Baneslayer Angel – MTG Throwback Thursday (2009)

David
Fanany
Player
since
1995

Now this is how I like my creatures to look – and I’m not talking about the art, although her art is actually very nice. She’s got amazingly efficient stats, she’s devastating on both offense and defense – and, importantly in a post-War of the Spark multiverse, she strikes down many planeswalkers in a single blow. She’s good in aggro and she’s good in control; good in competitive and good in casual. She’s the kind of card you always hope will be good, and I think she might make an impact a second time when she returns in M21: Ikoria might ask you to build your own monster, but there’s something to be said for a creature that you just cast and go to town with right away.

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

Back in Magic 2010, Baneslayer Angel ticked the boxes of “mythic” rare really well: a flashy, powerful creature with a bunch of potent keywords. She wins combat against most things with utmost ease, has evasion, and even has a high-enough toughness to stave off a lot of toughness-based removal. She’s never been bad, though a high mana cost conjoined with a lack of haste means she’s rarely seen play outside of her Standard stints.

That said, she is returning to Standard in Core Set 2021, and whether or not she can keep up remains to be seen; removal has generally gotten better, as have creatures. There’s still room for her to do her thing all the same, though, and I imagine that she’s going to do a lot of brutal things in the decks that want her.

Constructed: 4
Casual: 5
Limited: 5 (remove her, or you lose very quickly)
Multiplayer: 3
Commander: 3.5