The clock is ticking! This card rewards you for
doing something you already wanted to do-- kill
opponents' creatures-- but makes you bleed 1
point per turn in exchange for doing so. This
card exists only to gain you life, and it
doesn't even do that unless you can kill
creatures.
If you like life gain, at least this card will
encourage you to do something more proactive
than just sit there activating Tanglebloom. But
really, you'd be better off with an actual kill
spell in place of a card that does nothing but
bleed you until you draw a kill spell.
You know how abilities that ask you to pay life
for an effect usually have the life cost
adjusted in such a way that you can't do it
indefinitely? If you've ever wished you could
use them more often, this might just be the card
for you. It also gives you a hedge in
multiplayer settings, where people sometimes get
trigger-happy with their Day of Judgment effects
- while it doesn't directly counter them the way
something like No Rest for the Wicked or Angelic
Renewal would, but it turns other people's
setbacks into time for you to set up your deck's
main strategy.
Today's card of the day is Grim Feast which is
a three mana Green/Black enchantment that deals
one damage to you at the beginning of your
upkeep and whenever a creature is put into an
opponent's graveyard from play you gain life
equal to that creature's toughness. Life
gain by itself is rarely a successful strategy
and this deals damage to you which forces you
into destroying creatures and having some other
benefit from gaining life to justify Grim Feast
being present. In a deck that is already
two colors, somewhat easier thanks to Green,
this seems like quite a bit of effort for little
reward. There are other more reliable ways
to gain life that don't depend on the toughness
of creatures you need to destroy and ones that
don't deal damage to you every turn either.
Overall this is not a card well suited to
Constructed formats outside of a very specific
combo.
In Limited this is a fairly bad card that at
best can stall and at worst lets your opponent
stall until your own card takes your life points
away. The typical lack of removal and chances
against high toughness creatures being both
available plus destroyable leaves this with
almost no viability. Considering that,
there is little reason to play this and it is a
rare that should be passed until the end of the
pack in Booster, even if by some unlikely chance
it happens to be in color. For Sealed the
same holds true as even with Green/Black almost
anything is better than using this card as a
creature can deal damage or even direct life
gain is not going to have such a drawback.
For Multiplayer the update having it work on all
opponents instead of a target one helps quite a
bit by feeding off the carnage the format can
produce. The need to destroy creatures
directly is no longer a requirement of the build
and it can focus on a life gain based combo that
can have other players choosing to attack each
other rather than chip away at your high life
total. It can also backfire if others
target you to prevent building up, but in
general this is the best format to try gaining
an advantage from Grim Feast.
Welcome to another installment on Thanksgiving week here at
Pojo.com! Today we are looking at Grim Feast
from Mirage. Grim Feast is a rare black and
green enchantment that costs one generic, one
green, and one black mana. Grim Feast says at
the beginning of your upkeep, Grim Feast deals
one damage to you. Whenever a creature is put
into an opponents graveyard from the
battlefield, you gain life equal to it's
toughness.
Grim Feast sure isn't all that grim if you ask me. Well, it
may become grim for your opponent. With Grim
Feast out, sure, you are looking to be taking
some damage at the beginning of your turns. But
honestly, so what. The fact that you need only
kill your opponent's creatures to gain life
equal to their toughness more than makes up for
that so long as they keep dying.
A deck that utilizes Deathtouch and removal spells could
very easily make a decent amount of lifegain,
and stave of some potent attacks. Then use some
other bleeding spells to help sap the life right
out of your opponent. Not all that bad when you
ask me. Plus, since it's green, there are plenty
of cards that allow some lifegain in green.
A really decent card that just never took off, a shame.
