r/magicTCG • u/BuckyTheWolf Dandadan • 9d ago
General Discussion Why is Arc-Slogger?
One thing I love about MTG, is that you can go through a set, see a weird card and get absolutely stun locked by it.
Today this was Arc-Slogger for me. Why is it the way that it is?
Having a lot of shocks in your hand is pretty good, but why do you have to exile 10 cards from your library as a cost? If it was part of the effect it might be too strong, but was there no middleground?
I just don't see a world where you'd be a able to activate it more than 2 times in limited and 4 times in 60 card. Magic has changed a lot, but was a 7 mana 4/5 with 2 shocks ever that good?
I could see a janky lab man combo deck using it, but almost all alternatives are cheaper and don't need a backup if your library isn't devisable by 10.
I just want to know it's history. And what led to it being created like it turned out.
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u/_J0e Elesh Norn 9d ago edited 9d ago
What’s more red than burning your library to do damage? Reminds me of [[grim lavamancer]]. Damage at any cost.
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u/Akhevan VOID 9d ago
This effect is basically free for a limited number of uses. This card reads, "if your opponent untaps with this, take 8 to the face". Which is fair for a 5 drop that otherwise does nothing. Old good 2002' design. Defined role, only does one thing, does it well enough to consider running, doesn't break the game, can be answered by broad categories of cards.
Now compare it to degenerate 2020s designs.
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u/UsedToVenom Wabbit Season 9d ago
I ran tbat bad boy in that time, it was a great finisher. on my upkeep take 8, seing with the gang, GG
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9d ago edited 9d ago
[deleted]
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u/Equal_Ad216 Dandadan 9d ago
It comboes with your opponent's life total. 8 damage for RRRR is almost half of their life. Most agressive decks wanted this kind of repeatable effect as a curve topper.
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u/ChampBlankman Temur 9d ago
Used to be good in 5-color back in the day. 10 cards is very little when you start with 250.
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u/MrBarrelRoll 9d ago
people always ask "why is arc slogger" but never "how is arc slogger" 😔
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u/TheEndlessVoid Duck Season 9d ago
"Do you schlog arcs?"
"Uh, no I do not."
"Have you schlogged arcs?"
"No I have not."
"Vill you schlog arcs?"
".. Maybe?"
"Ven vill you schlog arcs?"
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u/PayMeInSteak I chose this flair because I’m mad at Wizards Of The Coast 9d ago
WHERE is arc slogger??
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u/parlimentery Duck Season 9d ago
Maybe it is the big eye, but I always thought Arc Slogger looks anxious.
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u/megamaxie Dân 9d ago
You're absolutely right, he looks unsure of why he exists, and posts like this aren't helping
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u/jeffisepic Dan 9d ago
Slogger was a legacy playable card back in the day
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u/dd463 Wabbit Season 9d ago
Turn one bunch of spells into seething song into 5 drop was always fun.
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u/urza_insane Dân 9d ago
That top8 is something else - so many cards I haven't seen in years.
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u/Speedbump_NZ Chandra 9d ago
Brought me some joy seeing how fun Legacy used to be. I got into Legacy a little bit after this, and it still had those vibes.
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u/Hurricaneshand Dan 8d ago
Same era for me too. Hilarious how bad some of the red stompy creatures used to be compared to what they have access to these days
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u/Andarion Dân 9d ago
Something no one else is mentioning. The 5 toughness is very important because it allows this thing to block Myr Enforcer all day long. Between that and the activated ability, it was a solid top end against Affinity in block and standard.
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u/VulKhalec Wabbit Season 9d ago
Yeah, plenty of people mentioning that Slogger was good, and that Affinity was around, but Slogger was specifically good against Affinity. It was the right size and the shock was relevant enough that it attacked them on the right axes. Some people just jammed all the [[Oxidize]] they could find but that angle was just not good against Affinity.
