Shaytan Monstrosity (SM) is one of the coolest ideas for a card Faeria has ever seen, but I’ve never seen it in Ranked play, and any time I have tried to use SM in Casual, or seen it used against me in Casuals, or discussed on the forums, it seems to fail more often than not.
The design behind SM seems to be to create a “squeeze play” where if they destroy one of your big creatures, you get a second threat in the form of a powerful SM. Alternatively, you can sac your own creatures to create a powerful SM, leading to an all-in situation with a threatening 12/4 on the board that could be given extra life in the right deck.
However, each of these plays is relatively easy to counter, which is why I believe this cool card is currently unviable. The squeeze play is easy to navigate because any rush decks or movement tricks are usually enough to kill the SM before it gains attack power (turn 5 as almost a general minimum), the sac strategy requires far too much commitment to be safe (6 faeria plus considerably more for whatever you’re sacrificing), and - perhaps most importantly - either strategy is massively vulnerable to removal of the SM once it’s gotten large. Frogify and Last Nightmare will always trade favorably with SM - and with only 4 life, it can be removed even more easily with Firebomb, Flame Burst + Derelict Tower, Wind Soldier + Soul Drain, etc.
I know that this is the kind of card whose balance can violently swing one way or the other, but right now I think it’s so undertuned that I’d suggest some combination of 2 of these buffs to make SM a viable card in Ranked:
- Reduce cost to 5 faeria (from 6)
- Reduce Desert requirement to 2 (from 4)
- Increase stats to 1/5 (from 0/4)
- Give SM Deathtouch
- Increase cost to 7 faeria (from 6); grants owner 3 faeria when (directly) affected by opponent’s Events
- Reduce Life to 3 (from 4); cannot be affected by any Events
