Pointed Discussion

One word. Broken.

Very sick. An automatic one-sided Wrath, plus card advantage? 8 mana is steep but in Highlander or EDH, it's easily obtainable.

Not broken, but card&tempo advantage in the realm of Cruel Ultimatum for black only.

Not broken, just very good.
Heres how you tell if a card is broken. Read what it does, go look at Baneslayer again, come back, then decide.

Baneslayer is not broken. It's just very, very good, but it's going to drop in price once it rotates out of standard. Broken would be something like tarmogoyf or force of will, or banned/restricted cards like tolarian academy.

In general, anything that costs a lot of mana (especially 8) is not going to be broken. Exceptions would be cards that instantly win you the game once it's played regardless of the situation, like yawgmoth's bargain or mind's desire. This will more or less instantly win you the game, but only if your opponent is running lots of creatures. Most legacy and vintage decks don't even run many creatures.

However, I can easily expect this to be a house in casual or longer games like EDH.

This is a good candidate for a functional reprint under a more appropriate name. Even as it is, I'll bet a good number of EDH fans have dropped $50 or more on one.

It's Decree of Pain but slightly different.

...and that's another card to the list of "Things that can kill Progenitus".

Anyone who is put off by the supposedly high mana cost should consider:

1) Wrath of God / Damnation are both 4 mana CMC

2) This is one sided board wipe: +2 CMC

3) Draw cards for each creature destroyed: +2 CMC

It is not broken with its high mana cost and you probably wouldn't want to waste it on just a big indestructible fattie (unless its something like Blightsteel Colossus). This card is well costed considering the number of good things it does for you

A functional reprint that prevents regeneration would probably see some play in EDH and casual and maybe in some constructed decks

But remember: The most you need to use this is when you'll be decking yourself with this.

I challenge every Magic player to say that it's not worth it mana cost.

WHAT! OMG. This is what "random card" leads me to discover.

This has GOT to be the best two-player black board wipe available! AND it's one sided AND gives you huge card advantage!!!! The card advantage from this plus the one-sided board wipe is most likely going to win you the game. If you frag even 3 creatures with this, the advantage is huge.

Generally, drawing large amounts of cards is a good thing, unless you are milling yourself to death, or being milled yourself!

Plague Wind is better in multiplayer as a board wipe, since it kills *all* your opponents' creatures. Generally, I stick to two player. Multiplayer is just too slow for me. And I *hate it* when everybody gangs up on me (mostly because they all know I run stuff like this!)

5/5 excellent black destruction

Not that all those numbers did Cao Cao much good at Chi Bi...(q.v. the P3K version of Blaze)

This is basically 'you win the game' for 6bb...recovering from a well-placed one of these is extremely difficult. Too bad this is $130 or it'd be in my monoblack edh. (Particularly nice in-set synergy with xiahou)

This is one of the most powerful "Wrath You" effects there is. While they can be regenerated unlike Plague Wind, the fact that you draw cards off of every kill makes it sad that this one never made it to the main MtG game.