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By: AJ_Impy, AJ Richardson
Apr 21 2014 12:00pm
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 Colossal Week

Hello and welcome to Colossal Week! This week, we'll be looking up (and up) at the biggest, most earth-shattering monsters the game has to offer, creatures that make even the Titans go 'Blimey, that's pretty big'. That's the entry requirement right there: Anything a mere 6/6 or thereabouts, 12 total body, is too small for this week. Creatures that can kill in three, two or even just one turn through their power alone qualify for Colossal status, with the sort of bodies that just beg to be cheated into play somehow. Let's start off with a historical look at the pre-Modern era, beginning with the two supermassive monsters printed in Alpha:

Lord of the Pit Force of Nature

 

Although by no means the only exemplars, they do give us a decent starting point. Back in the day, Wizards thought big creatures had to be held back by big drawbacks, a state of affairs which persisted for many a year. Considering this set had Animate Dead in it, you can see their point, but rendering the biggest, splashiest creatures in the game unplayable was not the best idea in the long run. It took many years for the pendulum to swing back the other way, which meant the early years were not great ones for the Colossal-scale creatures.

Leviathan Colossus of Sardia Marjhan Cosmic Horror

 

The only break from this cavalcade of unplayability were the Elder Dragons which formed the centrepiece of Legends, which were only mostly unplayable. One of the first splashy rare cycles in the game, Nicol Bolas did see some fringe play even years later when timeshifted, to say nothing of the format named after them. 'Elder' being a creature type and thus viable for Tribal Wars is a strange quirk of history, but winning games when you have twenty legendary eight-mana creatures with upkeep costs is its own challenge. It wasn't until Ice Age that we got a colossus scale creature, just about, without a drawback: The vanilla common Scaled Wurm weighing in at 13 total body and not actually asking for anything else. The era of Colossuses with an actual upside began in Tempest: Verdant Force backed up a huge body with a constant stream of tokens, cementing its place as a multiplayer favourite at the time. The set also gave us benthic behemoth, a Scaled Wurm with islandwalk in exchange for being two rarities up, and Stronghold gave us Sliver Queen, the first Colossus with power greater than mana cost which had no downside beyond needing five colours to cast it. Urza Block gave us a host of Colossi, of which Thorn Elemental and the variable Serra Avatar had no drawbacks, whilst Endless Wurm and Phyrexian Colossus both comboed with one mana spells, Rancor and Voltaic Key respectively, to negate their drawbacks. Masques block had Skyshroud Behemoth and Lithophage, which says a lot about Masques Block. Avatar of Might offered some measure of redemption here, even offering a way of cheating itself into play. 

Silvos, Rogue Elemental Devouring Strossus Draco Hypnox

This brings us to the last of the pre-Modern sets. Invasion Block gave us a rehashed Lord of the Pit with family friendly -'Horror' as its type, Shivan Wurm as a relatively inexpensive, minimal drawback Colossus, and Draco as the biggest mana cost in Magic, but the potential to get an evasive 9/9 for 6. It saw more play for the former thanks to Erratic Explosion, but it served as a pretty nice domain curve-topper nonetheless. Odyssey block had a few cards that fit the criteria, the play-from-hand Hypnox and the hilariously broken combo piece Worldgorger dragon alongside the Phantom poster boy Phantom Nishoba. Onslaught Block had the most extreme number of Colossuses yet, with Silvos, Symbiotic Wurm and a large double-handful of beasts, including the new size record claimant Krosan Cloudscraper.

Let's take a look at what the Modern era has done for the first few Colossal tribes. Demons, having returned to acceptability on cards just prior to the modern era getting into gear, have benefitted greatly from both their 'power at a price' original legacy, and the increasing upside the modern era allows on really big, expensive creatures. And really, what better way is there to mark 30 years since the first big D&D moral panic whose aftershocks led to them being ushered off from public view than sacrificing a whole bunch of human clerics to summon a colossal demon?

