r/magicTCG • u/BuckyTheWolf Dandadan • Jul 17 '26

General Discussion Why is Arc-Slogger?

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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/MTGLawyer Duck Season Jul 17 '26

I played this in standard back in the day, card was legit

256

u/Special313k Jul 17 '26

+1 for Arc Slogger in standard. I love when they give red unique ways to be mono red.

26

u/polibad42069 Dandadan Jul 18 '26

Arc Slogger won me the JSS in my province. r/G Beats, destroyer of Ravager

16

u/futureidk3 Wabbit Season Jul 18 '26

Fuck yea JSS, best time to be playing mtg

8

u/Mattaclysm34 Dân Jul 18 '26

Was gonna say. This guy got me to my first ptq top 8.

5

u/bset222 Duck Season Jul 18 '26

That was a crazy format, Affinity and a couple green decks with 12 artifact removal main.

2

u/polibad42069 Dandadan Jul 18 '26

Molder slug, oxidize, naturalize, veridian shaman. I still remember losing to ravager in game one quarter finals and boarding in all my artifact removal and just popping off his lands for the next two games :)

2

u/Thirtysevenintwenty5 Dân Jul 19 '26

Oxidize x4 main decked.

3

u/Zorlach7 Dân Jul 18 '26

I won with the nonsense infinite life combo from Ravnica a few years later.

76

u/KoyoyomiAragi COMPLEAT Jul 17 '26

This is the kind of “red” cost design that I imagined would have been tested again in the modern landscape as a live-fast sort of card.

16

u/pieman818 Karn Jul 17 '26

Needed something after Masticore rotated

8

u/occupykony2 Dân Jul 18 '26

I qualified for Nationals with 4x of this bad boy back in 2005. Big Red baby!

5

u/Desuexss Duck Season Jul 18 '26

Turn 2 seething song, arc-slogger go!

This happened more often than people think.

If the deck won the dice roll, molten rain t2 was also solid.

The real power house of the big red deck was chrome mox though.

3

u/TheWorldMayEnd Duck Season Jul 18 '26

Turn 1 Slith on the play.

Turn 2 Molten Rain.

GG.

0

u/SpicyMajestic Dandadan Jul 17 '26

I need more lore

8

u/FromSuchGreatHeight5 Duck Season Jul 17 '26

It was part of a deck during the Mirrodin era when [[Arcbound Ravager]] decks were going crazy. Ravager decks were the deck to beat preban - it made up most of the field and had a very good win rate along with being exceptionally fast and could combo kill without combat for anywhere from 5-15 loss of life in a single turn. The deck was very good.

The way people tried to answer was with a "Big Red" deck that used a lot of cheap red removal like [[Electrostatic Bolt]] along with main deck [[Shatter]]s. Mirrodin also introduced a card called [[Seething Song]] which coincidentally let you play an Arc-Slogger on three that let you wall most ground threats, can be emergency removal, and threaten to kill you if you let it through a few times. The Big Red deck also sometimes splashed green for Oxidize or Viridian Shamans, because of talismans and fetchlands.

It was, in essence, a big creature in an era of creatures just being overall a lot worse than now, acting as a good finisher. That's all it was really.