Odyssey Limited Review: Black Gary Wise This is the second installment in my series looking at the cards in Odyssey and their value in Limited play. The first installment can be found here. BLACK How the mighty have fallen. When standalone sets are released, black is usually a powerhouse. Whether it's because of great discard, Mercenary chains, Corrupt and Pestilence or what have you, black seems to be coveted as much if not more than the other colors and with good reason: the forces of evil are often capable of dominance. With Odyssey though, comes a new day. No longer is evil the road to take to power. Overshadowed by powerful blue and green spells, black has been relegated to the lower tier, with its cards contradicting one another, fighting for those precious graveyard cards to be sacrificed, neglecting threshold, and usually having too many four drops, and not enough earlier ones. Black isn't without it's charms: it still has good common kill (Ghastly Demise, Patriarch's Desire, Morbid Hunger), broken rares (Cabal Patriarch, Stalking Bloodsucker) and a few fliers, but black just isn't anyone's first choice anymore. If you see it's being underdrafted, black can be very strong, especially in tandem with blue's ability to get cards to the graveyard, but I'd recommend that you only draft it if the cards insist upon it. The Cards Afflict Not a bad way to start things off here. Afflict is one of those cantrips that gives you real card advantage 90% of the time, but you have be careful not to pick it too aggressively as the problem a lot of black decks seem to have concerns dealing with large creatures, not small ones. That said, if you want to kill one of the small ones, there aren't many better ways to do it, and sometimes you can block and Afflict to kill off an opposing fatty. All in all, a very versatile card, but you don't want too many: One or two is optimal, three's a stretch. A 3rd - 5th pick. Bloodcurdler This card may actually be better before threshold then afterwards. If you think about it, cards like Millikin are coveted in this format for their ability to fill the graveyard, but with the Curdler, once you get threshold, it takes it away again. A 2/2 flier for two mana is a good deal, and the Bloodcurdler gets that large soon enough, but it does frustratingly little on defense, so the verdict is this: if you have a lot of cards like Painbringer and Cabal Patriarch that want cards in your graveyard, it's playable, but really weigh the value of the Millstone ability before you decide to play it. A 6th - 8th pick. Braids, Cabal Minion When Dave Price took this card with his second pick in the Rotisserie Draft at the Invitational, a number of the competitors exchanged looks, but Braids may well be as good as Dave, Chris Pikula and a number of the other New Yorkers think it is. Simply, Braids allows you to take advantage of a fast start of your own or a slow start by your opponent, especially when you play first. Realistically, unless they have a kill spell for her, if you play Braids on turn four and they haven't cast any spells, the game is over. That kind of finality is pretty rare. A 2nd - 4th pick. Buried Alive Yes it helps with threshold and can be good with Gravedigger or Morgue Theft, but the ability just isn't worth a card. An 11th - 13th pick. Cabal Inquisitor I think R&D made this as weak as they could and then giggled as they watched small children open it. A 13th - 15th pick. Cabal Patriarch With apologies to Stalking Bloodsucker, this is black's best card. There's just about nothing that deals with a 5/5 black creature, and if that's all the Patriarch was, he'd still be very playable, but that's far from all the Patriarch is. With this bad boy, every creature you draw becomes two Patriarch's Desires at instant speed, and that's especially effective in combat. The moment you have this card, start building your deck around it: get cards in the graveyard fast and draft enough black that Black ManaBlack ManaBlack Mana will never be a problem. In the end, you'll find it was worth it. A 1st pick. Cabal Shrine I really believe the Shrines are an indication that someone lost a very bad bet. A 15th pick. Caustic Tar Sometimes, your game is moving slowly along and things don't seem to be going that well, and all of a sudden, you win. Caustic Tar is one of those cards that can make that happen. At six mana, the Tar costs a lot, but it provides you with an amazing clock, usually giving your opponent only a few turns to live. Of course, as an enchantment that targets a permanent, this card offers your opponent a chance for card advantage, but if you cast a six casting cost spell, losing a land shouldn't hurt too much, and it's a fair risk to take when you can win the game if the land survives. A 2nd - 4th pick Childhood Horror That the Horror can't block when at threshold is nearly irrelevant as you never really want to have to block with this thing anyways. The Horror is built for offense, and while a little meek earlier on, it makes up for it in the late (threshold) game. Four powered evasion creatures