- Dryad Militant

[Guli]

@ StanleyAugust Your argument is extremely rational and hold no basis in reality. I suggest all of you to read what I posted and do your analysis from the right perspective.

I also don't think this Dryad is automatically best suited in a mana denial deck with Thalia and/or Stony. This should be examined more closely. What does the card DO and what other cards can it make stronger. It will never be a big powerhouse like Gaddock Teeg, but it could be a very good first turn play to support your actual bombs. It is like knocking on their door very early and saying, yea deal with this, and more threats are coming. I put Dryad in the direct spell denial category. Teeg, Aven, Magus of the Moon, Meddling Mage are all cards that do this too. The weakness of these kinds of cards is that when they are gone, you are left dead in space sometimes because that is what your game is about, permanents. On the one hand you try to maximize by playing with cards that do 2 important things at the same time, disrupt and lower their life total. So you either protect them or you make sure you have enough threats so that they can't deal with all of them. Or you run things like Tarmogoyf and/or Ooze, cards that benefit when they use turns and cards to remove your hate bears.  In this regard I find Dryad very strong, it comes down early and is another threat in the mix. And the effect is actually global and big enough so I was surprised for the cheapness and cost flexibility of the card.

[Meddling Mike]

I'd be more excited if it were not hit by Misstep; Grafdigger's cage is still better in most situations. (especially against blue)

So you'd be more excited if this cost 0? Wouldn't we all? But that's clearly too good of a card to print. Perhaps you'd prefer to double the casting cost to 2? I disagree that the cage is better in most situations. The fact that it's a 2/1 for 1 mana makes it good in  just about any matchup regardless of how effective the disruption is. Playing v. Espresso Stax which has no instants or sorceries? You still put a 2/1 for one mana on the board. Cage, on the other hand, would be little more than the something to tap to Tangle Wire/sacrifice to Smokestack in the same scenario. Cage is also dead against Landstill where this card gets down before they can drop their Standstill and may force them to delay doing so. There's also the fact that against blue, when they Hurkyl's your Cage all the goodies they've cast over the course of the game are still sitting right there in the graveyard. Bounce/Kill Dryad and that Ancestral still ain't coming back, I don't care what Tiago and Yawgmoth say.

This card gets worse later in the game* and does not stop Tinker>bot/ Oath.

This is, of course, still valid as both cards are realistic and serious problems for G/W creature based decks. The question I think we are left with is does the added strength in these situations outweigh the improvements in other areas that the Dryad has that I've pointed out? The answer is probably a function of what you expect to face. If your whole metagame is Oath and Dredge then Cage is probably preferable. A more diverse metagame with Shops and Landstill in addition to Dredge, Oath and Blue and I think the Dryad is the better hedge.

Doesn't even do a great job at fighting Delver. (doesn't help that you can't block the flying Insectile once transformed)

I mean, what creature does do a great job of fighting Delver in this format? Griselbrand? You can probably race them given the other creatures in your deck. I guess if he was a 2/2 you could attack through an unflipped Delver, but again, it's a 1cc spell, let's keep our expectations reasonable.

Cards most likely/relevant to be Willed/ reccured back that Dryad Militant can't exile:

Black lotus
Time vault
Voltaic key
Engineered Explosives
Baleful strix
Dredge Creatures/ Ichorid/bloodghast

Lotus matters, but without anything juicy in the yard to recast with that mana I question it's effectiveness. It's not even like you can play it out hoping to net some mana by chaining it with some Rituals to cast that Bargain in your hand or whatever. I guess if you can replay Vault/Key and activate key the same turn after playing Will and I have no way to disrupt the combo then you win the prize. I'm not sure Baleful Strix has enough impact or is prevalent enough that I should be really concerned about it. I guess EE is a thing and can have an impact depending on the board state, but I'm not sure it's a huge concern. The Dredge creatures obviously matter, as I noted above.

[psyburat]

This is an exceptional card for Noble Fish, but the metagame must drift away from Workshops before it makes its way into the main.  It doesn't survive a self-boosting Mishra's Factory, even when double-exalted, and fails to trade with Lodestone Golem defensively.

[StanleyAugust]

@ StanleyAugust Your argument is extremely rational and hold no basis in reality. I suggest all of you to read what I posted and do your analysis from the right perspective.

As I said, "Of course this is very black and white and not taking into account various factors like counters, blockers etc.", and yes this is very rational - I'd like to say theoretical instead because we have to theorize to be able to deckbuild well.

Fish or beats or whatever you want to call it is a deck that wants to "prevent your opponent from winning long enough to be able to win yourself." In this there are two things: a) prevent your opponent from winning and b) win yourself.

Usually this is a tradeoff. Cage is on one end of the spectrum. It prevents your opponent from winning but it does nothing towards winning yourself. On the other end of the spectrum we have cards like Goyf that doesn't prevent your opponent from winning but helps you win like no other creature.

Militant is somewhere in between. It doesn't prevent your opponent from winning as well as Cage and it doesn't help you win like Goyf. But it does a little bit of both.

[LSD25]

in terms of things this could replace in bant

delver
snapcaster
shardless agent
cage
stony silence

are any of these clearly worse than this dryad?  i would say no, but the dryad doe4s seem to be about on par with some of these.