One of the more subtle spree cards, but I think this might be a sleeper in high powered cubes. At 4B this is a GSZ that fetches your best monarch / initiative enabler or set up your Sheoldred / Hullbreacher for your draw 7 combo from your graveyard / library, can be a decent value card at 3B, and isn't a bad back up to Entomb / Unmarked Grave for reanimator / Worldgorger Dragon combo. The ceiling of this card is recurring your best 4-cmc creature from your graveyard and using the Entomb effect on something that can recur itself like From the Catacombs. This is especially attractive for larger cubes that would want more redundancy to Entomb / Unmarked Grave. IMO this is a much better card for reanimator / Recurring Nightmare shells than most black discard outlets like Oona's Prowler / Pack Rat / Collective Brutality / etc, and is just a decent midrange card overall as a build your own monarch / initiative enabler.
I like the comparison to Green Sun's Zenith. I like this less than some other niche tutors, such as Beseech the Mirror and Bring to Light. But if you have 4 drops, especially monarch/initiative ones, this could be worth it. Pass for me though, especially because there are several other black cards I'm going to be testing.
I mean for one thing it's strictly better than Unmarked Grave, since the tutoring has no restrictions.
In addition to that having another option to recur things endures the card affects the board which is great.
The 5mv option is good but I'm not so sure how often it'll be played. Black is not green and so does not necessarily reach 5 mana every game, and even when it does not all of its 4 drops end games. GSZ is great because it's so flexible, fetching you an elf one game and a game ending bomb the next, while the average black deck would probably care only about the 5mv mode on this card, making it very inflexible.
I'd probably test it, but I'd consider it mostly a reanimator card with some niche uses elsewhere.
The 5mv option is good but I'm not so sure how often it'll be played.
Unlike other spree cards, I think this is going to be primarily played with both modes combined. I think it's best to think of this as a modal Custdoi Lich.
Damn, the hits keep coming.
I think this is pretty solid if you have a premium 4 drop or two in your deck.
Cubes I’ve been playing are midrange interactive heavy and creatures die/exchange a lot.
in a midrange battles where creatures are trading off, this is often 5 mana put your best creature in your deck into play and a good 2-3 drop.
even if you accelerate into it, paying 5 mana for an iniative creature is often still a good card.
It’s a bit niche, but not extremely so. Wouldn’t cubes it without support of the 4 drop initiative creatures
Black has no shortage of 5-mana bombs, and this card's cheaper modes are really situational and hard to play on curve. The card's ceiling doesn't seem high enough to make up for its merely decent floor.
And this is the thing. You can grab a chubacabra or sheoldred out of your deck which is cool but it is a miss to me. I cant think of a pair of creatures that is gonna win me the game. It wouldnt be bad but not for a small cube
Stuff like collective brutaility is truely flexible.
We've been testing out some janky creature combos lately (e.g. samwise/cat), and this seems like a nice tool for those decks to be able to fetch one piece and recur one/both if the other is in the GY.
This is a good card in creature-based combo decks, but I think it falls short as a generic goodstuff card, monarch/initiative support or not.
This will be cube dependent. Combined with 4-cmc creatures from other colors (particularly initiative enablers / Palace Jailer), it's not going to be hard for most BX creature based midraneg dceks to comfortably play this. In my cube, black has the best top 5 starting line up of 4-cmc creatures:
- Sheoldred, the Apocalypse
- Passageway Seer
- Ravenloft Adventurer
- Rankle, Master of Pranks
- Grief
- Hostile Investigator (6th man that hasn't been added yet)
Black has the most initiative enablers, and the fact that this can recur an initiative enabler and bin From the Catacombs (which is black's best 5-cmc spell IMO as it's a Recurring Nightmare / Bribery hybrid that's recurrable and an initiative enabler), it's not too hard to set up double / triple initiative trigger set ups to close out the game. Not to mention that this will naturally slot into any Reanimator / Recurring Nightmare deck with ease since a bad Entomb effect is still better than most discard outlets.
This is much better than Finale of Devastation since it's more mana efficient and is more versatile since this can go into more decks. I'm okay paying an extra mana for Palace Jailer / Sheoldred / any initiative enabler, but was never okay paying 4GG for them with Finale of Devastation. Not to mention that this has modes at 3 and 4 mana too. The Entomb effect alone will make the main deck of any reanimator / Recurring Nightmare deck.
The three natural homes for this card will be the following:
The last bullet especially covers a good amount of ground, not to mention a good amount of creature based combo decks this can sneak into, like draw 7 / persist / etc. If anything, this card should be compared to Bring to Light more than Finale of Devastation. I like this spree card much more than any other spree card in my cube.
I don't believe a 3 mana sorcery speed entomb is a good card in reanimator, such that this card auto makes any reanimator deck.
I think if I didn't have a few premium cheap creatures and I had 3-5 looting effects already, I'd rather play a card like a sheoldred's edict or an infernal grasp (ok interactive card that doesn't directly contribute to a reanimation game plan).
Could be wrong though, not high confidence. If that statement was true, it definitly increases the value of this card.
I don't believe a 3 mana sorcery speed entomb is a good card in reanimator, such that this card auto makes any reanimator deck.
Atraxa / Archon of Cruelty / etc are better on turn 4 than any other 4-cmc creature you can play on curve. And this is much more consistent than any 1-2 cmc discard outlet since it's an actual tutor, finds your actual best target, and reduces the combo from an A + B + C combo to an A + B combo. I find it extremely difficult to justify this not making the main deck of any reanimator / Recurring Nightmare deck when Entomb is literally the most important card to that strategy.
I probably wouldn't be in the market for a standalone 3-cmc Entomb since Buried Alive alredy exists, but this has much more applications than that.
Buried alive was not a good card many many years ago when I tested it in anything but living death.
yes entomb is the best enabler by a lot for reanimator, but tacking on 2 mana and making it sorcery speed is a totally different card in terms of quality.
again, I’m not arguing against the card in general, only the statement about it auto making reanimator decks.
Buried alive was not a good card many many years ago when I tested it in anything but living death.
The issue with Buried Alive is more justifying its slot in the cube than it is justifying it in a reanimator deck, IMO. And this has much more legs to stand on if you have a Sheoldred back up plan or something.
yes entomb is the best enabler by a lot for reanimator, but tacking on 2 mana and making it sorcery speed is a totally different card in terms of quality.
again, I’m not arguing against the card in general, only the statement about it auto making reanimator decks.
Here's my logic to this being an auto include in any reanimator deck:
- Again, a turn 4 Atraxa / Archon of Cruelty / etc is much better than any other creature / planeswalker / etc that you can play on curve.
- This being a tutor ensures you get the best possible target for any given scenario you're in (unless it's already in your hand).
- Entomb effects >>> discard outlets because it simplifies the combo down to two cards. If this isn't an auto include in a reanimator deck, then what mono black discard outlet is? This advances the gameplan of a reanimator deck much better than Bitter Triumph / Liliana of the Veil / Oona's Prowler / etc.
Honestly the only scenario I can see this not making the main of a reanimator deck is if you're a Reanimator / Oath of Druids hybrid and you already have Entomb / Unmarked Grave / Demonic Tutor / Vampiric Tutor / etc. In that scenario, sure this can probably ride the sideboard.
This card bears a strong resemblance to Smuggler's Surprise. They each have a mode which enables fatty cheating alongside a generic failsafe mode, a combination that I find very appealing. Unfortunately, the failsafe mode for Lively Dirge is also its premium mode, so it can't be a self-contained enabler + payoff like Smuggler's Surprise can. As for its individual modes, paying 3 mana for a sorcery speed entomb is just rough, even for decks that can leverage it. Instant speed would have gone a long way towards making this card more palatable.