are pretty hard to come by, and you should usually grab them when they surface. Just make sure it's going to have a power of four when you draft it, because a generic 2/2 for four is far from exciting. A 3rd - 5th pick. Coffin Purge I don't care how good the flashback cards in your opponent's deck are, the Purge just doesn't cut it. For your consideration, if your opponent has eleven mana and casts Roar of the Wurm, you can't Purge it before the flashback is activated. Just not effective enough. A 13th - 15th pick. Crypt Creeper Is this black's most important common? Obviously it isn't the most powerful, but arguments could still be made. Black seems woefully short on cost-efficient creatures, especially in the lower cost slots, so when the rest of your creatures are going to cost four or more, you need to make sure you get the one decent two-drop your color offers, and that's where the Creeper comes in. Providing a two-powered body for two mana and an activated ability that can prove useful, the Creeper is a quick trade for fast opposing creatures that gets you to the point in the game where your more powerful spells can take over. A 5th - 7th pick. Cursed Monstrosity This card is a tough call. On the one hand, the Monstrosity provides you with a four-powered evasion creature that can end the game in two or three turns, but on the other hand, it can prove to be the most useless bulk in the format. When drafting, consider how much creature elimination you have in order to remove creatures with targeted abilities, and if the answer is 'a lot', then this may be the card for you. Even then, though, you'll only be able to put it to any use on turn fifteen. Don't pick it high. A 7th - 9th pick. Decaying Soil Seems like a bad Malevolent Awakening to me. It's just too hard to keep threshold going while the Soil is in play. A 15th pick. Decompose Shouldn't a card like this draw you a card? I guess you could side it in times of desperation against a deck that must get threshold or that has six Roar of the Wurms, but generally, drawing a card like this will weaken your deck so much that it won't matter that you'll eventually weaken theirs. A 12th - 14th pick. Diabolic Tutor Well, the strength of the Tutor is obviously defined by the strength of the other cards in your deck, but it isn't that simple when deciding whether to draft it or not. The Tutor should always be good enough to make your deck, meaning you'll be able to pick it safely, but its true value comes in the form of two-card combos and power cards your deck holds: only then will you really know how high to pick it. A 3rd - 7th pick Dirty Wererat In a color that lacks a lot in the way of solid creatures, this is one of the few shining lights. The Wererats put opposing offenses on standstill, with the presence of a 2/3 regenerator more often than not making a creature swarm approach impossible. Once things have settled down to your liking, threshold kicks in, and that's when the Wererat becomes a nearly unstoppable force. The four casting cost works against these guys, as almost every other decent card in black costs around the same amount of mana, but unstoppable offensive forces are few and far between. A 3rd - 5th pick. Dusk Imp When you pay three mana for an evasion creature, you're counting on its ability to get through where other creatures won't. That's a lot of weight to put on these one-toughness shoulders. There are dozens of spells that kill it, dozens more that stop it. Don't pick these guys too highly, but they'll be good enough for your deck that when/if you get them, they should see the light of day. A 5th - 7th pick. Entomb Can't make a bad Roar of the Wurm joke here: Roar is a sorcery. A 15th pick. Execute I love this card. I'm a big believer in the high picking of sideboard cards that can single-handedly turn a game, and Execute fits the bill. Like killing a white creature for a mere three mana without hope of parole isn't enough to merit the sideboarding of this card, you get the additional bonus of replacing the Execute in your hand when you draw another card upon its resolution. I'm not saying that you should draft it first, but do understand that against three of four players at your table, this can be a game winner. I like winning games. A 5th - 7th pick. Face of Fear Of all the cards in Odyssey that forced involuntary winces from me, this was the one that hurt the most. Having been recently spoiled by Duskwalker, the experience of seeing it cost one more and require a discard at a cost of three mana in order to activate and not be able to come out pre-kicker was too much to bear. If your deck REALLY needs that one fat guy that can finish your opponent off, I supposed the FoF (These initials usually mean so much more) will do, but more often than not, I'd leave it in the sideboard, or better yet, pass it in the hopes an opponent might mistake it for being good. An 8th - 10th pick. Famished Ghoul It's only when you actually start playing with Odyssey that you realize how big a deal two cards being removed from your graveyard can be. With threshold and flashback making your graveyard almost as important as the field of play, every card counts, and while a removal effect like the Ghoul's will optimally catch a flashback card before it's activated, even catching two non-flashback cards can have big dividends. Throw in the 3/2 body and a non-intensive casting cost and you'll have a card that can't help but be solid, even if it will never be spectacular. A 5th - 7th pick. Filthy Cur This card is a cruel, cruel tease. It's fast, it's tough for its casting cost, and it seems to die despite staying in play on turn four. As enticing as the Cur's 2/2 for two stature makes it, its drawback is harsh, leaving it incapable of effectively chump blocking or being a part of a swarm attack, where your opponent can gang block it with everything to deal you massive amounts of damage. Yes, the Cur's suitable for a heavy beatdown deck or any deck that has a lot of creature sacrifice in the mid to late game (Sadistic Hypnotist, Malevolent Awakening), but more often than not, it should be your 24th or 25th card in a 23 card deck. A 9th - 11th pick. Fledgling Imp Through the centuries, mankind has sought the secrets of flight, but I'm not sure discarding a card is worth it. The Imp provides a warm body (2/2) in an important and oft-times barren casting cost slot, but it doesn't really do too much, offering you the option of either doing a little damage or trading with a flyer all at the cost of card disadvantage. The Imp is definitely an acceptable 23rd card, just don't get too excited about the prospect. A 7th - 9th pick. Fright Crawler 1/1 creatures for two... The big problem with Frightcrawler is its existence as a black card, sharing space in decks with cards like Painbringer, Zombie Assassin and the like that constantly deprive this little fellow of its much needed +2 +2. Basically, unless you have some way of milling cards into your graveyard like Cephalid Looter or Milikin, I'd suggest leaving the 1/1 in your sideboard, but by all means, if you have one of those cards, play your 3/3. A 7th - 9th pick. Ghastly Demise Black's best common is not without its quirks. You can't cast it early even though you often want to, and you can't kill regenerators, black creatures or oft times very large attackers. That said, cheap efficient kill is hard to find, and as it goes in this set, this is the best of the common variety. I'd rather pay two extra mana in exchange for the certainty of a Dark Banishing, but that doesn't mean this isn't one of the better Limited cards in the set. A 1st - 3rd pick. Gravedigger Good old Dave Gigger makes his return in the set where you want your creatures to stay in the graveyard, but I think taking a step back from threshold is probably worth it when you get a little card advantage in return. Gravedigger offers the exchange of a 'free' 2/2 body in exchange for time, becoming very good once you stabilize the table and allowing you to make a questionable trade secure in the knowledge that the dying creature will be back momentarily. A lot of fun in multiples or with other creatures like Scrivener or Anarchist possessing of coming into play abilities, Gravedigger is never a bad thing for your deck. A 3rd - 5th pick. Gravestorm Answer to question one: yes, Gravestorm is playable. If nothing else, it deprives your opponent of threshold and often flashback, without costing you any mana or other resources aside from the original casting cost. That said, Black ManaBlack ManaBlack Mana is quite a commitment to make when building your deck, one that requires the playing of at least ten swamps, maybe eleven, and when you consider that there will be times when the removing of a card from the graveyard will just be the removing of a card from the graveyard, that makes this a card you definitely shouldn't be going out of your way for. If your mana allows for the easy casting of Gravestorm, then play it, but don't build your mana base around casting it. A 6th - 8th pick. Haunting Echoes It's a lot of fun in Constructed, but unless your opponent has four copies of a flashback card you can't control, it's unlikely you'll find a use for the Echoes in Limited play. An 11th - 13th pick. Hint of Insanity Even if they do have four copies of that flashback card, this thing will be useless. A 15th pick. Infected Vermin Again, a black card functions best when threshold is achieved but comes up wanting because that so seldom happens. The Vermin's pre-threshold ability can be useful, but black has so many one-toughness creatures that it ends up detracting from the synergy of your deck. The Vermin is definitely a viable main deck card, but try to find some way of beefing up your graveyard to go with it, and if you see that your creatures are predominantly susceptible to the Rat's wrath, don't be afraid to leave it in the sideboard in lieu of some less-spectacular card. A 6th - 8th pick. Innocent Blood Ok folks, first things first, stop playing Innocent Blood in decks with fifteen creatures. It's just not a good solution to those creatures you need to kill, as you won't have enough room in your deck for the kill needed to make it effective. That said, there is one way to properly utilize this card, that being to play it in a deck with more kill than creatures. If you have enough creature elimination that you can virtually ensure your opponent will only have one creature in play when you want to use the Blood, then it suddenly becomes a card you drafted ninth or tenth that kills a 6/6 for one mana, and that's a card worth playing. A 5th - 12th pick. Last Rites Another black card that's close to playable which I'd prefer to leave in the sideboard. The Rites can act as a double or triple Unmask while trading your worst cards for your opponent's best and filling your graveyard quickly in the early game, and that seems pretty worthwhile, but in the mid or late game it only serves as a dead card once your opponent's spells have all been cast. Of course, this can be changed by playing it in a blue-black deck with Aether Bursts and Dematerializes, so keep an eye on the possibility of playing it in that situation. If nothing else, Last Rites makes sense as a potential sideboard card against power cards your deck can't otherwise handle. Shower of Coals or Kirtar's Wrath won't hurt too much once they're in the graveyard. An 8th - 10th pick. Malevolent Awakening This is one of the more interesting cards in the set. Strongest in combination with cards like Gravedigger and Chamber of Manipulation, the Awakening, while slow, is strong enough to be played on its own laurels. Intensive on the mana front, Malevolent Awakening is capable of providing massive card advantage, be it through the repeated casting of creatures with coming into play abilities or through its activation in combat after damage has gone on the stack. It's cost is high, so don't take it too high, but Malevolent Awakening is definitely good enough to warrant play as long as your deck can stabilize long enough to use it. A 6th - 8th pick. Mind Burst So, if you're lucky, your opponent will still have one card in hand by the time you draw your second Burst. Of course, at that point they'll have six cards in the graveyard with two Werebears and two Springing Tigers in play... a 12th - 14th pick. Mindslicer I keep going back to the blue-black color combination, but that's mostly because the cards in that archetype seem to work so well together. Mindslicer is powerful on its own, providing a 4/3 body for four mana, offering a lot of possibilities for decks with a lot of flashback, but the most enticing possibility is bouncing opposing creatures with Dematerialize and Aether Burst just before this big guy is about to die. Regardless, in a format full of small creatures and a color full of smaller ones, its nice to get a chance at a low-cost, high dividend creature whose 'side effect' can be abused. A 2nd - 4th pick. Morbid Hunger Every new set seems to have a 'Drain Life' and Odyssey is no exception. Six mana is a big commitment to make, especially considering how many high cost playables there are in this set, but the Hunger makes it worthwhile, killing an important creature, providing a positive life swing, and coming back for more of the same three mana later. Take mana efficient kill over the Hunger, if only because casting cost is such an issue in Odyssey, but if there isn't anything cheaper, you can still be happy being passed this card. A 3rd - 5th pick. Morgue Theft I think I like this card more than most. If you think about it, the Theft is basically the best creature in your graveyard for two more mana, with the additional bonus of providing a little staying power for the late game. Flashback is inherently advantageous and this is one card where you can get that desirable trait with a relatively late draft pick. Lots of fun in tandem with Gravedigger, the creature is better than the spell, so if you find yourself getting overloaded on creature revivers and undermanned as far as creatures themselves, don't be afraid to take a lesser creature over the Theft for the good of your deck. A 6th - 8th pick. Mortivore Most of the 'new Lhurgoyfs' are pretty bad, but this is the exception. At four mana, Mortivore should be about the equivalent of Gravedigger or Dirty Wererat, but obviously it's so much more. Cast on turn four, it's unlikely the 'vore will be much bigger than a 2/2, but even then, if you've known you wanted to cast it, you can make the conscious decision to trade creatures early to boost up the graveyard. Later on, the fatty is essentially an unstoppable force, especially in this environment that has so few regenerators and just as few ways of taking out large black regenerators. This guy is more likely than not to be your best creature: Take him when you get him. A 1st - 3rd pick. Nefarious Lich The world's most talented deckbuilders will have trouble breaking this card, and they'll have thousands of cards with which to try. Don't bother when you're only working with three boosters. A 15th pick. Overeager Apprentice Now that this article has been published, I have the expressed permission of every reader to