Trapjaw Kelpie MTG Card
Key Takeaways
- Trapjaw Kelpie’s persist ability provides card advantage through repeatable enters-the-battlefield effects.
- Instant speed play allows Trapjaw Kelpie to disrupt opponents’ combat plans unexpectedly.
- High casting cost and specific mana requirements limit the Kelpie’s deck compatibility.
Guide to Flash card ability
Explore the dynamic Flash ability in Magic: The Gathering (MTG), a feature that allows you to cast spells at lightning speed, often leaving your opponents reeling and your strategy several steps ahead. This versatile ability can turn the tide of a game, providing the element of surprise and tactical advantage. It places a premium on timing and foresight, transforming an ordinary deck into a formidable arsenal of instant threats and responses.
Text of card
Flash Persist (When this creature is put into a graveyard from play, if it had no -1/-1 counters on it, return it to play under its owner's control with a -1/-1 counter on it.)
Travelers in these waters leave a bit of themselves behind.
Card Pros
Card Advantage: Trapjaw Kelpie’s persist ability offers the potential to reuse beneficial enters-the-battlefield triggers, effectively doubling the value you get from other creatures you control. This can lead to a considerable advantage, as you can extract additional benefits from your existing cards.
Resource Acceleration: When paired with cards that manipulate +1/+1 and -1/-1 counters, Trapjaw Kelpie can become a recurring presence on the board. This synergy can expedite the deployment of your strategy by constantly having a blocker or attacker available, smoothing out the flow of your game.
Instant Speed: The fact that Trapjaw Kelpie can be played at instant speed makes it a flexible response during your opponent’s turn. It can surprise an opponent by interfering with combat math or being available to provide card advantage unexpectedly.
Card Cons
Discard Requirement: While Trapjaw Kelpie offers strategic flexibility with its persist ability, players must be ready to discard a card to garner any card draw benefits. This prerequisite could prove costly, especially when your hand is already scant from battling your opponent’s moves.
Specific Mana Cost: Trapjaw Kelpie demands a blend of blue and green mana to cast, which can restrict its integration into a wide variety of decks. Players running mono-colored decks or those that don’t support both hues may find this creature hard to weave into their strategy.
Comparatively High Mana Cost: With a casting cost of five mana, including one each of blue and green, Trapjaw Kelpie’s entrance onto the battlefield is a significant investment. Considering its moderate stats and the availability of lower-cost creatures with impactful enters-the-battlefield effects, it may be outpaced in a game where efficiency and speed are key.
Reasons to Include Trapjaw Kelpie in Your Collection
Versatility: Trapjaw Kelpie offers unique adaptability to different game situations. It can serve as a blocker, card advantage engine, and a way to disrupt opponents’ graveyard strategies—all rolled into one creature.
Combo Potential: With its persist ability, this creature has the ability to integrate into various combos, especially in decks that manipulate +1/+1 counters or take advantage of creatures entering the battlefield multiple times.
Meta-Relevance: In an environment rich with graveyard-based strategies, Trapjaw Kelpie becomes a relevant player, capable of repeatedly exiling key cards from the game, thus impeding opponents’ plans and enhancing your board state.
How to beat
Trapjaw Kelpie, with its persist ability, can prove to be a resilient threat in Magic: The Gathering. The key to overcoming this adaptive sea creature lies in how you handle persist. Utilizing removal spells that exile rather than destroy can ensure it doesn’t return to the battlefield. Cards such as Path to Exile or Ashes to Ashes bypass the persist mechanic entirely, providing a neat solution to what could otherwise be a thorny problem.
Another approach to defeating Trapjaw Kelpie is to deny it targets. Because its card draw ability triggers when a player plays a blue spell, adjusting your game plan to minimize blue spell casts or denying it targets with hexproof can stifle its effectiveness. It’s also susceptible to being outmatched by superior creatures. Overpowering it with aggressive creature strategies or creatures with abilities that trump persist, like undying, can force Kelpie’s controller into unfavorable trades.
