"Combustible Gearhulk:Burn now? Burn later?"

"Combustible Gearhulk:Burn now? Burn later?"

by:

Virgilio F. De leon Jr.

I love it when you give your opponents a choice which doesn't seem like a choice at all. Browbeat a 3 mana sorcery card that came out in the Judgement expansion bullies opponents into choosing one of two difficult conditions(depending on that opponents situation of course.)

So the choice is to have to take 5 damage or allow a target player to draw 3 cards. Considering that this is a red card it takes out 1/4 of players life. If a player is allowed to draw 3 cards then that is card advantage that might hurt in the future. So burn now or burn later. That was the choice back then.

Nowadays in Kaladesh you get that choice basically on a stick and worse. The Combustible Gearhulk is a 6 mana costing 6/6 first striker that has an enter the battlefield trigger of making your targetted opponent face tough choices. It's either they allow you to draw three cards(burn later) or you could put the top 3 three cards of you library to your graveyard and deal damage to that player equal to the total converted mana cost of those cards. So if by some stroke of luck you discard the new reincarnation of the Eldrazi titans , Emrakul(13 mana) , Kozilek(10 mana)  and Ulamog (10 mana) to your graveyard which totals to 33 points of damage! Of course it is more realistic to have a couple of lands or some spells in there. So to deal maximal damage have big creatures in your deck and even in Kaladesh there doesn't seem to have a shortage of that.

I just love this particular Gearhulk that I would really want to have it imprinted on a Mimic Vat to have it ask the same question again and again. "Would you want to burn now or would you want to burn later?"