Magic: The Gathering is reprinting Tarmogoyf into the Standard format for the first time since 2007. The green, graveyard-watching grow threat is set to appear as a mythic rare in the upcoming MTG set Reality Fracture. This is a card that once defined the high-powered Modern format and sold for $150 – but with the power level of contemporary Standard, I doubt that Tarmogoyf will see play outside of Sealed.
The Tarmogoyf is, by the standards of contemporary MTG, an efficient vanilla creature. It costs one green and one generic mana, and has weird stats – its power is equal to the number of different card types in graveyards, while its toughness is that value plus one. In the Standard and Extended meta it released into, and then in the Modern format when that debuted, it was the most efficient green aggro threat in the game.
When Tarmogoyf was printed in 2007’s Future Sight it was a design mistake – not in the sense that it was overpowered (although it was), but because its final printed stats were literally the wrong ones. During testing, the designers found that the 1G cost was too cheap, and bumped it up to 2G. Tarmogoyf was then temporarily pulled from the set, one of five cards the design team removed to make room for the very first Planeswalker cards. Ultimately the team decided that the Planeswalkers needed more time in the oven, and swapped back Tarmogoyf and its buddies. But when designer Mike Turian returned Tarmogoyf to the design document, he mistakenly gave it its original mana cost, and that’s what went to print.
Tarmogoyf was just too cheap and too powerful, and – in an era when creatures and removal spells were worse – it was the best threat that a deck with green mana and an aggressive game plan could field. It became a permanent threat in Modern, and sheer demand pushed the price to absurd highs. One of the most famous incidents of money-drafting in a professional setting ever occurred at the 2015 Vegas GP when Pascal Maynard drafted a foil Tarmogoyf – worth hundreds of dollars – despite it having no relevance to his deck.
For a fascinating deep dive into the history of Tarmogoyf, I can’t recommend Rhystic Studies video ‘The King’ highly enough:
In the context of today’s magic cards, Goyf can get become a pretty big creature for a very low cost. But it doesn’t have evasion, doesn’t have protection, doesn’t have an ability that triggers when it enters or dies. Its ability to easily grow in Standard and Pioneer is also hampered by the absence of fetch lands. It’s a good card, but its best days are far behind it, and Standard has far bigger green threats these days.
Still, it’s incredibly cool to have such an iconic part of Magic’s history return to the game. And I’m sure that some red players facing it in draft and sealed are going to learn important lessons about state based actions when they cast a damage-based removal spell and accidentally grow the ‘Goyf they’re trying to kill.
Do you still run the Goyf in any of your decks? Do you remember the glory days of Boomer Jund? Let us know in the Wargamer Discord community.
Source: Wargamer
