It doesn't do anything unique, it's not particularly flashy or game-winning, and it's not a personal favorite of ours, but Freed from the Real earns this spot simply by being useful. If there's one adjective that suits this card, "useful" would probably be the one. It can be used to keep an opponent's creature from being able to attack you. It can be used to keep a creature for both attacking and blocking. It can be used to combo with an activated ability on your own creature or on a card that taps your creatures as a cost. It can even be used as part of a combo on an opponent's creature, although that's a bit less likely. It's cheap enough to be worth it and versatile enough to use in whatever style you prefer. Perhaps the most obvious thing to do is turn your Prodigal Sorcerer into a "machine gun." But there are sundry other options.#107: Night Soil
I used to wonder why so many people used Night Soil. Fallen Empires was produced a lot or something, and cards from it tend to be readily available. But that doesn't mean people actually use them. Night Soil, possibly as much as anything on this list, is better than it looks. For one thing, it serves a dual purpose. It stops creature recursion by your opponent and it acts as a token generator for you. One thing about playing casually, at least the way I've always seen it done, is that strategy-hosing doesn't usually pay off the way it can in competitive tournaments, since there's no sideboarding and there's so much variety in what your opponents will do. Graveyard removal is excellent against reanimator decks, but not so good if your opponent doesn't care about his graveyard at all. Night Soil solves this problem nicely, since even if your opponent has no creatures, your own dead creatures can be used to fuel the token generation, meaning that Night Soil (unless you draw it in multiples) will never be a dead draw.#106: Briar Shield
Seal of Strength may be on par with Giant Growth, but Briar Shield is easily better than both. The key differences between these three cards and our reasons for declaring Briar Shield the best of them are obvious to any player experienced with Stompy or any green deck or any aggressive deck of any sort. As such, elaborating on them seems silly. Here's a short summary though: Briar Shield provides a permanent boost and the option of a Giant Growth effect when it's needed, which is very, very good. It's definitely at its best in beatdown decks, where it can team up with Bounty of the Hunt, Berserk, and other creature-boosting effects for a quick kill. Perhaps because of how good it is there, that's the only way I've seen Briar Shield used, at least that I can remember. But it's good enough to work in any green-heavy, creature-based deck.
#105: Forsaken Wastes
We already featured Transcendence and the combo it has with Forsaken Wastes, which is probably the most powerful and almost certainly the coolest use of this card. It can do other things, though, including some things that it will do by itself. It hoses lifegain. It kills your opponent on its own given enough time (it also kills you on its own given enough time, but that's all part of the fun). It even punishes opponents for getting rid of it. Combine it with something that prevent you from dying or that slows the game down and use it, perhaps alongside other cards that damage opponents, as a kill condition. It might be slow, but it's also absolutely unavoidable. Forsaken Wastes will punish opponents. Each of its three properties is designed to do just that.
Seal of Strength may be on par with Giant Growth, but Briar Shield is easily better than both. The key differences between these three cards and our reasons for declaring Briar Shield the best of them are obvious to any player experienced with Stompy or any green deck or any aggressive deck of any sort. As such, elaborating on them seems silly. Here's a short summary though: Briar Shield provides a permanent boost and the option of a Giant Growth effect when it's needed, which is very, very good. It's definitely at its best in beatdown decks, where it can team up with Bounty of the Hunt, Berserk, and other creature-boosting effects for a quick kill. Perhaps because of how good it is there, that's the only way I've seen Briar Shield used, at least that I can remember. But it's good enough to work in any green-heavy, creature-based deck.#105: Forsaken Wastes
We already featured Transcendence and the combo it has with Forsaken Wastes, which is probably the most powerful and almost certainly the coolest use of this card. It can do other things, though, including some things that it will do by itself. It hoses lifegain. It kills your opponent on its own given enough time (it also kills you on its own given enough time, but that's all part of the fun). It even punishes opponents for getting rid of it. Combine it with something that prevent you from dying or that slows the game down and use it, perhaps alongside other cards that damage opponents, as a kill condition. It might be slow, but it's also absolutely unavoidable. Forsaken Wastes will punish opponents. Each of its three properties is designed to do just that.#104: Centaur Glade
It's another token generator. This one may be more demanding when it comes to mana, but it's also one of the most powerful token-generating enchantments in the game. 3/3 tokens and the only limit is your mana pool. Green decks often excel at generating large amounts of mana. Unlike Call of the Wild, this one's not hit-or-miss. As long as you have lots of mana, you'll be making lots of tokens. Even you don't have lots of mana, over time you'll be making lots of tokens. Big tokens, too. Also notable is the fact that Centaur Glade, perhaps predictably, can be used for infinite combos. I don't particularly care for this approach because Centaur Glade is expensive and infinite combos using it tend to require too many cards. The most compact one I can think of would be to use it with Intruder Alarm and something else (like Earthcraft or Priest of Titania).
It's another token generator. This one may be more demanding when it comes to mana, but it's also one of the most powerful token-generating enchantments in the game. 3/3 tokens and the only limit is your mana pool. Green decks often excel at generating large amounts of mana. Unlike Call of the Wild, this one's not hit-or-miss. As long as you have lots of mana, you'll be making lots of tokens. Even you don't have lots of mana, over time you'll be making lots of tokens. Big tokens, too. Also notable is the fact that Centaur Glade, perhaps predictably, can be used for infinite combos. I don't particularly care for this approach because Centaur Glade is expensive and infinite combos using it tend to require too many cards. The most compact one I can think of would be to use it with Intruder Alarm and something else (like Earthcraft or Priest of Titania).
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