THIS is how magic should be updating old classics. Drudge Skeletons, but with an interesting twist. This is probably a little better, but both are excellent cards with their own spin.
R&D has been making far too many "updates" that are basically the same card but better, with the wording slightly changed so that you can't call them "strictly better" and evade accusations of power creep. All it does is devalue the old cards we know and love, and it feels like a cheap way to get casual players to keep buying boosters.
Kind of like how DLCs in video games often include powers/weapons/characters that are just better than what you get in the core game.
Ideally, Wizards would be enticing me to buy boosters by making cards that are inventive, fun, and flavourful. Not by making a 5/4 for 3 mana that makes me worry that my casual deck based on Visions and Stronghold cards is going to start losing unless I buy the new expansions.
/Rant
Posted By:
Wulfsten
(6/1/2011 1:47:00 PM)
One of the best skeletons in a long time. It's like unearth and regenerate had a baby.
Posted By:
DacenOctavio
(1/16/2011 11:55:41 PM)
I like it. It's like Drudge Skeletons but with options. It also combos well with Necrotic Plague.
Posted By:
dudecow
(7/8/2010 2:12:59 PM)
Quite powerful. But R&D, please listen to me. Just print a sorcery with some sort of buyback that produces a skeleton token. I would like to have a black deck that kills an opponent by nothing else but vanilla skeletons. No +1/+1, no deathtouch, no regeneration, just MASSES of them.
Just a Sprout Swarm with a non-mana dependant buyback. Maybe an automatic buyback unless an opponent fulfills a condition.
Posted By:
Cheza
(8/9/2010 12:17:41 PM)
Nobody thought of using this with Attrition?
Posted By:
TomYoung
(11/13/2010 6:54:10 AM)
This card should have existed in Alpha. It is so right. I don't think a card has ever become a staple across the whole breadth of the game so soon after printing as this one. There was a gap in my mental card encyclopedia just waiting to be filled, and this guy plugged it perfectly. Before this we had to put up activation gymnastics on stuff like Nether Shadow and Plague of ***roaches.
Thanks Wizards. No, it doesn't make-up for Papa Jace, Lotus Cobra, Vengevine or the whole greedy concept of mythic rare tourney staples. But I will accept that you do some things correctly as well from time to time.
Posted By:
BegleOne
(6/4/2011 8:31:08 AM)
While there are other cards that can be brought back to be used as sacrifice fodder for much cheeper, they are conditional. Like bloodghast or Nether Traitor, where you have to meat a condition in order to bring them back. This may cost 2 instead of 1 or 0, and its harder to go infinite with it, but there were so many times in my sac deck that i had tons of ways to sack and tons of sacrifices in my graveyard, but i had no way to bring them back. With this guy, i just need 2 land.
Posted By:
bijart_dauth
(2/16/2011 6:59:56 PM)
I once played a game of Magic Online where someone kept using this and Bloodthrone Vampire. I lost miserably.
Posted By:
land_comment
(3/7/2011 6:42:01 AM)
LOVE this card. Fantastic design since it is powerful but not broken. It is not an auto-include in every black deck (vampire nighthawk I'm looking at you) and not overly powerful on its own (1/1). But, this guy combos with so many things, is a recurring chump blocker, and is amazing in EDH. 5/5 for sure.
Posted By:
ofwgktaftw
(5/23/2011 5:53:15 PM)
Yay! They printed a REAL skeleton! Definately fun and playable. I just love the flavor and playablility in both limited and constructed. I was waiting for them to make a true skeleton like this. Hopefully there will be more skeletons in the future that will have the same ability. I definately adore this card. 5/5
Posted By:
dberry02
(7/9/2010 12:33:14 AM)