I forget the current ruling on legends with
off-color activated abilities and whether or not
they qualify to be Commanders, but any deck
looking to make good use of Delve will want to
run this card.Not only is he himself a decent
Delve card as a potential 4/5 for B, but his
activated ability keeps your graveyard full of
fuel while simultaneously giving you a chance to
reclaim some of the cards in your graveyard.
Sadly, you don't get to pick what you get back,
but typically any card is better than nothing.
After all, you put it in your deck in the first
place, right? If you didn't want to get it back,
you should have Delved it away.
I'm not sure who this guy is supposed to be in
relation to the rest of Tarkir, much less why he
has delve. I'm even less sure what the original
intention with his ability was - it seems to
require an awful lot of fiddling to get the card
you actually want from your graveyard. The delve
ability helps, of course, but the fact that he
adds things your opponent can choose from and
potentially increases their chance of selecting
something relatively innocuous is going to turn
a lot of people off. On the other hand, I may be
being too negative - ideally, any nonland card
in your deck would do something relevant to your
deck's game plan, right? We'll probably have to
wait and see how he turns out.
Today's card of the day is Tasigur, the Golden
Fang which is a six mana Black 4/5 Legendary
with Delve and for four mana with two of that
Blue or Green you put the top two cards of your
library into the graveyard then return a
non-land card of an opponent's choice from the
graveyard to your hand. This is a card
where Delve is a very solid benefit to get the
most out of the activated ability as it limites
the opponent's choices. Even supported
with Delve other effects may be needed to
maximize each activation, so it takes a fairly
dedicated deck to reach that level if that is
the goal. The other option is to focus on
the self-milling and card advantage, though with
the added choices for an opponent it is only
efficient in the long run. Overall this is
a card with a great deal of potential that will
see some play in current formats, as a possible
one mana 4/5 and for the four mana reusable card
advantage.
In Limited this is a potential low cost 4/5 at
worst and possible card
advantage at best which makes for a fairly easy
first pick in Booster.
The single Black in the casting cost can allow
this to be splashed into Green or Blue decks
with minimal dedication to the color and the
effects make it well worth considering, provided
there is not an excess of Delve in the pool
fighting for the same graveyard resource.
I'm a little on the fence about this guy. First,
for a 4/5, he's a pretty reasonably costed guy.
If you utelize the delve mechanic well, he can
come out pretty cheap. But without any evasion,
pump ability, or immediately relevant special
ability, he's nothing to get too excited about.
The ability he does have isn't quite as good as
it first looks. First, you have to pay 4 mana to
mill yourself for 2. Second, the card you get
back is of your opponent's choice. Any good
Sultai deck is going to have a fair number of
cards in the graveyard, so the opponent will
gladly choose the least offensive card to them.
Then, you still have to cast the other card, but
you've just spent 4 mana getting it, so you're
probably waiting another turn to do this. You
might have things work out well sometimes where
you can selectively delve away cards, increasing
the chance you can get the card back you want,
but even that's leaving room for chance. In the
end, do you really have nothing better to do
with 4 mana?
In limited, however, this becomes much better.
The big body is more relevant, and any kind of
card recursion is much more valuable. Don't
hesitate to pick him first.