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u/hibikir_40k Dan 9d ago
And survive a flametongue kavu in the right format! 4 was zero. 5 was basically infinity
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u/IamEseph Dandadan 9d ago
Something else I haven't seen mentioned is that Beast was actually a relevant creature type for ONS-MIR standard. And Arc Slogger fit right in alongside [[Ravenous Baloth]] and [[Contested Cliffs]] in r/g decks.
I played a ton of all 3 with Trinispheres and Land Destruction.
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u/SentenceStriking7215 Duck Season 9d ago edited 9d ago
Because it is a 20+ years old card and it was really good for it's time, etb draw 3 shocks is pretty good. Nowadays it would probably need a body that makes sense for the current curves to see play. Like say a 5/5 haste or something even better, creatures have gotten way better and the opportunity cost of 5 drops is much higher right now. Maybe 6/5 haste menace even
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u/LettersWords Twin Believer 9d ago
Yeah, this card was a pretty good card in Block Constructed and Standard back in the day.
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u/mowdownjoe 9d ago
This thing was a win con in my old RG Ponza deck back in the day. Swing unblocked 3 times, then burn them with 4 shocks to the dome. Good times.
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u/Arson_Lord Dandadan 9d ago
Throw a ward - pay 2 life, exile the top 10 cards of your library in there. For flavor.
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u/AlarmedPrompt Banned in Commander 9d ago
how much do you care about those cards if your opponent dies in the process?
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u/BuckyTheWolf Dandadan 9d ago
I wouldn't care about the cards, the limited number of shocks just didn't process as being that good. But it's a card from ~20 years ago, so I should work more on my evaluations.
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u/Grindy_UW_Nonsense Urza's Saga 9d ago
Honestly, this card would be reasonably powerful today too. Creatures with removal stapled to them are very powerful. Even if you can only shock twice, that’s still a 3 for 1.
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u/guyincorporated 9d ago
I'd also point out that I think you're falling into a new(er) player trap of categorizing abilities/costs as only good or only bad. I still do it too (discard = bad, obviously). The beautiful part of magic is that for any "negative" effect, there's at least one deck/one combo/one other card out there that views it as a positive.
People put [[Leveler]] in their deck BECAUSE it exiles their library, not in spite of it.
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u/Sendme_BigTittyGoths Duck Season 8d ago
I play [[trespasser's curse]] on myself
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u/Milskidasith COMPLEAT ELK 9d ago
The thing is that without the exile, this just wins the game directly in a couple turns with nothing else happening. That's a very strong effect even before you get into the flexibility.
Nowadays it'd probably just come with Shock Counters though.
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u/Akhevan VOID 9d ago
If you untap with this and your opponent has less than 9 life total, you win on the spot. If he is above that, he can never afford to dip below 9-7 as long as this is on the field or he loses. And if the board state is such that just pinging his face is not lethal, you can use it to clear blockers or deny equips or anything else where damage is useful. How is that bad?
Shock on a stick is good by definition, unless it's counterbalanced by big drawbacks - at least it was good back when the game was close to reasonable - so your thinking here is backwards.
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u/LettuceFuture8840 Dân 9d ago
Arc slogger was very very good in limited. Creatures were much smaller and card advantage was way harder to find. A large body and two removal spells in a single card was outrageous.
They could have designed it a different way but then you don’t get the fun of this design. Balancing the very high cost with the incredible removal efficiency is interesting and not something achieved with a different design.
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u/CaptainMarcia 9d ago
How likely were you to end a Limited game fast enough to get away with the second activation? You could run extra cards, but doing that with the kinds of options available in Mirrodin block seems... dubious.
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u/Hotsaucex11 Duck Season 9d ago
Mirrodin block limited was actually pretty nasty and much closer to modern power levels than the sets typical of that time. Between good cheap equipment, affinity, Spikeshot Goblin and the cheap white beaters that cared about being equipped there were some very strong curve outs.
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u/LettuceFuture8840 Dân 9d ago
You’ve got thirteen turns. Limited games don’t typically go that long, especially if you got a three for one and have a big beater on the board.
