by Elton Gahr

Created on: October 30, 2009

Since the day of the first spiders when reach had not yet earned the honor of its own keyword it has been an important ability for green. Typically one of greens weaknesses has be a general lack of good flying creatures. If you exclude the birds of paradise which are closer to land than creature it is in fact very difficult to think of any. But many of the creatures that have reach are small enough that they will do very little to stop the dragons and vampires of the world.

That is where Cloudthresher comes into play. A rare elemental from the Lorwyn expansion set of magic the gathering, it is a 7/7 creatures with reach that costs four green and two colorless mana to put into play. And while this is a considerable amount of green mana the green mage is far more likely to have cards that let him fix mana than any other so it becomes less of an issue.

In addition to reach Cloudthresher has three other abilities that make him a deadly enemy. The second of those is flash. This means that you can put out a 7/7 creature as a blocker when your opponent is not expecting it and with the ability to block flier this is almost a way to almost guarantee killing a creature when Cloudthresher comes into play.

The next of the abilities reads "When Cloudthresher enters the battlefield, it deals 2 damage to each creature with flying and each player." this is a minor amount of damage, unless you are playing a deck such as fairies which play a considerable number of small flying creatures, in which case this is a devastating ability. It also works well in the traditional red and green deck, putting a great many larger flying creatures into the range of a lightning bolt while doing a bit of damage to the opponent as well wearing them down for the inevitable fireball.

The final ability of Cloudthresher is Evoke, this costs two green and two colorless. It puts cloudthresher into play and then immediately into the graveyard. This is a little expensive for a two point hurricane but not so much that it is useless. In the situations where you need this card it is going to be very useful. Killing even one or two creatures that green would otherwise have trouble with, and most likely the two damage is less than you would take from a single attack of those creatures.

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