Batch 198 today had a dead heat between Stromkirk Mentor and Goblin Digging Team, with each amassing 361 votes. So it’s time for a tiebreaker!

Stromkirk Mentor

Design

Stromkirk Mentor is a pretty simple tribal effect, playing into the Innistrad tribal themes (in this case, B/R Vampires). It’s smart enough to have the counter have to go on another creature, unlike many green creatures with similar abilities, as +1/+1 counter granting isn’t a big bit of black’s colour pie, but tribal boosting is in all five colours. The card doesn’t have a whole lot else going on as a design, and the power level is obviously very low, at the ‘cut from your draft deck where you can’ level. Nobody’s excited about Giant Cockroach.

Flavour

The ‘mentor’ decision is interesting, as it isn’t particularly black-feeling. The Stromkirk vampire family are established throughout the Innistrad blocks as one of the big vampire noble houses, but there’s not really a mechanical difference between them.

The mechanic is pretty flavourful for something so simple - the Mentor trains someone, they get better at fighting. The flavour text does a little worldbuilding that’s credible enough - vampire households last a very long time and vampires are typically quick and aristocratic, so a strong tradition of fencing masters feels very right.

Art

Cynthia Sheppard does a lot with the art space here. Black cards often end up with a purple or other darker palette, but this piece has a lot of actual black, contrasting with gold and yellow highlights on the figure’s outfit and on the swords. He’s also proffering a sword to the camera, which works really well to sell the story of “let me teach you the art of the blade” that we imagine. Those definitely aren’t fencing swords, and I wish the figure’s face were more distinct / interesting, but overall this is a solid piece with some great gothic background work.

Place in Magic history

Sadly, none to speak of.





Goblin Digging Team

Note: This is the first tiebreaker card to have multiple printings. I’ll be combining my review of all of them, and taking the strongest showing for the card as my benchmark.

Design

Straightforward enough - some little Goblins that do one thing: kill Walls. There was a surprising amount of Wall tribal / Wall hate going on in early Magic, and red’s “destroy Walls” theme continued for really quite a long time. These little guys are a simple execution of a concept that is very dated-reading now. The power level is… weird. It’s actually a powerful effect if your opponent has Walls, but otherwise you have a Mons’ Goblin Raiders. The tap in the activation is always appreciated (as you have to choose to attack or use the Team), but there just isn’t much to write home about here.

Flavour

This is a bit more of a success. There’s a very long and proud lineage of comic-relief “Goblins who are bad at their jobs”, and a lot of fun flavour text written around that theme. This is one of the very earliest examples, and the original flavour text shows that excellently: We have a crack team of sappers, with just a few shortcomings in foresight. The name is straightforward and literal, but again gets the simple message across.

I’m less of a fan of the 7th Edition flavour text, which turns the story to ‘suicide mission’ from ‘hapless self-inflicted disaster’. It’s not as fun as the original.

Art

The original Ron Spencer piece (The Dark and Chronicles) is dark and scary, with a lot of detail and a great silhouetted figure digging away in the background. It’s a bit at odds with the silly flavour text, and the muscular creatures look a bit OTT for a bunch that taken together are 1/1, but it’s decent.

Phil Foglio (5th Edition, Anthologies, 6th Edition) is a very divisive artist, with some appreciating his cartoony art and some really being turned off by it. I personally think it’s fine when it fits the card it’s on, and the silly flavour fits better here. I like the fact that our team is actually digging here, and the painted musculature looks great, as do the silly helmets. The perspective and depth is a bit off, but assuming you’re OK with Foglio, this is a passable piece.

Ben Thompson’s piece (7th Edition) is I think the best fit for this card, which is very unusual as 7th Edition (an all-reprint set with all-new and mostly poorly-chosen art) is not known for that. But we get a great composition, with an eye-catching sapper working on the left of frame pulling out a support and lots of other nice detail around the lower part of the picture to explore. But wonder up to the top, and we see not only a Wall, but the cracks and wobbly bricks that any Jenga player will recognise as the signs of impending disaster. This actually shows a Wall about to collapse and kill the digging team, which while very literal, is the right story to supplement this card. I can only wish that the colour palette was a little more varied.

Place in Magic history

Goblin Digging Team ties into a long and proud history of Goblins that are crap at their jobs.

Final verdict:

DESIGN: Stromkirk Mentor

FLAVOUR: Goblin Digging Team

ART: Stromkirk Mentor

PLACE IN MAGIC HISTORY: Goblin Digging Team

My system says that if the four categories are tied, I use my own personal connection to the cards to pick a final winner. For me, as much as I like the cute story on Goblin Digging Team, I think my admiration of the art of Stromkirk Mentor, and my enjoyment of SOI draft, puts it over the top for me. But this was a tough one!

WINNER: Stromkirk Mentor