Part 1 of this set review can be found here: White
Part 2 of this set review can be found here: Blue
The Rating System:
Constructed Unplayable
This card should not be played in Constructed under any normal circumstances, and it will never be found in a competitive Constructed deck. Example: Hollow Dogs
Playable – Role Player
This card is either competing with cards that do the same thing more efficiently, or useful in only a limited number of decks. For whatever reason (redundancy, lack of better alternatives), the card is good enough to fill a role in a reasonable Constructed deck. Example: Terror
Playable — Staple
This card is played in whatever decks and strategies where it would be appropriate, almost without question. When the card is absent, we start asking questions. Example: Cabal Therapy
Playable — Flagship
This card has a powerful or unique effect, so much so that we build decks around it rather than fitting it into existing builds. Quite often, the presence of this card allows for new archetypes to be explored. In some cases, those archetypes are not very good (but without their flagships, we would never even ask the question). Example: Necropotence
To the Swamps we go!
Abyssal Nocturnus
Abyssal Nocturnus is a fairly unexciting drop at first glance, with classic Grey Ogre statistics for a slightly more difficult mana cost. Moreover, its ability is at least somewhat conditional, asking for pre-combat prep work before it gets going. That said, Abyssal Nocturnus has serious potential in the right deck, if not every deck.
Blackmail and Ravenous Rats are going to headline any Abyssal Nocturnus deck; interestingly enough, it is arguable that cards like Specter’s Wail or Funeral Charm would be superior to perennial favorites like Duress and Cabal Therapy — at least for purposes of amplifying the Nocturnus — because they guarantee discard so long as the opponent has non-instants in hand.
So will this card be any good? Abyssal Nocturnus is similar to Uktabi Orangutan or Avalanche Riders. It’s a random 2/2 dork that can prove highly potent, given conditional or enriching synergies. A dedicated discard deck might want to have the opponent dropping cards; if it taps mana pre-combat, so be it… Not a lot of downside on that kind of execution, even if it isn’t the usual way we go about things.
On top of that, what about putting this guy in front of a Wild Mongrel or one of his Odyssey Block cohorts? Not bad, not bad.
Playable – Role Player. It is actually arguable that Abyssal Nocturnus is Flagship. It’s the kind of card that you bend your decisions around much like Quirion Dryad. I’m not sure about this, as yet.
Caustic Rain
This card is somewhat less limited than Sowing Salt — it can destroy a Forest — but on the other hand, it doesn’t have the long game power to do broken things, like wipe all the Cloudposts or break up the UrzaTron forever.
That said, it is a Black card that kills a land, one-for-one, for four mana, which is off expectations. I’ve won qualifiers with Icequake and the strictly worse Rain of Tears, so I may be biased.
Of course, I played Befoul in a Constructed Pro Tour once. Shrug.
Playable – Role Player
Cremate
This was straight in during Invasion Block Standard; the first decks Kibler and I made ran Cremate maindeck, both for velocity and to break Probe/Nether Spirit. This was before Brian decided to take up attacking with 8/8 Spirit-Linked Pollenbright flyers, or whatever he became famous for… what was his name again? Enchantmentmaster?
This time around, Cremate has actual work to do. Nightmare Void ya?
Playable — Staple
Cry of Contrition
This card is a terrible Hymn to Tourach, but also reasonably mana efficient. Cry of Contrition actually creates interesting incentives. For example: I Cry your face and Haunt your Birds of Paradise. Do you spend a Jitte counter to kill it in response? You’ll lose both your Birds either way (probably), and go down a resource either way (probably), so what about controlling your destiny like a big boy?
Cry of Contrition is quite synergistic with Abyssal Nocturnus. First time around it’s like the evil version of Kodama’s Might… you get your +2/+2, you get some evasion — okay, actual evasion this time — and you have the possibility of a little card advantage. On the next turn, you ice a potential blocker… and get the old +2/+2 and evasion all over again.
Every Ravnica Block Nocturnus deck is going to run this, and it will probably earn space elsewhere, despite being not nearly as good at putting the opponent on his heels as, say, Duress. Don’t go aiming it at a Deep Dog player in Extended.
