Deification – Aftermath
Date Reviewed: May 30, 2023
Ratings:
Constructed: 3.13
Casual: 4.38
Limited: N/A
Multiplayer: 3.50
Commander [EDH]: 3.75
Ratings are based on a 1 to 5 scale. 1 is bad. 3 is average. 5 is great.
Reviews Below:
I feel like the events being depicted in the art need a lot more explanation. It’s times like this when you feel it’s unfortunate that Aftermath is such a small set, but we’ll undoubtedly see this concept again if and when they do Theros III: We Finally Got Licensing Permission For Universes Beyond Cards Involving Kratos.
Deification’s game text is a reference to cards like Ivory Mask and Worship, the quintessential cards that prevent you from losing in ways that range from challenging to unbeatable, depending on what cards are around them. Nowadays, of course, there are some planeswalkers that almost fill the same role that Ivory Mask and Worship used to – not in as oppressive a manner, of course, but there are many that can defend you and turn around combat states, and any planeswalker is technically a (potential at least) two-for-one. Giving a planeswalker their own version of those enchantments, on a very cheap card no less, seems on paper like it should be good, but also perhaps too cute; but then again, the same red decks who will lose the ability to attack or damage the planeswalker will also struggle to deal with Deification. I’m not sure that’s enough to make this a high-level tournament card, but that might be enough for a deck that leans heavily on a particular planeswalker card. It also encourages you to make use of multiple different versions of the same character that have the same planeswalker type – we’ve made jokes in the past about Jace Tribal or “yo we heard you like Gideon”, and now there’s an actual support card for such decks.
Constructed: 3
Casual: 4
Limited: N/A
Multiplayer: 3.5
Commander [EDH]: 3.5
Deification is an interesting card, a sort of Worship-style effect for a specific planeswalker character. Note that you do have to pick a planeswalker subtype (think Jace, Liliana, Venser, or Bahamut), which probably displeases The Wanderer, but she’s probably happy to be back on Kamigawa at this point so that’s not really an issue.
The ability to protect a planeswaker is an interesting wrinkle and a rather neat way to support the ones that don’t protect themselves as well; hexproof stops targeted kill spells, and the Worship-like effect is a good way to make sure they survive. I feel like the ones this supports best are, fittingly enough, the various Elspeth planeswalkers, since they tend to generate a lot of bodies, and I can see this alongside Elspeth, Sun’s Champion to make an obnoxious, hard-to-iut creature token engine turn over turn.
Two mana is actually quite nice for this effect; it’s as cheap as the cheapest planeswalkers are, but you can realistically follow this with a three-drop of your preferred type. This feels like a card with a narrow, defined home; it’s great in that home, but how good it is out of that remains to be seen.
Constructed: 3.25 (call this conservative, but I think it’ cheap enough and potent enough to get some play)
Casual: 4.75 (protects some better than others, but there are plenty it helps out potentially)
Limited: N/1 (would be a 1, since there are no planeswalkers in Aftermath and only mythic rare ones in March of the Machine; relying on a mythic to make a rare good is bad in Limited)
Multiplayer: 3.5
Commander [EDH]: 4 (might work well with the Commander planeswalkers)
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