This card's wording is rather curious to me.
After all the time it took us to get the fight
ability word, the thing that jumps out is that
it's not used here in favor of something that
has no real name. I understand that it's here to
make the Abzan clan's high average toughness
useful, and that it also combines well with
Doran and his friends, and that it turns Tower
Defense into some kind of crazy creature-kill
spell. It is kind of funny, though. Competitive
decks will probably prefer things that just say
"destroy", but there's no reason you shouldn't
combine this card with deathtouch, lifelink, or
Cowardice-style effects to do even more
interesting things.
Today's card of the day is Grim Contest which
is a three mana Black and Green instant that has
a target creature you control and target
creature an opponent controls deal damage to
each other equal to their toughness. This
is similar to the Fight mechanic, but with
toughness instead of power and works best with a
very different selection of creatures. It
requires a specific board state or manipulation
of it and puts some risk on your own creature,
if you have one, which is a noticeable drawback.
Overall this is a situational removal option for
Black/Green, but the Black half of that can
bring many other options to the table and this
probably shouldn't see much play in any format.
In Limited this is worth including in Sealed if
already running Black/Green as it is removal,
situational though it may be, and any removal is
at a premium in the format. It is not
quite worth splashing as it is usually a poor
topdeck and can often be dead weight in hand or
trading two of your cards for one opposing if
the field is balanced.
For Booster it depends on your earlier picks, so
it can be passed safely unless drafting into
Black/Green already where it is a reasonable
middle of the pack pick even if it isn't very
reliable.
Sigh…and we had been doing so well with good
cards to review this week. Grim Contest is a
decent removal spell in limited, because any
removal is good when your choices are limited,
but it’s way too situational to be good anywhere
else. Unless you’re playing some sort of crazy
high toughness creature deck, do yourself a
favor and find a more reliable kill spell.
