A fairly cheap way to unilaterally get everybody
to hate you and take out all their best
creatures. I find it interesting that the
creature with the highest power a player
controls may not in fact be their most important
one. I also would find it very entertaining if
somebody responded to this by pumping the power
of a creature they didn't care about (or
reducing the power of the one they wanted to
keep), which would let them keep the creature
they need to keep, but would cost them a combat
trick. The fact that this card is three colors
doesn't matter as much as you might think, since
it's clearly a late-game play. It's also clearly
a multiplayer bomb, and multiplayer games tend
to be slower and more tolerant of multicolor
mana bases.
Crackling Doom is a good example of the most
standard school of multicolor design: effects
from each color involved in sequence, add mana
cost, bake at 150 degrees for 30 minutes. It's
not always the most interesting, considering how
much it informed the popular Invasion and
Ravnica blocks, but it does usually make for
fairly strong cards. This one, for example,
avoids the traditional weakness of Diabolic
Edict effects by always killing the strongest
creature among a throng, and is also good at
ambushing creature-light decks when they think
they're about to start closing a game out. As
those two scenarios are very common, I expect
Crackling Doom to be adopted by decks of its
colors in Standard at the very least, and
possibly points beyond.
Today's card of the day is Crackling Doom which
is a three mana White, Red, and Black instant
that deals two damage to each opponent and each
opponent sacrifices their creature with the
highest power. One on one doing three mana for
two damage isn't great, though adding in the
forced sacrifice puts this on a level similar to
many Black removal spells. It is in
Multiplayer or Commander that this will be a
real powerhouse and it will be a staple of decks
using the three colors.
In Limited this is difficult to use reliably
early, but later on it is an excellent middle to
late game play that will almost always be a
serious game changer. As removal and a
rare it is worth a first pick in Booster, though
locking in three colors is a notable drawback.
In Sealed having two of the colors as part of
the deck with third splashed is worth it just to
force in the removal, though it of course
depends on the strength of the pool the options
are usually fairly aggressive for Red, Black,
and White.
Getting rid of hexproof creatures,
indestructible creatures or creatures with
protection from your colors has always been a
challenge. There have been a number of effects
over the years that cause an opponent to
sacrifice a creature to get around those
obstacles. The problem is usually that they get
to choose which creature to sacrifice, and if
they have a token or a mana dork, they are
usually more than happy to sacrifice it and
leave the one you really want to get rid of.
Crackling Doom takes a big step in fixing that
shortcoming as it decides for the opponent which
creature they must get rid of. More often than
not, the biggest creature is the one you want
eliminated, so this does the job. Notice, for
multiplayer, that it's ALL opponents. Sweet.
2 damage to each opponent isn't usually a big
deal, but every little bit adds up. It's really
a free bonus after this card's main effect.
