Gideon's Achilles Heels

Gideon's Achilles Heels

by:

Virgilio F. De leon Jr.

               At first glance Gideon , Champion of Justice looks like a very strong card. His ultimate ability of being able to exile each "Other" permanent from the game may have some Magic players foaming at the mouth at the  moment.They envision Gideon dealing massive damage without any hindrances since he is pretty much the only permanent remaining on the battlefield. Let me pop this dream bubble just about now. It actually takes 15 loyalty counters to remove everything else that would block Gideon's path or anything that threatens him in any way. Consider that his second ability relies on those loyalty counters as well when he becomes an indestructible Human Soldier  , they provide his power and toughness. He might be just a 1/1 creature the next turn when you get to use his ability and after a few turns your opponent or opponents may have well recovered from having all those permanents taken away.A few crafty opponents might have even been tucking in a few lands in their hand in preparation for that Ultimate bomb that Gideon can unleash much like in the old days when Obliterate was in fashion. I'm sure you are taking quite a good look at this new white Planeswalker now and asking yourself if it is as worthy as you thought it was. A lot would still play with him because if left unchecked he could still wreck havoc on every one but I'm sure you are having second thoughts right now. 

     I'm not a naysayer , I'm just saying that playing with this guy can be quite tricky. Lets go to his first ability. It is a very dependent ability and would not go well if all your opponent has is one big bruiser on the board. So the best time to actually cast Gideon, Champion of Justice  is when your opponent is threatening to swallow you up with a massive horde in play , tokenators and such from Selesnya or those white spirit tokens from Innistrad. Plop a Gideon and clear the field with a Supreme Verdict. Hopefully you may be able to cast your planeswalkers ultimate ability before a Bramblecrash , Dreadbore , Vraska or even a Nicol Bolas can get him. So the other weakness is that you need to follow up the massive loyalty counter pile up with a board sweeper...otherwise all those creatures would just trample all over Gideon's pretty boy soldier face.

     All in all people would still look for this card and at the least it is still a massive lure (without having that ability built in on this incarnation) and life extension that could buy some time for you to figure out how to win a match but once people realize that it is not how it initially seemed then expect the prices to plummet a bit.