Den Protector vs Tireless Tracker

Standard Deck Help forum

Posted on June 15, 2016, 11:31 p.m. by Iceygod

Currently, G/W tokens tends to run Den Protector for long grindy games where value is important. However, why play Den Protector over a Tireless Tracker? Is it exclusively because Den Protector can go over tokens in the mirror and can pick a specific card from a graveyard? It seems that Tireless Tracker could fill the same role. Or is there something I'm missing?

It's their piece of recursion. Rather than play Pulse of Murasa, they play Den P because most of their cards are spells. Most likely you see Den P in the sideboard as a 2 of for grindier match ups or for against control. Tireless Tracker kind of takes up their 3 drop slot and is rather slow. However, some lists are known to run about 2 in main. It's not a "4 of" kind of card because drawing 2 of them super late game is not as good as the "if I have it in the first few cards, sweet, if not, I have other stuff to do" kind of thing. You'll see a trend of Tracker being played as 2 ofs at least for a while. And with Deathmist Raptor not seeing a ton of play, it brought down the relevance of Den Protector and it is only merely a card for the super long game.

June 15, 2016 11:47 p.m.

MTGNuclear says... #3

Tracker is kinda of a four drop as you never wanna play it on turn 3 so there's that too

June 16, 2016 3:51 a.m.

TheHroth says... #4

I don't have Archangel Avacyn  Flips, so I've been running the Deathmist Raptor+Den Protector wombo-combo in my GW Tokens list, and let me just say the results are phenomenal. Recurring Raptors plus a Gideon, Ally of Zendikar or something is just back breaking.

Getting my Raptors Declaration in Stoned sucks arse but they have been a more than adequate replacement for Avacyn in the time being.

June 16, 2016 9:46 a.m.

Iceygod says... #5

Alright, so the consensus is that Tireless Tracker is slower than Den Protector. I was doing some research and I learned that den protector can often be played as a 2-drop to go wide. So all in all it's just a matter of speed.

June 16, 2016 3:14 p.m.

If you have a ton of things to do, meaning your hand is stacked with spells, and you don't have a 2 drop to make, playing Den P is fine as a two drop because with all the "anthem" effects (Nissa, Gideon) Den P becomes a real threat.

June 17, 2016 12:32 a.m. Edited.

This discussion has been closed