Feral Contest MTG Card

Mana cost
Converted mana cost	4
Rarity	Common
Type	Sorcery
Released	2010-02-05
Set symbol
Set name	Worldwake
Set code	WWK
Number	100
Frame	2003
Layout	Normal
Border	Black
Illustred by	Daarken

Key Takeaways

Draws cards and accelerates land play, offering great utility and boosting player advantage during the game.
Instant speed plays allow strategic flexibility, but beware of its discard requirement and specific mana cost.
Crucial in creature-focused strategies, it can be meta-relevant, but compare its higher cost to similar cards.

Text of card

Put a +1/+1 counter on target creature you control. Another target creature blocks it this turn if able.

The instinct for survival makes enemies of all.

Card Pros

Card Advantage: Feral Contest provides a significant boost in maintaining your hand resources by potentially drawing cards based on the power of creatures you control. This helps in overwhelming your opponent with options and keeping your momentum in the game.

Resource Acceleration: By allowing you to put additional lands onto the battlefield, Feral Contest can significantly speed up your resource development. It assists in ramping up your mana base, allowing for earlier and more impactful plays.

Instant Speed: The ability to play Feral Contest at instant speed offers strategic flexibility. You can choose the optimal time to capitalize on the card’s effects, either during your turn for a surprise power play or on your opponent’s turn to best respond to their actions.

Card Cons

Discard Requirement: Feral Contest asks players to discard cards, which might be costly when your hand is already dwindling or card advantage is crucial in the game’s context.

Specific Mana Cost: Requiring a set combination of mana to cast, this card could potentially strain mana resources, making it a less flexible choice for decks running multiple colors.

Comparatively High Mana Cost: When evaluating Feral Contest’s efficiency, it’s important to weigh its mana cost against the benefit it provides. Higher mana demands might hinder the card’s playability, especially when other options could achieve similar effects with lower costs.

Reasons to Include Feral Contest in Your Collection

Versatility: Feral Contest offers flexibility across a range of green decks. It can be a deciding factor in creature-based strategies, giving you an edge in combat phases and enabling advantageous trades on the battlefield.

Combo Potential: Feral Contest can catalyze card interactions within decks that thrive on fight mechanics, potentially clearing the way for your heavy hitters while diminishing enemy ranks. It’s an enabler for cards that trigger when creatures deal damage or die.

Meta-Relevance: With a dynamic MTG meta that often emphasizes creature dominance, Feral Contest becomes an indispensable tool. Its efficacy at removing key threats or disrupting opponent’s board presence keeps it relevant in many game scenarios.

How to beat

Feral Contest is an interesting card that brings a unique twist to creature interactions in the game. To outmaneuver this card, it’s essential to understand its mechanics and how it can impact the state of the battlefield. Feral Contest allows a player to choose two creatures an opponent controls and have them battle each other, so ensuring your most valuable creatures are not easily forced into conflict is crucial.

One efficient strategy to counter Feral Contest is to leverage creatures with hexproof or indestructible abilities, as they can avoid being chosen or survive the fight. Additionally, keeping a removal spell on hand to eliminate a vulnerable creature in response to Feral Contest can disrupt your opponent’s plans. Another tip is to maintain a lower creature count, emphasizing quality over quantity, making it harder for your opponent to capitalize on the card’s effect.

In summary, to navigate against Feral Contest, you’ll want to adapt your creature strategy, either through protective abilities, timely removal, or conservative creature deployment. This ensures that when Feral Contest enters the field, its impact is significantly reduced and your position remains solid.

Cards like Feral Contest

Feral Contest is tied into the thrilling world of creature-focused spells in Magic: The Gathering, bearing a resemblance to cards like Hunt the Weak. Both are sorcery spells that empower a creature with a +1/+1 counter before it fights another creature. A unique edge Feral Contest holds is its selective flexibility, allowing you to choose multiple targets, potentially swaying the board in your favor.

Expanding on the theme of combat tricks, Prey Upon stands out with its simplicity and lower cost. While it doesn’t provide the +1/+1 counter like Feral Contest, its efficiency makes it ideal for early creature removal. Savage Stomp is another intriguing comparison, as it costs less with a dinosaur and also buffs your creature permanently. Though it doesn’t have Feral Contest’s utility to affect multiple creatures, its synergy with dinosaur decks is a significant advantage.

When it comes down to utility against cost, Feral Contest offers a neat package of versatility in creature combat, setting it apart in decks that thrive on multi-target strategies within the diverse realm of Magic: The Gathering spells.

Cards similar to Feral Contest by color, type and mana cost

Where to buy

If you're looking to purchase Feral Contest MTG card by a specific set like Worldwake, 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 Feral Contest and other MTG cards:

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Legalities

Magic the Gathering formats where Feral Contest has restrictions

Format	Legality
Commander	Legal
Legacy	Legal
Paupercommander	Legal
Modern	Legal
Oathbreaker	Legal
Pauper	Legal
Vintage	Legal
Duel	Legal
Predh	Legal
Penny	Legal

Rules and information

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

Date	Text
2010-03-01	Casting Feral Contest doesn’t force you to attack with the first targeted creature that turn. If that creature doesn’t attack, the second targeted creature is free to block whichever creature its controller chooses, or block no creatures at all.
2010-03-01	If just the first targeted creature is an illegal target by the time Feral Contest resolves, it won’t get a +1/+1 counter. However, the second targeted creature is still affected by the blocking restriction the spell imposes, so it’ll have to block the first targeted creature that turn if able.
2010-03-01	If just the second targeted creature is an illegal target by the time Feral Contest resolves, the first targeted creature will get a +1/+1 counter, but the second targeted creature won’t have to block it that turn.
2010-03-01	If you attack with the first targeted creature but the second targeted creature isn’t able to block it (for example, because the first targeted creature has flying and the second one doesn’t), the requirement to block does nothing. The second targeted creature is free to block whichever creature its controller chooses, or block no creatures at all.
2010-03-01	Tapped creatures, creatures that can’t block as the result of an effect, creatures with unpaid costs to block (such as those from War Cadence), and creatures that aren’t controlled by the defending player are exempt from effects that would require them to block. Such creatures can be targeted by Feral Contest, but the requirement to block does nothing.
2010-03-01	You must choose two targets as you cast Feral Contest: a creature you control and any other creature. If you can’t (because there’s only one creature on the battlefield, perhaps), then you can’t cast the spell. Note that the second target may also be a creature you control.