Yesterday I received an urgent instant message from Ben Bleiweiss. I didn’t record the exact contents, so I’ll try to reconstruct the conversation from memory. (My memory isn’t very good, either.)
Ben: So I got stuck with Kird Ape for the 10th Edition series…
Yawgatog: hahahahahahaha
Ben: I don’t know what to do…
Yawgatog: Concede.
It seems that Ben has since conspired with the elder weather god Sk’tred Thuhnd’rstohrmz’z. I was messaged by Ted Knutson earlier today. Again, I did not keep a log of the chat, so I will reconstruct it from my imagination.
Ted: Are you busy today?
Yawgatog: Well, I’m just working on a puzzle column, a feature article, today’s StarCityGames.com Premium images, finding homes for seventeen orphaned children, testing the twelfth iteration of this cancer cure I’ve been—
Musteval: Hey, [random MTGO stuff]
Yawgatog: I’m kind of busy. This life-extending potion requires my—
Musteval: [more MTGO stuff]
Yawgatog: That’s great.
Musteval: [modomodomodomodo]
User “Musteval” has been blocked.
Yawgatog: No, not really.
Ted: Great. Ben can’t write his side of Selecting 10th Edition this week due to the SCG move, lightning strike, flash flood, freak earthquake, and giant atomic monster attack.
Yawgatog: Which one?
Ted: What?
Yawgatog: Which monster?
Ted: I don’t know. I think it was a weasel. Anyway, can you write the Kird Ape side today?
Yawgatog: Sure.
So here I am. I don’t believe there was really an earthquake at SCG HQ, but I’m not going to pass up an opportunity for Ted and/or Ben to owe me a favor. There are some pretty big rats here that could use some old-fashioned hands-on exterminating.
Kird Ape, I must say, is my favorite card of all time. I have a huge personal stake in this contest, and every vote for Mogg Fanatic will be a piece of shrapnel through my heart. I expect to have an entirely artificial heart by Wednesday. Additionally, I expect the shrapnel that bounced off the bits of metal already completely consuming my heart to be instead lodged into my other internal organs, making me a cyborg – living tissue over a metal endoskeleton. I will then use my superhuman cyborg power to force Wizards of the Coast to print Kird Ape in 11th Edition.
As you can see, there is no point in voting for Mogg Fanatic. Kird Ape’s win is inevitable, either by your vote in 2007 or by the Cyborg Revolution of ’09. This leads to two further reasons to vote for Kird Ape:
- You will be on the winning team. Nobody likes a loser.
- I will not flay the flesh from your sorry human skeleton in the Cyborg Revolution of ’09. Oh yes, there will be a reckoning.
I suspect the promise of victory and mortal threats may not be sufficient to sway the classically stubborn Magic community. Fortunately, my bag of reasons holds endless reasons why you should vote for Kird Ape. It also happens to contain endless raisins. I tried to return the bag to Spencer’s Gifts, as I don’t particularly like raisins, but the cashier informed me that I had in fact purchased a bag of raisins. The bags of raisins were stocked right next to the bags of reasons on the shelf and had uncannily similar packaging. Opened food products could not be returned, so I now store my reasons in the bag as well and just call it a bag of reasons. If anyone wants some raisins, drop on by; I have an infinite supply.
Raisin number one:
It’s a dry, shrivelled grape. Who would eat these things? The water is the best part of the grape. I love water.
Reason number one:
Kird Ape is an ape. There are 154 goblins in Magic, but only 23 apes. There is also one goblin ape, but Mistform Ultimus is the scourge of trivia everywhere and a traitor to apekind, so it doesn’t count. With so few apes in Magic, they ought to be on the endangered creature types list. By voting for Kird Ape, you are doing your part in conserving this glorious species for future Magic generations. Should Kird Ape not make it to 10th Edition, I honestly fear for the apes’ survival.
