[AKH] Gideon of the Trials
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This card seems pretty legit, and yet not really all that overpowered. Stopping damage from one source is meaningless in a world full of Monk tokens, and a 3-loyalty planeswalker dies to everything. Seems pretty bad in the creature match up.
That said, he does really put the screws to decks that want to win without creatures, like Storm. Of course, these decks were already on the outs, so it's kind of like kicking them when they're down...
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Cost-wise it's not that bad, but I agree that against mentor it kinda gets kicked around, and even against storm it gets hit by Chain of Vapor similarly to how you might deal with spheres or Rod. Also, you still see occasional Empty the Warrens in sideboards instead of Tendrils, which would polish him off pretty solidly.
The one place it would be sort of delicious is vs Oath, but who knows!
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Gideon of the Trials is a total headache for Doomsday.
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@MaximumCDawg said in [AKH] Gideon of the Trials:
That said, he does really put the screws to decks that want to win without creatures, like Storm. Of course, these decks were already on the outs, so it's kind of like kicking them when they're down...
If it does see play I think the interesting play is to knowing when not using the emblem first turn and instead +1 him to put him out of bolt range. He always has a target too since he can hit himself. I wonder if there are any interesting chains where one Gideon leads into a different Gideon for some cool synergy.
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I suspect in the meta right now, this won't be too useful. Shops, Mentor, Eldrazi, Dredge, and Oath all pretty much ignore this effect entirely. It's definitely relevant against a Paradox Outcome, DPS, or Doomsday deck ... but in all of those scenarios it seems worse than cards like Arcane Laboratory that already exist.
It would have been better in older metagames with a wider variety of decks that weren't winning through combat damage, and it's worth keeping in mind if we end up in a metagame like that in the future
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@The-Gremlin-Lord said in [AKH] Gideon of the Trials:
Gideon of the Trials is a total headache for Doomsday.
Our long notepad.exe fueled nightmare is finally over.
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You can combo him with moat and, he can beat anything in the metagame.
Its worse than Arcane Lab at stopping the Storm, but he does shut down Blightsteel. He also provides a fairly fast clock, and is main deckable due to his applications against other decks.
Even against the creature decks, he makes it very hard to kill you as they need at least 2 threats on the board to even hurt him. Setting him up with a Baby Jace, and now you have double fog effects. Your opponent has to establish a pretty large army to take down your Walkers setting you up for a blowout Wrath effect.
In sum, this is pretty great card for UW Moat decks.
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So my 16 year old daughter who has only ever done limited events (3 pre-releases and FNM drafts the past 10 months) just texted me the following: New card I think:? I don't know if this one already exists or not. But either way, what were they thinking with this?!
At 3 mana I think this is very playable in vintage and in the right shell I think its a fantastic control piece.
People are claiming an army of monk tokens make this a pushover. But when he's barricaded in his castle walls behind a Moat, that army of monk tokens is pretty useless. As @vaughnbros said, this is great in a u/w landstill shell.
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@vaughnbros said in [AKH] Gideon of the Trials:
Its worse than Arcane Lab at stopping the Storm, but he does shut down Blightsteel.
He also provides a fairly fast clock, and is main deckable due to his applications against other decks.Yeah this is all he does. He stops decks that want to kill you with Storm or with a single, really big threat while being a 4/4 for 3 on the attack. That's pretty decent. Good card.
But...
You can combo him with moat and, he can beat anything in the metagame.
What.
If you have a moat in play and it's stopping your opponent's creatures, then why do you even need Gideon?
Even against the creature decks, he makes it very hard to kill you as they need at least 2 threats on the board to even hurt him. Setting him up with a Baby Jace, and now you have double fog effects. Your opponent has to establish a pretty large army to take down your Walkers setting you up for a blowout Wrath effect.
I guess? Every creature and Walker is potentially a "fog" effect, though, and we've got a lot of competition in white that fogs as well or better than a 3 loyalty walker.
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@MaximumCDawg said in [AKH] Gideon of the Trials:
What.
If you have a moat in play and it's stopping your opponent's creatures, then why do you even need Gideon?
Because some people attack from multiple angles with creatures and spells.
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Seems like an auto include in the @ChubbyRain Nahiri-Emrakul deck.
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@MaximumCDawg You can't beat me with creatures (Moat), and you can't beat me with spells/effects (Giddeon). How does your opponent beat you?
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@vaughnbros Speaking specifically about Storm, Chain of Vapor on your Gideon gets the job done. Obviously there is strictly no way to win while both of those permanents remain in play, but that's not a given in any situation.
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@revengeanceful Right, but they have to have a spell that specifically removes one of them.
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It probably goes in some of the UW durdle decks, but those decks aren't very good in the first place right now. Probably not going to shake things up very much. This is just a speed bump for the decks it's trying to beat.
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While in planeswalker form you would need a bounce spell to deal with him, but if used to attack (in his 4/4 human soldier form) he becomes vulnerable also to swords, path, or any exile spell.
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Too bad Final Fortune, Last Chance, and Pact of Negation are still unplayable with this guy. ¯_(ツ)_/¯
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In the scenario where you are playing with him in a moat build, I almost think you would use him for just the Emblem and then drop the gideon who can +1 for additional loyalty equal to the creatures your opponent had, then next turn nuke their board. Just a thought anyway.
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For the way most decks are built now, if you have Moat+Gideon, and they have an answer to Moat, the Gideon probably doesn't help - it's trivially easy for most decks to kill the Gideon by attacking once the Moat is destroyed
If they DON'T have an answer to Moat, than you probably win without Gideon at all.
If you already have a Moat out:
- Eldrazi has no way of killing you without removing it, so Gideon is irrelevant.
- Shops plans on killing you with Ballista/Ravager, so Gideon is irrelevant.
- Saheeli Oath decks have to remove the Moat anyway, so Gideon is irrelevant
- Griselbrand Oath decks with Vault/Key, and Omni-Oath decks with Emrakul don't really care about Moat OR Gideon
- Dredge decks generally have to kill the Moat, making Gideon irrelevant, or win with Marit Lage, which Gideon can't stop (if timed correctly).
- The exception with Dredge is if the Dredge pilot plans on winning through Moat with a Dread-Return'ed Kolaghan, in which case Gideon actually would matter - but only if it has 6 counters on it, meaning it's been in play for 7 turns, which is not super exciting or likely.
- Mentor/Gush decks facing down a Moat might try to beat it with a Jace ultimate, which, unlike every other scenario, the Gideon actually would stop ... but ... if you actually get hit by a Jace ultimate (either one), it means you have no library, and therefore have lost your ability to threaten or interact with your opponent. That means if they have a single answer to Moat anywhere in their deck, they will draw it, and they will resolve it, and they have limitless uninterrupted turns until they do
Basically the situations in which Gideon makes a Moat better are pretty rare - far less than the number of situations where a Swords to Plowshares or a Red Elemental Blast or a Mana Drain make your Moat better. Consider that those all of those cards are unrestricted, and Moat isn't particularly winning a lot right now.
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And if you are at -6 life and something happens to your Gideon, you still lose.
Brassy covered everything else- just pointing out that a lot of people seem to approach this from the "you have to do something about Gideon first."