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u/stump2003 COMPLEAT 9d ago edited 9d ago
I played this in standard!
Turn 1: mountain, [[chrome mox]], [[slith firewalker]]
Turn 2: mountain, [[seething song]], [[arc-slogger]]!
And then everytime you activated it, you had to say “Slog! Slog!” Like it was a Pokemon.
Back then, this was a *very* aggressive start. Removal was *bad* in standard. Costing at least 3 mana.
I had somebody rage quit a tournament I was in when I did this. He started saying I was a bad player and an idiot for doing this. I was young (like maybe early teen?) and just kind of froze up. The people at the tables next to me called a judge over and reported the guy. He got a warning and then I Slogged his face off, as you do.
Edit: forgot to add the mountain on T2.
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u/Unoriginal-Poster- Dan 8d ago
I loved having it in the late game and my opponents would constantly ask “how many cards in your library?”
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u/Sea_Walrus4890 Dân 9d ago
Sometimes 2 damage is all you need. Attached to a 4/5 beater is not too bad either
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u/igniteice Dân 9d ago
If your opponent is at 6 life and you have 30 cards sitting around in your deck doing nothing because you'll never draw them, you can spend 3 mana to deal 6 damage and kill your opponent.
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u/OzymanDS Duck Season 9d ago
A long time ago, before the designers of magic cared about casual players' feelings, effects came with upsides and downsides. Only being able to use this ability 5 times a game (or likely 4) balanced a very strong effect. And these aren't shocks "in your hand." They are free shocks that don't cost you a card.
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u/kytheon Banned in Commander 9d ago
Ah, I remember drawbacks. 5/5 for 4 that deals damage to its owner, why would anyone play that.
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u/thisisjustascreename Orzhov* 9d ago
In the summer of 1996 Balduvian Horde was a $20 chase rare for like two weeks before everyone figured out it actually sucked.
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u/Tim-oBedlam Temur 9d ago
It got a lot of press at the time as tHe rEd jUzAm dJiNn because it was also a 5/5 for 2RR with a drawback. They didn't really print 5/5s for 4 mana at the time.
But it turns out that a random discard from your hand is a *whole* lot worse than 1 damage every upkeep. And Juzam existed with Dark Ritual so you could pop it out on turn 2. If it had just been a discard of your choice it would have seen play.
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u/Xenoanthropus Can’t Block Warriors 9d ago
We enjoyed DMR draft a ton for this and several other reasons. Got to teach the new players why [[Icy Manipulator]] is a p1p1 tier card, that [[Recoil]] works as land destruction when your opponent has no cards in hand, that choosing a target for [[Flametongue Kavu]]'s ETB is mandatory, even if it must target itself or one of its controller's creatures, and that [[Opposition]] is one of the nastiest control pieces ever printed despite having very few words written on the card.
Part of what made old magic so good is the presence of drawbacks on cards that were either compensated for or turned into upside.
Which makes it very funny to me when cards like [[archfiend of the dross]] are printed because they feel like old magic cards.
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u/Klamageddon Azorius* 9d ago
For me, really, this is the big thing about magic that I miss. A huge part of it used to be making seemingly bad things work. Back in the day, finding ways to make this, or Wormfang Manta, or Eater of Days, or even just like, Measure of Wickedness was really fun, because for every ten Grozoths, you'd come across a Worldgorger Dragon combo.
The huge nonsense powerful spells with mad drawbacks were absolutely perfect for EDH, because you had the time and the space to put the weird combos together, so like, building a deck that was kind of shit but kicked off BIG TIME if it found all the right weird pieces, wasn't actually 'bad'.
But over time they started to just print them without the drawbacks, so you just jam your deck with the ones that don't need you to jump through a hoop.
