Nine mana just plain doesn't happen in most
games. If it does, then this should outright win
it for you. Your opponents have nothing left,
and you've got everything. I suppose a
midrange/ramp deck could try and get this off
around turn six or seven. A control deck could
easily live to see nine mana, but it does so by
keeping it's opponents' boards clear long before
Turn Nine.
Casual and multiplayer games like it, because
those formats see longer games and bigger
armies. Multiplayer especially likes it, as no
matter how many people are at the table, you're
now the only one with any creatures or 'walkers.
I suppose you'd say this is technically an
upgrade of Plague Wind - destroying more things
is always better, right? Of course, you don't
always need to destroy planeswalkers because not
everybody plays them, especially in less
competitive environments. At the same time,
there are other settings where you may find
yourself facing three other players, each of
whom has a planeswalker, and this is a solid
option to fall back on in such circumstances.
Your only other likely play in such a situation
is Planar Cleansing, and not everybody wants to
play white all the time.
Today's card of the day is In Garruk's Wake
which is a nine mana Black sorcery that destroys
all creatures and planeswalkers you don't
control. This is an extremely powerful
effect at a perhaps equally extreme mana cost.
It takes acceleration, a very slow setting, or
probably both to even consider including this in
a deck. Overall this is unlikely to see
any competitive play, but in Multiplayer it is a
card that will come very close to ending the
game by itself or at least knock one or more
opponents out of contention if you are in a
position to capitalize on it.
In Limited this is one of the few times that the
mana cost is actually too high for the format as
nine mana is going to be over half of the mana
in your deck for most builds. It is very
powerful as it ends stalemates immediately and
will win many games when played, but it is
terrible in the opening hand or the multiple
turns of waiting for enough mana to cast it.
A high mana deck could curve into this, yet the
compromise to the early game and deck
flexibility is likely not worth it which makes
this a poor first pick in Booster. For
Sealed the pool has to be rough to make
including this seem reasonable as the deck will
need excess mana and fewer options to run at
lower mana costs.
Yesterday, I mentioned that some cards are
easy to review by just looking at them, and some
you have to play with to get a better feel for
them. This is the first type of card. What it
does is very straightforward - it wipes the
opponents' boards of creatures and planeswalkers,
leaving them open for all of your creatures to
come through. Most of the time, if you have very
many creatures out at all, this is game over if
you're playing a 1 on 1 game. It's one of the
most powerful effects in the game - but you have
to pay for it.
Nine mana is almost certainly too expensive
for a constructed deck. Casual players will love
this card, as games go on much longer. Nine mana
is even too much for most limited decks unless
you were very fortunate with mana accelerators.
Multiplayer games might get up to nine, and but
it's a little harder to take out multiple
opponents before they build back up their board.
