MTG Salvation

I'm looking forward to this card; Plague Belcher's been playing very well with my group, and with this Black Aggro gets another great tool, that's also a Zombie to boot!

Dumb stats + evasion with afflict is a good place to start. Has a drawback, but it can also be mitigated by hitting your opponent. Zombie Crocodile Demon 10/10 typing.

I'm not seeing any evasion here. I'd rather have a Master of the Feast 9 times out of 10, and that's not a card I'm too excited about anymore.

Definitely punishes a mana screwed opponent hard. I think this has a decent chance of being better than Plague Belcher - it is better when you have no other creatures out, is a less of a blow-up when bounced and has arguably better evasion.

It's interesting and has a cool play pattern, that's for sure. You're going to have soak up some nice chunks of damage from this without removal or a damage prevention effect, and it's a real hassle to try and kill it solely via -1/-1 counters. Splashability and zombie typing are also pluses.

Seems like a strong choice for black aggro in unpowered cubes, but it might struggle in a powered environment. Chaining spells together is a much more common occurrence in that environment.

I'm not sure I want another card in the Plague Belcher slot. This card is certainly powerful enough, but I think I like Belcher better, since this puts the burden of correct play on the opponent, whereas Belcher puts it on the more caster.

Quote from steve_man »

Quote from noratora »

Dumb stats + evasion with afflict is a good place to start. Has a drawback, but it can also be mitigated by hitting your opponent. Zombie Crocodile Demon 10/10 typing.

I'm not seeing any evasion here. I'd rather have a Master of the Feast 9 times out of 10, and that's not a card I'm too excited about anymore.

Afflict is similar to other forms of evasion to get damage through, like trample.

I suppose that makes sense, but wouldn't that better be called "reach" (not the keyword obviously)? The key difference for me is that with real evasion the critter has a good chance of not getting blocked at all – a not academic difference when we're talking about one that gets continuously smaller.

Afflict is a cool mechanic that I think is going to need to see some testing to see what it does to board states. I hope we get a pushed card with Afflict. I don't think this is it.

Think the card is ok, but competes in too deep of a slot, and isn't anything special.

Too easy to turn it into a 3/3 or 4/4 which is really not that efficient for 3 mana. Getting it killed in combat thankfully guarantees 3 damage... but still not efficient against removal.

It needs to be attacking, so doesn't really work outside of Agro either.

Black's 3cc creatures are pretty good... not sure this will make it for us. Love the creature types though!

This card seems pretty sweet to me. Basically a 2B 4/4 that must be blocked when it attacks and your opponent loses 3 life whenever it attacks on top of that.

turn 3 this
turn 4 attack as a 4/4 they chump: it gets in for 3 damage
turn 5 attack as a 2/2 it dies to a blocker but they take another 3 damage.

Outside of a removal spell, this seems like a pretty average case scenario. Is 6 damage plus killing off their chump blocker from a 3 drop a good rate?

I really like that it doesn't have a BB requirement.

Quote from Visserdrix »

This card seems pretty sweet to me. Basically a 2B 4/4 that must be blocked when it attacks and your opponent loses 3 life whenever it attacks on top of that.

turn 3 this
turn 4 attack as a 4/4 they chump: it gets in for 3 damage
turn 5 attack as a 2/2 it dies to a blocker but they take another 3 damage.

Outside of a removal spell, this seems like a pretty average case scenario. Is 6 damage plus killing off their chump blocker from a 3 drop a good rate?

I really like that it doesn't have a BB requirement.

I think this is an above average case scenario but I can see Ammit Eternal trading for a card most of the time. I've never played with a card quite like this where the opponent is heavily incentivized to block even though they'll be taking damage regardless. The 2B mana cc is the big attraction here and a 5/5 for three ain't bad. I might test this just to try some HOU cards.

For those that did test this guy, what were your results? Does this win out over Plague Belcher and do either of them merit a slot in a 450 unpowered? I've got both on my radar but haven't felt strongly enough to commit to buying these.

So far I have felt that this card is superior to Plague Belcher by a substantial margin. Nothing too fancy about it; it's just a very good beatstick that goes into every non-control deck, whereas Belcher demands some setup and doesn't offer enough payoff.