Magic the Gathering’s release of Zendikar was met with many mixed emotions of excitement and apprehension. Overall most players are very satisfied with the expansion, myself included. There was one outlier that comes to mind when discussing the “coolness of the set”. This certain card is a mythic rare, meaning it is the rarest of the rare… which should imply that it has some usefulness right?

Wrong.

Lorthos the Tidemaker. Mythic Rare (strike one). Legendary (strike two) creature – OCTOPUS?! (strike three). Mana cost : 5UUU (strike four)

Oh dear. There is so much wrong with this card, I dont even know where to start… So let’s start at the top.

Our ol’ buddy Lorthos obviously is a huge sea creature with immeasurable power and strength. If you cover up the text box of the card the huge blue mana cost of 8 converted mana is somewhat distressing but also gives me flashbacks of legendary (but no-so-useful) cards such as Polar Kraken and Leviathan from days of old. The 1990’s had some way too powerful and way too cool creatures that really were not rational to play with, rather just fun.

 Moving down the card slightly the picture looks pretty cool. A giant octopus destroying something… very flavorful.

Unfortunately not only is this guy the only creature type “Octopus” in the game, he’s Legendary! Immediately I know I can never build a deck around the idea of having more than one out at a time. Upto this point I’m thinking he’sa little too unique… but there might still be hope for this card to save itself with a cool ability or effect.

I had to read his ability twice before I realized that I wasn’t missing something. You can pay 8 mana, the equivalent of playing the big guy on a previous turn, to tap upto 8 permanents an opponent controls so that they stay tapped an extra turn. And that’s it. Lorthos’s ability can be summarized as an expensive combo of Sleep and/or Exhaustion. In fact, Exhaustion may even be better in many situations! I understand that with the new landfall ability, expensive creatures are more tolerable because of certain mana accelerators and combos, but 8 mana for a Doom-blade-able creature that you have to declare as an attacker for an 8 mana ”may” ability to trigger? Y.I.K.E.S.

Moving onto power and toughness… It’s been a while since magic released a colossal blue creature … Inkwell Leviathan from conflux was a 7/11 most recently and you have to dig back to 10th ed. to find an original blue guy with power in the double digits (Denizen of the Deep, also in Starter and Portal II., was an 11/11). Here’s Lorthos’s last chance to save himself, at least in a cool sense. He failed. An 8/8 is scary, but without trample and chump-block-able without paying a huge fine of 8 mana, again Lorthos fails to impress.

Overall Lorthos, the Tidemaker is a colossal fail. I’d rather get pretty much any other rare in Zendikar than pull this “Mythic”. While he might be a cool collectors item (I know I probably won’t be getting rid of mine now that I’ve written this article), he stops there. Select uncommons from Zendikar are selling for more. Playability on this card is a 4 out of 10 compared to his over priced overly powerful blue creatures. I prefer Polar Kraken, the obsolete guy from 1995, whom at the time of printing was the scariest creature in the game to some. At least hes nostalgic and flavorful. Lorthos, this is 2009. Ususaly you have to be around for a while before you’re out-dated. I think we can call agree that Lorthosis just “fun”. Instead of spending time at the top then slowly fading out of style, he already fits in with the blue monsters of old. Kind of like a 18 year old in a retirement home. Oh well. At least he fits in somewhere…

(card images courtosy of www.magiccards.info)

thanks for reading!

Any opinions?