Too Big? Too Small? This Minion is "Just Right"

A while back, at the prerelease, I finally had a chance to get Phyrexian Processor into play. Entered into the battlefield. Whatever it is called.

The experience was, to say the least, amazing. The ability to make a huge token, every turn, maybe even twice a turn, cannot be overestimated.

At the time, with little experience under my belt, I had to make an important decision as to how much life to sacrifice. Time was ticking, so I tried to think of a reasonable number and it turns out that number was 8.

So for 8 life, my Processor made an 8/8 every turn.

But I got to wondering if this was a good choice or not. Depends, I suppose. It depends on how you're using the tokens.

If you are way ahead of your opponents, I say go all in. Dump as much life as you can. Pick 32. You can smash a lot of face with just a few 32/32 minions running around.

But I'm concerned about removal. About sweepers. All that sort of thing.

If you're playing and you get even a WHIFF of artifact removal, you are probably going to want to pick something smaller.

Uh,oh.

Going too big on your processor also opens you up to the EDH silent killer…direct damage. Usually you take a little at a time, until you're down to 10 or so and anything can kill you. Don't do the work FOR your opponents with a thoughtless processor life payment!

My ideal life payment should be for a potential long game. I want to get the most out of my tokens, without paying too much life I'll regret later.

So I picked 8.

An 8/8 seems pretty resilient to me. It dodges Mutilate, Inferno, Wildfire…just about any power/toughness reducers and damage-based sweepers. They can block, and be blocked, by a large percentage of creatures out there.

How many creatures have a greater than 8 toughness? About 40. And most of the playable ones here are Eldrazi, who are WAY more than 8. Plus Eldrazi all have annihilator, which is going to be rough on your Minions. Although, to be honest, way rougher on folks who don't have any 8/8 tokens in play.

This search doesn't take into account "miracle grow" creatures, like Kresh or Thraximundar, who you are mostly going to see as opposing generals. But in these cases, at least I have a chump blocker until I can draw my own sweepers.

What happens if I make the token a 7/7? The number of relevant creatures doubles.

What else happens at 7? Your damage per turn goes down a little. 8 damage a turn brings a life total of 40 down to zero in 5 easy turns. 7 makes it 6. You have to go up to 10 to get 4.

And 9 is way out. Unless you're facing down Artisan of Kozilek. Then 9 makes all the difference. No way he's going to pick you to attack if you can trade.

So I'll probably keep picking 8. Or 9.

Or 20, if I want to go big or go home. But 20 is pretty greedy, and EDH karma tends to punish the greedy with dogpiles. Big ugly ones. So "going home" is likely the result.

don't be greedy!