Apes also kick ass. They’re just like ninjas in that they totally flip out and kill people, but instead of sneaking around and jumping out of boar carcasses, apes run at the opponent roaring and howling and smashing the ground. If you’ve ever had an ape charging at you, you’ll know what I’m talking about when I say you messed your pants. It’s all right; if I were a sissy wimp I would mess my pants, too. However, even I would be at least terrified. It’s a freakin’ ape.
Now put the amazing ape aside and picture a goblin. It’s a short, ugly, scrawny humanoid. It doesn’t roar so much as screech. Would you be afraid of Dustin Diamond’s character on Saved By The Bell? I sure hope not. By the way, he needs your help to save his house. You can buy a t-shirt signed by the Screechster himself here and keep him from getting kicked out of his luxurious Wisconsin home. Poor guy. Now, don’t mistake my concern for Dustin with any compassion toward Magic’s filthy, stupid goblins – none of them were on any early nineties television shows.
Reason number two:
Kird Ape sees play in several Standard decks. It’s a proven tournament staple. Does Mogg Fanatic see any Standard play? No. Not one Standard Championships Top 8 deck contained even one Mogg Fanatic. I believe this hard fact speaks for itself.
Raisin number two:
Damn it, these raisins keep sticking to my reasons. Maybe I should store the reasons in another bag and just toss this one.
Reason number three:
Kird Ape was originally printed in Arabian Nights. Mogg Fanatic was printed in Tempest. As we all know, Magic has been declining since the golden age of Alpha, Arabian Nights, and Antiquities. While Wizards of the Coast has thus far allowed us players no option to bring back the superior old card frames, the original white mana symbol, or masters of Magic like Drew Tucker and Fay Jones, we now have the opportunity to help set Magic right.
By the time Tempest rolled around, Magic was virtually dead. (It is currently comatose on life support with some limbs missing.) Mogg Fanatic, along with the 334 other disastrous cards in Tempest, nearly killed Magic. The Core Set – or Alpha 11, as I like to call it – is our greatest hope for returning to the glory days when Magic was alive and vibrant. Don’t destroy that hope by voting in a Tempest terrorist. Keep it old school with the O.A. (original ape), Kird Ape.
Reason number four:
With a forest in play, Kird Ape is a 2/3. With that same forest in play, Mogg Fanatic is a mere 1/1. Some quick calculations on my Mathemagictron shows that 2/3 is a 1/1 with +1/+2. That’s Holy Strength, kids. The mighty Kird Ape can take out even a 2/2 in combat and live to eat a banana. Mogg Fanatic explodes at the sight of a mere 1/1. Guess which creature survives a Pyroclasm. Hint: It’s Kird Ape.
Combat between a Kird Ape and a Mogg Fanatic wouldn’t be close. Fanatic would be mangled twice over. Even taking Mogg Fanatic’s activated ability into account, no less than two Fanatics would be able to bring down the holy ape. That’s twice the mana investment at RR to Kird Ape’s R. For that same RR, you could summon two Kird Apes to destroy a Phyrexian Hulk, and still one ape would be alive to share a bunch of bananas with that ape from my first example.
Further computation from my Mathemagictron has simplified all the math down to three inequalities:
2 > 1
3 > 1
Kird Ape > Mogg Fanatic
Raisin number three:
@&*(^!
Reason number five:
I have strong evidence that supports the rumor that Mogg Fanatic enjoys eating raisins. I can’t show you this evidence because it is a matter of national security. However, I assure you that this evidence exists, that Mogg Fanatic likes to eat raisins, and that raisins are horrible. I suspect Ted Knutson also enjoys raisins; he just seems like a raisin-eater to me.
Kird Ape doesn’t eat raisins. Kird Ape eats bananas.
Conclusion:
A vote for Kird Ape is vastly superior to a vote for Mogg Fanatic. You must vote Kird Ape. If you have impatiently and foolishly voted for Mogg Fanatic before reading this article, you must construct a time machine, go back in time, stop yourself from voting Mogg Fanatic, then vote Kird Ape. If you don’t do it, you’d better watch out for cyborgs.
Just sayin’.
Yawg.