For many years, Wizards of the Coast has held
that Demonic Tutor's low cost, and the way this
cost allowed you to tutor for something
super-powerful and play it in the same turn, was
what made it so dangerous. This was why the
updated variants on the effect tended to cost at
least four mana. In terms of that design
philosophy, I'm not sure what this card says
exactly. It does require more setup for you to
have a chance of playing the card the same turn
you search for it, but that's probably not too
hard in the right sort of combo deck. And when
there's no more mana burn, tutoring for your
finisher with the express intention of not
playing it until next turn isn't even a
disadvantage.
Today's card of the day is Dark Petition which
is a five mana Black sorcery with an easily met
Spell Mastery condition that makes this Demonic
Tutor at two mana as it gives the three mana to
play the newly added card. This will
absolutely be a staple of Black decks going
forward, both competitively and casually as it
really has no drawback having nearly all of the
power of one of the best Black cards ever
printed. The Dark Ritual from the Spell
Mastery should almost always activate as by that
point in the game there should be two removal
spells in graveyard at the very least.
In Limited this is a game winner that gets
whatever you need to gain the advantage at the
time of it being drawn, which makes for an
excellent topdeck second only to drawing the
card you use it to search for. An easy
first pick in Booster and automatic inclusion
when running Black in Sealed. If the Black
pool is weak though this offers very little and
not enough to splash the color as it is purely
support for other cards.
Cool. A demonic tutor variant that acts just
like demonic tutor mid/late-game. I like it.
It's not perfect but it does a far superior job
of the old diabolic tutor as the game goes on.
