Floating Shield MTG Card

Card Pros

Card Advantage: Floating Shield presents a savvy tactical edge, allowing the player to bestow protection from a chosen color on a creature. This defensive maneuver can shift the balance, preserving a key creature while disrupting opponent strategies. The added benefit of cycling from a graveyard for a fresh card draws gives players an ongoing value far beyond a single use.

Resource Acceleration: While not a traditional resource accelerator, Floating Shield’s versatility in protecting a creature facilitates smoother gameplay. Keeping pivotal creatures in play can ensure the player’s mana and other resources are used more effectively, maintaining pressure on the opponent without the need to recast important pieces.

Instant Speed: The inherent strength of Floating Shield comes from its capacity to be played at instant speed. The benefit of such timing allows players to respond with precision to threats during the crucial moments of battle. This flexibility ensures that crucial decisions can be made in reaction to an opponent’s moves, preserving the element of surprise and strategic superiority.

Card Cons

Discard Requirement: One downside of the Floating Shield is its requirement for you to discard another card when you want to use its flashback ability. This can set you back in card advantage, especially if you’re in a situation where your hand size is already depleted or every card in your hand is crucial for your game plan.

Specific Mana Cost: This card also comes with a specific mana cost that includes white mana. This might restrict the card’s incorporation only to decks that are based around white mana or have a white mana source, possibly limiting versatility if you’re aiming for a multi-colored deck that doesn’t prioritize white.

Comparatively High Mana Cost: Although it’s a useful aura, the Floating Shield has a comparatively high mana cost for the effect it provides—being able to protect only a single creature with totem armor. Other cards available in the same cost range might provide protection to multiple creatures or offer additional benefits, making the mana investment into Floating Shield less efficient in some game scenarios.

Reasons to Include Floating Shield in Your Collection

Versatility: Floating Shield provides the unique attribute of being able to confer protection from a color of your choice to a creature. This adaptability allows it to seamlessly blend into various deck archetypes, ranging from aggressive builds that want to protect a key creature, to more controlling decks that aim to stave off opponent threats.

Combo Potential: Alongside its ability to bolster your defenses, Floating Shield can work wonders with creatures that have beneficial tap or untap effects, by ensuring those creatures remain on the field and are ready to execute their abilities without disruption.

Meta-Relevance: Given a meta that’s rife with targeted removal or a prevalence of a particular color, Floating Shield’s protective quality can prove indispensable. Its ability to turn the tide by smartly shielding your creatures from the most prevalent colors or spells in your play environment ensures that it is consistently a relevant card choice.

How to beat

Floating Shield presents itself as a unique aura in Magic: The Gathering. Its ability to confer both protection from a color and totem armor to a creature gives players a tactical advantage. However, even the sturdiest defenses have their weaknesses. To circumvent the protection granted by Floating Shield, one can employ colorless spells or abilities, as they’re not affected by color-specific protection. Cards like Ugin, the Spirit Dragon offer such colorless solutions, providing a way to remove the protected creature from the battlefield without triggering the totem armor.

Another strategy is to address Floating Shield directly before it attaches to a creature. Counterspells, enchantment removal, or hand disruption are effective here. Cards such as Disenchant or Thoughtseize can preemptively neutralize the shield or its carrier. Remember that totem armor will only save the creature from being destroyed, so reducing a creature’s toughness to zero or using cards that exile it will also bypass Floating Shield’s defense. Approach your battles with these tactics and Floating Shield will no longer seem an insurmountable barrier in your matches.