Overlord of the Boilerbilges – Duskmourn
Date Reviewed: September 16, 2024
Ratings:
Constructed: 4.25
Casual: 5.00
Limited: 4.88
Multiplayer: 4.00
Commander [EDH]: 4.13
Ratings are based on a 1 to 5 scale. 1 is bad. 3 is average. 5 is great.
Reviews Below:
There is quite a lot going on with Overlord of the Boilerbilges, not least the impending keyword – it’s best thought of as a variation of suspend. The card remains in play but it’s not a creature until the last time counter is removed, so much like Time Spiral‘s most famous mechanic, your opponent knows what’s coming and how long they have to decide what to do about it. That concept works really, really well for a horror-themed set, so much that it makes you wonder why it took them so long to make that connection. In fact, it works really well in a mechanical sense on a large creature like this, again to the point that it’s a little surprising we’re getting it now. The gods of Theros and their devotion-related mechanic are a similar concept, making conditions where your opponent can’t deal with them using conventional creature-based cards, especially not before they do something else. But in the case of impending, all you have to do is wait, which makes it ideal for anyone who wants to just put things on the table and deal damage. And Overlord of the Boilerbilges recalls Inferno Titan in terms of its damage output: you trade the ability to clear swarms of smaller creatures for a trigger that can one-shot a lot of creatures in the one- to four-mana range, and even some strong planeswalkers. It’s obviously a good defensive card, but I wouldn’t skip over it in more aggressive decks either. While four mana is often the top of the curve, its damage ability targets anything and it’s some insurance in case the worst happens against control decks.
Constructed: 4
Casual: 5
Limited: 5
Multiplayer: 4
Commander [EDH]: 4
After the cute Bloomburrow, things are going to get very…less cute for Duskmourn, which appears to be suffused with a heavy dose of contemporary horror and just plain scary things. Impending is a good way to capture that mounting dread, a sort of riff on suspend that lets something hit play early and sit there menacingly, usually with a comes-into-play trigger and usually pairing very well with blink effects.
Overlord of the Boilerbilges is all about its effect: four damage to any target when it enters or attacks. While the body alone is not going to win any awards, throwing around four free damage with each attack is going to add up very quickly, and this also is where impending makes things interesting. It’s only a two-mana discount off of the regular price (and it has to wait for four turns), but four damage on turn 4 is pretty timely in terms of stopping threats, and the wording means that, if you wait until the time counters run out, it can immediately start attacking. It’s also not going to eat creature removal for those four turns, though enchantment removal *which isn’t as common) will still undo it.
A card like this one reads a lot more innocently than it plays, and the fact that you can keep throwing four damage around each turn is plenty scary. It also makes for a suitable target for cheating and/or reanimation; if you bring this in with haste, that’s potentially 13 damage in the blink of an eye, and that’s pretty fun. This does a lot of damage quickly, and while it might not be the flashiest execution, it certainly is scary.
Constructed: 4.5
Casual: 5
Limited: 4.75
Multiplayer: 4
Commander [EDH]: 4.25
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