by Elton Gahr

Created on: October 25, 2009

White has always had as abundance of good small creatures and early in the game they can ravage an opponents health, but at some point your opponent is able to begin to put out bigger creatures and then problems can begin. If white continues to attack into creatures they may do damage, but they also loose creatures and if they don't win quickly the card advantage problem catches up with them. The solution to this is of course cards that give you some type of card advantage, but white doesn't draw cards the way that blue does, or even as well as green, so it has to go another way.

Reveillark is a rare flying elemental creature from the morningtide expansion set of magic the gathering. It costs one white and four colorless to put into play and is a 4/3 creature. This size is an important once because it means it has a reasonable chance of trading with something, because while attacking and doing four damage with this is a reasonable effect the more powerful one is in the card advantage its leaving play effect can give you.

This effect reads "When Reveillark leaves the battlefield, return up to two target creature cards with power 2 or less from your graveyard to the battlefield." and while this effect isn't good enough to make you want to kill this creature it is enough that you typically won't care all that much if it dies and if you can make your opponent use some type of creature removal on it you will be happy.

If you need those two creatures earlier there is another option. This creature has an evoke cost of one white and five colorless. For this the creature goes directly into play and then into the graveyard letting you avoid the need for the opponent to kill it. This may not come up often, but when it does it is going to be because you desperately need those creatures for some reason.

Creatures with power two or less may not seem impressive but there are two points. The first is that this is not casting cost, so creatures with very powerful effects but a low power could be played with this. One that quickly comes to mind is Dorian the Siege tower. A 0/5 creature that makes cards use their toughness rather than power do damage. This would also make a combo with Indomitable Ancients a 2/10 creature that falls into the domain of revellark, and these are only two quick examples, there are many more cards such as any * power creature which counts as 0 or you could just return two small creatures and be happy with the card advantage.

Learn more about this author, Elton Gahr.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.