Playable – Role Player
Cryptwailing
I didn’t like Bearscape when it was legal, and that card generated a more significant effect than Cryptwailing. A 2/2 Bear, I figure, is more relevant than a card of the opponent’s choice, nine times out of ten. Moreover, Bearscape cost less mana and had less of a restriction on both mana activation — any time rather than just sorcery speed — and on what kind of cards could be removed to generate the effect. I don’t think that I would ever want to main-phase four mana for some future opportunity to remove my Dredge cards… five mana seems like an awful lot of an investment to hit the first card.
Constructed Unplayable
Daggerclaw Imp
Don’t get me wrong, Daggerclaw Imp is going to win a lot of games… But it’s going to get picked highly to do that. Many times this card will go first pick third [second] pack and be right. Oops… wrong kind of review.
Daggerclaw Imp is worse than Ravenous Skirge in every way. No matter how hard we wanted to win with that guy, he never made it into a Tier 1 deck.
Constructed Unplayable
Douse in Gloom
I basically invented Vicious Hunger for Constructed in the spring of 2000. At the time I published Napster on Neutral Ground, there were a lot of naysayers saying that Vicious Hunger wasn’t good enough. For its format, where there were lots of little guys like Ramosian Sergeant to kill, and with Vampiric Tutor a legitimate strain on life total two points at a time, Vicious Hunger was the right card for the job for the right cost.
I don’t know if Douse in Gloom can make the same claim. We originally saw this card spoiled as a cantrip, and the cantrip version would be Staple in an instant (and as an instant, heh), but I don’t know about it without that additional boost — despite the rise in creature decks since 2000, Vicious Hunger actually lost popularity in Standard when it came back for Eighth Edition. For the same mana as Douse in Gloom, you can just kill a creature outright with Putrefy, Mortify, or even Rend Flesh; it seems like the two points from Douse in Gloom would be most relevant against creatures that cost less than three mana, and we all know how I feel about that kind of math.
I don’t have anything against this card… I just think there are too many options in the relevant formats for this card to see play.
Constructed Unplayable (might be Role Player in a deck that wants a lot of spot removal, or in an inflexible monochromatic deck that can’t play peer cards from Ravnica Block)
Exhumer Thrull
I don’t see myself playing this in Constructed. For the same mana, I can smash for five and reanimate one of your guys. Maybe in Block? Probably not, still.
Constructed Unplayable
Hissing Miasma
I can’t imagine a deck that wants to play this.
Constructed Unplayable
Leyline of the Void
This is the kind of card that can really ruin a guy’s day. In a sense, it is much worse than Planar Void, but the reasonable chance that you can start with this Leyline in play… woe to the Dredge decks!
This card will probably see Extended play against Life from the Loam, the CAL mechanics, Friggorid, all of it. The cool thing is that even when you don’t start with Leyline of the Void in play, the broken Extended Dredge decks tend to give you a couple of turns — well, maybe not Friggorid on the ‘Tog draw — so you can often live long enough to hard cast it. What’s CAL going to do, honestly? Wish for its one Hull Breach?
Playable — Staple
Necromancer’s Magemark
This might be the best of the Magemarks. Possibly the advent of the Orzhov Guild will create an incentive to a B/W Tallowisp deck. If so, it is probably reasonable to get a bunch of Auras all over your guys. This card isn’t “good,” but it should be pretty annoying for an opponent trying to play attrition.
I don’t think Necromancer’s Magemark will see play out of that kind of theme deck, though.
Did I mention that Tallowisp hasn’t seen play outside of two set Block, and was replaced by a mediocre Saviors of Kamigawa equipment? Full disclosure and all.
Playable – Role Player (but probably Constructed Unplayable)
Orzhov Euthanist
This creature is the Bloodthirst equivalent of a Nekrataal. You read that right, “Bloodthirst” rather than Haunt. Bloodthirst, as a mechanic, seems to be about asking a player to spend some burn cards, or perhaps attack prior to playing the bloodthirsty pump candidate. Orzhov Euthanist wants a creature to have taken a couple of points, but the condition is functionally identical. You will probably be cracking with disposable creatures that are sure to be blocked — Sakura-Tribe Elders or Ravenous Rats — so you can play this card as a faux Nekrataal.
