Rather than join the artifact party black spends its time off in its own world. I can’t blame it for that but I wish it paid more attention to where it’s been. I think it’s got some sort of infection.
Great. Now we have two infections.
This is too high a price to pay for haste even above the too high price you are likely paying for infect. There are enough better creatures to round out the poison deck if you decide to go that route.
Traditions have fallen by the wayside. These days take away our tools and we are nothing.
This is a reasonable creature without the metalcraft requirement but we deserve more than a reasonable creature as the payoff.
When asking for some grub be careful with your word choice.
It’s better than a Bog Raiders I suppose.
That which does not kill him makes you weaker.
Played straight this allows you to cripple the rest of the board while getting a 6/6 flyer which is competitive with the Titans. In some cases it will be the right tool for the right job; in other cases it won’t but if I have plenty of black mana and few other creatures I believe I’d prefer this to Grave Titan — although part of that is that I’ve always thought Grave Titan was overrated.
Things get better and more interesting if you have tricks up your sleeve. The most obvious trick is a second Carnifex Demon which allows you to mow down the rest of the board at will if there’s enough black mana. Proliferation is also strong since it gives the Demon another counter to spend while putting an extra on everyone else.
The main weakness of Carnifex Demon is that it’s only a 4/4 for a turn if played as a pure six-drop so this probably wants to be in decks that don’t intend to stop at six.
The secret is that they aren’t very good at this.
No wait. Everyone knows that. They’re the even poorer man’s Ichor Rats.
It does a fine job of harvesting what it has to when it has to.
This is an insufficiently Twisted Abomination and the deal is awful.
This set requires everyone to make a few sacrifices.
This ability is probably more valuable as a way to sacrifice that which needs to be sacrificed than as a way to give the creature flying. It’s that sad.
I don’t know what that means either but I’m pretty sure I don’t want to.
In a multiplayer game this could be a way to gain a lot of life. In a two-player game there’s nothing to see here.
“I don’t have any more of that so it’s no longer a problem.” – Sheoldred Whispering One
I think it’d be neat if there were targeted removal spells that cost four or more mana and were worth playing but I have no idea why this requires the sacrifice of a creature. Actually I do: it’s flavorful thematic and adds to the damage but that and four mana?
He’s been running on them for years.
A simple 1/1 does very little in play and you can’t take out a two-toughness creature or two one-toughness ones with this in combat. It’s not easy to think of good scenarios beyond killing a first-turn Birds or Paradise and there are any number of ways to do that.
Digging up the past only creates more of it.
The Titans are wonderful tools for a set reviewer because they give a clear baseline of what a six-drop can do. The most important thing for a creature this expensive is to provide an advantage even when the opponent answers which is something Geth only does when you bring substantial amounts of mana with you. This ability should be able to keep going indefinitely against the majority of opponents’ decks even if they don’t allow you to rereanimate anything but it will always be slow. As a fast six-drop it isn’t impactful enough and as a finisher it has competition that’s too powerful with the Titans providing better hybrids. We’ve reached a world where this card seems far too fair.
Darkness‘ grip is powerful but its reach is limited.
A good old fashioned Doom Blade is more likely to get the job done when it counts the most as four isn’t enough to take down many of the best creatures in Standard. I like being able to take out black creatures but it’s far less of a problem than taking out large men.
Whatever you do don’t pull his finger.
As a first way of looking at them creatures with infect can be thought of as having doubled power. That means that Hand of the Praetors does six other infect creatures do an additional two and casting each does two more. That’s enough to make things interesting if the rest of the deck is good but he plays even more into the all or nothing nature of the beast.
A deck playing Hands is not going to want to do much of anything else besides play infect creatures proliferate and clear a path. There needs to be at least four other creature cards up to the task. Skithiryx or Putrefax is your five-drop (Bosnia calls; it wants its consonants back); Ichor Rats and Cystbearer are your three-drops. Corpse Cur is your other four-drop providing a good contrast in options for that turn. Ichorclaw Myr is a two-drop that I’m in no way inclined to use if I can help it — as is Plague Stinger but Blight Mamba and perhaps Necropede aren’t the end of the world. The curve can’t afford to start at three if it’s going to be built around a lord.
There’s no question this strategy can give an opponent a lot of poison counters quickly but only Skithiryx puts up any kind of real fight especially on defense and it seems unlikely this deck can count to ten quickly against so much as a Lightning Bolt. Once again we must wait and see what the future brings.
They would bite the hand that feeds them if they could reach that high. Mostly they stick to feet.
Infect is an active disadvantage if it forces you to do damage on two fronts. The only way that a card like Ichor Rats is worth playing is if your deck is going to go all-out to kill the enemy with poison counters. In that case this is still a woefully small creature but it does have the big advantage that it can give the enemy his first poison counter without having to attack. Proliferate can then provide additional counters but the deck needs to be rounded out and for now that doesn’t seem possible.
That makes me sick.
Isn’t this about what we’d expect to pay for a cantrip removal spell that actually… what’s the word for it… kills at least moderately large things?
