by Elton Gahr

Created on: October 29, 2009

If there is one major problem with the treefolk tribe it is that with relatively low powers they are not overly offensive and the moderately sized creatures of many opponents can block them indefinitely without dying. This is in part because not all that many of them have combat abilities.

It is for that reason that the treefolk champion, Unstoppable Ash is of some value even though having to remove a treefolk or a warrior from the game even for a while is a considerable cost considering that treefolk are generally expensive. He is a rare 5/5 treefolk warrior from the morningtide expansion set of magic the gathering that costs one green and three colorless as well as the championing of a treefolk or warrior to put into play. He has two abilities both of which help some to make treefolk more aggressive.

The first is his own personal ability of trample. This is valuable in large part because so few treefolk have trample and being able to force an opponent to using a bigger creature or take damage is always useful.

The second ability effects every creature you have. This reads "Whenever a creature you control becomes blocked, it gets +0/+5 until end of turn." This naturally makes it far easier to attack with all of your creatures without fear of many or any of them getting killed. Few people are going to have creatures out that can do more than five damage and the minimum it is going to take to kill any of your creatures is six.

The real value of this card in a treefolk comes in its synergy with the core of most treefolk decks, Dorian the siege tower. Because while this is useful enough by itself, when you combine this with dorians ability to make creatures use toughness to do damage it means that everything you attack with gets +5/+5 if it is blocked. Even with just those two creatures out that means that if your opponent blockes either one of them he is in effect blocking a 10/10 creature, one of them with trampling, and if he doesn't block either he is going to take ten points of damage. Since it is possible to have both of them out on the forth turn and attacking by the fifth this is a valuable card, but even without Dorian it makes it far easier for you to be aggressive when your opponent can't kill by blocking.

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