Ooze Garden MTG Card


Ooze Garden enhances battlefield presence, creating powerful Oozes from sacrificed creatures. It offers flexible instant-speed reactions, vital for maintaining momentum. Despite its power, the card’s specific mana requirements may limit deck compatibility.
Ooze Garden - Shards of Alara
Mana cost
Converted mana cost2
RarityRare
TypeEnchantment
Released2008-10-03
Set symbol
Set nameShards of Alara
Set codeALA
Number143
Frame2003
LayoutNormal
BorderBlack
Illustred byAnthony S. Waters

Text of card

, Sacrifice a non-Ooze creature: Put an X/X green Ooze creature token into play, where X is the sacrificed creature's power. Play this ability only any time you could play a sorcery.

Jund has little necromancy. Instead, the flesh of its dead gives rise to algal fiends.


Cards like Ooze Garden

Ooze Garden is a unique card within the realm of creature generation in MTG. It shares its creature-making essence with cards like Slime Molding, where you can also create an Ooze creature token. Ooze Garden, however, goes a step further by allowing you to sacrifice a non-Ooze creature to create an Ooze token with power and toughness equal to the sacrificed creature’s power. This offers a potentially more significant creature than Slime Molding’s X-cost token generation.

Comparably, Mitotic Slime provides an abundance of smaller Ooze tokens upon its death. While it doesn’t offer the player-controlled sacrifice mechanism, it ensures that you get value when the slime dies. In a similar category of permanents that love to live on beyond their own demise, we find the protean Hydra. It’s not exactly creating Ooze, but it grows bigger by placing +1/+1 counters whenever damage is dealt to it, embodying the resilience theme seen in Ooze-based cards.

Each card brings strategic depth and variety to a deck that’s themed around creatures and tokens. By scaling up creature power or multiplying presence on the board, Ooze Garden and its kin embody the continuous growth and adaptability inherent to MTG’s Ooze creatures.

Slime Molding - MTG Card versions
Mitotic Slime - MTG Card versions
Protean Hydra - MTG Card versions
Slime Molding - MTG Card versions
Mitotic Slime - MTG Card versions
Protean Hydra - MTG Card versions

Cards similar to Ooze Garden by color, type and mana cost

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Aspect of Wolf - MTG Card versions
Regeneration - MTG Card versions
Lifeforce - MTG Card versions
Gaea's Touch - MTG Card versions
Night Soil - MTG Card versions
Sylvan Library - MTG Card versions
Primal Rage - MTG Card versions
Survival of the Fittest - MTG Card versions
Crosswinds - MTG Card versions
Fortitude - MTG Card versions
Tranquil Grove - MTG Card versions
Treetop Bracers - MTG Card versions
Root Cage - MTG Card versions
Elfhame Sanctuary - MTG Card versions
Compost - MTG Card versions
Thoughtleech - MTG Card versions
Weaver of Harmony - MTG Card versions
Shigeki, Jukai Visionary - MTG Card versions
Fertile Ground - MTG Card versions
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Card Pros

Card Advantage: Ooze Garden offers a strategic edge by turning creature cards into potential card advantage. As you sacrifice a non-Ooze creature, the card’s ability kicks in, creating an Ooze token with power and toughness equal to the sacrificed creature’s. This process transforms your single creature into a new threat, maintaining or potentially even expanding your presence on the battlefield.

Resource Acceleration: In the right deck, Ooze Garden can act as a resource acceleration tool. By converting expendable creatures into new Ooze tokens, you can effectively recycle resources. This is especially potent in decks that rely on creatures entering or leaving the battlefield, turning temporary assets into lasting advantages.

Instant Speed: The beauty of Ooze Garden lies in its ability to be activated at instant speed. This flexibility allows savvy players to adapt to the fast-paced nature of a game. Whether it’s responding to an opponent’s removal spell by salvaging your creature’s value or creating a surprise blocker, the instant speed of Ooze Garden’s ability ensures that you remain a formidable adversary, turn after turn.


Card Cons

Discard Requirement: Engaging with Ooze Garden, you’re asked to sacrifice a creature, a steep price that might set you back if your board presence is already threatened or sparse.

Specific Mana Cost: Activating Ooze Garden requires a specific green mana investment, potentially making it less flexible for multicolored or colorless strategies that may struggle with generating the necessary resources.

Comparatively High Mana Cost: With an initial investment of five mana to cast, Ooze Garden demands a significant portion of your mana pool, which could be allocated to other versatile spells or creatures that provide immediate impact on the game state.


Reasons to Include in Your Collection

Versatility: Ooze Garden can adapt to a variety of decks, offering a repeatable way to create token creatures. This card shines in strategies that capitalize on creature sacrifice and benefit from having plenty of bodies on the board.

Combo Potential: This card has great synergy with effects that trigger on creature death or ETB (enter the battlefield). With the right setup, it can become a key piece in a combo engine, churning out Ooze tokens for various beneficial effects.

Meta-Relevance: Given certain matchups, particularly those where board presence is contested, Ooze Garden provides a resilient way to maintain creature availability, making it relevant in metas where creature-based strategies dominate.


How to beat

Ooze Garden is a unique enchantment in Magic: The Gathering that allows players to transform their creatures into Ooze tokens, each oozing with potential power and toughness equal to the sacrificed creature’s original stats. It’s a powerful card that can quickly escalate if not addressed promptly, turning even the smallest of creatures into a big, sticky problem. To effectively navigate around Ooze Garden’s slimy tactics, it’s crucial to employ removal spells that can target enchantments directly. Cards like Naturalize or Disenchant are key players in dismantling the Ooze generation factory before it overwhelms the board.

Another strategy is to maintain control of the battlefield with board wipes such as Wrath of God, which can reset the game state regardless of how many Ooze tokens have amassed. This leaves Ooze Garden without any creatures to utilize. Additionally, employing counterspells like Counterspell or Negate to prevent Ooze Garden from entering the battlefield in the first place is an effective preemptive strike. Handling Ooze Garden is all about disruption and control, ensuring it never gets the chance to convert its slimy potential into reality.


Where to buy

If you're looking to purchase Ooze Garden MTG card by a specific set like Shards of Alara, there are several reliable options to consider. One of the primary sources is your local game store, where you can often find booster packs, individual cards, and preconstructed decks from current and some past sets. They often offer the added benefit of a community where you can trade with other players.

For a broader inventory, particularly of older sets, online marketplaces like TCGPlayer, Card Kingdom and Card Market offer extensive selections and allow you to search for cards from specific sets. Larger e-commerce platforms like eBay and Amazon also have listings from various sellers, which can be a good place to look for sealed product and rare finds.

Additionally, Magic’s official site often has a store locator and retailer lists for finding Wizards of the Coast licensed products. Remember to check for authenticity and the condition of the cards when purchasing, especially from individual sellers on larger marketplaces.

Below is a list of some store websites where you can buy the Ooze Garden and other MTG cards:

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Legalities

Magic the Gathering formats where Ooze Garden has restrictions

FormatLegality
CommanderLegal
LegacyLegal
ModernLegal
OathbreakerLegal
VintageLegal
DuelLegal
PredhLegal
PennyLegal

Rules and information

The reference guide for Magic: The Gathering Ooze Garden card rulings provides official rulings, any errata issued, as well as a record of all the functional modifications that have occurred.

Date Text
2008-10-01 X is equal to the power of the sacrificed creature as it last existed on the battlefield.