"Feroz, Ulgrotha’s Warden: Birds, Bans, and Bant Stax"

"Feroz, Ulgrotha’s Warden: Birds, Bans, and Bant Stax"

by:

Virgilio F. De leon Jr.MD

Feroz, Ulgrotha's Warden was a good person.

He was a wizard, a teacher, and, perhaps most importantly, the husband of Serra.

Yes, that Serra.

The Serra who had her own realm.

The Serra who created angels.

That Serra.

Feroz, as his planeswalker card proclaims, is the Warden of Ulgrotha. He protected the plane from threats such as Baron Sengir, as well as incursions from other planeswalkers. Those incursions eventually became the reason he created Feroz's Ban—at least, that's how the lore tells it.

So, on to the card.

Feroz is a six-mana planeswalker in Bant colors, requiring three generic mana and one each of green, white, and blue. He enters the battlefield with five loyalty counters.

His +2 ability creates two 1/1 blue Bird creature tokens with flying.

These are probably the albatrosses associated with Feroz, and honestly, getting two flying bodies every time you activate the ability isn't a bad way to protect your planeswalker.

But his second ability is the one that really excites me.

It's a 0 ability.

You draw a card, and then you may put a permanent card with mana value 4 or less from your hand directly onto the battlefield.

Yes, you can put lands into play this way.

But that's hardly the most interesting thing you can do with it.

There are so many permanents with mana value four or less that could benefit from being cheated directly onto the battlefield. Creatures, enchantments, artifacts...

Maybe even some Stax pieces.

Boooo.

But let's be honest: if you're playing Bant and your planeswalker is giving you a free permanent every turn, someone is probably going to find a way to make the most annoying permanent possible appear on the battlefield.

And then we get to his -7 ability, which allows you to create Feroz's Ban.

It seems more anti-creature than anti-planeswalker to me, but hey, this is just another Stax piece to add to the collection.

At least it follows one of Feroz's most important beliefs: summoning creatures for battle is immoral.

He apparently believes that so strongly that he's willing to make sure everyone else has a very difficult time doing it.

Birds.

Free permanents.

And a Ban that tells creatures to stay home.

Feroz may have been a good man and a devoted husband to Serra, but as a Commander?

He might be an absolute nightmare to play against.