Slate Street Ruffian MTG Card

Card Pros

Card Advantage: Slate Street Ruffian’s ability to force opponents to discard cards whenever it becomes blocked enhances your card advantage. This disrupts your opponent’s strategy while giving you an upper hand, ensuring that you’re dictating the pace of the match.

Resource Acceleration: While not directly providing mana resources, the ruffian’s discard effect indirectly accelerates your resources by diminishing your opponent’s options. With fewer cards at their disposal, your tactical plays become more effective, allowing you to capitalize on their weakened position.

Instant Speed: The ability to engage the ruffian’s effect at the speed of combat instants is a tactical boon. You can choose to attack with this creature whenever it suits your game plan, leveraging its discard effect precisely when it will hit your opponent hardest – during the combat phase when they are least prepared.

Card Cons

Discard Requirement: Slate Street Ruffian challenges players by enforcing a discard from the opponent each time it becomes blocked or blocks. While disrupting the opponent’s hand can be advantageous, this requirement is conditional and not guaranteed every turn, potentially making it a less reliable form of discard strategy.

Specific Mana Cost: With a casting cost that necessitates one black mana, Slate Street Ruffian is bound to mono-black or multicolor decks with a strong black mana base. This specificity can limit the card’s versatility in a format that highly prizes flexibility and the ability to adapt to various mana configurations.

Comparatively High Mana Cost: Requiring a total of three mana, two of which are generic and one black, to play, Slate Street Ruffian may be considered a costly investment for its 2/2 stats and effect. There are alternatives in the realm of MTG that could provide more immediate or impactful board presence or hand disruption at a similar or lower mana cost.

Reasons to Include in Your Collection

Versatility: Slate Street Ruffian can adapt to various deck strategies, particularly in those that exploit discard mechanics to gain an upper hand over the opponent.

Combo Potential: Utilizing this card’s ability to force an opponent to discard can synergize with effects that punish discarding or capitalize on an opponent’s reduced hand size.

Meta-Relevance: As the game environment shifts towards strategies that involve maintaining card advantage, Slate Street Ruffian can become instrumental in disrupting the opponent’s hand, ensuring they are always at a disadvantage.

How to beat Slate Street Ruffian

Slate Street Ruffian, a creature card in MTG, demands attention due to its ability to cause a player to discard a card whenever it becomes blocked. This disruption can be a thorn in the side of many strategies that rely on maintaining a full hand of cards. To effectively navigate this challenge, one must consider utilizing removal spells such as Murder or Shock to eliminate the ruffian before it can engage in combat. Additionally, players can take advantage of cards that thrive on discarding, such as those with madness or reanimation mechanics, turning a potential setback into a strategic advantage.

Another tactic to counter this pesky creature is deploying creatures with deathtouch or those that can outclass it in combat, minimizing the drawback of its triggered ability by ensuring it’s swiftly taken off the battlefield. Furthermore, using cards that return your discarded cards from the graveyard to your hand, like Eternal Witness or Regrowth, can help recover from the loss induced by Slate Street Ruffian’s effect. Implementing these strategies should aid you in maintaining control over the game and ultimately, conquering the challenge posed by Slate Street Ruffian.