Pharagax Giant - Magic the Gathering

The gods have more aggressive donation campaigns.

Time to shamelessly increase my page view count by talking about a set everyone is talking about, MTG's Born of the Gods. Today's card I want to use to soapbox about one of the new set mechanics: Tribute. Tribute is a nicely flavored mechanic, particularly for Greek mythology. When you play the creature, you choose an opponent, and they either pay homage to your creature or feel it's wrath. In this case, you either get a 5/5 for 5, or a 3/3 that deals 5 damage to all opponents for 5.

This mechanic has one major flaw in my opinion; The player is not in control of the card. Instead, the opponent chooses what it does. There are a lot of random random cards in Magic, cards that operate by luck and/or chance. These mechanics tended to backfire, since players like certainty. They like knowing exactly what the card is going to do. They are willing to make some concessions, like with decks and card drawing, but losing a game because you lost a coin flip is a very bad feeling. There's an extra wrinkle with the tribute mechanic. Since your opponent is picking the effect, in a game of two-player Magic, you are guaranteed to get whichever is the worse effect. It will never do what you really want it to do. Compare this to kicker, or a choose one choice card. In both of these, you are the one who gets to make the decision, resulting in an overall more positive experience.

As much as I have been trashing tribute though, there is one format where the mechanic truly shines: multiplayer. Magic multiplayer is often a game of diplomacy. Players often do favors for one another, trying to form alliances. Tribute is a good diplomacy mechanic. You can do favors for one opponent, and in return that player can choose which part of the tribute to activate. The fact that Pharagax Giant's one effect deals damage to each opponent, this really hammers home for me the desire for tribute cards to be used in multiplayer. In formats like limited or standard though, the mechanic feels a bit flat. And this is what they replaced monstrous with. I think tribute would have worked better as a Commander mechanic as opposed to a main set one.

To close up, back to the actual card, the art is really effective. It is drawn from a perspective where you are looking upwards, making the giant seem even more towering. Oh, and pray for the man who is closest to the giant, not because he might get trampled, but because he might get a very disturbing view of what's under those loins.