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Pojo's Magic The Gathering
Card of the Day

Daily Since November 2001!

Dark Impostor
Image from Wizards.com

Dark Impostor
Avacyn Restored

Reviewed July 2, 2012

Constructed: 2.37
Casual: 3.25
Limited: 4.13
Multiplayer: 2.90

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

Dark impostor

People like Vampires. People will run this just to maximize their Nocturni. Its base power, toughness, and mana cost are underwhelming but tolerable. It's the ability we all came for.

Six mana to kill something is more than black is willing to pay. Even if this guy exiles instead of destroys, black has never struggled to eliminate indestructible dudes or regenerators. That's what -X/-X is for. And on Innistrad, not triggering morbid is a liability. So really, it's the theft of activated abilities that makes this interesting. And Necrotic Ooze has already proven that you can assemble a game-winning combo if you can cherry pick activate abilities from other creatures. But the Ooze just needed dead creatures; the Impostor actually needs you to pay 6 per creature whose ability you want to copy. That means you can't just kill and mill until the combo is assembled in the yard, then drop the would-be thief. You have to play Dark Impostor and then start paying 6 for each creature. Your opponent therefore will see what you're about long before you pull it off, and will have plenty of time to find a kill spell.

For nine mana, it's a kill spell that gets around indestructible and zombify effects plus a 3/3 vampire that may or may not have a cool ability to go with the repeatable Brittle Effigy effect. But for that kind of mana, there's so much better things you could do.

Constructed- 2.5
Limited- 4
Casual- 3
Multiplayer- 3.25


David Fanany

Player since 1995

Dark Impostor
 
The "monster with my face" horror trope has made it into things as diverse as Magic, Bayonetta, and Batman (that's what Hush does); this, I'm sure, says something about our society and our fear of being replaced or displaced. Dark Impostor, though is a rather unique take on it, if only because it requires a lot more investment of mana and has a lot more memory issues than even your standard Clone or such. I guess if you consider that the Impostor can become an Archivist or a Prodigal Pyromancer, or some kind of ungodly mashup between those two plus Birds of Paradise that can untap itself when you enchant it with Freed from the Real, it kind of figures that they would have costed it like they did. Don't get so enamored of the combo potential, though, that you overlook the little fact that there are no restrictions on what the exile ability can target or how many times it can be used as long as the Impostor remains in play. Sometimes, repeatable near-unconditional removal is just repeatable near-unconditional removal.
 
Constructed: 2/5
Casual: 4/5
Limited: 4/5
Multiplayer: 3/5

Michael "Maikeruu" Pierno

Today's card of the day is Dark Impostor which is a three mana 2/2 Black that for six mana can exile target creature to gain a +1/+1 counter and all of the activated abilities of creatures exiled by the effect.  A reusable exile effect in Black is a nice tool, but the cost of six leaves this for the later stages of the game and not as flexible as simple removal.  Overall this is a bit too slow for Constructed formats and probably won't see serious play even though the effect itself is quite impressive.
 
For Limited this is a very powerful card that can eliminate most threats and become an offensive or defensive leader at the same time.  Reusable removal is huge in the format and six mana with only two Black is not unreasonable at all.  An easy first pick in Booster and readily played in multicolor Sealed decks with the low color specific requirements.
 
Constructed: 2.5
Casual: 2.5
Limited: 4.5
Multiplayer: 2.5

John
Shultis
Phoenix
Gaming
John

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