This one bears the watermark of the Sultai clan,
who are green, black, and blue. It also bears a
new recurring mechanic: Delve! Are the Sultai
clan all about dumping dead cards into their
graveyard and feeding it to monstrosities like
this? Well, they're green, black, and blue. You
tell me!
Nine mana would be far too expensive for a 4/5
flyer with an activated ability, but of course,
they don't expect you to pay nine mana for it.
You could get this out as early as Turn Three if
you're willing to Tome Scour yourself to do it,
and Turn Two if you're lucky enough to be going
second and your opponent hits you with Glimpse
the Unthinkable on their Turn Two. The tension
is that the Fiend's activated ability also
consumes cards in your yard. If you force the
Fiend out too early, it's "just" a 4/5 flyer. If
you wait until you've fattened your graveyard,
or just choose to spend more mana on it, you've
got plenty of ammunition to kill your opponent's
creatures with -X/-X effects. The question is,
are you in a game state where you need
repeatable creature kill or a big flying Demon?
If you'd told me that there was going to be a
huge flying demon with delve in Khans of Tarkir,
I would have gotten excited because I thought
you were talking about Tombstalker from Future
Sight. Still, this card is a pretty interesting
one, if only because the delve keyword (and its
imitation in the activated ability) manages to
not actually reduce the associated costs by all
that much. I could actually see you holding him
until the very late game so as to be able to use
his tap ability to kill everything on the other
side of the table - risky in itself because nine
mana is pretty outlandish anywhere outside of
Rise of the Eldrazi or Elvish Piper.dec, but
hard to come back from for anyone on the
receiving end.
Today's card of the day is Necropolis Fiend
which is a seven mana Black
4/5 with Flying that can have the mana cost
lowered by one colorless for each card you exile
from your graveyard. Also, it can be
tapped for X mana and X exiled cards to give
target creature -X/-X until end of turn. A
4/5 with evasion as a possible two mana play is
very strong and could be a nice addition to a
self-mill deck if the cards aren't needed for
other effects. Without support it enters
play later in the game where more mana would be
available, which reduces the impact noticeably.
Overall the somewhat odd timing issues combined
with the support opposing nature will keep this
from just being added to existing decks, but it
may see play in a more specialized build with
this as the focus.
In Limited this is a great creature to have in
the midgame as a 4/5 evasive with a somewhat
flexible casting cost. The removal can be
useful, though having enough cards after casting
this can be situational. A very reasonable
first pick in Booster and while it is not
self-sufficient enough to force Black in Sealed
it is an easy inclusion when already running the
color.
The delve cards are a bit tricky to evaluate. I
can't help but see that immense 9 mana casting
cost in the corner. With the delve mechanic, it
will almost always been considerably cheaper -
perhaps as little as 2 black mana if you exile 7
cards from your graveyard. A 4/5 flier for 2
sounds amazing, but that's only going to happen
late enough in the game where you've been able
to dump 7 cards in the graveyard. A very
dedicated delve deck could probably do that
fairly quickly, but is it worth it?
Further, the Fiend's special ability costs you
more cards in the graveyard. Knocking out
another creature is no joke, but it is quite an
investment of resources to tap your big flier,
exile stuff from your 'yard, and pay X mana.
In the end, I think it's a quite solid card, but
I don't know that it's going to break any
formats. He's possibly very good in draft, but
making him worthwhile in a constructed deck it
going to be a little trickier. If you don't have
much (or anything) in your graveyard, you have
nothing but a grossly over-costed creature.
