by Elton Gahr

Created on: October 22, 2009

As a whole the problem with giants as a tribe is that they are giant. That is to say that it is difficult to build a good deck with all large creatures, and so wizards of the coast, when they decided to make them a viable tribe began to create smaller giants, but smaller is not the only way to go and the other possibility is to make them bigger.

Borderland Behemoth does not take the path of the smaller creatures. He is a rare giant warrior from the morningtide expansion set of magic the gathering. A 4/4 creature that costs two red and five colorless, he has trample, but his real power is in a giant deck. For every other giant that you have the Borderland Behemoth gets +4/+4, this along with trample can make for a very powerful creature.

The problem with then is still that it is reliant on building a giant deck, and though that has become a little more feasible giants are still generally expensive creatures and so building a deck requires some effort.

One of the first things that might be considered is the tribal enchantment Favor of the Might, white it pushes you into that color, but costs one one white and one colorless and gives the highest mana cost creature protection from all colors. More importantly in some ways though it is inexpensive and counts as a giant. And there are a few changelings that are inexpensive and have giant in addition to all other creature types. But the truth is that if you play giants you are not going to be able to play any of them as creatures until at least the third if not the forth turn.

As for Borderland Behemoth itself, it is not an inexpensive creature, at seven converted mana cost this means that it would be the eight turn before it can attack, even if it is a 12/12 or higher at that point it is likely to not matter as you will be dead unless you have done something to protect yourself.

In limited this is a very powerful card assuming you can draft any other giants. You are unlikely to get the full force of the card because drafting all giants simply isn't a good strategy, but in a 40 card deck it won't take many giants to ensure that you have enough to have one or two giants out before this and crashing through your opponents creatures with a 12/12 trampler is likely to be useful even if it dosn't do much damage.

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