A year or two ago, I was looking for more monoblack discard outlets to enable reanimator decks. I stumbled upon Drekavac and thought it was a decent inclusion as both an aggro creature and a reanimaton enabler. Then I saw that it said "noncreature card". Bummer. Pale Rider of Trostad now is actually the creature that I wanted:
Bit of a revival of this thread: this guy has been a real beating for us. Our black decks are so full of relevant effects that the discard has only once been any sort of negative impact. It's about 50-40-10 as to whether the discard is useful, neutral or unhelpful. The Skulk has been really useful to prevent him getting chumped, so he usually trades in combat at worst. 2 mana 3/3's are hard to deal with when you can't block them with your midrange 4/4's. To cap it all, the art/foiling are absolutely great. Anyway, wanted to share our positive findings with this card.
This card would have been great anytime before SOI gave us Heir of Falkenrath / Asylum Visitor, I consider Pale Rider to be the best black 2-drop I'm currently not running
And wow, this set singlehandedly fixed the black 2-drop slot. Three creatures that are better than what I am already running? Just wow.
Uril, the Miststalker RGW -- Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre C -- Vhati il-Dal BG -- Jor Kadeen, the Prevailer RW -- Animar, Soul of Elements URG
Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker R -- Maga, Traitor to Mortals B -- Ghave, Guru of Spores BGW -- Sliver Hivelord WUBRG
On spoiled card wishlisting and 'should-have-had'-isms:
My High Octane Unpowered Cube on CubeCobra