Small Cards for a Big Tower

Magic isn't the only thing we're learning today

I always wondered why people might read reviews of cards for Wizard's Tower but when I think about it, it's nice when someone gives you ideas for cards or shows you cards you didn't even know existed to add to your Tower. Most of our card reviews for Wizard's Tower are for rare and mythics and a lot of that has to do with the fact that usually rares and mythics have some of the silliest card effects. The beauty of Wizard's Tower though is that you don't need to go out and buy anything to actually build one. You can just use whatever scraps you have laying around. This means you the bulk of your Tower would be commons and uncommons and low cost things. That's good because you should have a fair amount of interesting low cost commons. So that's what I (Gaige) am here to talk to you about today. Wizard's Tower for the common folk.

If you came here and are lost, check out the intro article to get you up to speed.

How is it that something with the leg strength to jump into a cloud is only a 1/1?

Much like my sex life, this is a nice slow start that buys you sometime until you can find a better card who has more in common with you and wants to explore more in the bedroom. What I mean is I don't have a sex life and I just build pillow forts in my bedroom that I like to explore. Its low cost and probably costs like -$0.50. It does however still have a lot of functionality. You can swing in with it if you so choose, or you can ping other 1/1 creatures. You can also just start pinging down your opponents if you're bored. This can die to anything and everything, but you may have counter or buff spells to keep it alive, and this dying also relies on your opponents having kill spells. Plus even if they do have a kill spell, who is dumb enough to kill a 1/1 when they should probably save it for something way scarier that you may draw later on in the game.

"Saltfield nomads" aka my opponents

If we look closely we can see this lion in its natural habitat. A low level creature that might get glanced over but fits perfectly in a Tower. Look how it stalks its prey. It jumps in at the perfect time knocking your other creature out of the way of removal. Maybe your other creature was blocking to save you some damage. Well the lion jumps in and saves your creature while still keeping you safe. Now you have one creature still on board but your other beautiful animal lives to fight another day. The lion like many other animals appears weak on the outside but finds his place in the Tower. Many call him king of the jungle but I like to call him lion of the Tower. It's low cost, low price, but filled to the mane with function and is a great early game card.

"What do we do, it's just walking away from us?"

It's like my pappy always used to say "If it has a bunch of knives and arrows stuck in it, you probably don't need to worry about it killing you." That's exactly how this card is. It is not strong and won't kill you but it's a chump blocker and can chump block twice. Trade with their 1/1 and then you get a 2/2 back so you can trade with your other opponent giving you a 2 for 1. This one doesn't have as much offensive functionality but is great for sacrifice costs and getting in the way. If you have some cards in your tower that let you move around +1/+1 counters maybe you can keep your best friend the butcher ghoul alive forever. Oh the high jinks you two will get into!

How is this different than a sheep shepherd? Sheep already sound like they're dying.

This card will always have a special place in my heart because back when I started Magic (I wanted to say back when I was bad at Magic but I can't because that still applies today) I built a zombie deck where I used this to make sure I never lost a game. If things weren't going my way and I was about to lose, I would tap 4 of these with 10 or so zombies on the field and just kill everyone including myself. That way I at least got a draw rather than a loss. Since this is 1 life for each zombie anywhere on the battlefield this card is a lot of fun. You'll be bound to throw in a handful of zombies in to the tower just because it's such a common creature type and there are a lot of good zombies. This again is a low cost cheap card that can poke and has some fun utility and depending on board states, can still be decently powerful late game. It's like a black version of the above mentioned lighting lady but that can get more amped up when it's posse is around.

She's just crafting her mixed tape

Are you starting to see a theme yet? Yeah me neither but I will say that activated ability low cost creatures are the ones that keep the early game interesting. Look at this lady. Pay 1 and tap to make her mixed tape and then tap her to to throw a mixed tape to deal one damage. Although this is a two turn process, you can always make a dude at the end of the opponent before your's turn and keep her untapped through everyone else's turns in case you need to throw 1 damage at something. Or you can just build a pile of 1/1 defenders so you can throw warm bodies at some big creature as it attacks. You can make infinite chump blockers. There is a lot you can do with her cause she is on fire. Well she's about to be. Look at that splash back behind her. Apparently whatever plane she is on needs to have some OSHA creatures come take a look at the working conditions.


One final piece of advice from Pappy Salami: "If you don't know how to build something just start smacking the pieces together until it starts to take shape." Well something like that. Actually nothing like that. My pappy never said that to me and if we're being honest I never had a pappy. It was always Grandpa Salami to me. As far as commons go I don't really expect any of you to go out and buy commons for a Tower because that's unnecessary and tedious. Just use what you have lying around. Sometimes you're not sure what will work and what won't but just start slapping pieces together and trying it out until you get something beautiful.





Want more friendly advice from Grandpa Salami? Want more common ideas? Want an envelope full of commons? Leave us a comment or send us a message!