Card Spotlight - Voice of Hunger

The Card Spotlight series reviews cards that we don’t typically see in competitive play. In the spotlight I'll talk about each card’s strengths and what decks could use them.

Voice of Hunger

Its hunger is never satisfied and it is on a strict diet of friendly creatures. Voice of Hunger may devour your friends but he will grow into an absolute monster! It’s important to note that Voice of Hunger gains its power from the destroyed creatures Life. A creature’s attack has no relevance when determining its Gift ability.

Voice of Hunger’s ability has natural synergy with Green creatures because a lot of them have a high Life value. Living Willow is a great target because one Willow will add 7 Attack and Life to your Voice of Hunger. Creatures with high Life or events that increase Life will lead to massive Voice of Hungers. It’s hard to fit Voice of Hunger in a deck outside of Green. There are only a handful of creatures in other colours that have a Life value that is good enough for its Gift.

Positioning is important if you mean to devour multiple creatures. Make sure Voice of Hunger lands adjacent to the targets you want to eat. One slip up and you could destroy the wrong creature by mistake.

Why play Voice of Hunger?

Voice of Hunger is an amazing card against Red decks. The huge Attack and Life gain is often overwhelming for Red’s removal. Red has a problem when it comes to high Life creatures and Voice of Hunger will often go way beyond their removal range.

Voice of Hunger is a great option against other Green decks but is now answered by the Voice of Truth. Voice of Truth reverts Hunger back to its original stats which can punish you if you invest too many creatures for its ability.

Once a Voice of Hunger sticks to the board your opponent must respect Green’s ability to teleport creatures. Devouring one Living Willow gives Hunger enough Attack to set up a two turn lethal.

The most common way to accelerate an Oakling buff is through Feed the Forest. Voice of Hunger offers another way to destroy an Oakling and gains a reasonable amount of power from its five Life. The Oakling then empowers a creature in hand with Last Words, giving you another threat to summon in the future.

Potential Decks

I’ve been working on a Mid-Range Green that uses Voice of Hunger alongside high Life creatures.

Oakling made the cut because of its synergy with Voice of Hunger. This means we don’t have to solely rely on Feed the Forest to destroy our own Oaklings. Deepwood Stalker is a good fit because it gives you removal that can also be empowered in hand by Oakling.

Tiki Piper is a cheap turn one harvester that can extend the Life of our creatures. The more Life, the bigger Voice of Hunger. Burn has made a return in the meta-game so I’ve included one Tiki Healer. This is because of her high Life stat which gives us another solid Voice of Hunger target.

This deck will have vulnerabilities to Blue and Yellow. Frogify and Last Nightmare will punish massive Voice of Hungers. When playing against these two colours be careful not to over extend on your Voice of Hunger buffs. One creature with a high Life value should be enough to see good value from the card.

Conclusion

Voice of Hungers problem has always been Yellow and Blue’s answer to the card. It is often over-shadowed by Thyrian Golem, Verduran Force and Grove Guardian in standard Green decks. In a Red intensive meta-game, Voice of Hunger is incredibly powerful. If you’re seeing a lot of Green and Red on ladder I’d recommend giving it a shot.