Magic: The Gathering’s latest set, Secrets of Strixhaven, is doing what all good sets do: it’s making players look at older cards from a fresh perspective.
The upshot is more deckbuilding recipes, but it does cause significant value fluctuations. Case in point, I’m not sure Outlaws of Thunder Junction is the set many people would keep coming back to, given the other choices in recent years, but it did give us The Gitrog, Ravenous Ride.
This five-cost Legendary Frog Horror Mount (you don’t see those all that often) is yet another beneficiary of the Secrets of Strixhaven Golgari (black-green) boom that’s tied to Dina, Essence Brewer.
This new take on the classic Shadows Over Innistrad creature is a 6/5 with trample and haste. When it deals combat damage to a player, its controller may sacrifice a creature that saddled it (it’s worth stressing that this is optional, not mandatory). If they do, they draw cards equal to the sacrificed creature’s power, and put that many land cards onto the battlefield tapped. That’s a pretty great card in any Golgari deck with a sacrifice theme, but with Dina on the battlefield, you can get more card draw and value.
By using Dina’s second ability, you can sacrifice a creature, put +1/+1 counters on another creature, saddle that creature on The Gitrog, and then have The Gitrog sacrifice it to get a ton of card draw and land drops.
The option to ramp swiftly and keep a big creature on the board is one that’s too good to pass up, it seems. The Gitrog, Ravenous Ride was worth less than a dollar just a few weeks ago, according to TCGplayer, but is now at a market value of around $3.50 and selling for almost double that.
Is this a combo you’re tempted by? In some ways, it’s just a handy sacrifice outlet if Dina is removed from the board, and could help you pay her commander tax more swiftly, too.
