Challenger Troll MTG Card

Card Pros

Card Advantage: Challenger Troll provides an edge in card efficiency by requiring your opponents to use multiple resources to deal with it. Its substantial presence on the battlefield can outpace the card investments of an opponent, potentially leading to gaining an upper hand in card economy.

Resource Acceleration: With the capacity to expedite your board presence, Challenger Troll encourages a strategy that accelerates the deployment of your other creatures. Its influence enables you to pressure your opponent quicker and could lead to a more dominant position earlier in the match.

Instant Speed: Although Challenger Troll operates at sorcery speed, its effect on combat allows your instants and abilities to be more potent by disrupting your opponent’s blocking strategies. This sudden swing in battlefield control can function similarly to instant speed interactions, offering tactical advantages during the combat phase.

Card Cons

Discard Requirement: One downside of the Challenger Troll card is that it necessitates the player to discard another creature card, which can deplete your hand and leave you with fewer options as the game progresses.

Specific Mana Cost: The specific mana cost of Challenger Troll requires both green and generic mana, potentially limiting its inclusion to decks that can reliably produce both types of mana, particularly in multi-colored deck strategies.

Comparatively High Mana Cost: With a mana cost that is on the higher side compared to other creatures with similar abilities, Challenger Troll might not always be the most mana-efficient play. Other creatures or spells could potentially provide more impact on the game board for the same or lower mana investment.

Reasons to Include in Your Collection

Versatility: Challenger Troll shines in decks that capitalize on its unique ability to enhance other creatures. With its solid stat line, it can be a formidable presence on its own, but its real value lies in supporting fellow creatures with power 2 or less, allowing them to evade blockers with ease.

Combo Potential: This card can be the linchpin in combos that revolve around small, evasive creatures. It can significantly increase the potency of swarm strategies, enabling a horde of unblockable attackers to overwhelm opponents.

Meta-Relevance: In a meta filled with decks that rely on larger creatures to control the board, Challenger Troll provides an edge by allowing your smaller creatures to slip through undeterred, thus turning the tables on those strategies. Its role in helping underrepresented strategies gain a foothold cannot be overstated.

How to beat

Challenger Troll brings a unique dynamic to the battlefield with its capacity to empower other creatures. This card ensures your smaller creatures with power 2 or less can’t be blocked by more than one creature. This buff is quite significant, but let’s delve into strategies to outmaneuver this formidable troll.

For starters, removal spells are your best friends. Engage cards like Murder or Cast Down to directly eliminate the threat. Another effective method lies in crowd control—playing cards that force the opponent to sacrifice a creature, like Plaguecrafter, will make it difficult for a Challenger Troll to maintain its presence on the board.

Finally, an often-overlooked tactic is to bypass conflict altogether. By opting for flying creatures or spells that tap opponents’ creatures, you diminish the Troll’s influence in combat. This way, you can continue to chip away at your opponent’s lifepoints or secure your defenses without engaging the Challenger Troll directly.

In essence, several strategies can mitigate the dominance of Challenger Troll in a game, from direct removal to subtle avoidance tactics, ensuring you maintain the upper hand.