David Fanany
Player since
1995 |
Night of Souls' Betrayal
This card is rather obscure nowadays, but for my
part, seeing it always reminds me quite strongly
of the Kamigawa-Ravnica Standard era, because of
how many two-card interactions involved it back
then. For example, it was released soon before
the Hunted creatures, and it completely erases
the opponent's benefit from Hunted Troll and
Hunted Phantasm. Later, it became part of a much
less cute and even more powerful combination
with Dovescape. It remains particularly
effective against token-based strategies,
even though there are a lot of things that
generate 2/2 and stronger tokens; it's also
universally applicable against other creature
decks, unlike Illness in the Ranks, and so it's
easier to have in your maindeck.
Constructed: 3/5
Casual: 3/5
Limited: 3/5
Multiplayer: 3/5
EDH/Commander: 3/5 |
|
James H. |
Night of Souls' Betrayal
(4/13)
A weird legendary
enchantment from the block where everything and
their mother was legendary, Night of Souls'
Betrayal is simple: everything gets smaller.
It's simple, and it's brutally effective against
a lot of decks.
A static -1/-1 means that
any deck that relies on a flood of X/1's to
operate is all of a sudden on the back foot,
trying to recover; Infect is really hosed badly
by this card, and token-centric strategies are
also hurt. It's hard to really quantify how many
decks hate facing a resolved Night of Souls'
Betrayal, but it certainly is a non-trivial
number, since sending small creatures into the
fray is the order of the day a lot of the time.
(Affinity isn't a fan of facing this, either.)
While one might see a card
like Curse of Death's Hold as better, since it's
asymmetrical, this card gets the nod for two
major reasons. Being a global effect means that
it can't be blocked by Leyline of Sanctity (or
random weird pieces of tech, like Imp's Mischief
or Dawn Charm), and it's only 4 mana, with three
of it as a generic cost. That is a massive
difference-maker in Modern, where cards need to
be efficient to stand a chance. It's a powerful
sideboard weapon in Grixis and Jund, and it can
be almost an instant-win against the right
decks.
Constructed: 4
Casual: 3.5
Limited: 4
Multiplayer: 4.25
Commander: 4.25
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