Calling up the Heavies
Because nothing says 'perfectly fair' like an evasive 9/9 on turn 2
Creatures
4 Demon of Death's Gate
20 Shadowborn Apostle
1 Kuro, Pitlord
1 Pestilence Demon
26 cards

Other Spells
2 Immortal Servitude
2 Soul Foundry
2 Griselbrand
2 Thrumming Stone
2 Whip of Erebos
10 cards
Lands
4 Cabal Coffers
20 Swamp
24 cards
 
Demon of Death's Gate

 

Shadowborn Apostle spam is one of the most fun ways of cheating the big guys into play. Dropping hordes of cheap guys onto the board sends its own message, especially as you get ever closer to having six in play to activate your demonic toolbox, but it is remarkably easy to get in a situation where you go T1 Apostle, T2 Apostle, Apostle, Demon of Death's Gate. Soul Foundry gives you inevitability, either through a constant stream of 1-drops, or when you have enough mana via coffers, spamming the big guys. The whip is mainly in for its lifelink: Tutor up a Pestilence Demon and you have a dead opponent in short order with no drawbacks. Griselbrand can also exploit a buffer of life or dig for whatever you need: Yawgmoth's Bargain on a Colossal body needs no justification. Kuro is useful manaless removal, and landing a Thrumming Stone usually leads to hilarity. (Immprtal Servitude) with X equal to 1 Is a great way to turn having your apostles attrited away by a nervy opponent into instantly getting enough on board to go get Griselbrand. 

magmatic force baleful force tidal force celestial force

Elementals have long been poster children for being obscenely large, holding the size record back in Alpha and having the first all-upside Colossus example, They have more 7/*s, 8/*s and 10/*s than any other tribe, and so it would be most remiss of me to pass over them here. As with the myriad echoes of Lord of the Pit down the years, Force of Nature has its own offspring. Indeed, so many big green elemental fatties are named after it that we can fill out an entire tribal deck!  Regal Force has a Colossal mana cost if not a colossal body, but it interacts nicely with Verdant Force, not that it really needs to. There are dual use toys for each force: Puppet Strings keep Spectral Force upright whilst tapping down the opposition, Torpor Orb may well hurt our opponents even as it lets Primeval Force seamlessly enter, and Basilisk Collar neutralises Force of Nature's drawback. Aside from those shenanigans this is largely a straightforward ramp deck, able to drop anything short of a Verdant Force turn 3 with the ultimate draw. 

 

Forcing the Issue
And forcing a subtheme for that matter
Creatures
4 Regal Force
4 Force of Nature
4 Spectral Force
4 Primeval Force
4 Verdant Force
20 cards

Other Spells
3 Puppet Strings
3 Torpor Orb
3 Basilisk Collar
3 Cultivate
4 Gaea's Touch
16 cards
Lands
24 Forest
24 cards
 
Verdant Force

 

With Island Fish Jasconius not online (In addition to being the only Colossal fish) the next qualifying colossus post-Alpha, and indeed the type namer, is Colossus of Sardia from Antiquities. The second holder of the size record, it also began the trend for 'gigantic metal statues which fall over onto things', also seen on Phyrexian Colossus and even as recently as M12's Crumbling Colossus, as well as being alluded to on Stone Idol Trap. The Modern era brought with it an acceptance that even the really obscenely big, double-digit colossuses didn't have to have a downside, introducing Darksteel Colossus, which replaces 'falls over and can't get back up' with 'It can't be bargained with. It can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead.' A few years down the line, even that was superceded by Blightsteel Colossus, which established for the first time that you could have a huge colossus that could kill in one hit. This trait was passed on to Colossus of Akros, the installment plan one hit wonder, which neatly rounds out the Golem Colossus list in name and function. Just for fun, let's include the other 20 power creature as a 1-of.
 

 Voltaic Key, Akroma's Memorial and the obscure Angel's Trumpet help keep our old school colossi from falling over, though the latter requires help from one of our haste granters, either the Lightning Greaves or a painful visit to the Hall of the Bandit Lord. We have the usual cloudpost package, with late expedition maps having a few extra options to help win the game, or indeed to summon up the eldritch horror. With nine ways to kill in one hit, this is perhaps the epitome of what Colossal creatures are all about: Big, expensive, unwieldy and capable of ending games just like that. And on that note, I shall hand over to my colleagues for the rest of the week. Until next time, may swinging once be all you need.

 

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