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Magic the Gathering card analysis: Galepowder Mage

There are a great many cards that contributed to the idea that the "Removed from the game" section was a general misnomer and led to the changing of the name of the zone to the exile zone, implying that things really could return. And while this seems like minor tonal change it is a sign of the change of the point of view of those at wizards of the coast.

Among the cards that helped to contribute to that change is Galepowder Mage, a rare Kithkin wizard from the Lorwyn expansion set of magic the gathering. It is a 3/3 creature that has flying and costs one white and three colorless, with an ability that is potentially very powerful.

This cards ability reads "Whenever Galepowder Mage attacks, exile another target creature. Return that card to the battlefield under its owner's control at the beginning of the next end step."

This is most clearly valuable for making it far more difficult to block the Galepowder Mage. As a flying creature of reasonable size it is entirely possible that your opponent does not have more than one creature who could block it, by simply exiling it until the end of the turn it makes the Galepowder Mage generally unblockable.

This is not the only value of this card though, and it is likely not the most powerful. The reason for this is because of the coming and going effects of so many cards. And this card does not target an opponent but a creature so you can easily target your own. For a simple example if you were to target a creature that made an opponent discard a card when it came into play it would make him do so at the end of the turn. The ideal would be a card that did damage both when it comes into and leaves play. This would allow you to do damage twice per turn with it as well as attempting to do damage with the Galepowerder Mage.

In limited this cards ability to exile your own creatures becomes far less of a factor, though if you are able to draft the right cards it could still be useful, but the ability to remove creatures from combat becomes far more impressive, and it need not be to stop creatures from blocking it, removing a large land based creature until the end of the turn could easily be a major factor in a game.



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Magic the Gathering card analysis: Galepowder Mage

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    "Galepowder Mage" is a 3/3 white kithkin wizard printed as a rare for the Magic the Gathering expansion set known as "Lorwyn."

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    by Elton Gahr

    There are a great many cards that contributed to the idea that the "Removed from the game" section was a general misnomer

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