MTG Salvation

Quote from edster »

Dread Presence. Whenever a swamp etb, choose one: draw 1 and lose 1 life or 2 dmg to ANY target and gain 2 life. Really, any target? So, I can kill planeswalkers and clear the board with swamps. There's a lot of strong land ramp in modern, enough to turn Dread into a draw engine to draw more ramp then kill your opponent.

Four mana is a lot to pay in modern without ramp, though. Plus, it's technically a 5 drop because you'll want to hit your land drop on the turn you play it. Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth + Fetchlands is a good way to net a lot of value from it, though.

It's also a 3/3 Creature, so it dies to everything but un-Revolted Push and Abrupt Decay. This card would have been better as an Enchantment, but even then it's still 4 mana on turn 5 to drain a target for 2, then repeat once a turn maybe. I doubt it would ever be playable against top tier decks.

Tested Bag of Holding (in Mardu 8-Pyromancers Midrange because it has 8 discard outlets and not that much graveyard abuse). One neat thing that came up is that Bag of Holding can semi-nullify Turn 1 targeted discard by soaking up the forcibly discarded card. It also profitably loots while you're Hellbent. Maybe combo decks actually want it in their sideboard?