Gnarled Mass

Creature — Spirit

Legality

Format	Legality
1v1 Commander	Legal
Archenemy	Legal
Block Constructed	Legal
Canadian Highlander	Legal
Casual	Legal
Commander / EDH	Legal
Commander: Rule 0	Legal
Custom	Legal
Duel Commander	Legal
Highlander	Legal
Legacy	Legal
Leviathan	Legal
Limited	Legal
Modern	Legal
Oathbreaker	Legal
Pauper	Legal
Pauper Duel Commander	Legal
Pauper EDH	Legal
Planechase	Legal
Quest Magic	Legal
Tiny Leaders	Legal
Vanguard	Legal
Vintage	Legal

Discussion (2)

TheRedMage on Pattern Recognition #8 - Bears

7 years ago

I think in your discussion of vanilla p/t you forget to mention a fairly important aspect - that being power creep.

Creatures are slowly becoming better and better as years go by. Alpha had Scathe Zombies and Gray Ogre, now we get Walking Corpse and Falkenrath Reaver. Does being an uncommon factor into the extra point of stats that Kalonian Tusker gets? Probably. But Tusker is also a much more recent card than either Elvish Warrior or Gnarled Mass, which explains why it's more pushed. A more apt comparison for Gnarled Mass would be Watchwolf - uncommon, from the same period, but also in two colors. Mass saw constructed play in its time if I recall correctly. These days even 3/3 for 2 is not good enough for standard without significant upside or good synergy.

Re: Rarity as a balancing factor. I think it's actually perfectly fine for rarity to to be used that way because it allows to point different cards at different formats. I agree with you that in a world in which people routinely use websites to acquire their cards rarity is a non-factor when it comes to constructed formats. That is fine. Maybe 5% or 10% of all cards in a format are intended for constructed play, and those that would completely warp a limited deck or be useless because o how much synergy they require should be put at rare or mythic which largely keeps them out of most drafts and sealed pools and keeps the limited environment balanced.

Basically I think the rarity symbol on a card is irrelevant unless you are viewing the card in the context of Limited play. And in draft, it makes perfect sense for uncommons to be a bit more pushed - it's a way to set the average power level of decks. Cards that are aimed at constructed play often have a power level that is problematic for limited, so putting them at rares or mythics make sense. You don't want every other draft deck to have a titan in it.

SwaggyMcSwagglepants on Spell Strangler (Developing Competitive)

7 years ago

With all your bounce creatures, I don't see how bad you could be against dredge. Of course they could nut all over the place, but Path to Exile is just a great card against them, and bouncing a Prized Amalgam means they have a Gnarled Mass in hand. Which isn't super great for them.

And its not hard to dedicate some graveyard hate in your sideboard towards them and other graveyard based matchups (e.g. living end, delver, maybe even sometimes BGx/Grixis Control).

@EmrakultheGamingBeast I wouldn't call burn the most consistent modern combo deck. They have no filtering, a low land count, and if they have to mulligan, they are already super behind.