Hawk wrote: ↑3 years ago
Silversmote Ghoul - obviously this is worse than Bloodghast and Gravecrawler - but in a vampire/zombie tribal deck with any amount of lifegain (think Varina), how much worse is it?
A 3/1 body is awful, but it can block unlike the two gold standards. It has its own sac effect too, although you'll likely want to pitch it to Skullclamp or an altar. It can't come back multiple times a turn, but realistically 'ghast wasn't coming back more than once a turn terribly often either.
I think it's definitely going to find its way into Mirri the Cursed vampire tribal, and is questionable but worth testing for Varina, Lich Queen Zombie tribal. I think it'd also be worth a look in most lifegain-heavy decks (Ayli, Eternal Pilgrim for instance), but it won't be the aristocrat staple that 'ghast and 'crawler are. Good card though, especially at uncommon.
I'm a big fan of durdley card advantage engines, sacrifice synergies, and recursion, so I definitely like the card. I don't think that the card is necessarily better or worse than Bloodghast and Gravecrawler, just different. It is likely more niche, since not every deck has access to the lifegain necessary to support it... but if you do, then its ability to come back every turn for free is pretty good. Meanwhile, while you may be using it as sac fodder, its ability to cash itself in for a card is also very respectable. I wouldn't say that the card is strong enough to build a deck around.... but if I'm already running a lifegain deck (especially one with sacrifice synergies), I'd definitely consider it.
I'll call out that giving it lifelink is sufficient to recur it, which is a cute interaction.
As for other stuff....
Griffin Aerie and
Speaker of the Heavens are both very respectable token producers, assuming you can enable them.
Angelic Accord is sort of difficult to turn on, but it's hard for me to say how much of a difference there is between gaining 3 life and 4.
Animal Sanctuary is adorable.
Re: power creep - something I'm happy about for M21 is that most of the power creep appears to be focused on niche cards which either don't have a lot of redundancy, or are just at too low of a power level to see play. As a result, it's helping diversify the format, by making those niche strategies and cards more playable, and generally helping decks at lower levels of power that needed help. These cards also generally require some amount of synergy to function, which means you can't just throw them into any deck. Contrast with a card like
Arcane Signet or
Fierce Guardianship, which is generic enough to just slot into any deck.
In other words: I'm happy that they're power creeping build-arounds, and not staples.
Re:
Time Stop effects... they're certainly very powerful. Ending the turn can function as a
Time Walk,
Fog,
Silence,
Counterspell, or
Stifle. The primary problem with them is that at 6 mana, you're paying a pretty substantial premium. And while having additional flexibility is great, I would say that you're not gaining enough to justify running over a cheaper spell most of the time. You also lose some flexibility, since it can't be used proactively to force your spells through - if you cast some big spell and an opponent attempts to counter, ending the turn will also exile your own spell. Still, it's a very difficult effect to play around, and a blowout pretty much any time it shows up.