Necrodominance – Modern Horizons 3
Date Reviewed: December 26, 2024
Ratings:
Constructed: 3.63
Casual: 3.5
Limited: 3
Multiplayer: 3.5
Commander [EDH]: 4.5
Ratings are based on a 1 to 5 scale: 1 is bad; 3 is average; 5 is great.
Reviews Below:
David
Fanany
Player
since
1995
This card was #4 on my Top Ten list.
We did review this set recently, but I thought it was worth highlighting again, if only to emphasize to ourselves that even a nerfed version of a broken card can still be very powerful. While it hasn’t cast a shadow over Modern in the same way that Necropotence once did over Extended, it single-handedly lets people play mono-black in notoriously fast and devastating formats (there’s been interest in Legacy too). Its downsides are real and noticeably greater than Necropotence, notably its lack of flexibility of when you can activate it, but at the end of the day, it’s still a single card that lets you repeatedly draw enormous numbers of cards. If there’s ever a tournament-level instant-speed combo in Modern, everyone is going to be talking about this card even more than they are. Until then, it’s almost entirely unrestricted in where you can play it, so I think your course is clear: go out and find that instant-speed combo!
Constructed: 3.5
Casual: 3.5
Limited: 3
Multiplayer: 3.5
Commander: 3.5
This card did not make my Top 10 list, but it was on my short list.
Necrodominance is one of those cards that wound up a bit weaker than I was thinking…still strong, but it definitely did not take off like I was expecting it to. It has settled into a decent home in Commander and Legacy, though less in the latter than I was expecting it might…and it has some fringe Modern play. That didn’t surprise me as much.
Necrodominance is clearly a “fixed” Necropotence, and while it’s still powerful, they definitely gave it a lot of things to weaken it to a reasonable power level. Shrinking your hand size, flat graveyard exile…both of these are major downsides, and while they can be worked around, they definitely are not trivial. Still, the highs of this card are scary: ensuring you have a full hand every turn is formidable enough, and it’s always been part of why the original card was so infamous. In general, it feels like Necrodominance has shone brightest in formats that demand a deck go from zero to lethal as quickly as possible…which is mostly the more competitive Commander settings. Legacy’s pressure release valves keep this in check a bit, and Vintage would much rather play the original, even if this is unrestricted. Still, a bad Necropotence can still be good, and while this isn’t absolutely busted, it still does what you want it to do.
Constructed: 3.75
Casual: 3.5
Limited: 3
Multiplayer: 3.5
Commander [EDH]: 4.5
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