RCotD #29

Random Card of the Day #29:

Patagia Golem - 4

Artifact Creature - Golem

{3}: Patagia Golem gains flying until end of turn.

2/3

Initial thoughts:

Overcosted and not powerful enough. This is exactly the kind of card you don't play. It's already expensive enough and it is still in bolt range. I would sooner play Rotted Hystrix in Limited despite it costing more--at least it does something. This card is a 2 power conditional flier. There are tons of cards that do that. Stormfront Pegasus, Welkin Tern, Vampire Interloper, to name a few. All of which are 2 cmc.

Okay so it's an artifact creature, so you are playing it for metalcraft, why wouldn't you play Snapsail Glider? For 1 mana less you get 1 less toughness and still a conditional flier except with no activation cost.

How to fix this card:

It's difficult to say. Part of me just says make the flying always happen, and raise its power by 1. But at the same time I always think of the bad cards to compare cards to. And the way Wizards/R&D works, if you don't devote yourself to a color, artifact creatures will cost 1 more anyways. So while in blue a 4-cost 3/3 flier is par, a 4-cost 3/3 flier in all colors is a problem. This card is a bad card because of how colorless was punished back in the day because of being in any deck. If you were to fix this card any more, it could exactly become Gargoyle Sentinel. But nowadays colorless gets Wurmcoil Engine for beatface in all colors.

A really bad card, it's not completely unplayable though--more so in Limited. 2/5