"Beating Garruk The Slayer"

"Beating Garruk The Slayer"

by:

Virgilio F. De leon Jr. 

There is a side event in the upcoming M15 Pre release that promises to be both difficult and fun. Enter Garruk the Slayer. So Garruk after having a chance encounter with Liliana has slowly been transforming into something black from something green. The guy is tough. The guy is strong and nothing personifies this as much as this card.

So the side event goes like this , you would play your normal PR sealed deck and try your best to kill off Garruk the Slayer. Sounds easy on paper but wait till you check out the arsenal that this Garruk holds.In the hands of a mean player this planeswalker and his wolves will be out for your blood.

Now look at the opening Loyalty counter on this Planeswalker. He is simply like you. He starts off at 20 life/Loyalty counters, only unlike you have he has a tight grip on his abilities and the things that he could to kill you.He knows all his spells and does not need to draw them.

For Zero(0) loyalty counters he could already produce a Green 2/2 Wolf creature token on the battlefield. A free 2/2 creature! Unlike you he is not worried about mana flood or mana drought. Nor is he worried if he could play a creature this turn or not. He simply whistles and a wolf token appears(probably from some dark forest somewhere).

So let us say you manage to plop down a creature to defend against Garruks lone wolf.what are the odds that you had a 2/1 or 2/2 creature on turn one? Close to nil. So The wolf attacks and scores a hit if you do not block it. On the next turn Garruk plops down another wolf to up his token count.

On your turn you would wish for a pyroclasm. Only I don't think that they are reprinting it here. So you either have a creature to block with or nothing at all. Your life total is now at 14.Not looking good at all because on the very next turn Garruk will now have 3 wolves.

And let us say that for some reason you were able to cast a world clas threat like a Siege worm thanks to convoke. Garruk now has the option of using his +4 Planeswalker ability.He gives a +1/0 and death touch on one of the wolves and attacks. If your life total is low enough then you would really need to block with your big creature. If not well , prepare to be overwhelmed next turn.Garruk is now at least at 24 loyalty counters with a couple of wolves already in play.

If the player using Garruk is aiming for the kill , then he or she could just take out your biggest creature with the the -10 ability which makes you lose that creature as a defender while allowing Garruk to either recover Loyalty points or increase what he already has. Not a good prospect. 

So it seems like big creatures are not really the way to killing Garruk the Slayer.So does that mean that you should focus on a fast weenie deck that could outblitz the wolves in terms of damage? Well yeah...then again , Garruk has that last ability of His. -20 , which guarantees to annihilate all his foes. Destroy all creatures that he does not control. Meaning all his wolves will be able to attack while you sit there utterly helpless , flapping your gums as a bunch of wolves dogpile...err..wolfpile you.

After reading this article though...http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/win-ultimate-trophy-2014-06-22....I have to realize that the rules set out to destroy Garruk is via reducing his Loyalty counters to Zero...I guess they designed Garruk the Slayer much like the Kobayashi Maru in Star Trek...It just wants to to teach you a lesson that some things in life are futile...Almost winning could still be fun though.

The rest of the article would have been my thoughts of taking the guy out without reducing his loyalty counters to zero. If you are interested in that please do read on. Thanks!

The Non- Zero Way

Another thought would be to destroy Garruk via spells that destroy Planeswalkers directly. In Garruks Wake seems like your best bet in this category but at 9 mana. You might as well be dead without rapid mana acceleration.

Perilous Vault seems like a serious answer to the the fierce planeswalker. In fact it just might be the ticket. Exiling him and his Wolf club would be a lasting answer. If you yourself could last that long.When you also consider that in a Sealed format the chances that only a handful of players could actually get a Perilous Vault , then in my opinion this guy is highly unkillable. (As of this writing I am still not sure of this is ok for the side event. So a bit of a disclaimer here.)

Well , unless you are also lucky enough to get a copy of Garruk , Apex predator in your Pre-Release Kit. Garruk as it turns out is the only answer to Garruk. You only need to get to 7 mana and he could take one mighty swing of that axe and boom. Off with the Slayers head!Not to sound like a wet blanket though what are the chances of that happening? still one can hope and the packs may hold the key to victory.

So yeah I picture that a lot of the pictures posing along side the Standee of Garruk would either look frustrated or disappointed. Me , Id just be happy being able to play.My schedule please be kind!