If Catacomb Sifter from Monday was a good way to
take advantage of creatures dying in droves,
Grim Haruspex is a stellar one. The threat of
drawing more cards than Opportunity will tempt
people to not cast End Hostilities at all, and I
do like the morph-enabled mind games too (such
mind games are much better now than in
Onslaught, because there are many likely
candidates compared to 2001's Exalted Angel and
little else). End Hostilities is still probably
the right play, if only because the Haruspex is
often going to be telegraphing a deck that
itself has control over such death triggers, but
if you're the one playing this card, it means
you win either way. That's the hallmark of a
very good Magic card.
I read this thing over and over and wonder....
Why the hell does this thing have Morph? Why did
Khans block even have mor- Okay, I'm getting off
topic. Anyway, drawing cards every time one of
your creatures dies is something that goes in
Meren EDH.
The card draw can be incredibly powerful, if
it's allowed to trigger multiple times. In
practice, any creature with this ability is
always the first to die thanks to having such a
big target on its back. Morph helps with that to
a degree-- you can plan a combat step with
several trades, then unmorph the Haruspex to
cash in. The problem? Morph cards also tend to
have fairly large targets on their backs, simply
because your opponent will always be terrified
of what it might be. That seven-card cash-in
you're dreaming of might never happen, unless
you're sacrificing your own creatures for it.
