MTG Salvation

Fumigate / Zulaport Cutthroat or something in between in black.

In a control deck, much stronger than Fumigate against aggro as it can be played for less than 5 and gives you life for their creatures that die even after wrathing.

A sacrifice deck can surely find some value in the -X/-X effect of the card as well.

I like this a lot. Aristocrat decks can make good use of the base two mana mode or use it as a sweeper in a pinch.

That's about the best Massacre variant I've ever seen. I like it a lot. Shame about it being mythic.

The scalability gives this a lot of very powerful options. I see it not as an aristocrats card, but as a card that is good in aristocrats.

As someone that loves aristocrats, I'm really not fan. Aristocrats deck don't actually need 3-4 "Aristocrats". There are a lot of other cards that support go wide strategies that can function as well as an aristocrat.

I can only see this played in the all-in aristocrats variant and even there I don't think its very good.

Quote from Breathe1234 »

As someone that loves aristocrats, I'm really not fan. Aristocrats deck don't actually need 3-4 "Aristocrats". There are a lot of other cards that support go wide strategies that can function as well as an aristocrat.

I can only see this played in the all-in aristocrats variant and even there I don't think its very good.

I don't fully support aristocrats so I'm not too familiar with it as a cube archetype but I would have assumed being an enchantment rather than a creature was a significant upside over Zulaport Cutthroat or Blood Artist and the wrath mode was gravy. Which payoffs do you prefer?

If you support Aristocrats and sacrifice-based creature combos, this is a nice card. Does a lot of cool things for those decks. As a generic goodstuff card, I think it's a miss.

Really happy about this. It has been getting harder to keep justifying blood artist in the black 2 creature slot with all the new additions in recent sets.

For anyone still playing Black Sun's Zentith or Massacre Wurm (I know I have been playing those two for far too long) this seems like a better alternative to both.

We don't play aristocrats but are testing this today. Plague Engineer has been so good in our cube that we couldn't help but try another small-scale sweeper that can theoretically be played in both aggro and control decks. I didn't really like this the first time I saw it, but I think it has a ton of potential, card is super pushed.

We’re pretty high on this card. Black Sun’s Zenith played very well for us for years, and the lifegain on this is a big deal against aggro. While at first glance it does seem interesting for aristocrats support, I actually think it’s also a better and scalable Fumigate in many ways.

So this card is on a tear in Standard. Price is through the roof in the last day. Any cubers tried this card yet?

Haven't tested it because I don't support aristocrats as a theme but if you do it seems like a slam dunk to me. It doesn't gain you life when your creatures die but everything else about it is a massive upgrade on Blood Artist or Zulaport Cutthroat imo.

Quote from Thundermare3 »

So this card is on a tear in Standard. Price is through the roof in the last day. Any cubers tried this card yet?

My black section is supporting storm and not creatures right now...

With my snow cube, I have Toxic Deluge, Languish and dead of winter. Not sure if it unseats any of those in hard control?
In standard, the games are much slower and grindier, so the lifegain AFTER wrath is quite a bit more important than it is a higher powered vintage cube.

If anyone is running black agro, I can't imagine not testing it though.. It's rare for a wrath to be good and both agro and control.

We've been playing it, and it's been in one deck so far (BW Aggro). Card has been alright in testing so far, but nothing particularly exciting. We're hoping it can be just versatile enough to see play in control and aggro/midrange, but we just haven't had enough testing volume so far.

We prefer this card over both Languish and Dead of Winter. We liked this card when it was spoiled as perhaps a bottom 10 but playable card for our 720 Cube black section, but it's better than expected.

Quote from NotScottMescudi »

We've been playing it, and it's been in one deck so far (BW Aggro). Card has been alright in testing so far, but nothing particularly exciting. We're hoping it can be just versatile enough to see play in control and aggro/midrange, but we just haven't had enough testing volume so far.

Could you explain? How often do you cast it on turn 2 for the incremental drain and how often do you cast it on turns 4-5 for removing your board + draining your opponent out with a on board blood artist.

Not coming with a 2 CMC body has been my biggest concern. My sacrifice decks can often sacrifice the blood artist for value.

The problem is any time I hear a card is decent in X and decent in Y, it ends up being okay everywhere and is often the 24th card in any draft pool.

I have yet to see this cast for BB. What makes it good is the flexible scalable wrath with massive life swing potential that continues to threaten relevance as the game goes on.

The reason I'm reluctant about cards like this is I find the aristocrats deck never really struggles with playables and this doesn't really deal with one of two of Aristocrat's biggest problems - lack of disruption vs combo (storm) or ability to remove big blockers - this has gotten much better with new cards like Grist that can play the role of removal/ sacrifice outlet + create sacrifice fodder.

For us this is less of a dedicated Aristocrats card and instead goes into a variety of decks where the role depends on the matchup. The primary value is simply a scalable drain wrath that gives a relevant lasting effect. I might not play it at 540 or smaller though.

On the other hand, Languish is easily becoming my weakest sweeper - Its easily on my way out. I do not think I'm in the market for a weaker Languish for my control decks, but at the same time I don't want white to have all the sweepers in cube with Terminus and Shatter the sky.

I feel the aristocrats deck really needs cards like Westvale Abbey, Smokestack, Grist, the Hunger Tide, Skullclamp, Greater Gargadon etc. to go over the opponent/ control the game or more cards like Gutterbones, Kari Zev, Skyship Raider, Lingering Souls to go under them.

I much rather have a card like Westvale Abbey that's more dedicated than a card that's a bad version of two cards that are borderline on the cutting block.