I love that this is an instant. I have it in my mono green deck with Huntmaster of the Fells. "I play nothing, my huntmaster transforms and kills a critter, your turn. *their endstep, after not playing 2 spells specifically to make sure it doesn't swap back* I play this spell and flash it back...i gain a ton of life and at the beginning of my turn my huntmaster switches." >.> <3 flashback at instant speed...something you don't see too often as green
Posted By:
seath
(2/20/2012 10:40:45 PM)
There are only a handful of cards in Magic worth playing that do nothing but gain life. This is one of the few. It takes a lot of things to make it happen but this does it. First, its splashable with blue or black easily because of the mana. Second, it has flashback with perfectly synergizes with its style of life gain. The deck is going to have a way to dump stuff into the graveyard and if this happens to get dumped its still usable. Third, the style of deck that would play this focuses on the midgame. By playing cheap, weak early creatures to fill the graveyard, this gives enough of a lifeboost to get into midgame and drop real threats that care about the yard. Lastly, the sheer power. 20+ from a cast, then 20+ from a flashback is not uncommon midgame. Even a modest 10 and 10 is an incredible amount of life in midgame.
This goes side-by-side with Martyr of Sands as some of the only playable lifegain cards.
Posted By:
jjmalove
(4/23/2012 7:54:14 AM)
As lifegain goes, this is pretty good. The right deck can get 10+ life from this, twice. Alternatively, self-mill shenanigans can cast it pretty easily if it does end up in the yard.
UPDATE: Playing UG-lhurgoyf and gaining 20 life a shot from this. After milling it. I know lifegain sucks but this is an exception.
Posted By:
Studoku
(10/1/2011 1:47:25 PM)
Gnaw it to the bone... twice. Yeah that's good flavor.
Posted By:
Tommy9898
(9/22/2011 9:52:51 PM)
Pure lifegain is usually a waste of a card, but this can give you enough to transform Chalice of Life into Chalice of Death. With instant speed, 2G cost, and 2G flashback, this card is better in several ways than Archangel's Light.
I may actually have to find a way to build a deck around this and the chalice.
Posted By:
Powercat
(4/7/2012 10:06:42 AM)
and it's... COMMON!?
Posted By:
A0602
(9/23/2011 11:45:59 AM)
Saved my life several times in prerelease, in constructed perhaps there are better choices but I think it's a decent card. 3.5/5.
Posted By:
Hackworthy
(1/28/2012 10:52:50 PM)
in the pre-release an opponent had two of these as well as a tree of redemption, but very little defense. he used the tree when his life was at 2, than fully used both of these for ten each time, or 40 total.
18 +40 +13 = 61 damage. That match took forever, but at least it was inevitable.
Posted By:
jsttu
(9/24/2011 9:35:31 PM)
Ah dammit, all my guys are dead... might as well tuck in!
Posted By:
Villainous1
(11/3/2011 10:45:40 AM)
My first thought was: "This would be great against mill decks."
Which was quickly followed by something among the lines of "Duh".
But seriously, as all lifegain cards, its kinda situational, but if you are playing around having stuff in your graveyard you probably have ways of throwing it aside should you draw it. And if your opponent is using reduction of your life total to 0 as his win condiction (a surprising amount of them do), this could slow him down a lot. And it's not even card disadvantage, as eveyone complains in other lifegain cards.
I'd totally throw one of it in a Dredge deck, and maybe sideboard a couple more. Innistrad is making BG Dredge an interesting archetype again. Gotta shop for some Darkblasts and Golgari Brownscales for my casual decks.
Posted By:
Lash_of_Dragonbreath
(11/29/2011 5:03:54 PM)