Of all the keywords to put on a 6/6, deathtouch
is one of the least useful. Six damage is
already going to kill just about anything
anyway, but at least now it combos that much
better with effects that grant trample.
The real draw here, of course, is that for five
mana you can get back three dead creatures,
ensuring solid card advantage in the late game.
The best part is that you get to do this at
least once EVEN IF the Soul dies before your
next untap step, and if it lives, you can do it
every turn until you run out of dead creatures
or hit your maximum hand size. There are few
game states that it's harder to come back from
than "my opponent's creatures won't stay dead",
as you're burning resources to cope with an army
that just rebuilds anything you tear down.
Today's card of the day is Soul of Innistrad
which is a six mana Black
6/6 with Deathtouch and for five mana can return
up to three target creatures from your graveyard
to hand and for five mana can be exiled from the
graveyard for the same effect. This is a
decent top of the mana curve choice for a
mono-Black sacrifice build that is more oriented
towards control than speed. While it
nets card advantage with the choice of creatures
returned there is a notable investment in mana
to play this, or discard it, then use the effect
and finally cast the returned creatures.
Even with the lower speed it is quite playable
in current formats and adds quite a bit of late
game staying power.
In a Limited format this is an excellent reason
to run Black in Sealed or Booster that can
utterly change the game state by refilling your
hand with the creatures lost in earlier turns.
As it is easily managed even if Black is the
secondary color and is also a solid creature in
addition to the effects the value is quite high
in the format.
A 6/6 Deathtouch for 6 is perfectly reasonable
before anything else. It probably wouldn't get
played just for that, but because it ISN'T just
that, we have some real potential here.
For 5 mana, you can bring back three creatures.
How often do you have 3 creatures in your
graveyard worth bringing back? This greatly
varies between decks, but it's not hard to have
a lot of creatures end up in your graveyard.
Paying 5 mana to essentially draw three good
creatures is a pretty nice investment. Doing
this just once could give you an almost
insurmountable card advantage. The fact that he
can do this even from the grave himself is quite
useful.
The problem is that it's tough to know what type
of deck wants this. Maybe you have a control
deck with lots of cheap utility creatures so you
can reuse them to control your opponent's board
while attacking with the Soul? It's an idea
worth considering. Right now, however, I'm still
a little unsure how useful he's going to be in
most situations.
In limited, however, they don't get much more "bomby"
than this. A 6/6 with deathtouch is more than
most decks can handle. And since limited is all
about creatures, bringing back three (or more,
with multiple activations) threats that they
thought they had gotten rid of can be completely
backbreaking to an opponent.
