Woebearer MTG Card

Card Pros

Card Advantage: Woebearer provides a consistent advantage by returning target creature cards from your graveyard to your hand whenever it deals combat damage to a player. This can swing the dynamics of the game in your favor over time, giving you more options and resources for strategic plays.

Resource Acceleration: By reclaiming valuable creatures from the graveyard, Woebearer can essentially accelerate your resource pool without expending additional cards from your hand, allowing you to deploy more threats on the board and overwhelm your opponents.

Instant Speed: While Woebearer itself doesn’t operate at instant speed, it allows you to hold back creatures in your hand until the moment is right. This creates potential instant speed plays by maximizing the use of your creatures in response to the flow of the game, especially those with Flash or with effects that trigger when a creature enters the battlefield.

Card Cons

Discard Requirement: It mandates players to let go of one of their valuable cards, which could interrupt the flow of their hand, especially in a tight game state where every card counts.

Specific Mana Cost: The precise mana cost of Woebearer makes it a challenging fit for decks that aren’t heavy on both black and other colors needed. This may restrict deck-building options and reduce the card’s overall flexibility.

Comparatively High Mana Cost: Requiring a significant five mana to play, Woebearer can be seen as an investment that enters the battlefield later in the game when players might opt for more impactful or immediate solutions to the board state.

Reasons to Include Woebearer in Your Collection

Versatility: Woebearer offers a dynamic role in a variety of black-focused decks. It has the unique ability to repeatedly return creatures from your graveyard to your hand, stocking your hand with valuable resources over the course of a game.

Combo Potential: This card’s inherent recursion ability pairs perfectly with sacrifice strategies, or with creatures that have potent enter-the-battlefield effects. It opens the door to numerous combo possibilities and synergies.

Meta-Relevance: Its relevance in the meta can fluctuate, but in games where attrition is key, Woebearer shines by granting sustainability and endurance. It can repeatedly undermine your opponent’s removal strategies by bringing your creatures back, turn after turn.

How to beat

Woebearer is a unique card that presents a recurring threat in MTG, thanks to its ability to resurrect creatures from the graveyard to the battlefield. This feature enriches strategies within black decks, especially those that thrive on creature recursion. One effective strategy to counter Woebearer is the use of graveyard hate cards, such as Relic of Progenitus or Tormod’s Crypt, which can exile creatures before Woebearer has the chance to bring them back. Another proven method is to remove Woebearer from play with efficient removal spells, such as Path to Exile or Swords to Plowshares, which can neutralize this persistent problem before it starts recouping value for your opponent.

It might also be strategic to avoid trading smaller creatures in combat if Woebearer is on the battlefield, as this prevents your opponent from gaining advantageous targets for its ability. Instead, focus on applying pressure with larger threats or creatures that have beneficial enter the battlefield effects, swaying the resource balance in your favor and making Woebearer’s influence on the game negligible. By incorporating these tactics, the challenge posed by Woebearer in a game of MTG can be mitigated, turning what might seem like a looming threat into a manageable obstacle.