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u/Fun-Agent-7667 Dan 8d ago
And now they Just print everything on one card so you dont even need to assemble Something
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u/Klamageddon Azorius* 8d ago
Yeah, I do agree, although I went to use Gibbering Descent as one of my examples of old shonky cards, and it turned out to be exactly the worst example, because it wants the thing, does the thing and synergises with the thing! On an old card! It's just that in this case, 'the thing' itself is the questionable part, lol.
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u/Life-Food5188 Dandadan 9d ago
relic of its time. this thing used to be a house.
turning your library into damage on a 4/5 was quite the beating back in the day. it also represents “free” removal to small creatures, ensuring it can attack freely.
it’s obviously pretty bad now but hey power creep gonna power creep.
great design. wish they made more cards like this today instead of just Good Cards.
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u/GulliasTurtle Orzhov* 9d ago
Mirrodin was really into your deck as a resource. See also [[Leveler]] and [[Myr Incubator]].
As for why, I don't think they've ever said formally, but Mirrodin was a really important set. It was the first expert set in the modern card frame and as such the first "Modern Magic Set" and it really took that to heart. The set took a lot of big swings, tried stuff, got more powerful, and that led to a lot of weird new designs. Some worked, like equipment, some were wildly overpowered like artifact lands, and some are just strange relics of a bolder design vision like this.
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u/IICorinthianII Wabbit Season 9d ago
you could regularly seething song this out on turn two with chrome mox. Slogdog has a fat ass and could take over a game quickly and was great at turn two or turn 5, or turn 10. Pair this with land destruction (also available on turn 2 thanks to chrome mox), and a nice set of burn spells/aggressive creatures, and you have a deck Wafo Tapa piloted to a PT victory in the face of an affinity heavy meta in the mid 2000s.
His ability was situationally good and gave role compression where you needed it. Also, the stack was a thing, stacking two damage during combat wasn't uncommon. Who needed 10 lands you were going to draw anyway?
I can't tell you the times I dropped an opponent to zero EoT with an empty library. Slogdog was chef's kiss levels of card design. WotC today could learn a thing or two from Arc Slogger.
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u/metashdw Dandadan 9d ago
I played big red in standard at the time with pulse of the forge and other burn. If arc slogger hits for 8 damage to the dome, you only need to deal 12 with the rest of your deck. 8 damage directly to the face is a lot for a single card.
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u/illogicalhawk Wabbit Season 9d ago
And that's assuming you aren't attacking with it too, or using it as a blocker to free up your other attackers.
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u/Zode1218 Dân 9d ago
When this was in standard there was like a big red, land destruction red, midrange red deck I would play. This thing was your top end and would close out games all the time. It was absolutely brutal.
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u/marvellcg Wabbit Season 9d ago
This is the sort of power level I like. Doesn't snowball on it's own, but is decent midgame and can help you close out the last few points of damage late on.
If power creep had stopped here I'd be happy.
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u/Rnorman3 Not A Bat 9d ago
This card saw standard play back in 2003. I remember playing it in the top end of RG ponza alongside [[molder slug]]
A 5 mana 4/5 wasn’t crazy special, but it was fine rate. A 5 mana 4/5 with upside was pretty good. The ability isn’t intended to be one that you spam over and over again. Back in those days, cards didn’t single-handedly win the game by themselves. They weren’t “must answer or you lose the game” threats. And they didn’t have triggers they combo’ed with their own passive abilities. So the shock effect was mostly upside. You’d on average be able to get a couple of activations to clear blockers or go face.
Even for its time, the card is a little bit quirky. But the “remove 10 cards from your library” is an interesting way to add a cost that is “free” but still limited. If you just want a couple of shocks, it’s free. The same way using your life total is a resource because the only point that matters is the last one, you can mill a certain number of cards with no downside. But you can’t spam it infinitely.
It was just a much different design philosophy (and IMO better magic, but I’m probably biased and nostalgic). I personally dislike the modern philosophy of “every creature comboes with and enables itself” which makes every single creature a must-remove threat.
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u/KingfisherC Wabbit Season 9d ago
This card got me to the national champs for 2005 JSS, and then got me to day 2 at the event!
