Elder Gargaroth is the New Monarch of Reach

I'm back to tell you which creatures have reach in Magic Core Set 2021, so that you can avoid the embarrassment of attacking your flying creature into them. Let's start with three simple green creatures.



Skyway Sniper
Snarespinner
Sporeweb Weaver
Rating: 0.0
These are the reach creatures we need. They all have higher toughness than power, a classic creature type, and both art and name that are highly suggestive of their anti-air use. While I usually approach this list in color, then alphabetical order, I wanted to start with this trio to emphasize how important all of these flavor hints are as we enter an increasingly digital game where card text is shrunk or absent until you hover. If you are staring at the Skyway Sniper on your opponent’s side of the screen, you can see in the art that they are getting ready to shoot an arrow at that passing Thopter. And spiders are spiders with the added benefit of having web-focused names.


Gnarled Sage
Rating: 3.0
While Gnarled Sage is not the most problematic card on this list, I do need to highlight that this card also exists in the set:


Look at these two cards, just the artwork, and tell me which of these is supposed to have reach. Heck, go beyond the art. The latter card is a warden, “a person responsible for the supervision of a particular place or thing or for ensuring that regulations associated with it are obeyed.” The Warden of the Woods does have vigilance, and that ability has been associated with sentries and guardians in the past, and now that I'm thinking about that, I don't know that I understand the flavor there either. What does that have to do with being able to attack and block? You still have to leave your post in order to attack.

It’s also noteworthy that this is the third treefolk with reach in Magic’s history, and that the previous two were oak trees (per their names, Cloudcrown Oak and Great Oak Guardian). There’s also no consistency in secondary typing with a warrior, druid, and single-typed treefolk. Oak is actually the most common type of tree to be in a card name, and based on my very rudimentary understanding of trees, appears to be the default treefolk in Magic.

What if they introduced a different type of tree as the treefolk with reach? I would suggest pine trees because they have a distinct look to them, and the flavor could be that they shoot their pine needles as anti-air projectiles akin to arrows. This would lean less on the trope of “tall things have reach,” which doesn’t make much sense when we start comparing treefolk. The other way to go would be redwoods, which are renown as super tall trees.


Turret Ogre
Rating: 3.0
Second time’s the charm? During its first printing in War of the Spark, I rated Turret Ogre a 3.0. There’s only one subtle change this time around, the reminder text on the reach ability itself. While that helps new players understand what the ability does, I think that it is a small hindrance for others as it adds some word soup into the mix, making the ability itself stand out less.


Elder Gargaroth
Rating: 5.0

Word soup, especially multiple keywords on the same line with reach buried. Even p/t. "Tall" flavor that isn't reflected in the name, and only somewhat reflected in the art. Luckily a mythic rare, but may have Constructed implications. Probably a 4.0 or 4.5 reach ambusher. https://t.co/ikgyEP7vxw

— Riki Hayashi (@mtgRikipedia) June 8, 2020

Excuse me?!

This card is ridiculous. Word soup with multiple keywords on one line, including having vigilance, so this will always be on defense to ambush you.

And while we’re on those keywords, what’s up with the order that they are printed on the card? I feel like there is some hierarchy of keywords, and this might be something that I spend some more time investigating. Totally get why trample is last. It only matters at the end of combat when it attacks. Basically every other keyword ever printed will be relevant before it. But if we’re talking about relevance of timing, surely reach should precede vigilance. Unless you give this haste through some outside means, Elder Gargaroth is going to be on blocking (and potentially reaching) duty before it goes on the attack and vigilance matters.

My ratings are made on a combination of how likely a creature is to reach ambush based on its flavor and art, and how punishing it is for said ambush to happen. With a 6/6 body, Elder Gargaroth is going to eat your flyer, and that’s plenty punishing enough to warrant a high rating, a 4.0 or 4.5 as I initially Tweeted, but what puts this card over the top is the triggered ability, which yes, triggers on attacking and blocking, something that I actually missed upon my first look.

