This enchantment first made its debut back in
Scourge, one of the earliest "tribal" sets.
There, it was a popular capstone for dedicated
Zombie decks and black control decks alike. All
you really need is one Zombie to make this
viable-- you'll never have to sacrifice
creatures as long as all of yours are Zombies,
and your opponents all have to keep playing at
least one creature per turn or end up losing
them all to the Call. Once a player is caught
creatureless, he's pretty much out of the combat
game, save for maybe producing a blocker each
turn. Meanwhile, the Zombies can continue to
shamble onto the field, and their necromantic
leanings allow them to even pull your old dead
creatures out of your graveyard!
Call to the Grave was chosen this week not just
for its usefulness in reanimator strategies, but
because it was recently reprinted in M12.
Magic's new Core Set policy means it can
carefully choose which cards it reprints to
compliment, or create tension with, the
expansion set it's accompanying, and Call to the
Grave is a prime example of what that means for
Magic. It means that the Core Set reprints are
more likely to have a chance to shine in a whole
new light, and those of us who remember them the
first time around are going to get a lot more
good use out of all those old cards we used to
have fun with way back when.
Over the last three years or so, I've drifted
away from Standard in my own personal Magic
habits. You can see this if you go back to the
page you were just on and compare the kinds of
things I wrote about Cards of the Day in 2008 or
so. Oh sure, I follow the new sets, I know more
or less what's going on, but here in my relative
old age, I find it harder and harder to cut off
cards I like just because of the year printed on
the bottom. Call to the Grave is a good example.
It's been a pillar of Zombie decks that can
dominate certain casual environments, a
one-sided Abyss that is laughably easy for black
decks to build around. It deserves respect,
Standard-legal or no. Sometimes everything old
really can be new again.
Welcome back to an interesting week of cards
today we are starting with Call to The Grave a
powerful black enchantment last seen in Scourge
and years ago around friend’s kitchen tables. In
standard zombies could be a viable tribe with a
little more support Ghoulraiser and Endless
Ranks of the Dead and other support cards and a
powerful one drop in the form of Diregraf Ghoul
it could go places. As of now it is not a
competitive deck making this card unlikely to
appear at top tables, however this is a powerful
edict style effect as long as you play a smidge
of zombies which including Phyrexian Crusader
may not be hard, it’s not the most competitive
card but it does have tech potential. In
extended modern and legacy and vintage this card
costs too much mana and is too slow to affect
anything it won’t see play here.
In casual and
multiplayer this card shines as the zombie tribe
is so jam packed you can take the deck in so
many directions to take and this clears nasty
opposing creatures even Eldrazi and colossuses
just make sure to protect your own creatures
perhaps BoneKnitter? In limited this card is
somewhat powerful and a sort of build around
card if you can snag a lot of zombies its
obvious good otherwise playable but unexciting
and I also have to insert that it has one black
in its cost so it is splashable! Overall a
historically powerful kitchen table enchantment
that may see some constructed play yet.
Today's card of the day is Call to the Grave
which is a five mana ongoing source of removal
for zombie decks that can put quite a bit of
pressure on an opponent when properly supported.
Zombies that have regenerate or are otherwise
difficult to destroy and additional removal
cards restrict an opponent's sacrifice choices
and strengthen a deck trying to make the most of
Call. The mana cost is a little high which
keeps it from being very beneficial to faster
aggressive builds, but in a design based on
controlling the field or building a large swarm
it works well enough to possibly see competitive
play.
For Limited having enough zombies to reliably
keep Call to the Grave working may be difficult
especially without sacrificing too many of your
own creatures in the process. It may
benefit an opponent equally without the proper
situation and is somewhat risky, though quite
powerful. In Booster it is a viable first
pick which should be supported by aggressively
drafting zombies while in Sealed the value is
held to how many zombies are available and
whether it is played offensively or defensively.
Welcome to
our card of the day section here at Pojo.com.
Today we are looking at Call to the Grave. Call
to the Grave is a rare black enchantment that
costs four generic and one black mana. Call to
the Grave says that during each player’s upkeep
they must sacrifice a non-zombie creature. Then
at the beginning of the end step, if no
creatures are in play, sacrifice Call to the
Grave.
This is just one sick card that changes
everything. If you are not running a zombie deck
when you run up against this, you become under
an awful lot of pressure. And when combined with
kill spells, it could easily empty your board.
The fact that you can drop a single blocker can
be less than reassuring these days when we see
how fast a zombie deck can build up a
substantial army. This of course means that the
person who dropped the Call to the Grave is
likely not losing anything.
And this card is felt in multiplayer as much as
in single player. Which of course will cause
massive agro against the person who dropped the
Call to the Grave. But it could fall in vain if
the zombie army has already risen.
