — Kraken5 generic manaBlue manaBlue manaBlue mana

Eight mana for a 6/6 with one keyword's worth of text: this is the late-90s notion of a blue top-end, where evasion was a premium feature you paid full sticker price to attach to an oversized frame rather than a cheap rider on a small body. The unblockable line is everything the card promises, a guaranteed six damage a turn once it sticks, and the toughness is high enough to weather the burn of its era. The flaw is structural and shared by every fatty of this vintage: with no enters-the-battlefield value, one combat step is the entire return, and by the time you have eight mana the game has usually already broken one direction or the other. What it does cleanly is delete the blocking math: no double-block, no gang-up, no chump, no need for trample because nothing ever stands between it and your opponent's life total. Set it beside the cheap unblockables that arrived later (the one- and two-drops that wear an aura or trigger off a counter), and the design instinct of the period sharpens into view: evasion as luxury rather than enabler. It is a finisher for a slow, durdling blue deck that wanted a single swing it could not be raced off of, a clean and honest closer from the years before evasion got cheap enough to staple onto creatures costing a quarter as much.

Tidal Kraken (9ed)
9ED · #105rare
Pricing
Normal: $0.72
Foil:
Oracle Text

Rules text

This creature can't be blocked.
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
Legal
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
Printings elsewhere

Other printings

3 sets
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