Amugaba MTG Card

Mana cost
Converted mana cost	7
Rarity	Rare
Type	Creature — Illusion
Abilities	Flying
Released	2001-10-01
Set symbol
Set name	Odyssey
Set code	ODY
Power	6
Toughness	6
Number	61
Frame	1997
Layout	Normal
Border	Black
Illustred by	Heather Hudson

Key Takeaways

Amugaba grants card advantage through spell retrieval, allowing for strategic planning and resource maintenance.
Its discard mechanism can unexpectedly boost your board presence, turning the tide of a match.
Amugaba’s instant-speed return to hand offers reactive play and protection from threats.

Text of card

Flying o U, Discard a card from your hand: Return Amugaba to its owner's hand.

The aven claim it feeds on thunder and rainbows.

Card Pros

Card Advantage: Amugaba offers a unique form of card advantage by allowing you to return uncast spells to your hand, enabling you to utilize them in future turns to maximize strategic plays and maintain resources.

Resource Acceleration: Through its discard ability, Amugaba indirectly aids in ramping up your resources. By discarding a high-cost card, you can potentially reanimate or retrieve it, accelerating your board presence at a vital moment in the match.

Instant Speed: The flying behemoth can provide an advantageous engagement during combat or in response to an opponent’s actions due to its ability to return to your hand at instant speed. This flexibility ensures that you remain reactive and that Amugaba returns to safety even under impending threat.

Card Cons

Discard Requirement: Amugaba demands a significant price for its undying loyalty. Each time you wish to utilize its ability to dodge harm by taking flight, you must let go of another card from your hand. This can strain your resources, especially during late-game scenarios when each card in your hand counts.

Specific Mana Cost: Summoning this beast requires a specific blend of mana: a trio of blue and four others. This can sometimes be restrictive, as it may not seamlessly fit into decks that utilize a broader color palette or have less consistent mana bases.

Comparatively High Mana Cost: Amugaba’s aerial escapades and potential for board presence come at a steep price of seven mana. Given such an investment, players often weigh their options, as other cards could provide similar impact without the hefty mana cost, allowing for a more flexible and dynamic play earlier in the game.

Reasons to Include in Your Collection

Versatility: The Amugaba card offers a unique blend of evasion and repeatable bounce ability, making it an intriguing choice for decks that aim to disrupt opponents’ strategies while presenting a formidable flying threat.

Combo Potential: With the capability to return to your hand by discarding three cards, Amugaba can synergize with strategies that capitalize on high card turnover or graveyard shenanigans, offering numerous ways to optimize gameplay.

Meta-Relevance: As matches become more complex and interactive, Amugaba’s daunting recursion can serve as a resilient win condition that endures through removal-heavy environments, ensuring it remains a relevant choice across various meta shifts.

How to beat

Amugaba, a daunting flying creature card from the Magic: The Gathering universe, poses a unique challenge with its ability to evade capture and removal. This evasion is facilitated by its return-to-hand ability, activated by the sacrifice of a land, making it slippery in the face of direct removal spells. However, every MTG player knows that for every powerful card there are clever strategies to outmaneuver it.

One effective way to counter Amugaba is through the use of counterspells. By preventing Amugaba from entering the battlefield to begin with, you circumvent its return ability entirely. Alternatively, you can tackle the card with spells that force players to sacrifice a creature. Since Amugaba’s ability hinges on the player’s choice, it can’t protect itself against these types of effects. Another strategy is to apply pressure on your opponent’s land base, thereby making the cost of returning Amugaba to their hand too steep to pay. Amugaba can also be rendered harmless with enchantment-based removal, which doesn’t destroy or target, thus navigating around its sneaky evasion ability.

In short, overcoming the challenge of Amugaba demands tactical foresight and a deck prepared with various answers to airborne threats. By employing these strategies, you can turn the tides against this formidable MTG card.

Cards like Amugaba

Amugaba, an intriguing creature card in MTG, swims in the deep waters of evasive powerhouses. This card is somewhat reminiscent of creatures such as Phantom Monster, which also boasts a significant presence in the air with a sturdy flying ability. Yet, Amugaba separates itself with a unique twist to its design – the ability to bounce itself back to a player’s hand at the cost of discarding a card from their hand. Phantom Monster lacks this tactical feature, offering less flexibility in terms of board control and protection from removals.

When drawing parallels, we also come across Aven Fateshaper. It shares Amugaba’s capacity to return to the owner’s hand, although instead of discarding, it reshuffles itself into one’s library. Both cards allow for repeatable use, but Amugaba’s immediate hand return can be more advantageous in quickly adapting to the ever-changing battlefield. Another creature that enters this circle of comparison is Windreader Sphinx, which shares the flying trait and offers card draw for aerial attacks, yet it doesn’t have the self-bouncing mechanism that gives Amugaba its strategic edge.

Examining the shared and distinct qualities of these cards, it is evident that Amugaba finds its place among MTG’s versatile creatures, carving out a niche with its flexible form of survival and board impact.

Cards similar to Amugaba by color, type and mana cost

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Where to buy

If you're looking to purchase Amugaba MTG card by a specific set like Odyssey, 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 Amugaba and other MTG cards: