I actually think it's kind of cool that it's Liliana
who ends up saving the day in this set. Black
may be all about self-advancement, but that is
not the same thing as stabbing people in the
back for no reason or refusing to play with
others every single time. After all, how far can
you advance if you're dead? The thing I like
best about this card is almost - almost, mind
you - not the promise of Cabal Coffers-fueled
insanity, but rather the fact that a Zombie
tribal deck can cast it with X equal to zero and
use it as some sort of crazy black version
of Goblin War Strike. The fact that it's also a
token producer if such a deck has enough mana
means that it can choose to devote less space to
narrower spells like Grasp of Darkness, and that
starts a tantalizing cascade of deckbuilding
decisions.
Don’t be fooled by the casting cost; Dark
Salvation is better than it looks, and it’s
probably going to be as good as the best Zombie
deck in the format.
As a token generator, Dark Salvation is…not
great. You’re paying 3 mana for 1 Zombie, 5 mana
for 2, and so on. It is an excellent late-game
mana sink, when you can overwhelm the board and
not face any repercussions. But black has better
token generators, and it also has better Zombie
generators.
Dark Salvation’s true flexibility, though, is
that it’s also a kill spell. If you have a lot
of Zombies already, you can use this as a
one-mana kill spell. And even if you don’t have
enough Zombies, that’s what the Zombie
production part of this spell can be for. It’s
both token generation and a kill spell in one
card; being a sorcery makes it slightly worse,
but it’s still pretty legit.
If you have a Zombie deck, put this in there.
You might be surprised by how well it works.
