"Aetherplasm:The exploding Wonder goo"

"Aetherplasm:The exploding Wonder goo"

by:

Virgilio F. De leon Jr.

During the early days of Spiral Battlegrounds - Valenzuela I was able to meet new players who were medical students in OLFU. As was customary I was able to browse through one of their binders. Aside from getting some cool pieces for a zombie deck I was planning to do. I also found this wonderful card. A card which literally had a thousand shape shifting possibilities. The card was Aetherplasm.

A 4 to cast creature with a 1/1 body , it seemed like a harmless pile of goo right? Harmless is not really something that I would use to describe this ooze. My new found friends from Fatima showed me that when this blob blocks an attacking creature , you could return it to your hand and the defending player(you) could choose any creature from his or her hand to replace the Aetherplasm and use it to block on its behalf. The combo that was shown to me involved a Blazing Archon. A creature that prevented any further attacks. 

Right then and there my mind began to look at the ways I could abuse this card. I wanted something more diabolical in the mix since we are going to be dealing with a goo that could take on any creature shape.(or at least according to the creatures in your hand)

So there I was thinking , who would not want to block with creatures like Glissa, The Traitor , Blightsteel Colossus or Emrakul right? Well? Everyone wants to block with them right? Glissa kills almost anything with her Firststrike and Deathtouch while returning an artifact to your hand too! Blightsteel Colossus , there are only a hand of  creatures that can survive the -11/-11 counters it would inflict on it because of infect. And even if they do survive , the Blightsteel Colossus would live on and potentially threaten to end at least one players life on your next turn(if you are playing an EDH multiplayer game). And Emrakul , I have a foil PR one that has been glaring at me all this time. Asking me why he hasn't seen much play lately, So much power in one card. A Modern Deck or a Duel EDH deck would be glad to have this guy coming down from your hand and replacing our wonder goo to block. Other notables would be Avacyn who makes everything Indestructible and Iona who makes opponents concede due to the fact that they could not play certain colors in their deck. Sunblast Angel also takes advantage of the fact that you have just been attacked, When it comes into play all tapped creatures are destroyed.

So when it comes to the attack phase the Aetherplasm is surely something that could change the mind of your potential attackers. They see the goo , they see you gripping a full hand or even just one and all that they would be thinking about is what kind of monstrosity you would be putting down on the battlefield once they attack and you block. I mean a simple Aetherling could mess up all those life points that your enemies have. The Aetherplasm may not look much like a physical hindrance  but it offers more of a psychological barrier than a tangible deterrent. No one would dare attack you if there are other paths of least resistance. Like the player beside you who has no creatures on the battlefield at all!

Aetherplasm would really work well in a mono blue EDH deck where it can cheat into play a lot of Krakens and Leviathans but it would be a more scary fit in a Simic EDH deck where the controlling magic of blue would meet the might of green. Having access to green poses a lot of horrible big creatures that can be put into play. Like the now banned Sylvan Primordial , Woodfal Primus or my ever favorite Terastodon.

Yup , it is amazing how sets come and go and you still find gems like this one. This is one of the reasons why I love this game so much. Once you start to think that there is nothing new left to learn , one just rears is gooey head and swallows you whole. Blob style.