This card bears a strong resemblance to Smuggler's Surprise. paying 3 mana for a sorcery speed entomb is just rough, even for decks that can leverage it.
This curves out your super fatties than something like Sneak Attack and will be more consistent than a discard outlet. What matters is that you get your creature on turn 4.
Buried alive was not a good card many many years ago when I tested it in anything but living death.
The issue with Buried Alive is more justifying its slot in the cube than it is justifying it in a reanimator deck, IMO. And this has much more legs to stand on if you have a Sheoldred back up plan or something.
yes entomb is the best enabler by a lot for reanimator, but tacking on 2 mana and making it sorcery speed is a totally different card in terms of quality.
again, I’m not arguing against the card in general, only the statement about it auto making reanimator decks.
Here's my logic to this being an auto include in any reanimator deck:
- Again, a turn 4 Atraxa / Archon of Cruelty / etc is much better than any other creature / planeswalker / etc that you can play on curve.
- This being a tutor ensures you get the best possible target for any given scenario you're in (unless it's already in your hand).
- Entomb effects >>> discard outlets because it simplifies the combo down to two cards. If this isn't an auto include in a reanimator deck, then what mono black discard outlet is? This advances the gameplan of a reanimator deck much better than Bitter Triumph / Liliana of the Veil / Oona's Prowler / etc.
Honestly the only scenario I can see this not making the main of a reanimator deck is if you're a Reanimator / Oath of Druids hybrid and you already have Entomb / Unmarked Grave / Demonic Tutor / Vampiric Tutor / etc. In that scenario, sure this can probably ride the sideboard.
To be fair, mono black doesn't have that many great self discard effects. After entomb, looting effects are the best to set up reanimation and that is best done by blue and red. Looting doesn't put you at a card disadvantage and it also draws you into your reanimation spells. The raw consistency of entomb effects (A+B vs A+B+C) outweigh the advantages of looting, but not to a degree where you can dismiss the relative mana effeciency and speed of the spells.
The better black discard outlets are cheaper, disrupt the opponents game plan in some way, or protect your reanimation spell. At the cost of consistency.
If this guarnteed you a turn 4 reanimation , then yes, it would be good enough, but that's not what it does. It gives the opponent 4 turns to either disrupt your reanimation spell, find a way to exile a card from the graveyard, prepare for the creature or reanimate the exposed creature themselves. You also have to have a reanimation spell in your hand. Meanwhile, you tapped out on turn 3 and didn't progress the board state in some way.
This won't happen the majority of the time, but it's relevant.
Mostly arguing for the sake of arguing at this point, I do think it's close.
To be fair, mono black doesn't have that many great self discard effects. After entomb, looting effects are the best to set up reanimation and that is best done by blue and red.
After Entomb, the best outlet is Unmarked Grave by far. Could make an argument for this being #3, but it sacrifices speed guaranteed accuracy.
Buried alive was not a good card many many years ago when I tested it in anything but living death.
Going back to this, yes Buried Alive has never been great, but it has appreciated a lot in value over time. A lot of the best super fatties have been printed in the past couple of years (Atraxa / Archon of Cruelty / Etali / Astral Dragon / etc), we've gotten a new reanimation spell in Persist, and Shallow Grave has appreciated so much in value due to said new super fatties and better discard outlets over time.
The raw consistency of entomb effects (A+B vs A+B+C) outweigh the advantages of looting, but not to a degree where you can dismiss the relative mana efficiency and speed of the spells.
The efficiency doesn't matter when the outcome is the same as what a discard outlet would normally result in: your premium super fattie on turn 4 that makes up for any tempo losses in the previous turns.
One of the more subtle spree cards, but I think this might be a sleeper in high powered cubes. At 4B this is a GSZ that fetches your best monarch / initiative enabler or set up your Sheoldred / Hullbreacher for your draw 7 combo from your graveyard / library, can be a decent value card at 3B, and isn't a bad back up to Entomb / Unmarked Grave for reanimator / Worldgorger Dragon combo. The ceiling of this card is recurring your best 4-cmc creature from your graveyard and using the Entomb effect on something that can recur itself like From the Catacombs. This is especially attractive for larger cubes that would want more redundancy to Entomb / Unmarked Grave. IMO this is a much better card for reanimator / Recurring Nightmare shells than most black discard outlets like Oona's Prowler / Pack Rat / Collective Brutality / etc, and is just a decent midrange card overall as a build your own monarch / initiative enabler.
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In addition to that having another option to recur things endures the card affects the board which is great.
The 5mv option is good but I'm not so sure how often it'll be played. Black is not green and so does not necessarily reach 5 mana every game, and even when it does not all of its 4 drops end games. GSZ is great because it's so flexible, fetching you an elf one game and a game ending bomb the next, while the average black deck would probably care only about the 5mv mode on this card, making it very inflexible.
I'd probably test it, but I'd consider it mostly a reanimator card with some niche uses elsewhere.
Unmarked Grave is cheaper, this costs 2B for the Entomb effect.
Unlike other spree cards, I think this is going to be primarily played with both modes combined. I think it's best to think of this as a modal Custdoi Lich.
I think this is going to be solid in any monarch / initiative based midrange deck. This also helps set up other creature based combos like persist.
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I think this is pretty solid if you have a premium 4 drop or two in your deck.
Cubes I’ve been playing are midrange interactive heavy and creatures die/exchange a lot.
in a midrange battles where creatures are trading off, this is often 5 mana put your best creature in your deck into play and a good 2-3 drop.
even if you accelerate into it, paying 5 mana for an iniative creature is often still a good card.
It’s a bit niche, but not extremely so. Wouldn’t cubes it without support of the 4 drop initiative creatures
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I believe it's a total of 4mv or less, so you can get a pair of smaller creatures or your 4-drop, but not both.
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Stuff like collective brutaility is truely flexible.
Oh damn. I didn't see that either! This seems like a godsend for persist.
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This will be cube dependent. Combined with 4-cmc creatures from other colors (particularly initiative enablers / Palace Jailer), it's not going to be hard for most BX creature based midraneg dceks to comfortably play this. In my cube, black has the best top 5 starting line up of 4-cmc creatures:
- Sheoldred, the Apocalypse
- Passageway Seer
- Ravenloft Adventurer
- Rankle, Master of Pranks
- Grief
- Hostile Investigator (6th man that hasn't been added yet)
Black has the most initiative enablers, and the fact that this can recur an initiative enabler and bin From the Catacombs (which is black's best 5-cmc spell IMO as it's a Recurring Nightmare / Bribery hybrid that's recurrable and an initiative enabler), it's not too hard to set up double / triple initiative trigger set ups to close out the game. Not to mention that this will naturally slot into any Reanimator / Recurring Nightmare deck with ease since a bad Entomb effect is still better than most discard outlets.
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Thanks wtwlf, I gotta stop skimming cards and then posting 😅
No longer interested (it’s fine)
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I feel this is just Finale of Devastation with a more restrictive cost.
This is much better than Finale of Devastation since it's more mana efficient and is more versatile since this can go into more decks. I'm okay paying an extra mana for Palace Jailer / Sheoldred / any initiative enabler, but was never okay paying 4GG for them with Finale of Devastation. Not to mention that this has modes at 3 and 4 mana too. The Entomb effect alone will make the main deck of any reanimator / Recurring Nightmare deck.
The three natural homes for this card will be the following:
- Reanimator
- Recurring Nightmare
- Midrange decks with premium 4 drops
The last bullet especially covers a good amount of ground, not to mention a good amount of creature based combo decks this can sneak into, like draw 7 / persist / etc. If anything, this card should be compared to Bring to Light more than Finale of Devastation. I like this spree card much more than any other spree card in my cube.
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I think if I didn't have a few premium cheap creatures and I had 3-5 looting effects already, I'd rather play a card like a sheoldred's edict or an infernal grasp (ok interactive card that doesn't directly contribute to a reanimation game plan).
Could be wrong though, not high confidence. If that statement was true, it definitly increases the value of this card.
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Atraxa / Archon of Cruelty / etc are better on turn 4 than any other 4-cmc creature you can play on curve. And this is much more consistent than any 1-2 cmc discard outlet since it's an actual tutor, finds your actual best target, and reduces the combo from an A + B + C combo to an A + B combo. I find it extremely difficult to justify this not making the main deck of any reanimator / Recurring Nightmare deck when Entomb is literally the most important card to that strategy.
I probably wouldn't be in the market for a standalone 3-cmc Entomb since Buried Alive alredy exists, but this has much more applications than that.
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yes entomb is the best enabler by a lot for reanimator, but tacking on 2 mana and making it sorcery speed is a totally different card in terms of quality.
again, I’m not arguing against the card in general, only the statement about it auto making reanimator decks.
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The issue with Buried Alive is more justifying its slot in the cube than it is justifying it in a reanimator deck, IMO. And this has much more legs to stand on if you have a Sheoldred back up plan or something.
Here's my logic to this being an auto include in any reanimator deck:
- Again, a turn 4 Atraxa / Archon of Cruelty / etc is much better than any other creature / planeswalker / etc that you can play on curve.
- This being a tutor ensures you get the best possible target for any given scenario you're in (unless it's already in your hand).
- Entomb effects >>> discard outlets because it simplifies the combo down to two cards. If this isn't an auto include in a reanimator deck, then what mono black discard outlet is? This advances the gameplan of a reanimator deck much better than Bitter Triumph / Liliana of the Veil / Oona's Prowler / etc.
Honestly the only scenario I can see this not making the main of a reanimator deck is if you're a Reanimator / Oath of Druids hybrid and you already have Entomb / Unmarked Grave / Demonic Tutor / Vampiric Tutor / etc. In that scenario, sure this can probably ride the sideboard.
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This curves out your super fatties than something like Sneak Attack and will be more consistent than a discard outlet. What matters is that you get your creature on turn 4.
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To be fair, mono black doesn't have that many great self discard effects. After entomb, looting effects are the best to set up reanimation and that is best done by blue and red. Looting doesn't put you at a card disadvantage and it also draws you into your reanimation spells. The raw consistency of entomb effects (A+B vs A+B+C) outweigh the advantages of looting, but not to a degree where you can dismiss the relative mana effeciency and speed of the spells.
The better black discard outlets are cheaper, disrupt the opponents game plan in some way, or protect your reanimation spell. At the cost of consistency.
If this guarnteed you a turn 4 reanimation , then yes, it would be good enough, but that's not what it does. It gives the opponent 4 turns to either disrupt your reanimation spell, find a way to exile a card from the graveyard, prepare for the creature or reanimate the exposed creature themselves. You also have to have a reanimation spell in your hand. Meanwhile, you tapped out on turn 3 and didn't progress the board state in some way.
This won't happen the majority of the time, but it's relevant.
Mostly arguing for the sake of arguing at this point, I do think it's close.
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After Entomb, the best outlet is Unmarked Grave by far. Could make an argument for this being #3, but it sacrifices speed guaranteed accuracy.
Going back to this, yes Buried Alive has never been great, but it has appreciated a lot in value over time. A lot of the best super fatties have been printed in the past couple of years (Atraxa / Archon of Cruelty / Etali / Astral Dragon / etc), we've gotten a new reanimation spell in Persist, and Shallow Grave has appreciated so much in value due to said new super fatties and better discard outlets over time.
The efficiency doesn't matter when the outcome is the same as what a discard outlet would normally result in: your premium super fattie on turn 4 that makes up for any tempo losses in the previous turns.
Looting doesn't you a turn 4 reanimation either, or anything for the matter of fact. This at least guarantees you 50% of the combo.
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