Frankenstein's Monster MTG Card

Card Pros

Card Advantage: Frankenstein’s Monster provides the unique ability to assemble a formidable creature piece by piece from your graveyard, ensuring that your resources are never truly depleted as long as you have creature cards to exile.

Resource Acceleration: While not directly a source of traditional mana acceleration, Frankenstein’s Monster allows you to make the most out of your graveyard resources by converting them into power on the battlefield, essentially accelerating your threat development.

Instant Speed: Although Frankenstein’s Monster itself isn’t an instant, its ability to utilize the graveyard can be synced with instant speed graveyard-filling cards, allowing you to strategically enhance its power mid-combat or in response to an opponent’s actions.

Card Cons

Discard Requirement: Frankenstein’s Monster requires a unique commitment, where players need to discard creatures from their graveyard to activate its abilities. This situation often entails a sacrifice of valuable graveyard resources, which might weaken strategies relying on such cards for later game stages or reanimation tactics.

Specific Mana Cost: This card demands a very particular mana cost involving two black mana and one additional mana. This specific requirement can be restrictive, making it a challenging fit for multi-colored or color-flexible decks that may not consistently produce the necessary black mana.

Comparatively High Mana Cost: With an initial casting cost of three mana, including the specific color requirements, it stands on the higher end for a creature of its stats. There are other creatures with lower mana costs and potentially more immediate board impact, providing superior mana efficiency for players looking to optimize their gameplay. Furthermore, the additional investment needed to boost its abilities through its discard requirement only adds to the overall cost of deploying this creature effectively.

Reasons to Include in Your Collection

Versatility: Frankenstein’s Monster is a unique creature card that can adapt to various strategies, as it can be customized with +2/+0, -1/-1 counters depending on the player’s graveyard resources, allowing for flexible tactics during gameplay.

Combo Potential: This card offers strong synergy with decks that manipulate the graveyard. Its ability to grow by exiling creatures from the graveyard creates opportunities for powerful combos, especially in a reanimator or self-mill deck approach.

Meta-Relevance: In a game that often cycles through different phases, the ability to leverage graveyards can be particularly potent against control decks that manipulate or rely on the graveyard themselves. Having Frankenstein’s Monster can disrupt those strategies while bolstering your board presence.

How to beat

Frankenstein’s Monster, an intriguing configuration to creature cards in MTG, stands out with its unique ability to become stronger with the more graveyard interaction it receives. Much like the narrative of its namesake, the card thrives as you exile creatures from your graveyard, granting it +2/+0 and +0/+2 for each different creature exiled. To tackle this potentially overwhelming force, consider employing graveyard disruption strategies such as Tormod’s Crypt or Scavenging Ooze to limit the resources available for its growth. Prioritize removal spells that exile, such as Path to Exile or Ashes to Ashes, ensuring that once the Monster is off the field, it remains gone. Managing your removal and understanding the key moment to disrupt your opponent’s graveyard will keep Frankenstein’s Monster in check.

Subsequently, transforming your strategies to focus on card types that don’t fuel the Monster’s power growth—like instants, sorceries, or artifacts—can yield an advantage. Building around these shields you from inadvertently strengthening the Monster due to your own gameplay. Monitoring and controlling the graveyard is a quintessential strategy in prevailing over this gothic behemoth.