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Forum Pulse: Krasis, Simic Sentiment in Online Discussions
In the afterglow of a weekend Reddit thread or a flurry of forum posts, you’ll often spot the same creature refrains echoing through the Simic corners of the multiverse: a green-blue curiosity with a bite, a creature that grows with your board and still keeps something wild and untamed in its teeth. Battering Krasis is that kind of card—an early 2013 gem from Dragon’s Maze that has aged into a reliable staple for players who love big moments that come from small, synergistic steps. The discussion around Krasis isn’t just about power; it’s about tempo, growth, and a little bit of wild, aquarium-chaos flavor that makes the Simic identity sing 🧙🔥💎⚔️.
At its core, Krasis is a compact engine. For two mana you summon a green creature with trample and evolve, two classic Simic keywords that players tend to love for different reasons. The card’s mana cost of {2}{G} lands you a 2/1 body—a modest start, but the real play begins when you drop a larger creature onto the battlefield. Evolve reads like a friendly nudge: if a creature you control enters the battlefield with greater power or toughness than Battering Krasis, it gets a +1/+1 counter. That means Krasis effectively tracks your team’s growth and rewards you with incremental, cumulative advantages. Trample ensures that even modest early damage can convert into real pressure, which is a big deal in formats that reward combat damage, blocking decisions, and careful mulligans 🧙♂️🎲.
A Snapshot of the Card
- Name: Battering Krasis
- Set: Dragon's Maze (DGM), 2013
- Rarity: Common
- Colors: Green
- Mana Cost: {2}{G} (CMC 3)
- Type: Creature — Shark Beast
- Power/Toughness: 2/1
- Keywords: Trample, Evolve
- Oracle Text: Trample; Evolve (Whenever a creature you control enters the battlefield, if that creature has greater power or toughness than this creature, put a +1/+1 counter on this creature.)
- Flavor/Theme: Simic experimentation in action—creatures that grow smarter, tougher, and more bizarre as your swarm expands.
When you strip away the flavor text and look at the math, Krasis shines as a value-driven pick in any green-leaning shell that wants to weaponize creature growth. The Simic identity—often centered on adaptation and improvement—gets a tangible vehicle in this card. The evolving mechanic creates a feedback loop: more creatures entering the battlefield means Krasis has more opportunities to accumulate counters, leading to a potentially overbearing 5/3 or 6/4 with a couple of your bigger creatures in play. It’s a texture that many players savor in EDH/Commander circles and in midrange environments where every incremental advantage compounds over multiple turns 🚀.
Why Forums Embrace Krasis: Evolve in Practice
For many players, the appeal of Battering Krasis lies in its clean design and the way it rewards board development. Evolve is not a flashy mechanic in the same way as double-strike or prowess, but it provides a reliable, always-on incentive to play into the late game. You don’t need a complicated combo to make Krasis shine; you simply need to keep dropping bigger bodies. In sealed or budget formats, Krasis can be a game finisher that sneaks up on an opponent who thought they had stabilized the board. In Commander, the evolve trigger scales beautifully with +1/+1 counter synergies from cards like Hardened Scales or Rites of Growth, turning a modest 2/1 into a credible threat with trample and staying power 🧙💎.
Fans in discussions often highlight two traits: its predictability and its potential for surprising turns. You might bring Krasis down on turn 3 as a 2/1 with trample, but as your larger creatures hit the battlefield, Krasis swells into a chunky behemoth. The evolving nature mirrors Simic themes of growth, mutation, and adaptive strategy, which makes it a favorite subject for threads debating decklists, budget upgrades, and fetchable staples. The card’s presence within Dragon’s Maze also acts as a wink to longtime players who remember the Alara shard-block era—where hybrid mana and guild-specific mechanics began to ink the identity of a set. The sentiment you see online is a mix of nostalgia and practical testing: Krasis isn’t flashy, but it’s dependable and fun to pilot when you’re chasing incremental advantage ⚔️🎨.
Meta, Legality & Collector Curiosity
Dragon’s Maze is a unique entry in MTG’s history—part of the Return to Ravnica block’s guild-centric exploration, but with its own twists. Battering Krasis, as a green card, sits comfortably in Historic, Modern, Legacy, Pioneer, and many other eternal formats, while not being standard-legal. The card’s rarity as a common makes it accessible for budget-oriented builds, and foil versions add a bit of flash for collectors who enjoy seeing the blue-green watermark pop on the battlefield. Its price dynamics skew low, typically a few dollars for nonfoil copies and a modest premium for foils, reflecting its role as a reliable ramp-and-grow creature rather than a game-breaking staple. The market discussion around Krasis often centers on its role as a flexible beater in green-centered decks, its synergy with +1/+1 counters, and its evergreen appeal to Simic enthusiasts who love creatures that feel like they’re “learning” as the game unfolds 🧠💡.
Strategies for Play: Budget to Midrange Paths
If you’re aiming to pilot Battering Krasis effectively, here are a few practical paths to consider:
- Early pressure, late payoff: Use Krasis as a resilient, evolving threat that punishes opponents who overextend. Keep your mana open for ramp or bite-sized removal, and watch Krasis climb from an efficient 2/1 into a more intimidating threat able to pressure multiple players in multiplayer formats.
- Combo-lite with +1/+1 counters: Pair Krasis with cards that place +1/+1 counters or that care about larger creatures entering the battlefield. Hardened Scales and Grafted Exoskeleton-type effects can accelerate Krasis into the realm of serious beatdown without needing a full combo.
- Board presence over time: In multiplayer settings, Krasis rewards durable board states. Don’t race to end the game on turn four; instead, cultivate a healthy board and let evolving Krasis carry the day as the plan unfolds.
- Combat trickery with Trample: Trample makes Krasis a reliable attacker even when your board is not overwhelmingly large. It helps capitalize on marginal gains and bulldoze through blockers you expect to see in midrange adversaries.
Beyond raw play, Krasis also fits nicely into a broader design ethos. Simic decks often blend ramp, card draw, and resilient bodies to outlast opponents. Krasis contributes by providing a tempo-friendly way to scale power automatically as the battlefield grows, which can be especially satisfying when you’ve drafted a deck that genuinely foils opponents’ attempts to stabilize the board 🧙♀️🎲.
Closing Inspiration: A Nod to the Desk and the Deck
As you fine-tune your Simic shell and chase evolving threats, it helps to have a little creature that embodies the spirit of growth. Battering Krasis is that creature—simple on the surface, deceptively potent the longer you play. It’s the kind of card that makes players smile mid-combat as their board becomes a living, breathing experiment in mutation and momentum. If you’re chasing the next level of table presence on the desk, a subtle nod to aesthetics matters as well. AndSpeaking of desks and glow—to level up your workspace for long nights of deckbuilding and tuning, consider a Gaming Neon Mouse Pad with personalized 9x7 neoprene. It’s not just practical; it adds a dash of neon flair to your planning sessions as you map out evolve-friendly lines of play 🧙🔥💎.
Whether you’re revisiting Dragon’s Maze in a modern-leaning build or exploring the card’s place in older formats, Krasis remains a pocket-sized reminder of what makes Simic so endlessly interesting: growth, adaptation, and the joy of watching a plan come together one +1/+1 counter at a time.