Mausoleum Secrets – MTG Card Review

David
Fanany
Player
since
1995

This card being an instant is probably absolutely shocking to long-time design watchers. Yes, it has restrictions that prevent it from being a universal combo enabler like the Demonic or Vampiric Tutors before it, but there are still so many things you can do with it. Perhaps you have a lot of cheap creatures, maybe mostly black cards, and cheap black spells, and this card will grab you almost anything in your deck just as a result of you playing the game. And don’t forget that it comes in a multicolor block – just because the card you look for has to be black doesn’t mean it can’t also be another color!

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

This might be one of the most-hyped Guilds of Ravnica cards. While Assassin’s Trophy is more powerful and more clearly good, this takes more set-up to work. But the payoff for Mausoleum Secrets is very good.

It is a cheap tutor…and a cheap, instant-speed tutor at that. Most tutor cards tend to be sorcery speed, so that’s already an alarm bell. It also does have one notable limitation, only able to grab black cards from your deck. (Though Painter’s Servant makes every card in your library black, so there is that!) But when you factor in that black has the ability to load up their graveyard pretty well, that it can grab a zero-mana kill spell in Modern at worst (hi, Slaughter Pact), and that this still grabs at instant-speed, Mausoleum Secrets looks like a powerful weapon indeed.

It’s not a Limited card, since setting up for it is a bit clunky, and bombs in limited are rarely going to be must-grab attractions (outside of Doom Whisperer, maybe). But I see this going places in Modern and maybe Legacy (and possibly Standard, though that might be shakier.)

Constructed: 4.25
Casual: 4
Limited: 1.5
Multiplayer: 3.5
Commander: 4.5