| Districts of Kestner: Cardlist | Visual spoiler | Export | Booster | Comments | Search | Recent activity |
| Mechanics | Districts of Kestner |
|
CardName: Kin of Odessa Cost: {4}{G} Type: Creature - Elf Warrior Pow/Tgh: 3/4 Rules Text: Spare (Whenever a creature dealt damage by this one this turn dies, you may return that creature to its owner’s hand. If you do, you gain life equal to that creature’s toughness.) Whenever Kin of Odessa spares a creature, you may put a green creature card from your hand onto the battlefield. Flavour Text: Set/Rarity: Districts of Kestner Rare
Kin of Odessa
  Spare (Whenever a creature dealt damage by this one this turn dies, you may return that creature to its owner’s hand. If you do, you gain life equal to that creature’s toughness.)
Whenever Kin of Odessa spares a creature, you may put a green creature card from your hand onto the battlefield.
Illus. Claudio Pozas
3/4
|
History: [-] Add your comments: |
added art and name
-> 
Interesting. A bit bigger than an elf would usually be though - an elf bigger than a wooly mammoth; slghtly odd flavour.
But it's actually secretly sometimes an Elvish Piper which seems nifty.
Curious, I did a search for Elves that have a p/t equal to or greater than 3/4. It turns out there are 26 of them. Granted, a number of them are on beast mounts, are in groups, or are Legendary. But some are not. Golgari Findbroker seems like a poster child for "This is fine."
Oh; they do exist. It just feels weird. (And feels weird on that one). But as I said; this is clearly what Elvish Piper became when it grew bigger. So it's fine to me over-all.
Though if I could think of a creature whose signature was being 3/4, I'd suggest making it a that-piper instead :)
Since I didn't say it before - this is a kinda interesting use of spare. The creature clearly needs to be big for spare to exist on it (which is a problem for the mechanic as a whole, only so many common creatures can be big) and that then also means that an opponent is likely to chump it. You'll want to pair with other bigger threats to stop them prioritising it immediately; but; well, you're clearly playing a big-green-creatures deck, so that's hardly likely to be a hard issue.
The reward is nice, potentially game shatteringly good if you can cheat the right creature into play. But it's also a lot harder to get it to go off if the opponent is half-smart. So it's nicely skill testing for an opponent. While flavourwise the mirror of "One creature back to hand, one from hand into play" is very pleasing.
All up, I like this particular use of spare.
Vitenka is right about this being less useful on low-powered creatures. However, spare can be printed on a 1/1 creature with deathtouch for a relatively low cost. That is, presuming the spare ability isn't too strong (maybe it shuffles a card from that player's graveyard back into their library. Maybe you gain 3 life.)
Mmm, but how many cheap 1/1 deathtouch can a set afford? Maybe two? And would anyone ever bother using the spare ability on thm, rather than saying "Hey, a perfect chump blocker!" leading to groundstall problems?