smack them on the side of the head if I see this card in play on their side of the table. A 20th pick... nah, 30th. Painbringer More and more, I'm finding that Painbringer, while obviously strong, isn't quite what I first thought it would be. As a 1/1 for four mana that taps to kill, I thought Painbringer would show itself to be the equivalent of Tsabo's Assassin, but with black requiring so many cards in the graveyard to function properly, I've found that quite often, the Bringer insists upon many cards from the graveyard as a sacrifice and that I'm unable to fill that demand. I'm obviously not saying that you shouldn't pick it or play it, but when weighing its strength against, say Ghastly Demise or Patriarch's Desire, look at the contents of your deck and understand that if you already have Skeletal Scrying, Gravedigger, Zombie Assassin and other black cards that take from your graveyard, that you likely won't have the fodder you need to keep this little critter well fed and effective. A 2nd - 4th pick. Patriarch's Desire At four mana, this card's pre-threshold ability is very expensive for what it does, but hey, what common kill in this set isn't (Firebolt, I know)? Simply put, the Desire kills regenerators, black creatures and just about everything in between in efficient fashion, and once threshold is achieved, it only gets stronger. Unfortunately, with the lack of size of black creatures, it's very seldom that you can play the Desire on one of your creatures as an offensive maneuver, but no matter, it's rare that you'd want to do that anyway. Just be careful of opponents achieving threshold in response to your casting the Desire: making your opponent's Springing Tiger 9/1 could definitely suck. A 2nd - 4th pick. Repentant Vampire It's funny, but in this format where creatures are generally considered weak, 3/3 flyers, while still good, aren't anything special. It seems that while you pay five mana for your 3/3, your opponent is playing a 4/4 for the same amount, with another waiting to be flashed back, and flying or not, your creature is going to lose the race. That said, you won't find many 3/3 flyers better than the Vampire, whose ability only really seems to come into play in an opponent's lack of willingness to bluff an attack through or when the pressure the flyer produces is intense enough that they must start chump blocking. The threshold ability though, is powerful and dangerous, as an opposing Persuasion could mean very bad things for you and your army of black critters. A 1st - 3rd pick. Rotting Giant The key to the Giant isn't that it's a 3/3 for two mana. Ok, that's definitely important, but frankly, you can't expect to use it very often unless you're playing blue, and even then you won't be able to activate it while using other, similarly graveyard-sapping black cards effectively. Mainly, the Giant's strength comes in the form of the threat of activation on defense, with the prospect of trading a card in play for a card in the graveyard not being a very enticing one for your opponent. I don't pick this critter too high because I don't expect to have the graveyard cards available, but he's not a bad call for just about any deck. A 5th - 7th pick. Sadistic Hypnotist Five mana for a 2/2 is definitely a lot, but there are definitely times where the Hypnotist proves to be more than worth it. Turning every creature you have in play into a walking, talking Unnerve, the Hypnotist's ability is strong on its own, but becomes much better with cards that control opposing creatures like Chamber of Manipulation or cards that create multiple creatures like Elephant Ambush or Squirrel's Nest, not to mention finding another use for creatures incapacitated by Kirtar's Desire and the like. Obviously, the Hypnotist's strength will rely upon just how willing you are to sacrifice your creatures, but if nothing else, it can trade itself for two cards. A 5th - 7th pick. Screams of the Damned You guys remember Pestilence, right? Black card, killed stuff, won games? While Screams doesn't quite measure up with regards to casting cost or activation cost, the end result is the same: deal one point of damage to all creatures and players. When that ability is renewable, it is incredibly potent, and unlike Pestilence, once you've cleared the table, Screams of the Damned sticks around for more torture and merriment. I can't stress enough how important it is to not have too many cards that rob your graveyard, but this is one of the cards that can make it worthwhile. A 3rd - 5th pick. Skeletal Scrying And again. Black's problem is not the late game, it's the early game, with almost everything of substance costing four or more mana. As a result, as strong as this card is, there will be a lot of times where you'll have to make the sacrifice for your deck, drafting something less powerful over the Scrying. Trust me, I know how strong this thing is, I played it in Extended, but I'd rather have the best deck than a collection of the best cards. Pick it and play it, but make sure your deck will be capable of feeding it: casting it