Friday, October 7, 2011

Garruk Relentless Color Identity Crisis - Green AND Black

It may come as a surprise to some of you, but Garruk Relentless actually counts as both a Green and Black card when it comes to color identity.  This means that Garruk will not be legal in any Green deck without Black. 

Garruk, the Veil-Cursed

Bummer.

This is problematic to me for a few reasons - the first and foremost being that he would be excellent in mono-Green.  The Wolves combo with Master of the Wildhunt and his 3 damage is super relevant.

Not so much in BG, where he is just another card that kills Creatures.  Black has plenty of cards that are functionally more exciting than Garruk.  I am not sure he is all that great in my Ghave deck even, as the interaction with Doubling Season makes it harder to flip him, though I suppose he could just Lightning Bolt Ghave and take 5 damamge himself.  Likewise, Glissa has little to no use for him. 

I think the fact that he will kill the other two Garruks, who I think are much more solid and reliable, make Relentless the odd man out. 

The justification for him being BG - well, the color identity rules specifically mention the color of the card, even though it has never been relevant since there are no colored cards without a mana symbol on there somewhere.