Not only will Gargaroth eat an attacker, it will also generate an extra card’s worth of value in the deal. The old two-for-nothing. I’m stunned that I started writing these pieces because of Shifting Ceratops one year ago, and I thought that was one of the worst cases of this phenomenon ever. From the ambush side of things, it still might be because the reach is buried in an activated ability. But Gargaroth is now the top… elephant(?) for the maximum punishment it inflicts if you do fly into it. People talk a lot about power creep for things like Planeswalkers. I just never thought that I would see it so starkly in my niche genre.

Don't Get Ceratopped: Ikoria, Lair of Behemoths

Here we are again for my usual installment of Don't Get Ceratopped*, where I examine each creature with reach in the new Magic: the Gathering set Ikoria: Lair of Behemoths, and rate it on its likelihood of pulling off a reach ambush, as Shifting Ceratops did so many times during M20 Limited season. Here's the original blogpost. Roughly at around a 3.0 I would expect even veteran players to send a flyer unwittingly into the creature with reach and for that ambush to cost you a full card.

*Astute readers will note that this is a new title for this series. I may or may not go back and edit my older posts at some point to Mandela Effect y'all. Credit to Nick Prince for pointing out what a great phrase this is.

Cloudpiercer
Rating: 3.5

Here we have our one-per-set red common with reach. These often rate pretty high because they have unusual creature type and higher power than toughness, as is the case on Cloupiercer. The red reachers also tend to have more word soup, as the reach isn't their primary function. In this case, the word soup is mutate, and that adds an additional level of surprise factor since Cloudpiercer could be hiding underneath the creature it mutates onto.

This is also the space where I will make my regularly-scheduled complaint about the flavor of reach, specifically the notion that tall things can block flyers. This card tries to reinforce this via its name and the scale birds flying around its long neck. So on Ikoria, these tall brachiosaur types can block flyers, right?


...

I guess the vantasaur should have reared up on its hind legs.

Crystalline Giant
Rating: 4.5

This is a card that plays much worse in paper than online, what with needing to roll a die, sometimes multiple times. This ability points to a new direction for card designs using this design philosophy, and it opens up a host of memory and/or token visibility issues when playing it in paper. This card is going to be a nightmare to play and track.
However, the likelihood of an ambush goes up online by several magnitudes. In paper, you'll have to make a chart, roll a die, say the ability out loud, and write the ability on a scrap of paper. That's a lot of steps that will reinforce in your brain when it gets reach. Online, the program will handle all of that, and if you aren't paying attention and just click through the upkeep trigger, you're very likely to miss what actually happened. The flying counter basically plays the same way as reach on defense, and other abilities like deathtouch and first strike can combine to make the ambush even worse, which is why I've bumped this card to just short of Shifting Ceratops based on this heinous online interaction. The way the abilities are displayed on the card may influence the chances of an ambush as well. Will the words of the added abilities be prominent enough to see, or will they be shrunk down and invisible?

Flycatcher Giraffid
Rating: 3.0

Yikes. Yikes. This set is going to get a lot of people ambushed. There are some decent flavor things on this card that hint at reach. "Flycatcher" is a good sign that things that fly should watch out. "Giraffid" not so much. I guess it's trying to fill the "tall things" space, but doesn't quite get there for me. And all of these things don't come close the the cues from the usual spider/archer flavor.
The real culprit for the unusually high rating for a common is the ability counter. Burying the keyword so that you won't see it at a glance is always a problem. Second, and more important, it's variable. Some games, this will have reach and some games it will have vigilance. So there will be some games where you can safely push your flyers right past the strange Antelope Lizard (it's not even a Giraffe?), making it hard to develop the visual connection between the art and reach. And like Crystalline Giant, the ability is something that you are much more likely to click through and forget compared to paper Magic, where your opponent will have to make a verbal declaration and scribble on a piece of paper.
A 3.0 is unnaturally high for the simple, green common in the set, and along with some of the other things going on, makes this a very dangerous set for flyers. The ability counter also has the potential to be moved (albeit via rare cards Ozolith and Bonders' Enclave), and that can make for completely new and unexpected combinations for ambush.

