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One 23-year-old Magic Card Protects a Popular Hobbit Commander From Total Annihilation
A Polygon feature highlights how Caller of the Claw, a three-mana card first released in Magic: The Gathering's 2003 Legions set, offers a powerful way to recover from board wipes when playing Beorn the Fierce, one of the most popular commanders introduced in the game's recent Hobbit crossover set. Beorn is a strong choice for bear-focused decks thanks to his combat buffs and card-draw ability, but stacking the board with creatures leaves players vulnerable to sweepers such as Blasphemous Act or Toxic Deluge, making protective answers valuable to the format's players.
Beorn the Fierce, a five-mana 6/6 with trample, has been used in over 4,410 decks registered on the deck-building site EDHREC. Caller of the Claw counters mass removal by turning every nontoken creature that dies that turn into a 2/2 bear token when cast after a wipe, effectively rebuilding an army, including Beorn himself, from the graveyard. The card has limitations, since it only replaces nontoken creatures, requires three untapped mana in hand, and is ineffective against exile-based removal, but it works particularly well against Toxic Deluge, which even indestructible or hexproof creatures cannot survive.
In short
- Caller of the Claw counters board wipes in Beorn the Fierce Magic decks.
- The 2003 card turns dead creatures into 2/2 bear tokens.
- Beorn commander deck has over 4,410 registrations on EDHREC.
Explained simply
Magic: The Gathering is a collectible card game in which players build decks of creatures and spells. In Commander, each deck is led by a chosen creature called a commander, and players often build the rest of the deck around its abilities.
Beorn the Fierce is a commander from a set inspired by The Hobbit, valued by some players for strengthening creatures in combat and helping draw cards. Filling the battlefield with creatures can make a deck powerful, but spells such as Blasphemous Act and Toxic Deluge can remove many creatures at once.
Caller of the Claw is an older card that can create a 2/2 Bear token for each nontoken creature that died that turn, if it is played after the destruction. That can help a Beorn deck rebuild after a mass removal spell, though it needs three available mana and does not work when creatures are exiled instead of dying.