Fiend Hunting

~
Happy Wednesday MTG peeps,

Today we wanted to yatter a bit about that new Innistrad uncommon Fiend Hunter. Why? We've noticed that this card has gained some popularity and players, whether aggro or control, are giving it serious consideration for inclusion in their Magic the Gathering builds.

This 1/3 for a cmc of three (one colourless and two white mana) provides an excellent 'enters the battlefield' trigger which could be messed up by Torpor Orb but fortunately that card does not see popular play. What's the effect ? The player gets to exile another creature as long as the Fiend Hunter remains in play.

This is a bit reminescent of Leonin Relic-Warder which eilies artifacts / enchantments and Oblivion Ring which exiles any non-land permanent. We love this type of card and can only hope that the next set, Dark Ascension, has a functional reprint of Tidehollow Sculler from Shards of Alara which gave you the opportunity for early control by exiling a non-land card directly from your opponent's hand.


The downside of course is when your Fiend Hunter gets pwn'd, you have to give up the loot. Turning that frown upside down though may be possible with some handy recursion Disentomb tech via Sun Titan - hoorah for 3 cmc spells!. Hopefully by this time, you would already have sufficient resources on the game table or in your hand to not care about the threat you had just buried with Fiend Hunter.


So where to put this guy ? That is completely up to you. The crew here at MTG Realm loves rogue and casual builds but found that Fiend Hunter is best on a mono-white or blue-white human build. A Geist aggro build also could use this guy. One build we are considering to take for a spin at Friday Night Magic includes Doomed Traveler, Fiend Hunter, Geist of Saint Traft, Hero of Bladehold, Leonin Arbiter, Leonin Relic-Warder, and Mirran Crusader. Supporting cards such as Angelic Destiny, Dismember, Honor of the Pure, Mana Leak, Oblivion Ring & Sword of War and Peace round out the rest of the choices. For a more 'human-centric' build a must-have for us is the versatile Bonds of Faith and some of those human-friendly equipments in Innistrad such as Silver-Inlaid Dagger.

We want to know where you use Fiend Hunter - drop a comment in the comment thingy below.
~
Lastly,
The folks over at MTG Mint Card has one heck of a Christmas Holiday deal - you can knock off 50% (!) off express shipping for any purchase. This deal is good until 21st December which should allow you loads of time to Christmas shop for that special MTG fan.

~