"Oozing with Ooze"

"Oozing with Ooze"

by:

Virgilio F. De leon Jr.

I have always been a fan of Ooze! One of the earliest decks I made had one, it was the Primordial ooze and I really wanted to create a mean deck with one but it always had a built in weakness. Some guy with a weak burn spell always spoiled my fun before I could make a monster out of my 1 drop ooze or somebody with terror always clocked it. And well, because of the upkeep cost my ooze actually turns and kills me. You can put +1/+1 counters on it and pay it every upkeep or it turns and smacks you in the head. What a very demanding ooze. It means that you are not allowed to miss a land-drop. If you do then it won’t be long before your ooze and your opponent go hand in hand in beating you. I wonder how people played with this pesky thing in the earlier years of magic.

I still think that the best Ooze to come out in recent years was the Bloodhall Ooze from the Alara Block, It was another one drop and it rewarded you for having a black or green permanent which wasn’t all that hard because Alara block wanted you to play multiple colors and for this type it would be Jund colors. It still had the same problem as the primordial ooze though; it had to survive to your next up where it can grow up to 3/3. A well timed Shock was all it took, and even if the Ooze made it to your upkeep, a lightning bolt (that was still around that time in standard) was there to take care of it. Annoying because it had so much beat down potential and in game where no creature control existed, it actually went to town and never let up. Sigh.

Then came Dark Ascension and the current Ooze of choice. Enter Predatory Ooze; this one had the promise of delivering. Right off the bat, it heralded itself as an indestructible 1/1 creature for 3 green mana, heck it was a mana commitment right from the start but many are still going to play this guy. It is the only non-vampire creature in standard that can grow. It even does it the moment you tap it to attack! It becomes 2/2 the moment it wants to chomp some of your opponents life points and if some hapless creature blocks it and dies it gets another +1/+1 counter on it! It can even trade for an opponent’s 2/2 creature and leave the scene of the carnage even bigger. Weenie armies beware of the Ooze. It will devour you.