Once upon a time, Cranial Extraction defined a
metagame. You just couldn't play a deck that
depended solely on one card as long as people
had this in their sideboards. Once your opponent
hit four mana, your entire win condition would
be stripped from you. Combo just wasn't viable,
unless you could reliably go off (or put your
most important combo pieces on the field, where
Extraction couldn't hit them) before your
opponent got four mana.
Why am I talking about an old Kamigawa card,
instead of today's COTD, Memoricide? Isn't it
obvious? Minus the Arcane subtype, Cranial
Extraction IS Memoricide. And they're both Tyler
Durden. When this hits the stores, any deck that
depends too heavily on one specific card may
find itself hunted out of existence, and not
having full playsets may be less of a drawback.
Memoricide's effect has been around in various
forms for a long time now, and has just as much
value as it did in Ice Age. I've been known to
play with card's like this in places where you
"shouldn't," like Singleton games, just because
the often-overlooked fact of getting to see your
opponent's deck can be so advantageous. Knowing,
as G.I. Joe once said, is half the battle. Also,
when you manage to play this against a
Relentless Rats deck, it's kind of funny
(although not so much for the guy with the
Rats).
Today's card of the day is Memoricide which is
a four mana Black spell that is more or less a
reprint of Cranial Extraction without the Arcane
aspect. Being able to exile all copies of
a card from a player's hand, library, and
graveyard is an incredibly effective tool at
disrupting a combo or just eliminating either
the strongest card they have or the hardest card
for you to otherwise counter. For Black
this can be a Planeswalker, Enchantment,
Artifact, something with Protection, or any
number of other threats. Knowing the decks
being played in your area helps in the first
game of a match, but for the second or third
game you should know for sure what to name
especially if you've seen their entire deck.
The cost is a little high which may allow fast
acceleration or cheap threats to get out before
Memoricide can be played, but otherwise any
finishers can be taken out of the game.
For Limited this has value in the sidedeck, but
it is pretty much a shot in the dark in the
first game of any match aside from getting a
look at someone's deck or perhaps exiling your
own card for some obscure reason. The
format produces few multiple copies of cards and
often the biggest threats will be singletons
only. Memoricide works well as to remove
one of them before they hit the board.
Once you get into the second or third game you
can simply exile whatever the biggest concern is
or target whatever card may come up next that
will disrupt your plans most. As a
strictly preemptive removal this is a difficult
first choice in Booster and has nowhere near the
power it holds in Constructed formats.
Consider the other choices carefully, but as it
can effectively remove any card from the game it
is a solid choice for any Black deck and easily
splashed with the one dedicated mana symbol.
