Exodar Life-Staff
4 stars based on
72 reviews
A few quick notes before I get to the reviews:. The grade on each card is much less important than the analysis. Some set specific mechanics emerge, escalate, and meld are hard to understand until you get to see them in action. Retired and inducted into the Limited Hall of Fame: The best of the best. Incredible bomb, but not unbeatable.
Descend Upon the Sinful. Jace, Unraveller of Secrets. Good rare or top-tier uncommon. Top-tier common or solid uncommon. Good playable that basically always makes the cut. Solid playable that rarely gets cut. Good filler, but sometimes gets cut. Gets cut about half the time. Fork in the Road. Gets cut most of the time. Very low-end playables and sideboard material. I like emerge as ethereum life staff drop rate of ashes quite a lot.
As a general rule when evaluating new Magic cards, anything that lets you cast expensive spells for cheaper is worth paying close attention to.
Emerge can lead to some easy wins when you put a giant monster into play quickly and it goes unanswered. But be aware that the cost of emerge is card disadvantage. You spend 2 cards the Eldrazi in your hand and the creature on the battlefield to result in 1 new creature on the battlefield. But this card is very likely to win you the game immediately when you cast it. I envision plenty of games where you emerge this out on turn 6 or 7 for a quick win. Overall, Decimator of the Provinces seems noticeably better than Overrunwhich has traditionally helped set the bar for broken Limited cards.
Casting Distended Mindbender ahead of schedule for its emerge cost can be more powerful. Even by turn 5, ethereum life staff drop rate of ashes odds of actually sniping 2 spells will be relatively low.
Because of its strange 1-turn-hexproof clause, Drownyard Behemoth is a foolproof way to ambush a ground attacker. This is its way of guaranteeing value and paying for the creature you sacrificed to emerge. Looks pretty solid to me. Being helpful in a wide variety of situations is exactly what I look for in an expensive card, and this one seems to fit that bill.
Note also that it can tap any permanent, including lands. Elder Deep-Fiend earns its high rating based on being able to cast it for its emerge cost in a blue deck. Spending that much mana for an auto-win card is an effect that some, but not all, decks will be interested in. Building a self-mill deck that gets delirium quickly is a little helpful. I also think it would be reasonable to start instead with a removal spell or a premium cheaper card in order to keep the door open for an aggressive deck.
For most practical purposes, Eternal Scourge is a colorless Nessian Courser. It can always come back, but they might use their instants and sorceries to tempo you out, or they might have a permanent that can repeatedly target it. Overall, not a high draft pick. It of the Horrid Swarm is 1 of only 2 common emerge creatures. I like this card, and I like its immediate impact on the battlefield.
Having a multicolored emerge cost makes Lashweed Lurker slightly more difficult to use well. When it destroys something relevant, this card is going to be great. Of the non-rare emerge creatures, Vexing Scuttler is my favorite. Returning an instant or sorcery from your graveyard to your hand replaces the creature that you sacrificed to emerge. I like the card advantage, the flexibility, and the giant monster that you get out of casting Vexing Scuttler.
Look for this to be an especially powerful card in a Sealed deck. Mulldrifter this is not. But a threatening body that replaces itself it is! Wretched Gryff looks like a good addition to any blue deck, and some, slow nonblue decks. Pairing this with Exultant Cultist or Enlightened Maniac will probably be one of the bread-and-butter synergies that blue decks will want in Eldritch Moon Limited. On the whole, this is a poor card. Cryptolith Fragment is a unique and reasonably powerful card, but whether or not you can use it well will depend largely on your deck.
At its best, the Fragment could easily be as high as a 2. Granted, it will be very annoying to have this locked down by a Choking Tethers you can consider sideboarding it out if your opponent has a lot of cards like that.
Unlike a Steel Golemyou can still cast your creatures—it just becomes minorly annoying to do so. Outside of that, I envision this being a solid playable for most decks in this Limited format. You can cast this and another spell in the same turn, and then cash in once you finally do empty your hand.
Investing 4 mana to equip a creature, only to have that ethereum life staff drop rate of ashes trade in combat is a real bummer. Soul Separator has excellent flavor, and some interesting potential uses, but I think it costs too much mana to be very good. If you have some self-mill, you can dump a giant monster in your graveyard and then use Soul Separator to make a big threat. As someone pointed out in the comments section of the black review, the sweetest combo with Soul Separator is Tree of Perdition.
Imagine, for example, equipping an Ethereum life staff drop rate of ashes Neonate on turn 3. More than the other common and uncommon equipment, I like both the flavor and the strategy questions represented by Thirsting Axe. For a pretty affordable rate, you can put your opponent to the test of trading for your weakest creatures every turn, or taking massive damage.
Having the option to unload damage is a good thing. Well-above-average stats and madness make Bloodhall Priest a card to be excited ethereum life staff drop rate of ashes in any RB deck. The ability to sometimes kill a creature when it enters the battlefield is a big bonus on an already-good card. But jamming Bloodhall Priest right away or waiting to empty your hand is a choice that can be made case-by-case.
Campaign of Vengeance does a reasonable impression of Glorious Anthem and is quite a powerful card. But noncreature, nonremoval card that commits me to 2 colors is not how I would hope to start a draft.
The self-mill ability finds you Zombies to cast, helps with delirium, and can offer plenty of other benefits in this color combination. He also stands on his own extremely well, being a solid body that can ambush an attacker. Built-in lifelink also makes him carry equipment, Auras, and combat tricks particularly well. Mercurial Geists ethereum life staff drop rate of ashes the potential to hit ethereum life staff drop rate of ashes hard, but I usually ethereum life staff drop rate of ashes for my 4-mana gold uncommon to have a bit more standalone power than this.
The stats and text on Mournwillow are similar likely a little worse than Voldaren Duelist. These decks are in the market for any card that lets them keep attacking, and Ride Down might just be the best one out there. Note that it can give trample to all 8 creatures blocked by an opposing Watcher in the Web! In terms of power level, Spell Queller is pushed to the limit on virtually every axis!
Flash gives it the potential to ambush a creature if you choose, or keeps your mana open for other options. The ability to ethereum life staff drop rate of ashes counter a spell while adding an evasive attacker to the board is a huge swing.
Granted, Spell Queller does have its limits. If it gets killed later in ethereum life staff drop rate of ashes game, the opponent will finally get their spell. At any rate, this seems like a creature that you want to get onto the board early to push a tempo advantage, not save in your hand forever to counter their late-game bomb. The other is her demanding 3-color requirement.
This is a 2-color format, and splashing comes at a very high cost. A ethereum life staff drop rate of ashes has to go right for Tamiyo to fit into your deck, and a lot more has to go right before you can smoothly curve into casting her on turn 4. Ulrich of the Krallenhorde is one of the major characters in Shadows over Innistradbeing referenced in the names and flavor texts of a lot of the Werewolves.
I had pretty high expectations for him when he finally got printed as his own card. The Human side is actually a bit lackluster. But the Werewolf side does not disappoint in the slightest. The fact that you might actually get to make this happen more than once in a game is truly beastly. Geier Reach Sanitarium offers a relatively powerful symmetrical effect, and having control over it is appealing. Hanweir Battlements is a bit more powerful because its effect only benefits you. Any red deck that can afford it will want Hanweir Battlements.
Very aggressive red decks like WR will want to pick it relatively highly. The multicolored rares are great examples. As of now, I see no reason not to believe that all 10 color combinations will be viable in draft. If the emerge mechanic is as powerful as it looks like it might be, then there might be big rewards in finding the perfect way to build a UG Emerge deck.