Gemrazer
Rating: 4.0

I don't understand this card. It's breaking these gems for whatever reason. That's fine. You do you. Flavorwise, this fits fine with the ability to destroy artifacts... and enchantments why? Are enchantments "gems"? But why does this have reach? Do the gem shards fly up into the air and hit flyers? It's not a regularly-supported reach creature type, has equal power and toughness, and like the Giraffid, has the potential for mutate to hide the reach ability. Fs in chat for the first Dreamtail Heron that flies necklong into a Gemrazer.

Glowstone Recluse
Rating: 1.5

Classic spider with spider art and higher toughness than power. The 2/3 body at least allows this to threaten to outright kill or trade with a lot of flyers. This gets a slight bump due to mutate potentially putting this on the bottom of a mutation, denying you some of those visual clues.

Sudden Spinnerets
Rating: 2.0

I usually don't rate the green combat trick every set that gives reach, because if that's going to eat a flyer, there's not much that can be done to avoid that outcome. Like with many combat tricks, you just have to hope that they don't have it. But this spell has the potential to eat a follow up flyer because the reach counter sticks around on the creature, and I'm rating it a 2.0 solely on that follow up of "Oh, it still has reach."

Vivien, Monsters' Advocate
Rating: 5.0

We did it. We rated another card besides Shifting Ceratops as a 5.0, and here's why. When I first started writing this blogpost, I didn't have Vivien on my list. I missed it while scanning the visual spoiler, and it was only upon a final Scryfall check that I came across it. As a Planeswalker, you know it's going to be word soup. On top of that, the reach comes on an ability counter, and that counter has three different options. At some point, you are going to look across at this sea of beasts and forget that one of them has reach, and you will be sad. And while my ratings are for Limited play, this card is also going to get people in Constructed where Vivien will combine with Nissa to put counters on ALL THE THINGS. And while the 3/3 body isn't the worst thing you could run a flyer into, the token doesn't cost them a card, and this interaction is bound to happen even though you "know" they can have reach, because sometimes they won't and you'll forget.

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This set is bad for those of us who want to avoid the displeasure of foolishly running a flyer into an opposing creature with reach. Even the boring old spider in the set has the ability to mutate and hide underneath another creature, in addition to two other mutate reachers, including a red reacher that has all the usual problems with red reachers (power > toughness, inconsistent "tall" flavor). Then there's the ability counters. Two of these are commons, and the instant can give the counter to any creature. And once that counter is out there, there are ways to move it around. All in all, there are multiple things that make it very difficult to develop the usual mental and visual shortcuts for what has reach. Good luck to all of you on avoiding getting Ceratopped.

Shifting Ceratops Scale: Throne of Eldraine

Welcome back to the Shifting Ceratops Scale, where I take a look at all the cards in a set with reach and rate them on a five-point scale named after the greatest reach ambusher. Throne of Eldraine has six entries, five creatures and one aura, and overall this is a very dangerous bunch of cards. Be careful and don't get Ceratopped by these cards with reach!

Brimstone Trebuchet
2.0
There is a lot of text on this card, and reach coming after another keyword is a good indicator for a potential ambush, but being only a 1/3 makes it lower impact ambush. Anecdotally, I also think that players tend to read defender text a little more often when they go to attack into them, since there’s more of a likelihood of those abilities mattering to blocking. But it’s still a pretty weird package in all: red, defender, trebuchet?!



I think the flavor of a trebuchet is supposed to suggest some kind of anti-air ability, like archery, but a trebuchet is actually a siege weapon, more akin to a catapult. It’s meant to hurl heavy objects at stationary castle walls, not fast-moving, flying targets. Maybe the flavor is that it’s so tall of a structure that it just gets in the way of a flyer, but in that case, it should probably have zero power.

Robber of the Rich
2.0
Although archers have become the defacto secondary reach creature type to spiders, just having the word in the type line isn’t enough of a tip off, especially when there are multiple other creature types present. For something to truly resonate as an archer, it needs to have the classic “bow pose.” It also helps if the card name itself references the fact that it is an archer. Robin Hood has his bow on his back, and both the name and the artwork reflect more on the robbing aspect of the card than the archery.



The other abilities on the card, focusing on attacking rather than blocking, also serve to draw attention away from the trap laying in hiding here. Similar to the Trebuchet, what keeps Robber of the Rich’s rating so low is its rather pedestrian 2/2 stats. It’s likely to trick you, but that trick probably won’t be a blowout where you lose one of your valuable flyers. Nonetheless, there are a lot of smaller faeries in this set, so maybe it might have more of an impact in this format than most.

