MTG Salvation

She's a sac outlet, a mana ramp, a mana sink, and a Typhoid Rats all in one.

Although I don't buy a flesh-mechanist at work having such immaculate hair.

Aggressive decks don't value the Typhoid Rats body and cannot make use the powerstones. The powerstones can be used to activate Ashnod's ability, but note that this requires you to play Ashnod early, sacrifice creatures to her and have her survive multiple attacks and many turns, which isn't very realistic.

Midrange and control decks don't have creatures to sacrifice and wouldn't want to attack with a 1-power deathtoucher to trigger the ability. Control decks that appreciate the body the most don't have the creatures to exile to the mana sink.

The sacrifice ability is hard to activate, can only be used once per turn cycle, and has to sacrifice creatures during combat, which means she isn't valuable as a sacrifice outlet either.

Typhoid Rats isn't even close to being an include, so I really don't think this is enough.

It's not really mana ramp, the powerstones are so so specific in what you can do with the mana. Think this is an easy pass.

Will add in artifact cube, but not a fan of the attack requirement. Will just trade with a token.

I've always liked Typhoid Rats, and have been looking for a good version for some time. But I've also always preferred a slower and weaker cube environment than most. These days, it's hard to find interesting creatures that aren't monstrously pushed.

I find a 1/1 deathtouch is often able to safely attack, since it's not worth trading a more valuable creature for it (and if they do trade, you're happy). But it's true that tokens eat eat it up.

And yeah, black has such low artifact-synergy that artifact cubes will probably want to consider this. Unfortunately can't go in my peasant cube.

She'll need to be 2/1 at least. As is, she's an easy pass.

I played enough brother's war draft to understand that powerstones are more versatile that one might think.

In addition to being useful to play expensive artifacts in Recurring/ Stax decks, powerstones are useful for:

- Ashnod's own ability
- Paying for abilities/ kicker/ Evoke off cards like Misery's Shadow, Pack Rat, Cult Conscript, Flesh Carver, Skyclave Shade
- Artifact Synergies
- Cast Artifacts etc.

I think if there are 5+ cards that can take advantage of powerstones, its more than worth it.

I was playing black-red aristocrats in brother's war draft last night and a scarified two early prototypes to Ashnod, Flesh Mechanist for ramp value and I got to recur them in the late game for 2 3/3 zombies.

I feel her value is fairly strong, and her floor of a 1 mana 1/1 deathtouch isn't even that bad.