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Pojo's Magic The Gathering
Card of the Day

Daily Since November 2001!

Call to the Kindred
Image from Wizards.com

Call to the Kindred
Dark Ascension

Reviewed January 3, 2012

Constructed: 2.90
Casual: 3.90
Limited: 3.20
Multiplayer: 3.10

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 Kindred

I have no doubt that this card will be prized by a certain subset of Magic players, though not necessarily because of its quality. Lots of people like to play Tribal decks, but some people find themselves drawn to quirky, unusual Tribes. I still remember my early attempt at a Golem deck back in Mirrodin block... before the Great Creature Type Update, when many creatures that are now Golems were just an "Artifact Creature". For a tribal deck to be viable, there need to be at least a few good cards that properly reward you for using the tribe in question. Or at the very least, there needs to be a critical mass of tribe members that are good enough on their own, centralized to within a few colors, and don't have any glaring conflicts in their abilities. But that doesn't stop people who decide that they like a specific tribe so much that they want to build a deck around it. And for those people, we have cards like Call to the Kindred. These "wild card tribal" cards encourage tribal decks, but they don't care which tribe you're using. Much like Adaptive Automaton and its ancestor Brass Herald, plus the Morningtide cycle of Distant Melody, Pack's Disdain, and so on, it's pretty clear that this card will always have an audience.

But is it any good? Well, it's an Aura that's not a removal spell, and we know how that usually ends up, but this one generates card advantage if you can keep it around until your next upkeep. It also drops creatures onto the field directly from your library without you having to pay for them, raising hopes of what you could cheat out, and how early. Enchant an Eldrazi Spawn token and get Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre? Got your attention yet? And don't forget that this is all happening in the color of Scry, so this isn't the long shot it may sound like-- even in a format like EDH, where obscure tribes inevitably have to run every available member just to meet a quorum. 

Constructed- 2.5
Casual- 3.5
Limited- 2.75
Multiplayer- 3

David Fanany

Player since 1995

Call to the Kindred
 
Again, surely this effect is green (cf. Summoning Trap)? I suppose you could just break down and play it alongside the green effects . . . hmm. I suddenly had a vision of a Kiora Atua-style deck, where you enchant a Kraken Hatchling with this and get a Tidal Kraken the next turn. There's nothing like a new way of cheating huge monsters into play to make me forget momentarily about possible color pie violations, and I suspect a lot of people are going to adopt this in our new creature-based blue overlords. Assuming they're not freaked out by that art - it reminds me a lot of the classic Star Trek episode "The Mark of Gideon."
 
Constructed: 2/5
Casual: 4/5
Limited: 3/5
Multiplayer: 3/5

Paul

Welcome back readers and todays card of the day is an interesting enchantment, like most enchantment it doesn’t provide card advantage and when your opponent kills the creature you were going to enchant you just feel bad and waste cards. In standard and extended and modern and legacy and vintage I don’t feel this makes the cut for a constructed playable card too much inherent disadvantage in enchantments like this and not enough competitive tribal oriented decks that could use a card like this in constructed formats. In casual and multiplayer this has a chance of seeing play it faces some of the same problems but the ability to cheat creatures into play is worth trying out some decks may be better suited to it than others making it an interesting niche choice in casual and multiplayer especially in decks with tribal themes or perhaps enchantment themes. In limited if you draft heavy tribal be it zombies or blue white humans this could be an interesting choice but definitely not a first pick or high value. Overall a card with some casual applications and some interesting non competitive interactions.
 
Constructed: 1.0
Casual: 2.5
Limited: 2.0
Multiplayer: 2.5

Michael "Maikeruu" Pierno

Today's card of the day is Call to the Kindred which is a four mana Blue aura that enchants a creature to allow you to play a creature with at least one matching type from the top five cards of your library at the beginning of your upkeep.  If combined with Hexproof in a dedicated tribal deck this is a very impressive advantage that can keep a game in your favor against nearly any deck.  Without Hexproof the two for one of destroying the creature will be the top priority of any opponent. 

Overall this is a powerful card in the right deck, but not something to be added to just any design if anything near the full potential is desired.
 
For Limited getting multiple creatures with the same type is usually difficult, though the Human, Spirit, and Zombie types should be common enough between Blue and a neighboring color.  With luck in a Sealed pool this should be playable and worth using as even one extra creature lets you break even while more can win a game.  In Booster drafting a theme deck can be a big advantage after this as a first pick, but if the table or packs don't cooperate it can be a dead card left in your sidedeck. 
The risk is worth taking as the biggest concern of using Call is removal which is far less common in the format.
 
Constructed: 4.0
Casual: 4.0
Limited: 4.0
Multiplayer: 4.0

John
Shultis
Phoenix
Gaming

      Welcome to the Card of the Day section here at Pojo.com. We are continuing our look at Dark Ascension, and close out this week with Call to the Kindred. Call to the Kindred is a rare enchantment aura that enchants a creature. Call to the Kindred costs three generic and one blue mana. Call to the Kindred says that at the beginning of your upkeep, look at the top five cards of your library. If you do, you may put a creature card that shares a creature type with enchanted creature from among them onto the battlefield, and then put the rest of them onto the bottom of your library in any order.

     This card is insane, period. The fact that there has been such a push for tribal decks means that by looking at the top five cards of your library, you very easily will find a creature type in common with the enchanted creature. And to ensure it, enchant a changeling! Then you are guaranteed to find one! Yes there are no changelings in standard, but that just makes this even more of a Modern based or Vintage based card. Put it on some lowly Eldrazi, next thing you know, Emrakul! Or, on a changeling, all the sudden, Karthus, in a dragon deck. Very useful, just depends on how you would like to use it.
 
Limited: 4/5
Casual: 5/5
Constructed: 5/5
Multiplayer: 3/5


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