Scavenging Ooze is an iconic Magic: the Gathering card. It sees play across Magic formats. And over the years, it has been in the spotlight of top-level competitive scenes on more than one occasion. But a new Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty card, Lion Sash, might give Ooze a run for its money.
Scavenging Ooze does a lot of things really well. For a single green mana, Ooze can exile important cards from your opponent’s graveyard, gain life, and get bigger. It acts as graveyard hate, life gain, and a reasonable threat all wrapped up in a two-mana creature.
Now, let’s take a look at Lion Sash, which many MTG players are already calling the “white Scavenging Ooze”.
Lion Sash
Like Scavenging Ooze, Lion Sash can exile a card from a graveyard for a single mana. And it gains a +1/+1 counter if a permanent was exiled in this way.
But Lion Sash is also an equipment with the new ability “reconfigure”. For two mana, Lion Sash can equip onto another creature you control, and that creature gets +1/+1 equal to the number of counters on Lion Sash.
Even if Lion Sash is an equipment, it can still activate its ability. This can make for a good combat trick. And, because Lion Sash loses its creature typing when equipped, it makes Lion Sash more difficult for opponents to remove.
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Scavenging Ooze vs Lion Sash
Both cards are good sideboard options against graveyard-centric decks.
The main appeal of Scavenging Ooze over Lion Sash is Ooze’s ability to gain life. This makes Ooze a good sideboard option against aggressive decks like Burn. But Ooze’s life gain and +1/+1 counter are conditional, depending on whether the card exiled to Ooze’s ability was a creature or not.
On the other hand, Lion Sash can exile any permanent to receive a +1/+1 counter. This is relevant against many strategies such as Lurrus of the Dream-Den recasting Mishra’s Bauble from the graveyard.
In addition, Lion Sash has many synergies because of its artifact and equipment card types. For example, Stoneforge Mystic can tutor Lion Sash in Modern. And in Affinity decks, Lion Sash synergizes with Cranial Plating, Thought Monitor, and the Constructs from Urza’s Saga.
There are pros and cons to both Scavenging Ooze and Lion Sash. But they are definitely both good cards.
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