Initially, I didn’t think that the Euthanist (I keep thinking “Enthusiast”) could share space in a format with Nekrataal (e.g. Standard), but then I remembered that, at his debut Pro Tour, Zvi Mowshowitz ran Opportunist as an extra Fireslinger; there is something to be said for redundancy in certain builds. In Block, where a thousand Saprolings will be fuelling Bloodthirst already, the Euthanist should buy sideboard space in some decks.
As with many of the Haunt creatures, I think that setting up the re-buy will be a mite difficult, but I would probably have to see the cards in play before making a final determination.
Playable – Role Player
Ostiary Thrull
Only Pierre Canali plays one-mana tappers with off-color activation costs. As for the four-mana version? If only this were Red, it might make the cut in the Ponza deck.
Constructed Unplayable
Plagued Rusalka
Probably the second best Rusalka for Constructed. This diseased Spirit, played alongside other little beaters, should be hell for other creature decks. Can you imagine opening on Overgrown Tomb, then dropping Fists of Ironwood on this guy… um… Ghost?
I don’t know about universal adoption of the Plagued Rusalka, but Seth Burn advocated Bile Urchin last summer, and the Rusalka seems better in every relevant way.
Playable – Role Player
Poisonbelly Ogre
I can see this card as a foil — an attempted foil, anyway — for token generation strategies, but its symmetrical nature and general 3/3-for-five-mana-ness are strikes against. Black has too many good tools for tokens, from Rolling Spoil (Green), to Orzhov Pontiff (White), to the Plagued Rusalka we just talked about, for this card to be very good.
Maybe if you found a way to untap Forbidden Orchard a bunch of times?
Constructed Unplayable
Constructed Unplayable
No, no review. Just “Constructed Unplayable.”
Revenant Patriarch
Revenant Patriarch is an interesting card. Given its enhanced White ability, why would R&D create a creature that couldn’t block (not that anyone blocks in Constructed)?
Obviously, this card isn’t good enough on its own… a 4/3 for five mana? However, if some enterprising Orzhov mage figured out a way to loop the card, perhaps via a sacrifice effect (not that there are any in this Block), then perhaps an unending string of Soulless Revivals would… oh wait, the unending string of Soulless Revivals combined with precisely one White mana already has that option.
Maybe in Block?
Constructed Unplayable
Sanguine Praetor
I am going to run the usual caveat for giant creatures: “You don’t expect to actually pay for [fill in the blank], yadda, yadda, yadda.”
That said, I don’t know that you would actually want to pay for Sanguine Praetor. As far as eights go, he is no great shakes; this isn’t the legendary Angel of Wrath or one of Greg Weiss’s Living Hives.
I suppose you can sideboard this in against tokens (provided you have your own tokens) so that you can keep all tokens dead for all time or something, but without so much as trample, the Praetor isn’t getting past a two-mana Selesnya Guildmage consistently.
Constructed Unplayable
Seize the Soul
This card has a very clear limitation. It is not aiming at anyone eligible for the Ghost Council, and it can’t reliably hit a member of the Boros, Dimir, Golgari, or Selesnya guilds (or White or Black creatures to come). That relegates this to the sideboard almost immediately… but once you get past that, you have an interesting, powerful, and most of all, synergistic removal card, whose effect on the game (and interactions with the rest of your team) warrant a good deal of exploration.
For the longest time, no one would touch Terror in Constructed. It wasn’t until Pro Tour Dallas that we considered the card, thanks to the incomparable Brian Hacker. Terror was half the cost of Seize the Soul… and had half the limitation. Yet players were highly reluctant to play the card, for fear of Dead Card disadvantage. Any such fears are exacerbated when considering this double cost descendent.
As a sideboard card, Seize the Soul is conditionally powerful. Tag Godo, you keep the first two counters off the Jitte. Block with the first token and set up your Ghost Council, and you take out as many as two creatures… and keep two counters off the Jitte. Trigger that nasty Haunt ability and you get more and more enemies down (or at least contained), more Council fodder… and still no counters on the Jitte.
