Here we are with another installment in the Zendikar Rising review. Today's article is brought to you by the color Black!
Black
Also it's just getting tiring seeing so many Black mythics revisit the old "mass reanimation" well, especially when they so often fail to compare favorably to past iterations.
This is undeniably a cool card, and probably still quite powerful, so it's not like you'd be ashamed to run this, but it's hard to find an excuse to do that if you already own one of the much superior versions of this effect.
Fairly decent beatstick for Rogue decks. I'd like it better if it was a 1/2 for 2 with the same buff. Menace is an underrated evasion ability, but then again token/go wide decks are pretty popular in some metas.
Fine for Rogue decks but it's not going to be an all star even there.
One of the few pay-off cards for the Party theme that I actually dig. This could pretty easily be just a second copy of Demonic Tutor in the right decks, but having a full party makes this thing kinda crazy good.
The interesting this is, if you get the "full party" bonus effect, you don't actually have to cast the card you tutored for. Really interesting design and a card I like in theory, I just wish it wasn't tied to the Party mechanic.
Oh look, yet another Fleshbag Marauder. The twist on this one is, it can, theoretically hit planeswalkers. I don't see that as a super relevant upside but I suppose it is still TECHNICALLY better than the OG Fleshbag. Also the creature types are relevant, not just for the Party theme but for B/W Clerics and various Human Tribal decks.
Still, even though I am a die hard fan of the Fleshbag effects in EDH, and was positively thrilled when the started printing functionally identical version, I feel they peaked HARD with Plaguecrafter, and now it's just getting tiresome.
I still kinda like the aggro version of Drana from the last time we went to Zendikar, but man the potential value on this one is pretty sweet. Definitely have to find a slot for this in nearly any Vampire deck you build. She's probably a bit too slow for some metas, but for casual builds, I think she's just the right level of splashy and powerful.
So... you punish greedy/expensive mana bases by... what? Getting to cast Murder? Just Murder, no upside? They could have cost this at 1BB with the exact same text and I still wouldn't play it, because Murder kinda blows in this format.
Hard pass.
Does not scale well to the EDH format. It almost certainly has niche uses here and there, but... paying 7 mana to make just one opponent discard, get back a 1-drop or 2-drop, and kill a single 3-drop... all of these effects combined simply do not feel impactful enough to add up to 7 mana of value.
An almost, sorta, strictly better Vampire Nighthawk is certainly welcome. Nighthawk is a very good card and is playable even outside of vampire-themed decks. It's just a really good early blocker.
But this can also be a really good attacker, once even a few cards have hit your opponents' graveyards, and that really pushes it into the "better than Nighthawk" realm.
Also worth noting it's a Rogue for times where that matters. I really hope they bring back Prowl in a future set soon.
That said, the creature types attached might make this relevant for tribal reasons. Also creatures themselves are easier to recur, so if you can bounce or recast this multiple times somehow, it stands to outperform a Sorcery effect.
Given the starting life totals in our format, this seems pretty terrible at first glance. Still, that Kicker is bound to pique some folks' interest and I've seen some chatter about weird combos with Nethroi.
All told, this might have some very niche, corner-case uses, but for the most part it's just plain awful in EDH.
Perfectly fine if you play against a lot of weenie decks or go-wide decks that like to poop out small creatures en mass. Still, on average, most of the truly scary cards in our format cost well more than 3 mana so I think much of the time this is just going to clear the chaff but leave the wheat, so to speak. I'll just stick with my Toxic Deluges, thanks.
Oh, look, a new Bloodghast for us to feed to our Skullclamps over and over! Neat! I don't really see myself paying the Kicker much at all. But I'll happily draw 2 turn after turn after turn.
Good draw effect for Abzan or Golgari decks built around the +1/+1 counter theme. I especially see this as a strong addition to Mazirek decks.
Okay I know I just said I was getting tired of them printing Fleshbag Marauder effects every other set, but damn this one is GOOD. I usually like the effect on a creature because creatures are much easier to recur and reuse. But casting a Fleshbag effect at Instant speed is also VERY powerful.
I also appreciate the way this is worded so they can't just fodder some mana dork or utility dork that they no longer need. It is much more likely to hit an actual threat. And even if not, it's still a good tempo play to make this sac whatever they spent the most mana on.
Exceptionally good card, and that art is fucking exceptional as well.
I like seeing cheaper, smaller demons getting printed. They don't all have to be 8-mana 7/7's, y'know. I hope they continue the trend and allow demons to thrive at all levels of the CMC curve.
But this one is such a specific design, I'm not sure exactly where it has a home. I mean, some sort of cleric tribal deck is the obvious answer, but outside of that archetype, it's ceiling is just a large, flying lifelinker. That's not terrible - see Serra Ascendant for example - but this costs more and is much harder to turn on its buffs.
But I think what really kills my enthusiasm is that "nontoken" caveat on it's "dies" trigger. Man that really bums me out.
No comments:
Post a Comment