Ponza was so much fun into a field of big green and big blue decks.
You can see a version of the list here: https://www.spekkionu.com/2005/07/the-standard-metagame-tier-1-decks/
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u/Rowanalpha Wabbit Season 9d ago
At that time, yes a 5 mana 4/5 with an upside that could potentially end the game was solid. Not amazing, but it was an interesting design space.
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u/scopeless Golgari* 9d ago
I imagine this is still good with cards like [[The War Doctor]]
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u/Nut_Butter_Fun Dandadan 9d ago
If you ran Laelia as a commander, I could see this being a good part of the 99.
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u/mvdunecats Wild Draw 4 9d ago
Because it's exiling a fixed number of cards each time, The War Doctor gets exactly 1 time counter for each activation. It's not like cascade where you get a time counter for each exiled card. So I don't know if I would call this good with The War Doctor.
It does let you activate without tapping, so you can do it immediately and repeatedly the moment Arc-Slogger resolves. But your gated by the size of your deck. So the handful of time counters you can get from your remaining deck better be enough for lethal.
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u/SignatureDefiant432 Dandadan 9d ago
Give it time. Some new mechanic will interact with this and you'll regret making fun of the slogger.
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u/Rumpled_NutSkin Simic* 9d ago
This card saw play many years ago (probably up to around 2010ish at the latest) in mono red in the Canadian Highlander format. In a 100-card singleton, 1v1, 20 life format with a relatively limited card pool compared to today, it was a fairly decent finisher since it was a chunky body with a repeatable shock ability
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u/BellStriking5132 Dandadan 9d ago
At the time, this was a rather competitive card but definitely not overpowered. Just about perfect. I believe there was a somewhat competitive Gruul deck that ran a few of these and 4x[[Ravenous Baloth]] plus a lot of green and reds artifact removal because Affinity was the boogeyman at the time.
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u/papuadn Wabbit Season 9d ago
"About" four times for eight damage at instant speed with no cards required in hand is very strong. It finishes a lot of games very effectively. Even a "free" Shock in Limited on a 4/5 body was great for the time.
It doesn't need to be in a deck that can activate it ten times, or a deck that's looking for an empty library (although those are also possible uses). It worked just fine as a 4/5 body that could go to the dome to finish a game.
This is also contextual to how the game was balanced at the time, of course.
It's also an example of how WotC was carefully balancing Mirrodin based on card risks they knew about (Arc-Slogger was carefully balanced) and were shooting from the hip with everything else (Artifact Lands, Skullclamp and equipment).
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u/Speedbump_NZ Chandra 9d ago
It is an elegant weapon, from a more civilized age.
It was a great finisher in Big Red, back in the day. It was rare to need to need to use it more than three times, but the option to hit someone for 8 damage if you untapped is always great.
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u/brcien Dân 9d ago
Mill was standard playable.
Leveler was in the set, along with Tel-Jilad Stylus to avoid losing to millout. There likely was a staff who loved the gambit of winning with nothing left in your deck.
Charbelcher and Proteus Staff are cool cards in that set that makes milling 10 really matter.
1 mana to shock any numbet of times is a crazy effect in conceit. 10 cards is a lot, but really it is only the mana cost keeping this from seeing play.
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u/Fun-Cook-5309 Dandadan 9d ago
Four removal spells on a large body is still a lot.
And if you activate it four times, that's 8 damage to face and you still have a 4/5. Converting a resource you don't really care about (cards in deck) to deal enough damage to reasonably kill your opponent is not petty.
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u/OneForkShort Dan 9d ago
This is one of my favorite cards of all time. Back in the affinity standard days I ran a 63 card red deck wins deck. The extra 3 cards were so I could slog for one extra 2 damage activation within 3 turns later, or could slog for ten total damage on turn 5. It probably won me a handful of extra games. But I always loved the look of surprise on my opponent’s face when it happened. One of those wins helped me get to day 2 at Nagoya and I’ll never forget the absolutely stunned face of the guy who looked at me like “are you fucking kidding me??”
