MTG Salvation

I have found that in my cube one of the best answers for black's lifeloss has been Sylvok Lifestaff. The three life adds up quickly.

My friend dropped me a foil Whip so I'm testing it. Will return with results but my prior prediction is that black needs pressure more than it needs a 4cmc card without immediate pressure

Quote from cuttups

I have found that in my cube one of the best answers for black's lifeloss has been Sylvok Lifestaff. The three life adds up quickly.

That's great input! I'll be adding it immediately.

The Whip was very good tonight, the life gain was always really good even got to see it crack an Obsedat

I want to try this to offset some of the black's life loss.

This card was disgustingly good in a reanimator deck I tested. Often times, reanimator eats a lot of self inflicted life loss (or gets beat on pretty badly while they tutor up pieces), and this enchantment really swung games (it literally won one game where I was all but dead before this hit the table).

Plus it can give you an unearth effect to get one more go out of your fatties. So it's earning a solid spot right now even if it only just supports this deck (which I don't think will be the case).

What do people think of this card after four months of play? How good is it in a dedicated reanimator deck? If you want to support mono/heavy-black decks in your cube, does this make the Whip more attractive?

I'm running this in a multiplayer cube, so take this with a grain of salt if you're in a faster cube, but...
... this has been pretty useful for us. And as per Trolldevil above, it's the lifegain that makes the difference.
I rolled this in an Orzhov deck that had a strong Knights draft a couple of weeks back, and promptly went T3 Mirran Crusader, T4 Knight Exemplar, T5 Whip of Erebos. It was disgustingly good.

Yup, the lifegain is the huge game changer for immediate impact. Later, Whip provides insane value later with reanimating any random bodies (usually with some ETB trigger) after 4 mana activations are easy to accomodate.

Agreed with the lifegain being the important part. There are so many ways that black is losing life that good lifegain abilities are sorely needed. We have found this to meet the requirements with some extra value from the reanimating part.

So it is as I feared: This is less a card for dedicated reanimation decks and more a card for slower, grindy decks that like to regain their lost life and to gain some lategame value by reusing dead creatures?

Yeah, you're not cheating out fatties with this card =\

This card was easily overlooked by my group until the prerelease when it was devastating. In cube, it is merely good, but it really shines with ETB/LTB abilities. Even then, casting it generally means you'll survive a few more turns because of lifelink. Whipping back a bomb or even something like a Baleful Stryx is where you want to be at. All-in-all, pretty neat.

I am so tempted to put this card into my cube. With all those life loss effects, the mass life gain would be highly appreciated. Plus, some of my friends just love to play grindy, Rock-style decks with repeated reanimation for value. This would be the perfect card for them. Argh, looks like I have to find yet another cut in black.

The most important word on this card is certainly lifelink. This is not a reanimator card - it is a black midrange engine. The lifelink lets you get to the lategame where you can actually start activating the whip for value. I have been hugely impressed with this card and I pick it fairly high.

Whip of Erebos was discussed here in the Random Cube Card of the Day Thread. I'm so slave driver, but I will certainly crack the whip if it gets you to visit the thread.

(Spoiler: Meh. The lifelink is valuable and reanimation is nice but no one seems blown away)