Ideas sometimes die but more often they change names.
There was a period where Cranial Extraction was common enough that players built their decks thinking about what would happen if an opponent named the right card on the third or fourth turn and knocked out their primary engine or win condition. In my experience a large part of the reason for this is the dream of knocking an opponent out and that led to more players trying to do so than was justified.
It’s going to be a lot harder to do this now than it was then with so many decks naturally playing multiple strong win conditions but the counters available are weak and Jace encourages control players to tap out so anyone trying to play a pure control deck is going to be vulnerable if they don’t build their deck to protect themselves. With Elspeth and Gideon both providing relatively robust kills Celestial Colonnade as a standard backup plan that’s likely already in play and the possibility of maindecking Sun Titan or Baneslayer Angel I don’t see even these decks as vulnerable. That leaves using this to knock out Jace or other similar plans and there’s a ton of competition for similar four-drops if that’s all you’re trying to do.
After all that has happened this is what passes for a human in Mirrodin.
All Geth wants is for them to die quickly. I don’t blame him.
You’d scudder too if it happened to you.
There’s no reason to give up three life for a creature that wasn’t that great in the first place.
Anything you can no longer do it can do better.
There are some awesome activated abilities out there but getting one of them into the graveyard and getting a four-drop onto the table is remarkably similar in difficulty level to getting the creature into the graveyard and then putting it into play. This is reanimation for activated abilities by proxy with additional options — and there’s nothing wrong with that — but the best reanimation strategies tend to involve giant creatures or powerful entering the battlefield effects neither of which is an option here. The compensation is that you get a reasonable creature on its own rather than being stranded in hand but it seems doubtful this will work out in practice.
I realize trading it away won’t be easy but better to get it over with now.
Giving the opponent a choice in the matter is rarely a good idea. Often there will be lands to discard or surplus life to pay so this won’t disrupt opponents that reliably and at five mana you’re giving up the chance to do something dramatic on another front. The worst part is that it isn’t a victory condition given the option to discard or even not cast spells which means you still need another way to kill your opponent thus taking away much of the appeal.
This is what happens when the rules aren’t fair. We all know where we go from there.
I’ve got a bad feeling about this. We’ve tried this before but without the baseline of two power and without the flexibility to spread the effect around to where it’s most needed. This is the type of card that is hard to get into the right range.
If the card isn’t good enough or the deck doesn’t fill out properly you have nothing since you have to price the card around the extreme case but if it comes together you get Affinity. I’m still more than a little shocked that Affinity almost made it into the set and am reminded that those who remember their history often choose to repeat it anyway.
For now I think the world is safe but for how long?
Stings plagues dead!
If this is the standard for what infect creatures are like it’ll be a strictly Limited phenomenon at best. I’m not entirely unhappy about that.
If you don’t feel one by now we’ll keep going until you do.
This will eventually get a spell but it seems like a worse deal than Mind Rot when it does so early and it gives them the option to start off by discarding a spell. Later in the game it goes through lands held as a bluff and that’s nice but it’s still a one-for-one trade. That’s the definition of unexciting.
We must stop abusing technology before it kills us and everything we hold dear. Luckily we have handy counters to track when that is.
Presumably the plan is to tap down the artifact in question yourself since otherwise you’re giving them a free roll even if you’re all-in on poison. If you’re doing that it means you’re trading two cards and an activation for one card (which they can likely tap in response or use otherwise when desired) and a poison counter. Yikes.
Some would do well to remember that their skin might be better off without them.
It’s vital to the success of creatures like this that they be usable without a victim and Skinrender fails that test. Given that it won’t take out the creatures you’d most be willing to pay top dollar to take out it’s not even that exciting when this isn’t a concern.
Even before it hits you already you can’t spell straight.
If one was going all-in on poison counters this provides a reasonable package. Regeneration combined with the ability to deal damage as counters means it can fight through most things eventually and haste is a great option given how often four counters should be enough to send the opponent over the edge. It’s still not the best fighter but the effective damage rate is acceptable. The problem is — as with all the other such creatures — that you need to be all-in on the strategy and this may be respectable. However it’s not as good as the best of the rest and it might well be the best of its kind.
It’s the rare strike that does not at some point involve a rat.
Once again it’s worth remembering that infect is an all or nothing proposition. Either all your creatures should have it at which point this does essentially nothing or none of them have it — in which case this does essentially nothing.
Black is all-in on poison. If you’re going to be on poison you need to be all-in – so better this way than by doing it in halves but only if it adds up to something worthwhile. There are two essential approaches to the poison deck. It can go small and center around Hand of the Praetors trying to take advantage of the fact that infect creatures can kill remarkably quickly when given a little boost; this deck may play Giant Growth for the first time in years or even Vampire’s Bite if green isn’t involved. The other approach is to go big and star Skithiryx. For now this is looking like a strategy that is highly unlikely to make it past Block Constructed but perhaps the crafty Mr. Rosewater has more waiting for us once he has weakened our immune systems.