Sporecap Spider
0.0

Surprisingly, the only spider in the set. It has typically “spidery” art, and low power, so it’s a low-probability, low-impact ambusher.

Tall as a Beanstalk
4.0

Explain this one to me. Tall as a Beanstalk gives reach, but literal Beanstalk Giant does not have reach, nor do any of the other giants in this set, so this one card is playing into the “tall things have reach,” but nothing else in the set does.

It doesn’t help that this is an aura, and thus the text will usually be hiding behind the creature it enchants. Hopefully, what will happen is that players will read the aura to confirm the p/t boost and when they do that, see the reach. But beware of sneaky players who may try to subvert this when they cast it by omitting that information: “it gets +3/+3 and becomes a giant.” Derived information! Yay! This card might actually lead to the opposite of an ambush, where a card like Beanstalk Giant deters an opponent from attacking a flyer into it under the misattribution of reach.

Wildborn Preserver
3.0

It’s an archer, but if you look at the artwork, you might not know it. The most prominent thing is the fox, and the rider is wielding a sword with their bow slung on their back. In terms of gameplay, the triggered ability is going to garner more attention, and it’s very likely that this creature could be 5/5 or larger when it ambushes your flyer because the play pattern with this card will be to cast it on two, attack once or twice, have it sit on the sidelines accumulating counters, then “Surprise, reach!” It does take a bit of setup for this to be an effective ambush, which is why I don’t rate it as a 4.0.

Stonecoil Serpent
4.0

I don’t get it. I don’t understand why snakes have reach in Magic. The “giants are tall” thing makes more sense to me than what appears to be “snakes are in the trees.” This one isn’t even in a tree; it’s a statue. Nothing in the name suggests reach here either.

Stonecoil Serpent is likely to enter the battlefield with significant size, probably 4/4 or larger in most games, and it has a lot of abilities, particularly other keywords on the same line as the reach. Along with Tall as a Beanstalk, I consider this the most likely to ambush a flyer in Throne of Eldraine. But of course now that you’ve read this list, none of these reachers will take you by surprise.

The Shifting Ceratops Scale: Creatures with Surprise Reach

Have you ever attacked with a flying creature only to be completely surprised when your opponent blocks with their reach creature? This typically happens to me at least once per set. It’s a sheepish and humbling moment as a Magic player, right up there with trying to use a sorcery as an instant. In the past, I’ve referred to this as the Nessian Asp Problem (a snake with reach?!), in honor of one of the first times I remember being ambushed, but that reference is a bit dated, and M20 actually had what might be the most egregious “surprise, reach!” blocker in Magic’s history, so I’ve named this scale in honor of the mighty dino-spider, Shifting Ceratops.



This five-point scale balances both the likelihood of a creature with reach ambushing your flyer and the impact of said ambush on the game. I’m only rating things for Limited play because that is where this is most likely to happen. I've rated all the reachers for the last year of Limited to establish some baselines, and will be writing updates every set. My hope is that by writing about this, I'll avoid the problem, and maybe save you from the same.

0.0 Netcaster Spider, Mammoth Spider

Most spiders and many archers fall into this rating. These are iconic creature types that we have been trained to associate with reach. Hence, it’s unlikely that they will ambush your flyers. It’s possible that for newer players who haven’t developed the shortcut of “spider = reach” that some spiders might rate higher.

Archers are a funny lot. The very first archer in Magic, Elvish Archer, actually had first strike, keying off of an archers ability to attack from a distance. For much of Magic’s history, its archers played off of this “remote strike” capability with various damage-dealing abilities, either in combat or against flyers. But more and more, archers have consolidated into the secondary reach creature type for the humanoid races.

1.0 Arboreal Grazer, Grappling Sundew

These have a low impact due to the zero power. You might accidentally attack a flyer into one of these, but it won’t cost you your creature, and you can play it off as “reach-checking” your opponent.

