Affa Guard Hound MTG Card

Card Pros

Card Advantage: Affa Guard Hound offers not just a creature on the board but also the tactical advantage of potentially saving one of your more valuable creatures from removal with its ability to return another creature you control to your hand.

Resource Acceleration: While not directly accelerating resources, Affa Guard Hound provides a tempo boost by allowing you to reuse enter-the-battlefield effects of your creatures, essentially doubling their initial value.

Instant Speed: Affa Guard Hound’s flash ability means it can be summoned at the end of your opponent’s turn or during combat to surprise your opponent, disrupt their strategy, or simply to save mana for other instant-speed interactions during their turn.

Card Cons

Discard Requirement: Playing Affa Guard Hound doesn’t come with a discard requirement per se, but it does ask for a creature to be flashed in. This can be seen as a sort of “hand discard” because you’re potentially using up a creature card from your hand that you might prefer to keep for a more opportune moment.

Specific Mana Cost: Requiring one white mana plus two generic mana, Affa Guard Hound may not fit seamlessly into multi-colored decks that aren’t heavily focused on white. Its mana cost demands a certain level of commitment to white mana sources, which can impact deck building and strategy.

Comparatively High Mana Cost: While a 2/2 creature with flash that can boost another creature’s toughness by two may seem decent, there are alternatives that might provide more value or versatility at a lower cost. In competitive play, where efficiency is key, the three-mana investment for Affa Guard Hound could be considered steep for the effect it provides.

Reasons to Include Affa Guard Hound in Your Collection

Versatility: Affa Guard Hound offers a flexible defense tactic for decks that focus on protecting key creatures or buying time against aggressive opponents. Its flash ability allows for surprise blocks and strategic plays, fitting well in control or midrange decks.

Combo Potential: As a creature with flash, Affa Guard Hound can be a component in combos that revolve around entering the battlefield effects. It can synergize with cards that care about the number of creatures you control or those that grant benefits each time a creature enters the battlefield under your control.

Meta-Relevance: In a game environment where quick, aggressive creatures dominate, having a card like Affa Guard Hound can be crucial. It serves as a handy tool to thwart an opponent’s attack and potentially shift the tempo of the game in your favor, making it a relevant choice in many MTG matchups.

How to beat

The Affa Guard Hound is a creature card in Magic: The Gathering that offers a unique benefit of flashing onto the battlefield and giving a target creature an untimely boost in defense. This white card is sometimes a thorn in an opponent’s side as it disrupts the combat phase and turns the tide with its surprise block or by shoring up a key creature’s toughness. To effectively outmaneuver this hound, consider using instant speed removal to address it before it can declare a block or to prevent the bolstering of a creature it aims to protect. Conditional removal that circumvents the hound’s ability by not targeting it directly—like board wipes—can also be effective.

Timing is crucial when dealing with Affa Guard Hound. Anticipate when your opponent might have the mana open for this hound and plan your attacks or spells accordingly. Sorcery speed threats are less likely to be disrupted by its flashing ability, so laying out your major plays while the hound’s caster is tapped out can sidestep its protective capabilities. Lastly, since the hound hinges on combat tricks, consider strategies that minimize combat interaction or render battlefield presence less of a deciding factor.