Last time this was Standard-legal, this and
Traumatize made a pretty slick combo. I remember
six-way casual games where this would take a
player out of the game without actually making
him lose-- just leave him sitting there, drawing
land for the next ten turns before finally
decking out, unable to do anything beyond what
he already had in play and hoping nobody dropped
an Akroma's Vengeance. That combo may be too
slow for today's Constructed, and combo never
pays off in Limited, but around the casual
tables it's a gruesome blow, akin to burying a
guy in the desert and leaving him to the ants.
Without Traumatize? Meh, it's a weird Cranial
Extraction variant. Could be useful, I guess.
This card was already a powerhouse in
constructed once, when Patriarch's Bidding was
heavily played in Standard. Later, it returned
in Extended to foil Gifts Ungiven strategies. I
have no doubt that it will do the same again -
it's in the same set as Mind Shatter, so watch
out. You could bring it to your kitchen table as
an effective, if mean, answer to the likes of
Kokusho, though I'd recommend that only as a
last resort after you asked them nicely to play
something else!
Today's card of the day and the last card in this
week's Black theme is Haunting Echoes. You may
already have heard about it as one half of the
combination with Traumatize and that's pretty
much the main use for it.
Support cards can include Jace, Memory Sluice,
Mind Funeral, Lich Lord of Unx, Memory Erosion,
Nemesis of Reason, Oona, and Tome Scour as
examples. I mainly like it with Mind Funeral as
it is fairly cheap and quite brutal before a
Haunting Echoes. It is also a faster play than
the in set Traumatize as that also costs five
mana while Funeral is only three.
Constructed is an environment where deck
destroyers are notoriously hard to effectively
wield. The potential with some of the newer
cards listed above makes the concept tempting,
but it is still vulnerable to faster decks. It
is possible someone will break out just the
right mix of the above with support to win
games, but for now this seems like a lower level
threat.
Casual is a format where different themes take
off and a library destruction deck is something
many people find enjoyable. I expect to see a
number of decks featuring Haunting Echoes appear
in homes and schools in the near future.
Limited is not a good place for this card at
all. Generally people won't have multiple copies
of much and even then it may only be of one or
two different cards. More or less unplayable
aside from getting to see their entire deck.
This is the kind of rare you can safely pass in
Booster Draft unless you really need it for your
collection. The double black just adds to an
overall terrible limited card.
Multiplayer is the last place you'd ever want to
play a deck that is entirely designed on
destroying a single player's library. You will
absolutely run out of momentum in a race against
several opponents even if you somehow manage to
cripple two or more decks with the above combos.