for one card on turn twelve makes Scrying kind of weak. A 3rd - 5th pick. Skull Fracture This card isn't all that bad. At one mana for one card, the Fracture isn't ever going to be spectacular, but it isn't going to be awful either, taking a card from your opponent while getting a card into your graveyard. The flashback is really what makes Skull Fracture playable, offering the possibility of card advantage while the card itself offers the versatility of adding to your graveyard if the second use seems less than optimal. This little sorcery won't make your main deck every time, but you could do worse for a 23rd card. A 7th - 9th pick. Stalking Bloodsucker The first time I read this card, I was tempted to buy tickets to Renton so I could have words with Randy Buehler face to face. The Bloodsucker is a game ender, plain and simple, attacking for massive amounts of evasion damage while being virtually unkillable thanks to its size and color. I might take Overrun over this thing first pick because of color preference, but other than that, there's no uncommon or common in the set that would keep me from drafting the vampire. A 1st pick. Tainted Pact My experiences with this card in Limited have been nothing but good thus far, basically reading 'remove any land on top of your deck from the game, take the first spell', and that's fine by me. What's more, it offers the additional versatility of being able to search a little harder in times of desperation, with an otherwise certain loss suddenly becoming slightly winnable with that desperate search to find one of those three cards you need to kill 'that creature' or the ones you need to do the last two points of damage. The Pact isn't perfect, occasionally netting you nothing or next to, but if you feel you can play it competently, I see no reason you wouldn't include it in your deck. A 6th - 8th pick. Tombfire I don't think I can see myself siding this in. Coffin Purge just seems better, with it's own flashback making it a much more justifiable choice. I don't rate this as a fifteenth pick, but your opponent needs to have a lot of Flashback to make this viable. A 12th - 14th pick. Traveling Plague Five mana, kill all your own guys, take around 15 turns to kill all opposing critters. Um, thanks, but...a 13th - 15th pick. Whispering Shade Every deck seems to have twenty-three four-casting cost cards in it these days, meaning that there often isn't a lot of spare mana lying around with which to pump this guy. The question of how high to draft this card is a convoluted one because of this, with the Shade just not being very good against non-black decks (More often than not there will only be two other back players at your table if you're black yourself) but very good against you. The answer will probably come in the form of solutions you have to the Shade and how much you fear the other black players at your table. Weigh these factors carefully and make your decision, but be careful not to overcompensate. By the way, this above all others is the one card I won't pick if I'm not playing black. Let the black mages play this card main and the one with the swampwalkers will win. When they play my non-black deck, it will be a 1/1 for four. My decks can usually deal with that kind of threat. A 5th - 7th pick. Zombie Assassin If the Assassin were 3/3, cost 4 ManaBlack Mana and read 'Tap: Sacrifice Zombie Assassin: Destroy target non-black creature. It can't be regenerated.', it would be really good. Interesting how it's the little things that make or break a card huh? As is, the Assassin isn't bad, but far too often, you'll find yourself needing to activate it and find your graveyard lacking OR you'll want to sacrifice it then bring it back with Gravedigger OR you'll need the Assassin to hit the table and live a turn but your opponent will have Firebolt in the graveyard. The Assassin is playable, but five mana spells are a dime a dozen in this format, and overloading on them will leave you short on mana and shorter on life. Don't pick these too highly. A 5th - 7th pick. Zombie Cannibal If this had flying and cost one more, it would be decently playable. Of course, then I'd be 18 again, the Raptors would win the NBA Championship every year and Gary Wise would have four Pro Tour wins in the last year. A 15th pick Zombie Infestation Three cards for your first 2/2 creature you say? Sorry guys, you'll have to stick to sixty card decks on this one. A 10th - 12th pick. Zombify This one's simple enough: how many creatures in your deck are worth more than four mana to you? Zombify returns a creature of your choice from the graveyard to play, an ability unique to this card in Odyssey. Not quite the same as a four casting cost creature, Zombify is a little weaker in that there has to be something worth animating, or is a little stronger as it offers a lot more versatility than any one creature can. In the end, this card should always be playable assuming you get your allotment of twelve or more creatures, but you'll have other four-cc spells, so don't pick it with emphasis. A 6th - 8th pick.