"The Locust God : Ang Locust Locust!"

"The Locust God : Ang Locust Locust!"

by:

Virgilio F. De leon Jr. MD

In the game of magic there are some who fall in love with certain types of game play and normally stick with the concept until they get tired and try something new. In Team Virulence  for example I specialized in Infect decks. We always had someone who was aggro or control or a little bit of both but one stood out because his decks would always do one thing. Draw. Draw massive amounts of cards that would either flood his hand or cause him to win a lot of games. 

The moment I saw The Locust God I instantly remembered Nolan who said that his main goal in life is to draw the most number of cards. Now he has a win condition.Let us take a look at the Izzet aligned god and see how strong it really is.

For 6 mana , you get a 4/4 flying legendary creature that says, "Whenever you draw a card , create a 1/1 blue/red Insect creature token with flying and haste."

You draw a card. Create a 1/1 flyer with haste! Standard players already want to pair this with Pull from tomorrow for X number of flying critters. Add the amount of cycling cards in the current standard and you have a lot of those locust babies on the battlefield. Locust talaga. Di siya weak. Malocust siya. I can't wait to get this in my PR kit and just go on punning away while I play. Gino . Team Virulence's chef and pun maker would be proud of me.

If Pull from Tomorrow is bad I imagine other worse things to pair with this God in EDH. Imagine The Locust God in play with a Consecrated Sphinx. Assuming that you have 4 opponents and you draw 2 cards for each that they draw then potentially you could have 8 1/1 Insects when your turn comes around.Make that  a solid 9 1/1 Insects on your own draw step. Then there are the other EDH staples like Rhystic study that let's you draw a card if an opponent does not pay an extra colorless mana for each spell they cast.

Then there are the Enters the battlefield cards that let's you draw a card. Primespeaker Zegana and Deadeye Navigator soul bonded with each other could make you enough tokens to win the game. Just keep on bouncing the Primespeaker. Even an Elvish Visionary can get you a 1/1 token. Assuming you really want to play 4 colors hehehheeh.

Skullclamp just begs to be used in anything that involves The Locust God. On your first draw of the turn you already get a 1/1 token that can then be equipped on the clamp ,it dies ,  you proceed to draw two cards and assuming that you have enough mana can go on until you have enough attackers to finish off an opponent or two. One thing I would really love pull off with this interaction is to have an Impact Tremors in play as well. Just keep on having Insects come in and just keep on pinging each opponent until they have no life. Sick.

One combo that gets an upgrade is the Niv-Mizzet , The Firemind - Curiosity/Ophidian Eye combo that lets you draw and ping an opponent to death. Normally you would restrain your draw and pinging to stave off dying via library death but with all the 1/1 Insect tokens you can be sure not let your other opponents feel left out from the damage dealing.They won't love you or the Locust God for it but hey what are good friends for right?

Oh and just in case you don't have a spell to draw a card , the Locust God has an ability to let you draw and discard a card for 4 mana. I love these built in things.

While the Locust God seems like it is a lot weaker than the other Gods(you can Electrify it for 4 damage after all). It also shares the same ability as the others since it will just go back to your hand when it dies on the next end of turn. 

Resilient and full of buggy goodness.