Pious Warrior MTG Card

Mana cost
Converted mana cost	4
Rarity	Common
Type	Creature — Human Rebel Warrior
Released	1999-10-04
Set symbol
Set name	Mercadian Masques
Set code	MMQ
Power	2
Toughness	3
Number	34
Frame	1997
Layout	Normal
Border	Black
Illustred by	Jeff Miracola

Key Takeaways

Pious Warrior enables recurring card advantage, bolstering your hand with creatures from your graveyard.
Indirectly aids resource acceleration by returning low-cost creatures, optimizing spent mana.
Aligning with instant speed spells, Pious Warrior sets up strategic plays during combat.

Text of card

Whenever Pious Warrior is dealt combat damage, you gain that much life.

The Cho-Arrim make no distinction between healers and soldiers.

Card Pros

Card Advantage: The Pious Warrior can potentially offer a card advantage during gameplay. Each time it is declared as an attacker, you may get an opportunity to return a creature card with mana value 2 or less from your graveyard to your hand, keeping your resources in flux and your hand stocked.

Resource Acceleration: While not directly providing mana acceleration, the Pious Warrior can indirectly increase your resources by recurrently bringing low-cost creatures back to your hand. Over time, this can amount to significant resource acceleration as you effectively reuse the mana spent on creatures that have already been played.

Instant Speed: Although the Pious Warrior’s ability isn’t at instant speed, it complements instant speed spells well. By returning creatures to your hand during the combat phase, you can retain mana for instant speed interactions, ensuring you’re prepared for your opponent’s moves while setting up for your own strategy during your turn.

Card Cons

Discard Requirement: Integrating a Pious Warrior into your deck might come at a cost beyond mana. Players may find the requirement to discard a card as part of the cost or effect burdensome, especially when their hand size is already dwindling.

Specific Mana Cost: The Pious Warrior demands a stringent mana alignment, often requiring both white and another specific color. This can be restrictive, particularly when trying to maintain a flexible and adaptable mana base for a diverse set of strategies.

Comparatively High Mana Cost: With a notably high mana cost when compared to cards with similar abilities, the Pious Warrior might not be the most mana-efficient choice. Players could face difficulty justifying its place over lower-cost alternatives that provide similar or greater benefits to gameplay.

Reasons to Include Pious Warrior in Your Collection

Versatility: Pious Warrior offers a dynamic role within various white-centric and life gain decks. Its capacity to efficiently block early aggression while potentially growing stronger makes it a strategic inclusion for those seeking resilience and adaptability.

Combo Potential: The warrior’s ability to garner life points with each attack opens up synergies with cards that thrive on life gain, setting the stage for potent combinations that can tip the scales in your favor during a match.

Meta-Relevance: Given a metagame where aggressive strategies are common, Pious Warrior stands as a pertinent countermeasure. Its enduring presence on the battlefield can consistently disrupt the pace of opponents, allowing you to stabilize and control the course of the duel.

How to beat

When facing the Pious Warrior in your MTG matchups, it’s important to recognize its strengths to effectively navigate around it. What sets the Pious Warrior apart is its resilience and capability to generate value over time. The key to undermining the Pious Warrior lies in preemptively managing the board or altering the flow of combat to your advantage.

Utilizing removal spells that exile or bypass traditional destruction mechanics can ensure the Warrior doesn’t trigger any beneficial effects from death. Moreover, countering the creature through spells or leveraging bounce effects to reset the Warrior’s loyalty counter buildup can halt your opponent’s momentum. Additionally, combat tricks and buff spells can turn the tables against the Pious Warrior, especially when timed to interfere with its combat strategies.

Ultimately, your toolbox to outsmart the Pious Warrior revolves around disrupting your opponent’s game plan, managing the battlefield with precision, and choosing the right moment for your decisive moves. In the realm of MTG, understanding cards like the Pious Warrior and devising strategies against them can often be the difference between victory and defeat.

Cards like Pious Warrior

The Pious Warrior offers a nuanced spin on life-gain strategies within Magic: The Gathering. It stands akin to cards such as Ajani’s Pridemate, a creature that grows stronger whenever you gain life. While similar in their synergy with life-gain tactics, Pious Warrior has the additional ability to return a creature card from your graveyard to your hand, granting you a recurring benefit. Unlike Ajani’s Pridemate, the Pious Warrior doesn’t permanently grow in power but provides a level of card advantage.

Much like the Mourning Thrull, Pious Warrior gains you life upon dealing damage. However, it’s the Warrior’s secondary effect that truly sets it apart, making it valuable in longer games where it creates opportunities for recurring your fallen creatures. The Mourning Thrull lacks this utility, illustrating why Pious Warrior can be seen as a more versatile option. Another comparable MTG card is the Healer’s Hawk, a low-cost flier with lifelink. Even while the Hawk excels in early game aggression, the Pious Warrior’s late-game potential overshadows it due to its graveyard interaction.

In the scope of durability and resilience, Pious Warrior earns its keep among creature-based life-gain cards in Magic: The Gathering. It gracefully blends life-gain with graveyard recursion, offering a commanding presence on the battlefield.

Cards similar to Pious Warrior by color, type and mana cost

Coalition Honor Guard - MTG Card versions

Mangara, the Diplomat - MTG Card versions

Veteran of the Depths - MTG Card versions

Lightkeeper of Emeria - MTG Card versions

Cho-Manno, Revolutionary - MTG Card versions

Where to buy

If you're looking to purchase Pious Warrior MTG card by a specific set like Mercadian Masques, 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 Pious Warrior and other MTG cards: