MTG Salvation

Another Hero's Downfall? Yes please

Ruinous Path
1BB
Sorcery
Destroy target creature or planeswalker
Awaken 4 - 5BB

Intriguing. The cube is always in the market for more answers to planeswalkers, but that awaken cost is quite expensive, and competition in black has really tightened up in the last few years. Dreadbore was also on my chopping block lately due to sorcery speed being insufficient for many threats.

I'm a fan of this card. Solid removal spell with the option to be a pretty sweet creature + ETB trigger if the mana's available.

Cross posted from Rumor Mill:

Hero's Shriekmaw. Should be a constructed staple.

Shriekmaw is way better than Terror. The body here is not nearly as competitive, but I suspect it might still be even so slightly better than Downfall.

I also might prefer it to Downfall in Cube, but I might just be looking for an excuse to run Awaken cards.

Edit: It's not super relevant, since you can just cube both at many sizes.

Yes, I'm a fan. More planeswalker answer are awesome. I'll try to run both this card and Hero Downfall

I just realized the Awaken keyword should (hopefully) make Koth occasionally very relevant!

This is definitely on the maybe list for me. It's definitely a good card, but I think the sorcery speed plus the very expensive Awaken cost both hurt it from a cubeability standpoint. If I see people testing it or giving it rave reviews around here, then maybe the stock will up some on this for me.

Sorcery speed makes me sad but otherwise this looks pretty awesome. I was really excited for the awaken mechanic when they first spoiled it and I was really, really hoping that there would be one or two good, pushed versions of it. Of course, at the time, I didn't realize that you got both effects, I thought it was one or the other, so this is actually pretty awesome. But couldn't they have made it an instant but you can only play it as a sorcery if you pay the awaken cost or something? Still, probably going to try this out.

I really like this card. Hard removal with upside sounds great for any limited format. I can't picture many decks outside of hard aggro that don't want to play this card.

Not a spell I'm interested in mainphasing at that cost. The token also has "enters the battlefield tapped" for all intents and purposes, so it can't defend. Seven mana is too much for a Nekrataal and you lose tempo on the spell-only version. Overall, super cumbersome card. Worse than Shriekmaw and worse than Hero's Downfall, the flexibility of getting both on one card is probably not enough to include it in my cube.

I really like the flexibility of this card. No surprise, since I am a huge fan of Shriekmaw. 7 mana is a lot more than 5 though and it is also not splashable. Plus, not a creature card, so way less ways to recur/abuse it.

Despite the awesome flexility, I am not going to cut Hero's Downfall for this. I value the instant speed a little bit higher. I might cut another black spot removal spell for this though and run it in addition to Downfall. Possibly Go for the Throat. Or finally boot out Phyrexian Arena.

Diabolic edict is to chainers edict as heroes downfall is to ruinous path (kind of)

I think I prefer the instant speed of downfall to the late game CA of path... not looking for more expensive removal spells. Probably test it, and it might not stay. Solid card tho, larger cubes should auto include this

Walker kill is too good to pass at this point in my book. I'll definitely test this card.

Quote from noshadowkick »

Walker kill is too good to pass at this point in my book.

If that was true, you would be running Mold Shambler

Only somewhat serious, but it seems to me this card has the same problem as the Shambler. It's guaranteed card advantage in "kicker" mode, it fills a valuable role as removal, but it's too expensive to matter when you need it. Unlike Shambler, Ruinous Path will still be available when you need it, but at that point you're giving up a turn due to its cost (and on turn 3, it's a pretty critical turn to give up at this point) on a target which may or may not be worth the cost of removal.

A sorcery-speed Hero's Downfall is infinitely better than a green Hill Giant. Come on man, that comparison is abysmal.

A more accurate comparison would be something like Burst Lightning. A card that isn't cubeworthy on its own in either of its casting modes, but having both options available on the same card makes it better than a lot of the more cost-effective competition.

I'll test this out and it might make the cut. I like it mainly for the extra planeswalker killing. The Awaken mode is interesting but I don't see it getting cast that way too often.

Seems good, this is the black burst lightning pretty much.

I feel like this is much worse than shriekmaw. Shriekmaw is much more abuseable. It might be good enough though.

More abusable yes, but sorcery speed Terror is also much worse than sorcery speed Hero's Downfall.

You're right. It's pretty reasonable cost. By changing terror to downfall that's another mana cost add in, then it's another mana for +1/+2 stat, which is pretty ok.

This card is pretty pushed IMO. And it's pretty flexible. Destroy a creature/walker early in the game, or destroy 2 walkers later in the game? Fantastic card.

Hero's Downfall is better, I would not cut it for this. Ruinous Path remains a very good card, that I'd like to include. Having two modes available is always welcome, if at least one mode has a reasonable cost. Shock is not good enough because there are so many better options, but killing a small dude or 2 to the dome for R is actually fine, so Burst Lightning gets played. I don't think the Awaken will be played often, keeping my removal until I have 7 mana is not something I can usually afford to do, but sorcery Downfall is fine as a baseline.

There will be a lot of games where this will be cast late to kill their bomb and leave you with a beefy threat. If you need the removal earlier than, sure, cast it. Having the option to get a 4/4 for 4 later on is REALLY efficient though and is an awesome mode for a removal spell to have. I still run Malicious Affliction, so that will be my cut to test this card.

I am not too worried about walkers saturation but it seems like if you don't intentionally try to cap (which I do) you have to really up the count of cards that deal with them. Many people don't like running all the swords and crazy equipment, partially because they were unwilling to commit to artifact hate. With walkers the removal doesn't always seem good because it is a little less than a one for one even if you get it a little cheape mana wise.

Right now I am trying to hold at about ~5% but I haven't added the flipwalers yet, not sure how my calculation is going. But there are many out there who are looking at 6-8 white walkers alone. I don't know if I will ever do that. Partially because I am sure there is enough design space to make them different enough for me. Much like certain gold sections I think rotation is a good answer. But for those that want them all cards like this, Dragonlord Silumgar, Dredbore, and Zealous conscrips are all must adds.