The life loss from Vendetta can hurt quite a
bit, but in many cases it's nothing compared to
the life you'd lose if you let the creature
live. And the ability to kill any nonblack
creature at instant speed, for a mere one mana,
is a powerful thing. Play some life-drain
effects alongside it if you're worried about the
life loss. Having this power is worth it.
Vendetta is the black Path to Exile: equally
efficient, equally ruthless, and inversely
self-destructive. I doubt you'd rely on this
card alone, especially in Standard where you
have more options than at any time before, and
many of them are equal or greater in
effectiveness. Still, it makes a good complement
to other cards in the Zendikar block, as it
affects things that Smother can't. Just try not
to point it at an Eldrazi unless you absolutely
have to; and remember to shout "VENDETTA!" in a
Sideshow Bob voice when you cast it.
Magic The Gathering Card of the day: Overgrown
Battlement
Welcome back readers today’s card of the day is
an interesting Wall from Rise of the Eldrazi,
Overgrown Battlement is a 0/4 wall that can tap
to add a green mana to your mana pool for each
creature with defender you control. Wow let’s
gets this out of the way, when was the last time
Vine Trellis saw serious tournament action?
Tooth and Nail? Well well now I could see this
card seeing play in some sort of insane mana
ramp style deck possibly featuring the Eldrazi
in standard. In extended and eternal I
doubt this card will see much if any play, there
are more effective ways to ramp mana and Tooth
and Nail hasn’t been a powerful choice for a
while, this being said a slightly improved Vine
Trellis won’t see much competitive play. In
casual and multiplayer utilizing walls could be
fun I planned a deck with this Vine Trellis and
other assorted walls to ramp into Spawnsire of
Ulamog and bash with Eldrazi, there are a lot of
fun things you can utilize walls and mana in
casual as well as providing a wall to hold back
aggression. In limited unless you have a massive
amount of Eldrazi of creatures with defender I
can’t recommend this.
Today's card of the day is Vendetta which is a
one mana kill spell for anything non-black, but
shackled with a fairly rough penalty for many of
the threats it would be used against. It
would work well against high attack low
defense elementals from Red or if trying to
combine with a Death's Shadow play, but
otherwise Black is certainly not lacking for
removal options. Unless using this for a
specific combination or to target a particular
metagame there are simply better choices.
For Limited there are fewer removal options
which bumps this up a notch, but the big threats
are really quite large and using this is a last
resort to avoid multiple attacks. Not
something to be drafted early, but can be picked
up later on if it is in your colors and removal
is light. For Sealed your choices will
likely be few, but it may be better to use this
on Eldrazi support instead of the Eldrazi
themselves whenever possible.
