Having a Blood Artist on the battlefield seems
like it might be awesome. Black likes to kill
and/or sacrifice creatures, so you should be
able to syphon off plenty of life, right? Not
exactly. In my experience, anything that
triggers that often ends up dead pretty soon, if
only because it keeps drawing attention to
itself and reminding everybody why it needs to
die. It may not be a huge threat, but it's a
major annoyance.
That doesn't make it a bad card, mind you. It
can sometimes draw an opponent's kill spell away
from the creatures you actually want to save.
Because it doesn't care who controls the
to-be-dead creature, it's good in multiplayer
when people start killing each others'
creatures. And since it counts itself and
others, it'll trigger for every creature in the
event of a Day of Judgment. That makes it good
as a sort of insurance policy against board
wipes... or a perfect lead-in to your own.
Of all the attempts over the years at the black
"anti-Soul Warden," this is probably my
favorite, and not just because of the art: also
because of the cost, the relevant tribe, and the
way the trigger is actually sort of the mirror
opposite of Soul Warden's as opposed to forcing
you into complicated flavor gymnastics to try
and justify why it also uses "comes into play"
when it's supposed to be an evil opposite
counterpart. The level of synergy with
everything the color black likes to do is simply
astounding, and with enough support in your
deck, one of these guys can take down an entire
EDH melee by himself.
Today's card of the day is Blood Artist which is a
two mana Black 0/1 vampire that has target
opponent lose one life and you gain one life
whenever it or another creature dies.
Effects like this are always popular and having
both on one affordable creature is a welcome
addition to mono-Black sacrifice or vampire
themes. The effect is also not worded as
may which is a nice little benefit for those
that can forget to activate voluntary triggers.
Overall this is likely to see play in the two
drop spot in several builds, particularly those
with a sacrifice engine, lots of removal, or the
mon-Black and vampire concepts.
In Limited this is an excellent long-term
advantage that is not likely to draw a removal
as a 0/1, though it will also be unlikely to
block.
Even if it does die it still nets a two point
swing in life and there is no reason not to run
this is in Sealed or draft it fairly early in
Booster. Even one other creature that dies
while this is in play makes it a bargain, so
every additional one becomes a bonus which can
be easily augmented with Undying or similar
effects.
For Multiplayer the number of players should
make this a somewhat bigger threat, though even
the weakest of popular mass burn or removal will
destroy it. A theme based around
reanimation with this as a keystone can be
viable particularly with repeatable recursion
and a sacrifice engine.
