I enjoyed the fact that this card is a
reference, in broad concept, to Soul of the
Harvest from Avacyn Restored. I also like that
it's a sort of mechanical reference to the
horror stories from which Innistrad draws its
inspiration (is it better to try and act, or
will that make things worse?), and I happen to
think it's a perfect way to balance out the
removal spells that green has sometimes
struggled to overcome. Black decks can have
their Ultimate Prices and other things that look
like they have drawbacks, but the forest always
has something in reserve. Try it with Ishkanah
in that spider tribal deck I mentioned
yesterday!
This creature is basically a rejiggered
combination of Soul of the Harvest and Harvester
of Souls from Avacyn Restored; it draws you
cards, but it cares about toughness and doesn't
care if they're tokens. I don't think this is
quite good enough, though; there are not a lot
of cheap creatures with large bodies that would
make this a rate of return, and relying on your
creatures dying to get a benefit makes it more
of a "lose less" card. That said, it is a 6/6 on
its own, which is decent.
This is simply underwhelming, outside of a
couple corner cases. There are decks that would
love to have this...anything with Treefolk, for
example, but I don't see a home for Ulvenwald
Observer in constructed play.
