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Pojo's Magic The Gathering
Card of the Day

Daily Since November 2001!

Call to the Grave
Image from Wizards.com

Call to the Grave
Magic 2012

Reviewed December 5, 2011

Constructed: 3.60
Casual: 4.25
Limited: 3.60
Multiplayer: 3.80

Ratings are based on a 1 to 5 scale
1 being the worst.  3 ... average.  
5 is the highest rating

Click here to see all of our 
Card of the Day Reviews 

BMoor

Call to the Grave

This enchantment first made its debut back in Scourge, one of the earliest "tribal" sets. There, it was a popular capstone for dedicated Zombie decks and black control decks alike. All you really need is one Zombie to make this viable-- you'll never have to sacrifice creatures as long as all of yours are Zombies, and your opponents all have to keep playing at least one creature per turn or end up losing them all to the Call. Once a player is caught creatureless, he's pretty much out of the combat game, save for maybe producing a blocker each turn. Meanwhile, the Zombies can continue to shamble onto the field, and their necromantic leanings allow them to even pull your old dead creatures out of your graveyard!

Call to the Grave was chosen this week not just for its usefulness in reanimator strategies, but because it was recently reprinted in M12. Magic's new Core Set policy means it can carefully choose which cards it reprints to compliment, or create tension with, the expansion set it's accompanying, and Call to the Grave is a prime example of what that means for Magic. It means that the Core Set reprints are more likely to have a chance to shine in a whole new light, and those of us who remember them the first time around are going to get a lot more good use out of all those old cards we used to have fun with way back when.

Constructed- 4.0
Casual- 4.75
Limited- 4
Multiplayer- 4.5


David Fanany

Player since 1995

Call to the Grave

Over the last three years or so, I've drifted away from Standard in my own personal Magic habits. You can see this if you go back to the page you were just on and compare the kinds of things I wrote about Cards of the Day in 2008 or so. Oh sure, I follow the new sets, I know more or less what's going on, but here in my relative old age, I find it harder and harder to cut off cards I like just because of the year printed on the bottom. Call to the Grave is a good example. It's been a pillar of Zombie decks that can dominate certain casual environments, a one-sided Abyss that is laughably easy for black decks to build around. It deserves respect, Standard-legal or no. Sometimes everything old really can be new again.

Constructed: 3/5
Casual: 4/5
Limited: 3/5
Multiplayer: 3/5


Paul

Welcome back to an interesting week of cards today we are starting with Call to The Grave a powerful black enchantment last seen in Scourge and years ago around friend’s kitchen tables. In standard zombies could be a viable tribe with a little more support Ghoulraiser and Endless Ranks of the Dead and other support cards and a powerful one drop in the form of Diregraf Ghoul it could go places. As of now it is not a competitive deck making this card unlikely to appear at top tables, however this is a powerful edict style effect as long as you play a smidge of zombies which including Phyrexian Crusader may not be hard, it’s not the most competitive card but it does have tech potential. In extended modern and legacy and vintage this card costs too much mana and is too slow to affect anything it won’t see play here.

            In casual and multiplayer this card shines as the zombie tribe is so jam packed you can take the deck in so many directions to take and this clears nasty opposing creatures even Eldrazi and colossuses just make sure to protect your own creatures perhaps BoneKnitter? In limited this card is somewhat powerful and a sort of build around card if you can snag a lot of zombies its obvious good otherwise playable but unexciting and I also have to insert that it has one black in its cost so it is splashable! Overall a historically powerful kitchen table enchantment that may see some constructed play yet.
 
Constructed: 2.0
Casual: 3.5
Limited: 3.0
Multiplayer: 3.5

Michael "Maikeruu" Pierno

Today's card of the day is Call to the Grave which is a five mana ongoing source of removal for zombie decks that can put quite a bit of pressure on an opponent when properly supported.  Zombies that have regenerate or are otherwise difficult to destroy and additional removal cards restrict an opponent's sacrifice choices and strengthen a deck trying to make the most of Call.  The mana cost is a little high which keeps it from being very beneficial to faster aggressive builds, but in a design based on controlling the field or building a large swarm it works well enough to possibly see competitive play.
 
For Limited having enough zombies to reliably keep Call to the Grave working may be difficult especially without sacrificing too many of your own creatures in the process.  It may benefit an opponent equally without the proper situation and is somewhat risky, though quite powerful.  In Booster it is a viable first pick which should be supported by aggressively drafting zombies while in Sealed the value is held to how many zombies are available and whether it is played offensively or defensively.
 
Constructed: 4.0
Casual: 4.0
Limited: 3.0
Multiplayer: 4.5

John
Shultis
Phoenix
Gaming

       Welcome to our card of the day section here at Pojo.com. Today we are looking at Call to the Grave. Call to the Grave is a rare black enchantment that costs four generic and one black mana. Call to the Grave says that during each player’s upkeep they must sacrifice a non-zombie creature. Then at the beginning of the end step, if no creatures are in play, sacrifice Call to the Grave.

       This is just one sick card that changes everything. If you are not running a zombie deck when you run up against this, you become under an awful lot of pressure. And when combined with kill spells, it could easily empty your board. The fact that you can drop a single blocker can be less than reassuring these days when we see how fast a zombie deck can build up a substantial army. This of course means that the person who dropped the Call to the Grave is likely not losing anything.

      And this card is felt in multiplayer as much as in single player. Which of course will cause massive agro against the person who dropped the Call to the Grave. But it could fall in vain if the zombie army has already risen.
 
Limited: 5/5
Casual: 5/5
Constructed: 5/5
Multiplayer: 5/5


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