Emerald Dragonfly

I loved this card when I was younger. It had Quinton Hoover art -- always a positive, the guy's illustrations are wonderful -- and it was a small green creature with flying. The first strike was a weird touch; I thought that then, and I think that now. Of course, back then I thought it was weird because it cost GG, and I couldn't imagine paying more than G or 2 for the ability. (I'm not particularly tactically minded now, but I was absurdly untactical at 15.)

Today, I know that this instance of first strike is weird because it's a conditional combat ability that scales with power tacked onto an evasive 1/1. First strike doesn't pair well with evasion on offense -- you're looking to connect via evasion, not get bogged down in combats -- and it doesn't pair well with low-power guys. The fact that they want you to sink GG into it is just crazy flavorless gravy.

I'm not sure what to make of the design intent of this card. I can't tell if it's intended to be an carry auras, which were a significant focus of Legends, or if it was meant to solve some kind of problem (green can't deal with fliers, let's give it an indirect way of killing them -- for GGG and a Giant Growth, you can kill Air Elementals!) or if it was just a top-down dragonfly design. I'm honestly at a loss.

Let's run with the latter, and make the assumption that the Emerald Dragonfly is poisonous or massive or magical or somehow able to kill a grown man (remember, 1 power kills an average human in Magic).

That's much better. It's got pseudo-haste, it's about a third of a fog, and it evokes a dragonfly. It's straight-up worse than Scryb Ranger, but that card's honestly ridiculous on a lot of levels. It's like someone just started tacking on abilities and forgot to stop. (Ranger also hoses Sea Drake, making it genius non grata as far as I'm concerned.)

I'm loathe to pull it out, since we just did  Elven Riders, but there's a solid argument for the Silhana treatment on this guy, too.

After all, dragonflies are notoriously fast little guys -- I doubt I could catch one that didn't want to be caught.