Yeah, I'll cop to not having noticed the comes into battled tapped part because it was in the middle of the sentence with the counters. That card would of course be completely useless.LM wrote:Only two times actually. It comes into play tapped and only untaps itself twice. Also they've seriously printed a 5 mana 8/8 trampler with upside since then, and for most of that format the best deck Temur energy could play Verdurous Gearhulk and elected not to.
But the fact that Verdurous Gearhulk saw only limited play tells us a lot about the limitations of counting to 20 in MtG. A 1, 2, 3, 4 curveout kills your opponent on turn 5 with no synergy even using draft chaff. An aggressive deck with good cards can kill on turn 4. Hero, Judith, Reinforcements is three cards that kills on turn 4 with no turn 1 play at all. A single unanswered threat will kill your opponent in not very long whether it's a 3-drop or a 7-drop. An unanswered Legion Warboss on turn 3 kills your opponent on turn 6, which is faster than an unanswered Gearhulk on turn 5 will do the job.
If you want people to play cards that cost 5+ mana that are merely big threats that put a clock on the opponent, you're going to have to fundamentally change how the game works. Perhaps freespawn bullshit blockers to clog up the battlefield for the first few turns like in Artifact, or have escalation phases like in one of the WH40K card games. Because as long as 1+3+6+10=20, 5 mana threats need to provide value when answered or there isn't really a circumstance where you wouldn't rather just have a cheaper threat in your deck.
-Username17