Dross Harvester MTG Card

Mirrodin (MRD)
2003-10-02 - Number 63

Dross Harvester - Commander Legends: Battle for Baldur's Gate (CLB)

Commander Legends: Battle for Baldur's Gate (CLB)
2022-06-10 - Number 750

Card sets	Released in 2 setsSee all
Mana cost
Converted mana cost	3
Rarity	Rare
Type	Creature — Horror
Abilities	Protection
Power	4
Toughness	4

Key Takeaways

Robust life gain from Dross Harvester can shift game dynamics, granting players a critical survival edge.
Its life-draining synergy with instant spells maximizes opportunities for resource and board control.
However, its discard requirement and specific mana cost may limit flexibility in diverse deck compositions.

Text of card

Protection from white At the end of your turn, you lose 4 life. Whenever a creature is put into a graveyard from play, you gain 2 life.

Card Pros

Card Advantage: When Dross Harvester enters the battlefield, it presents a robust source of life gain, which effectively protects your life total while depleting your opponent’s resources. The ability to recover health with each creature’s death ensures you maintain an advantage, often forcing your opponent to address the Harvester or risk falling behind.

Resource Acceleration: The life gain provided by Dross Harvester can be transformed into virtual resource acceleration. With additional life as a buffer, you’re able to utilize high-impact cards or abilities that require life payments without the same level of risk, speeding up your gameplay and enabling more aggressive strategies.

Instant Speed: While Dross Harvester itself is not an instant, it synergizes well with instant speed removal and sacrifice effects, which allows you to optimize its life-draining ability. You can activate these during your opponent’s turn, ensuring that no creature’s death is wasted and constantly working the Harvester’s ability for maximum benefit.

Card Cons

Discard Requirement: Dross Harvester forces you to discard a card every time it deals or receives damage, potentially depleting your hand quickly and depriving you of vital resources, stakes are higher when your library is full of powerful but situational cards that you may not want to discard.

Specific Mana Cost: This card requires a mix of generic and black mana, which can be restrictive and difficult for multicolored decks to manage consistently, especially if you’re running a deck with a tight mana curve and have limited access to mana fixing.

Comparatively High Mana Cost: With a casting cost that is on the higher side for its abilities, Dross Harvester competes with other impactful four-mana creatures or spells that may offer immediate board presence or value without the drawback of a discard requirement.

Reasons to Include in Your Collection

Versatility: Dross Harvester stands out for its ability to fit into multiple deck archetypes, particularly those centered around life gain or loss. Its unique life transaction mechanic offers a different angle of play, catering to various strategic approaches within the black color realm.

Combo Potential: With the right setup, this card becomes a powerhouse. Pairing Dross Harvester with cards that negate its life loss or convert life into advantages creates potent combos, enhancing both offensive and defensive strategies in your deck.

Meta-Relevance: In an environment where creature-based strategies are prevalent, Dross Harvester can be extremely influential. Its inherent ability to gain life with each creature’s demise makes it relevant, as it can shift the tide in games where maintaining a high life total is crucial against aggressive opponents.

How to beat

Dross Harvester is an intriguing creature card in MTG that presents unique challenges. This black Phyrexian creature can be a real nuisance due to its life gain ability whenever a creature dies. The card sees its true potential in decks packed with creature sacrifices or those that boast a high creature turnover, allowing its controller to gain significant life over the course of a game.

To effectively combat a Dross Harvester, the focus should be on either preventing creature deaths or manipulating them to your advantage. Utilizing exile effects can be extremely beneficial, as they bypass the graveyard and Dross Harvester’s life gain trigger. Cards like Path to Exile or Swords to Plowshares can be particularly effective. Additionally, strong control elements to neutralize your opponent’s creatures before they can capitalize on Dross Harvester’s benefit can tilt the match in your favor.

It’s also worth considering counter strategies like employing cards with lifeloss abilities or introducing graveyard disruption to undermine the synergy Dross Harvester creates. Strategic removal and timing your plays to minimize the life gain for your opponent will be key in mitigating the advantages granted by Dross Harvester, ultimately giving you the upper hand in the match.

Cards like Dross Harvester

Dross Harvester stands out in MTG as a life-gaining powerhouse. Like Dross Harvester, cards such as Blood Artist and Zulaport Cutthroat allow players to benefit from creature deaths, yet Dross Harvester’s potential for life gain is more direct and significant during your opponent’s end step. Unlike Blood Artist and Zulaport Cutthroat whose effects are triggered by any creature’s death, Dross Harvester’s pro-black ability means it is less vulnerable to one of Magic’s most common removal colors.

Exquisite Blood is another card that provides life gain, yet it does so through a different mechanism that triggers whenever an opponent loses life. While Exquisite Blood can create a combo with cards like Sanguine Bond for an automatic win, Dross Harvester is more self-sufficient, providing a consistent gain without relying on an opponent’s status. Finally, we look at Whip of Erebos, offering a similar life-link ability across all your creatures but at the cost of being an artifact that requires other pieces in play to truly shine, whereas Dross Harvester is a creature in and of itself ready to harvest life from each fallen foe.

Taking these comparisons into account, Dross Harvester is a strong contender with a unique advantage in the life gain category, ready to stand its ground in MTG as a formidable presence on the battlefield.

Cards similar to Dross Harvester by color, type and mana cost

Mischievous Poltergeist - MTG Card versions

Where to buy

If you're looking to purchase Dross Harvester MTG card by a specific set like Mirrodin and Commander Legends: Battle for Baldur's Gate, 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 Dross Harvester and other MTG cards: