People like Vampires. People will run this just
to maximize their Nocturni. Its base power,
toughness, and mana cost are underwhelming but
tolerable. It's the ability we all came for.
Six mana to kill something is more than black is
willing to pay. Even if this guy exiles instead
of destroys, black has never struggled to
eliminate indestructible dudes or regenerators.
That's what -X/-X is for. And on Innistrad, not
triggering morbid is a liability. So really,
it's the theft of activated abilities that makes
this interesting. And Necrotic Ooze has already
proven that you can assemble a game-winning
combo if you can cherry pick activate abilities
from other creatures. But the Ooze just needed
dead creatures; the Impostor actually needs you
to pay 6 per creature whose ability you want to
copy. That means you can't just kill and mill
until the combo is assembled in the yard, then
drop the would-be thief. You have to play Dark
Impostor and then start paying 6 for each
creature. Your opponent therefore will see what
you're about long before you pull it off, and
will have plenty of time to find a kill spell.
For nine mana, it's a kill spell that gets
around indestructible and zombify effects plus a
3/3 vampire that may or may not have a cool
ability to go with the repeatable Brittle Effigy
effect. But for that kind of mana, there's so
much better things you could do.
The "monster with my face" horror trope has made
it into things as diverse as Magic, Bayonetta,
and Batman (that's what Hush does); this, I'm
sure, says something about our society and our
fear of being replaced or displaced. Dark
Impostor, though is a rather unique take on it,
if only because it requires a lot more
investment of mana and has a lot more memory
issues than even your standard Clone or such. I
guess if you consider that the Impostor can
become an Archivist or a Prodigal Pyromancer, or
some kind of ungodly mashup between those
two plus Birds of Paradise that can untap itself
when you enchant it with Freed from the Real, it
kind of figures that they would have costed it
like they did. Don't get so enamored of the
combo potential, though, that you overlook the
little fact that there are no restrictions on
what the exile ability can target or how many
times it can be used as long as the Impostor
remains in play. Sometimes, repeatable
near-unconditional removal is just repeatable
near-unconditional removal.
Today's card of the day is Dark Impostor which
is a three mana 2/2 Black that for six mana can
exile target creature to gain a +1/+1 counter
and all of the activated abilities of creatures
exiled by the effect. A reusable exile
effect in Black is a nice tool, but the cost of
six leaves this for the later stages of the game
and not as flexible as simple removal.
Overall this is a bit too slow for Constructed
formats and probably won't see serious play even
though the effect itself is quite impressive.
For Limited this is a very powerful card that
can eliminate most threats and become an
offensive or defensive leader at the same time.
Reusable removal is huge in the format and six
mana with only two Black is not unreasonable at
all. An easy first pick in Booster and
readily played in multicolor Sealed decks with
the low color specific requirements.
