Masticore (Original Art)

Masticore is a four mana 4/4 artifact creature, that must be sacrificed at the beginning of your upkeep, unless you discard a card. For (2), it can deal 1 damage to target creature or regenerate itself. When Urza’s Destiny was released in 1999, Masticore became an overnight sensation. It was intended to be a “creature that could control the board like a spell”. The idea was to create a powerful colorless threat that required real upkeep and resource management. Masticore is a powerhouse of efficiency and control – it has repeatable removal with its ping ability to destroy small creatures endlessly. It was resilient to removal because of its regeneration ability, and could fit in any deck that could handle its discard cost. Masticore absolutely defined Standard from 1999-2000 (Urza’s Block/Masques Block), and its influence stretched into early Extended seasons. Most notably is Kai Budde’s 1999 World Championship-winning Red-Artifact “Wildfire” deck. This deck focused on generating large amounts of mana with artifacts like Grim Monolith, Thran Dynamo, Worn Powerstone, Fire Diamond, and Voltaic Key to cast powerful creatures like Masticore and Covetous Dragon, often wiping the board with Wildfire. Masticore was also played in the sideboard of finalist Mark Le Pine’s aggressive “Sped Red” deck. The next year, Jon Finkel became the 2000 World Champion using a powerful mono-blue artifact-based deck called “Mono-Blue Tinker”. The deck was known for its explosive potential to generate large amounts of mana, using cards such as Grim Monolith, Thran Dynamo, Metalworker, and Voltaic Key – and quickly put powerful creatures into play like Masticore and Phyrexian Colossus. Tinker was also a key card to the strategy, searching for a specific artifact and directly putting it into play. Nowadays, Masticore mostly sees play in Premodern, where it’s included in many different decks (e.g. MUD Stax, UW Tron, Survival, Elves, Welder Tinker). This card is not on the Reserved List, it has been reprinted once in From the Vault: Relics (2010).