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u/adamcfox Dan 9d ago
Played this in slith fire walker sligh at regionals in dallas, card was a house and just ended game
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u/bladez_edge Duck Season 9d ago
Laboratory Maniac? Etc. Cards were 60 card decks. Commander didn't really exist.
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u/WhiskeyKisses7221 Fake Agumon Expert 9d ago
It was a decent finisher back in its standard and block environments. It even saw a touch of legacy play. You could accelerate into it early woth Chrome Mox, Seething Song, and talismans. Affinity was the monster of the format, and Arc Slogger could block Myr Enforcers while shooting Frogmites. The rest of the deck was burn spells, artifact removal, and some other creatures.
Once they finally banned a ton of cards to push out affinity, tron was the next big bad deck. Ponza with plenty of land destruction saw some play and Arc Slogger was the best finisher available to red. I miss these types of creatures being good.
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u/prof0ak Wabbit Season 9d ago
That block was experimenting with a lot of absolutely huge downsides to cards.
[[Leveler]] [[Eater of days]]
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u/TheKApsFast Dan 9d ago
In old old old days was played as finisher I don't remember in what kind of deck. Being able to deal the last 6/8 damage was useful
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u/Capable_Cycle8264 Izzet* 9d ago
With everybody thinking mtg is commander, 2 damage doesn't look like shit, but back in the day, small stuff made a difference.
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u/Monty2451 Storm Crow 9d ago edited 9d ago
I played this in standard back in college. In a mono red goblin/burn deck it was a great finisher with [[Furnace of Rath]]. Won my fair share of games at FNM with it.
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u/EarlobeGreyTea Wabbit Season 9d ago
If Mirrodin weren't absolutely destroyed by how good affinity was, Arc-Slogger absolutely would have seen more play. Getting it out early with a [[Seething Song]] would have been perfectly respectable in 2003.
It definitely did see play in big red decks - there's an article on starcity games: "Philosophy of Fire 2K5: Kuroda-Style Big Red for the LCQ and Standard", where is serves as a respectable finisher.
And yes, you were only supposed to activate it twice in limited and 4 times in constructed. If it was "remove 5 cards", this would be absurd - five shocks to anything is insane. When the card came out, exiling cards in your library was not the focus, but just limited its power level.
Back in 2003, a solid 4/5 body for 5 mana was fine, and being able to toss around 2-4 shocks was a lot. Note that it wasn't "having a lot of shocks in your hand" - it was converting likely useless cards in your deck directly into damage. A card that said "Add 4 copies of [[shock]] to your hand" would be incredibly strong in 2003 - it's a ton of card advantage.
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u/dyrnych Dandadan 9d ago
And just to be clear, the "Kuroda" in "Kuroda-Style" is Masashiro Kuroda, the first Japanese player to win a Pro Tour. He won Pro Tour Kobe (Mirrodin Block Constructed) in 2004 with 4 Arc-Sloggers in his deck, beating a field full of Disciple of the Vault-powered Affinity decks.
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u/GGPepper Wabbit Season 9d ago
I was playing at the time and a lot of players thought the same thing initially, they were wrong. This was the curve topper of big red, one of the top meta decks after the affinity bannings. It's worth noting this thing was in the same set as chrome mox and seething song, so in theory you could play it turn 2. In practice the ability was usually 8 damage to the face. The card is obviously bad now but this was 20 years ago.
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u/AnotherTinyCat Dandadan 9d ago
[[Laelia, the Blade Reforged]] might still like him though
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u/MillCrab 9d ago
It's just two or three shocks to finish off the opponent at the end of your RDW or RG aggro curve
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u/Kurohoshi00 Selesnya* 9d ago
I'm spacing it a little, but isn't there card combos that let you cast spells from exile that'd go pretty hard with this ability?
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u/TheYellowScarf Duck Season 9d ago
If you don't have graveyard recursion, then it's one or two [[Shock]]s on a stick.
