MTG Salvation

WOW.

Hahaha they printed Yawgmoth! Thran's heretical healer and I think the raven man.

He ain't dead, he just went home.

https://www.mtgsalvation.com/articles/49659-who-is-the-raven-man

No offence, but I don't really know what you're point is; my comment is about Yawgmoth being the raven man, you're taking something I've said it off context to be pedantic? But to answer your question, embodies, by definition is to compare something with the characteristics of another, in this case I'm saying that Yawgmoth symbolises black mana, not that he is black mana, or that he existed before it. Anyway, it's just a spoiler, and the raven man could be something else entirely.

"Embodies" black mana? If this is going where I think it's going, black mana existed long before he did, and he certainly doesn't imbue all black mana everywhere.

Nah, I don't think he's really dead, he is an entity that embodies black mana; one whose physical form got destroyed by the legacy weapon, true, but like phyrexia he still lingers on. It is not inconceivable that he exists albeit in an incredibly weaken state, and his personality would be an exact match for the raven man. Giving a cure to liliana only for her brother only for it to corrupt him? That's Yawgmoth all over.

He's long dead, man. He can't be the Raven Man. Read Jay13x's article on that if you want to read up on who it could be.

I'm sorry, they put who on a card? This is huge! We finally get the man himself!

Oh wow. That’s an efficient sac engine right there... not to mention a hot new commander for mono-black infect

Always remember, that if you have zero skill in commander, then play infect.

While I don't know why you would ever want to, it's interesting that he can't target himself with his -1/-1 counter ability due to his protection from Humans ability.

Hapatra, Vizier of Poisonslikes him

This card oozes evil.

Great set so far. Worthy of the "Return to Time Spiral" nickname.

From what I remember of the novel, this doesn't exactly fit. The card name would seem to be early in his story, while the ability text would suggest it's toward the end as he commits himself to an evil destiny.

I kinda would have preferred he be black/white. For the majority of this part of his history, he had relatively noble intentions (unless I'm totally misremembering).

Yeah, apparently I am completely misremembering the book.

Um, the Ineffable did full-on Tuskegee-style experiments, engineering plagues just to study how the sufferers die. You might make a case that ending death (even if that just makes us all into a cancer) is a noble intention, but he was more concerned with himself than with others.

I'll confirm what Caledor said. Yawgmoth was totally amoral and wanted to study diseases so that he could try and perfect the human body and gain power. By capitalizing on Glacian's pthisis condition, Yawgmoth was able to take over the Thran empire. Check out his MTG Wiki bio here.

Yawgmoth never had noble intentions, he simply had no morals at all. He just wanted to learn and didn't care what the price was. While he was exiled (before Glacian got sick) he unleashed plagues like it was nothing, only to observe the effects.

Sacrifice and -1/-1 to draw fits him perfectly.

My body is ready.