I've always liked Breath of Life, so it was
pretty cool to see it referenced in this card.
Not sure anything in Portal was this scary,
though. If anybody makes a reanimator deck in
Standard, this is pretty much the card to go to
- zombify two creatures with only one card?
Sounds like a bargain. Back in Time Spiral
limited, Dread Return and its interactions with
Looter il-Kor could be devastating; while there
isn't anything quite so crazy in Innistrad,
there also isn't much that can keep up with
creatures who just won't stay dead.
Welcome back readers todays card of the day is
one of the most played and powerful cards from
the set. A double Zombify for a slightly higher
initial mana cost is perfectly awesome. This in
standard has been seeing a lot of play in Solar
Flare decks that can use the new Lilianna’s
abilities to its benefit and recur a Sun Titan
into the same planeswalker is just about the
most powerful thing you can do. As of now it’s a
solid card that helps cement an archtype in
standard and I don’t expect this to change any
time soon. In extended and modern I suspect it
has about the same amount of power for decks as
the tools are available to abuse it even more.
In casual and multiplayer some decks focused on
reanimating fattie creatures could use this and
the fact your spell counts twice means a lot in
multiplayer where every spell count. In limited
it’s a pretty high pick obviously good in the
color combination but easily splashable and a
powerful card. Overall one of the most powerful
cards in standard and a double Zombify is
nothing to sneeze at a powerful card.
Today's card of the day is Unburial Rites which
can bring a creature back into play from the
graveyard twice if your deck has both Black and
White mana. The combination was fairly
popular with Eventide and cards like this fit
the theme well which can easily benefit more
modern builds with those colors. The cost
of five for the initial casting is a little
high, but if used for a six mana creature or
discarded with the creature in a Blue/White
self-milling concept for a cost of four it is a
bargain. Overall this is an interesting
card with tournament potential in several very
different color combinations.
For Limited this loses a bit of power if not
played in a Black/White build and likely won't
have available support for a different pairing,
yet is still effective in any deck with Black as
only one mana symbol requires a specific color.
In the format it is more likely your best
creatures will be single copies and the opponent
may not have additional methods of removing them
which makes playing that one creature a second
time a potential game-winning move. The
overall effectiveness of this, presuming a
decent target, makes it a strong early pick in
Booster and an easy inclusion in Sealed
especially if both Black and White mana are
available.
Welcome to
this week’s last review. To close the week out,
we look at Unburial Rites, a fitting card from
Innistrad to head into Halloween weekend!
Unburial Rites is a black sorcery that costs
four generic and one black mana. It allows you
to return target creature card from you
graveyard to the battlefield, and has flashback
for three generic and one white.
This card is definitely one of the better cards that I
have seen, mostly because of it’s versatility.
It is almost Rise From the Grave and Breath of
Life in one, minus the zombie part of Rise From
the Grave. And that is extremely useful. If
running a white deck, you could even be using
this card, you just need to creatively find
reasons to discard cards in white, and you have
access to a Breath of Life when you need it. But
obviously it’s truest potential involves using
both black and white, which although they are
“enemy” colors, seem to work wonderfully
together. Strong removal in both, with creature
pumps, and creature production, only
strengthened by combining two really good
resurrection spells into one. Which I must add
how coincidentally easy it is to exploit this
card using our dearest friend, the lovely planes
walker Liliana. Each player has to discard using
her new ability, but then you could just pitch a
very nice creature, only to res it using this
card, which you could pitch with her as well,
and then use the flashback. Oh those tricky
graveyards!
A very useful card in most formats, but like
other cards we looked at this week, not so when
it comes to multiplayer.