In any matchup against Trapjaw Kelpie, remember that it shines in a reactive game state. A proactive approach can keep your opponent on the defensive and reduce the chances of Kelpie’s resilience tipping the scales. Employing these strategies can turn the tide in your favor, ensuring your dominance on the high seas of Magic: The Gathering.
Cards like Trapjaw Kelpie
Trapjaw Kelpie stands out in the world of Magic: The Gathering as a unique creature with abilities that interact with counters. When considering creatures that share a similarity, Lorescale Coatl immediately comes to mind. Both creatures revolve around the concept of counters – in this case, +1/+1 counters. Trapjaw Kelpie capitalizes on these whenever a permanent is turned face up, which can be particularly potent in decks built around morph mechanics.
Another comparable card is Experiment One, which also gains +1/+1 counters, in this case through evolve. While Experiment One can become quite a threat over time, Trapjaw Kelpie has the potential for more immediate impact by accumulating multiple counters within a single turn cycle. Plus, unlike Experiment One, Trapjaw Kelpie can also serve as a temporary answer to problematic permanents due to its counter reset ability upon leaving the battlefield.
Within MTG’s diverse ecosystem of creatures, Trapjaw Kelpie offers a distinctive strategy for players who enjoy manipulating +1/+1 counters and interacting with the flip mechanic. Its blend of offensive growth and tactical board presence merits a close comparison to its peers, endowing trap-laden decks with a versatile tool.
Cards similar to Trapjaw Kelpie by color, type and mana cost
Where to buy
If you're looking to purchase Trapjaw Kelpie MTG card by a specific set like Eventide, 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 Trapjaw Kelpie and other MTG cards:
- eBay
- TCG Player
- Card Kingdom
- Card Market
- Star City Games
- CoolStuffInc
- MTG Mint Card
- Hareruya
- Troll and Toad
- ABU Games
- Card Hoarder Magic Online
- MTGO Traders Magic Online
See MTG Products
Legalities
Magic the Gathering formats where Trapjaw Kelpie 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 Trapjaw Kelpie card rulings provides official rulings, any errata issued, as well as a record of all the functional modifications that have occurred.
| Date | Text |
|---|---|
| 2013-06-07 | If a creature with persist stops being a creature, persist will still work. |
| 2013-06-07 | If a creature with persist that has +1/+1 counters on it receives enough -1/-1 counters to cause it to be destroyed by lethal damage or put into its owner’s graveyard for having 0 or less toughness, persist won’t trigger and the card won’t return to the battlefield. That’s because persist checks the creature’s existence just before it leaves the battlefield, and it still has all those counters on it at that point. |
| 2013-06-07 | If a permanent has multiple instances of persist, they’ll each trigger separately, but the redundant instances will have no effect. If one instance returns the card to the battlefield, the next to resolve will do nothing. |
| 2013-06-07 | If a token with no -1/-1 counters on it has persist, the ability will trigger when the token is put into the graveyard. However, the token will cease to exist and can’t return to the battlefield. |
| 2013-06-07 | If multiple creatures with persist are put into the graveyard at the same time (due to combat damage or a spell that destroys all creatures, for example), the active player (the player whose turn it is) puts all of their persist triggers on the stack in any order, then each other player in turn order does the same. The last trigger put on the stack is the first one that resolves. That means that in a two-player game, the nonactive player’s persist creatures will return to the battlefield first, then the active player’s persist creatures do the same. The creatures return to the battlefield one at a time. |
| 2013-06-07 | The persist ability triggers when the permanent is put into a graveyard. Its last known information (that is, how the creature last existed on the battlefield) is used to determine whether it had a -1/-1 counter on it. |
| 2013-06-07 | When a permanent with persist returns to the battlefield, it’s a new object with no memory of or connection to its previous existence. |
