This card offers you the capability to reach
into your opponent’s deck and literally rip
their heart out. Unfortunately, the ability to
pull more than one card from their deck depends
on something you may not have very much control
over, the number of permanents that have gone to
your graveyard this turn. It’s hard to imagine
that you will have Bitter Ordeal in hand, that
you will hold Bitter Ordeal until the turn when
your board has been severely thrashed by your
opponent. That seems like the time you would
LEAST be interested in playing a card like
Bitter Ordeal, you would probably be more
concerned with, oh, I don’t know, rebuilding
your board position or destroying your
opponent’s permanents. If this card’s gravestorm
ability doesn’t matter, and I don’t think it
does, then Bitter Ordeal is basically a bad
card. Paying three mana to remove one card from
the opponent’s deck is instant card disadvantage
for you. I guess you bring a card like this from
the sideboard to rip a card out of your
opponent’s deck that you have no other good
answer for. Yuck.
This is
an interesting card. You could potentially
remove 6-8 cards at one time from an
opponent's deck. Usually, it's going to
stop just one card though. I'm not sure
it's over the top, but I wouldn't be
surprised as all if a deck was created to
utilize its power. Even in limited, you can
use it to remove your opponent's one bomb
that they opened.
Bitter Ordeal
Keep in mind, Gravestorm counts PERMANENTS put
into a graveyard. Not cards from anywhere else
other than in play, but any type of permanent
and it doesn't matter who control them. You
could set up a pretty devastating turn by
playing Wildfire, Damnation, or Bust (of
Boom//Bust) followed by this, and then remove
all the relevant cards from your opponent's
deck. Or you could just send plenty of creatures
into combat, or send Nantuko Husk on a feeding
frenzy. There's plenty of ways to up the
Gravestorm count, but the trick is making sure
you remove all the right cards from your
opponent's library.
Constructed- 3
Casual- 4
Limited- 2.5
-David N
Tuesday -
Bitter Ordeal
Wow...the new version of storm. This card is
great to play right after a mass removal such as
wrath or god or damnation. After all the
creatures hit play this card to stop any combo.
This may have the ability to take out virtually
all of the combo pieces in one swoop. Great
sideboard against any combo decks. Might see
some maindeck just to see what the opponent is
playing.
Constructed: 4
Casual: 3
Limited: 4
David Fanany
Bitter Ordeal
Even though Bitter Ordeal looks like the new
Cranial Extraction, it's really much more of a
Johnny card than that. You need a Gravestorm
count of at least two to make it comparable with
Cranial Extraction in terms of the average
number of cards removed. There are ways to do
that - Smallpox and Damnation spring to mind -
but they're all a little unreliable, and the
ways to make the Ordeal large enough to remove
all the lands from someone's library are also
frightfully expensive. If you cast something
like Obliterate, you don't need Bitter Ordeal to
win the game. In multiplayer games, enough weird
stuff happens that the Ordeal's Gravestorm count
will often be high, but you still often have
better options. I could see this card working
okay in limited, especially after a particularly
brutal combat step.
Constructed: 1/5
Casual: 1/5
Limited: 2/5
The Missing
Linc
Bitter Ordeal
I know
this card will be made useful by someone but
it's competive play may be limited. For 3
mana and a sorcery, there is little way you
could get this to work with less than 5 mana
available and that may only allow you a
smallpox (a good combo) or a pyroclasm (when
the conditions are right). Later in the
game this could be real fun. I could see
this used with Armageddon or the Bust side
of Boom/Bust. All lands gone and I think I
will go into your deck and remove the
rest...game over.
Constructed: 3 (only because the potential
is there)
Casual: 2
Limited:
2
Necro
nomikron
Bitter Ordeal:
This is like a jester's cap, but colored and
requires cards to have gone to a graveyard to be
really effective. If this were done after a
wrath, you could cripple the opposing deck.
However, if you're at 7 mana, and playing
control, you should already be winning.
Constructed: 2/5
Casual: 1/5
Limited: 1/5
PsychoAnime
Gravestorm can be used like Brain Freeze as a
win condition that doesn't get
owned by Gaea's Blessing or it can be used to
remove some cards from combo.
The first option requires an infinite storm
count. I don't recall any decent
way to achieve this in Standard right now so
yeah... it's not that great.
The second option requires some setting up if
your deck isn't made to abuse
the gravestorm mechanic. You'll probably need 4
copies of this to mess up
combo decks badly and that can be difficult in a
normal deck, with the
easiest way coming into mind right now being
this following Damnation. This
still requires 7 mana though.
It's not completely junk, but not really
playable either.
Constructed: 2/5
Casual: 2/5
Limited: 1/5, doesn't do much here