Historically, this is probably where I would rate spiders and archers with power equal to or higher than their toughness. In addition to creature type and art, the p/t stats have been another strong shortcut for identifying reachers. It wouldn’t surprise me if Sentinel Spider got someone at some point, especially since reach isn’t the first word in its text box, another factor that could play into an ambush. Such balanced p/t spiders are unlikely to ambush, but if they do, there’s a good chance they eat or trade with your creature as well.

2.0 Rubble Slinger, Grazing Whiptail

If these were spiders or archers, they wouldn’t rank here. I actually thought that Rubble Slinger was an archer, but it appears that what is being slung is rocks, not arrows. Meanwhile, the Whiptail fills out a dinosaur quota in Ixalan.

Both rank this low because they are French Vanilla, so if you do bother to read them, you’re likely to notice that they have reach. Plus they have the all-important toughness > power, which can be a good secondary tipoff.

3.0 Turret Ogre, Kraul Harpooner

This is the point on the SCS that I would personally expect to get tricked into a reach ambush early in a Limited format. You’ve got non-typical creature types, power greater than toughness, and what I like to call “word soup,” long abilities that distract you from the all-important keyword ability. The Harpooner is probably slightly less likely to pull off the ambush because it has the triggered ability that fights with a flyer, but most of the time, that fight ends up in a trade or just does nothing, so it’s quite possible to forget that it interacts with flyers.

Flavor-wise, they are both more of a stretch than your typical archers. I usually think of throwing harpoons at whales, so it’s weird to see it touted here as an anti-flyer weapon. Although Kaladesh did have flying whales…And I’m not sure what’s going on with Turret Ogre. It’s standing on a turret so it’s high enough to throw rocks at birds? I mean, that’s what is going on in the art.

4.0 Howling Giant, Cavalier of Thorns

Both of these creatures also rate so high because they are more likely to eat an ambushed flyer for free rather than trade with them, making the mistake all the more punishing. This is the class of creatures where they do so much else that you focus on those things before the reach. Cavalier of Thorns is obviously a word soup; you first focus your attention on the enters-the-battlefield ability, then read the leaves-the-battlefield ability, note the synergy between the two, and completely forget that it has reach. The creature type doesn’t lend itself to assuming reach (but I’m just now noticing that all the Cavaliers are Knights--cross set synergy with Eldraine!), and while it has more toughness than power, it’s still beefy enough for the reach to slip by. In my head, +2 toughness to power is the point where I start looking for reach. Cavalier of Thorns is also the most likely to get someone in Constructed.

When a Howling Giant hits the battlefield, you tend to focus on the 9/9 worth of stats that just gummed up the ground. Suddenly the air is your path to victory... except that it isn't. It’s possible that Howling Giant should be rated 3.0. Someone on Twitter noted that giants are a somewhat supported reach type, but there are only 5 such giants in the history of Magic (compared to 51 spiders and 27 archers). There are also 6 snakes with reach (2 of them gain reach from an activated ability). I guess what trips me up is the flavor behind giants with reach. Are they just really tall? This tracks with what was going on with Turret Ogre standing on the high turret, but the lack of consistency on this over the years means that the giants with reach are likely to pull off a reach ambush.

5.0 Shifting Ceratops
This dinosaur is in a class all its own, as it ticks off multiple boxes.
Unusual creature type not known for reach
Power greater than toughness
Word soup (37 words!)
The word “reach” itself is buried in an activated ability that does multiple other things

The fourth point of toughness is key here as it means that common flyers Dawning Angel or a single-pumped Griffin Protector can’t trade with it. The protection from blue adds an addition kick to the teeth against four and five-power flyers Air Elemental, Atemsis, and the blue Cavalier. The protection also makes Shifting Ceratops extra lethal as it eats blue flyers for free without any worry of pump spells or follow up burn to finish it off. The activation nature of the reach, and the word itself being buried in said ability, makes this such a lethal ambusher that I’ve now named the entire scale after the dinosaur.

A lot of players like to focus on learning the various removal spells and combat tricks in a set in order to play around them at Prerelease. Those things are important, but there’s no more sinking feeling than throwing away a flying creature to a reach ambush. My plan is to make new posts every set to identify all the cards with reach, and to rate them on this scale. Don’t get Ceratopped!