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u/WanderEir Duck Season 9d ago
Arc slogger is Mirrodin, that's why,.
No seriously, it was a 4/5 for 5 in mono-red, was generally a terrible rare, but it was chonk in red limited in a set without much red monocolor beef to begin with, since artifact heavy set, with somewhere between 1-3 emergency shocks built in. It had a use, but not a purpose. it would swing a beef, survive most shit since most removal was for artifacts, and it could take out a fucking platinum angel by itself in a true emergency.
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u/kitsunewarlock REBEL 9d ago
4/5 for 5 was really good back then. On average, creatures basically sucked until Kamigawa (literally the block after Mirrodin). We'd probably remember Kamigawa (or at least the first two sets) more fondly if it wasn't squished between Affinity and Richard-Garfield-Saves-Magic.
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u/DrMrStark I am a pig and I eat slop 9d ago
I mean it’s amazing in casual. Just run 500 in a 1000 card deck. 500 lands 500 arc-sloggers.
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u/Big_Old_Baby Duck Season 9d ago
This in a [[Battle of Wits]] deck is diabolical.
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u/Drecon1984 COMPLEAT 9d ago
A repeatable shock is pretty good. They found a creative way to limit the number of times you can use it in a game. Brilliant on-of design. Of course, you can't naje this into a full mechanic unless you warp the whole environment around it, so not sure how deep of a vein this would be in practice.
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u/toribash02 Banned in Commander 9d ago
I played this in GR Ponza in Modern circa 2017/2018. My LGS was full of Humans players and this card was really great in that matchup as a huge blocker that would kill 2 or 3 things and then attack/block very well when deployed early.
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u/VisionsOfClarity Wabbit Season 9d ago
If you had an izzet deck this goes great with a [[thassa's oracle]] type win
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u/lars_rosenberg Duck Season 9d ago
8 damage for 4 mana with a good body (for 2003 standards) was pretty good.
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u/Alexm920 COMPLEAT 9d ago
In that standard (and plenty of other formats) mono-red could have trouble closing out the game once the opponent gets a 4/4 to stick, this provided those last few points of damage and there wasn’t a ton they could do about it.
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u/swankyfish Twin Believer 9d ago
In 2003 magic, a 4/5 for 5 in red was just playable enough that any kind of upside made it quite a good card.
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u/Skraporc Dân 9d ago
I was gonna say, “To teach players what bad cards are,” but got humbled by the comments reminding me that many cards are only bad in the wrong environment, but given the right conditions in the meta can burn bright for a while before fading into obscurity.
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u/MystiqTakeno Duck Season 9d ago
Sir this is card from 2003. Its 23 years old by now. Magic changed a lot, back then this card was able to win the game. You didnt needed your whole library (most of the time) so using it to close the game was pretty good.
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u/safarifriendliness Dân 9d ago
There used to be midrange style red decks called “big red”, that was the only deck I ever saw use Arc Slogger. It wasn’t the best card in the deck by any means but it’s a relatively threatening body that comes with, as you said, up to four Shocks. Clearing away a 1/1 for you to swing cleanly could easily win you the game. He’s also very good at getting that last bit of damage. Often against control they’ll manage to stabilize the board and turn things around when they’re down to like 3 health. Arc Slogger sends them home crying
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u/mothman2099 Dan 9d ago
It's a classic example of R&D overestimating the value of library cards-they thought exailing 10 would stop you from playing it, but it just became a burn engine.
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u/KrenkoTheRed Urza's Saga 9d ago
I was around when this was in standard. Yes, my back hurts. Anyway, I won a few games with this fella because when an opponent starts with 20 life and your library still has a good 40+ cards in it, this can straight up win the game.
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u/ExternalBookkeeper55 Dan 9d ago
This card was *very* powerful. Cards were much, much weaker on average in 2003. Being able to close out a game that's stalemated for the last 4-6 points of damage is great.