It's a potential win condition that an opponent
can't block. Most players don't maindeck cards
to kill enchantments or lands, so in a deck that
already runs a set of Gates, this could be
surprisingly effective Plan B. It sort of
reminds me of Seismic Assault, in that it's a
red enchantment that converts lands into damage,
but that one made you discard lands while with
this, all you have to do is tap them. And you
can tap the same lands each turn to deal the
damage again, so this is definitely easier to
build around. If you're building a Gate theme
deck, this is probably the card you want to see
the most.
It's very difficult for a lot of decks to
interact with enchantments, and very difficult
for a different subset of decks to interact with
lands; much less with an enchantment that lets
you use lands to kill opponents. Note that the
activated ability belongs to Crackling
Perimeter, not to the lands as with Koth's
emblem, meaning that Disenchant is the weapon of
choice against it; despite the ubiquity of such
effects in casual, though, repeatable mass (in
multiplayer) damage is a pretty good incentive
to play with Gates.
Welcome back readers todays card of the day is
the interesting Crackling Perimeter which can
turn your gates into a constant source of
damage. In standard and all competitive formats
this card just doesn’t cut it as it relies on an
arguably subpar mana base to get the most value
out of this card. In casual and multiplayer it
does damage to each opponent making it a
legitimate way to win but for the most damage
you need to tie up your ability to cast spells,
this could end games quickly or speed them up
dramatically if your deck packs the highest
density of gates. In limited it you get enough
gates it could be a solid source of damage but
aside from that its hard to make the best use of
this card. Perhaps in a slow control deck with a
ton of gates as a win condition. Overall a card
made more for limited and kitchen tables but an
interesting card none the less.
Today's card of the day is Crackling Perimeter
which is a two mana Red enchantment that allows
you to tap an untapped Gate you control to deal
one damage to each opponent. This is a
very situational card best suited to a deck
filled with Gates where it can be a win
condition, but simple and direct burn is far
more flexible. This isn't a card that will
see much play outside of a Casual or Multiplayer
all Gate deck possibly supported by untap land
effects.
In Limited the odds of having many Gates in your
deck is fairly low and having both a Gate and
this in play when you don't need the mana option
is a far too specialized scenario to include
this in your deck. While the option of
doing one damage a turn to an opponent can help
break a stalemate, using two cards to do it and
locking down a dual land is a high cost.
Barring the bizarre scenario of a large number
of Gates in your pool this should always be
sidedecked in Sealed and passed until the very
end of a Booster draft.
