by Elton Gahr

Created on: October 23, 2009   Last Updated: February 24, 2012

One of the "tribes" that have always been a part of the elves but never really had any cards that interacted with them were the archers and while there are not a great many of them, even a single card that can interact with the type makes them reasonable possibility of a tribe, especially when you consider that many of the already had reasonable powers. The card that would be at the heart of any archer deck is the Greatbow Doyen. A rare 2/4 elf archer that costs one green and four colorless from the morningtide expansion set of magic the gathering. It has two abilities that could interest a person in the archer deck, or more likely to run a few archers in a elf deck.

The first of these is that he gives all other archers +1/+1. This is a very common ability but one that is always welcome. There is virtually no tribe that can not be helped, but for many of the arches this pushes them over the hump from three toughness to four. This is important because it puts them out of the range of a lightning bolt. The second ability though, is where it becomes truly valuable. This ability reads "Whenever an Archer you control deals damage to a creature, that Archer deals that much damage to that creature's controller." It is first important to note that this does not say combat damage. This is important because a number of the archers have the ability to do damage to creatures outside of combat. Being able to do damage to creatures that are attacking, or blocking creatures. This is a reasonable ability but not one that is great.

On the other hand if that same damage is also done to the opponent this gives you an opportunity to build a deck around archers that are primarily defensive. In addition it makes blocking your creatures far less effective because while the blocking creature may be able to kill it, the opponent will still be forced to take damage. This could make for a very easy math since if you have more power of archers than your opponent has life there would be no way to block that wouldn't kill him. Arches as a tribe are unlikely to become truly powerful, but with their ability to do damage to attacking or blocking creatures and even a single general that can make them better they become a consideration.

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