Is this a strong enough card? I think so. We are generally willing to bring in narrower removal cards, and this one fights Meloku, Arashi, and the mighty Tide Star.
I can see many situations where the Orzhov bleeder can both profit from its inclusion and dance around its downsides… It does cost four mana, remember…
Playable – Role Player
Skeletal Vampire
While not as sexy as the Kamigawa Block legends, Skeletal Vampire compares reasonably to both Meloku and Keiga. The Vampire is essentially five power in flyers for six mana (a la Keiga), and quite resilient due to the regeneration clause. I don’t normally advocate blocking, but the Vampire and his cohorts should do so profitably, taking down four-to-five toughness of attackers in any exchange, with no net loss of card economy.
Going long, the additional Bat generation (a la Meloku) will be slow, but it will also be available; the Vampire doesn’t run out of gas like a Deranged Hermit, and retains much of his vigor even when zeroes are removed by some effect.
I don’t think Skeletal Vampire will be Staple as long as Ink-Eyes and Kokusho, or the Blue staples, are in Standard, but this card should see a reasonable amount of small set play.
Playable — Staple
Smogsteed Rider
Smogsteed Rider is the walking Alpha Strike. While not a particularly exciting card on the stats, there is precedent to the whole “attack with all my guys” mirror.
The Top 8 of the Masques Block Pro Tour at New York 2000 was nothing but Reverent Mantras and ninety-degree cardboard rectangles. Ben Rubin deck — which included the Mantras — was most significant, in that it played Green cards alongside Rebels. The Green token decks could easily play a Black creature, via their Wood Elves, Birds of Paradise, and potential Elves of Deep Shadow. This card isn’t sexy on its face, but probably has more play in the sixty-card decks than seems immediately obvious.
Playable – Role Player
Black has a number of curious cards in Guildpact, but few really good ones — or proactive ones, anyway. Flagged for follow-up:
Skeletal Vampire
The only proactive Staple in the color, Skeletal Vampire will have little adoption outside its own Block. While I reiterate that the card should play better than it looks, that isn’t saying a lot given how bad it looks on paper. Given a tremendous amount of mana, this card can play Meloku without any real downside, but that its token generation is entirely contingent on the presence of other bats makes Skeletal Vampire surprisingly vulnerable, especially to cards like Darkblast or Plagued Rusalka long term.
Abyssal Nocturnus
This card is Black’s great hope for a proactive strategy coming out of Guildpact. It is essentially a forward-moving Quirion Dryad whose unique potency can dry up if the opponent just dumps his hand. For that reason, and the fact that the Nocturnus does not retain its boosts from turn to turn, it will probably not hit Dryad’s adoption, especially in larger formats. That said, this card’s ability to tangle one-on-one with the Odyssey bombs can’t be overstated; while it may be a bit narrow, the card should nevertheless be a consideration for anti-Madness and anti-Cycling in big format play.
Plagued Rusalka
Simply solid, obviously cheap… The combination has been the default for tournament caliber choices since the beginning.
Cremate and Leyline of the Void
There is no doubt that these cards will have the widest adoption of all Black cards in Guildpact. Cremate is maindeck quality, due to its ability to offset the loss of net card advantage, and Leyline of the Void will graduate to big set play, if as a sideboard card only. It seems Wizards of the Coast discovered the imbalance in power between Dredge and the rest of the Guild trademarks… the printing of specific hosers to fight that strategy is welcome.
Whether these cards are sufficient to hold in Friggorid, or even Nightmare Void, remains to be seen.
Seize the Soul
The big question mark out of Guildpact Black, Seize the Soul has the greatest potential in-Guild. Horrendous targeting limitations make it a liability in the mirror, as well as when fighting any of the other Ravnica Guilds… I guess you can aim at Gruul, Izzet, and any unaffiliated Kamigawa Block threats that aren’t the Morning Star, the Evening Star, or some other giant that has slipped my recollection. Clearly, this card is a powerhouse in the right deck… the question is, can Seize the Soul overcome its inherent limitations to fight the wrong decks?
Tomorrow: Guildpact-style Red
LOVE
MIKE