by Elton Gahr

Created on: November 02, 2009

Adding a +1/+1 counter to a creature has become easier in the past years in magic the gathering as more cards have taken that approach rather than the less popular aura approach and yet it has typically remained something that required a significant cost, this might be sacrificing something or just some mana, but it required resources and yet so long is there is some limit that isn't entirely necessary as a counter does not add to the number of your creatures only to how dangerous they are.

Immaculate Magistrate is a rare elf Shaman from the Lorwyn expansion set of magic the gathering. It costs one green and three colorless to put into play, is a 2/2 creature and has a very simple ability that requires nothing more than the 2/2 creature to tap and reads "Put a +1/+1 counter on target creature for each Elf you control."

The first thing to consider is the cost. Four mana is a bit expensive for a 2/2 creature, especially in green, but this is only sort of a 2/2 creature. After all, if you want it to be bigger you only need to tap it and while this will leave it vulnerable to shock on the first turn the truth is that any creature can be killed and the low toughness is only a minor deterrent to that.

The second to consider is how many elves are likely to be out. This is valuable because it directly effects the magistrates ability. Assuming that you are able to put an elf out on the two turns before it this means that it is likely to have four elves out the first time it uses the ability. This allows you to compare the cost of this card to aura or equipment that give +4/+4 and you will see that it is in fact quite inexpensive, and if you begin to combine it with any of the elves that are able to put out a large amount of tokens it becomes far better.

One of the major weaknesses of elves in the recent expansion sets has been that they almost all tap to improve your army. This is a good thing if used correctly, but it leads to a situation in which you spend your time building up the army rather than killing your opponent. You must be careful that you do not allow yourself to fall into the trap with this card and while most turns it will make more sense to use this cards ability you must make sure that there are other cards attacking.

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