Pointed Discussion

Hello Baneslayer Angel

I like the "opponent lose life and you gain that much life" ability. =)

This ends vampire mana curves this is the vampire bomb. Drop it, shoot for four gain four. It can't be bolted pathed, or bladed, and it punches you in the face for alot on a flier -oh and it's a vampire itself.

Great synergy with Sanguine Bond and maybe a Tainted Sigil combo.

I like it even more than Sengir Vampire.

This card is like a black Air Elemental with protection from white and on top of that has a Kokusho-etb effect that will at least drain 1 life; in a Vampire tribal 3 or even more most of the time. Devasting in multiplayer games.

Black creatures for early and mid-game normally do not have such a good cost-efficiency relation, but Zendikar's Vampire are like "yeah, whatever" and just ignore that fact.

This card has some great potetial, and currently in Standard will be a good response to Baneslayer Angel.

Vampire decks just got a whole lot sillier. In Zendikar limited, by the time this bad girl comes out, you'll have at least four other vampires out. I can imagine it going a little something like this:

Turn 1: Swamp, Guul Draz Vampire or Vampire Lacerator
Turn 2: Swamp, Bloodghast or Vampire Hexmage or two more Guul Draz Vamps.
Turn 3: Swamp, Vampire Nighthawk
Turn 4: Swamp, perhaps another Bloodghast or two, or maybe two Hexmages
Turn 5: Swamp, Malakir Bloodwitch. Yeah, you lose seven, I gain seven.

Plus, with her protection from white, she'll be able to survive that pesky Undead Slayer, that annoying Path to Exile, or, as Mode pointed out, that uberly-powerful Baneslayer Angel. She's certainly a must for any mono-black Vampire deck. The only reason she is priced as low as she is is because she's in an intro pack already, which is a REALLY good deal. Buy a playset of these! You shan't be disappointed!

Totally agree with Salostot, this is Baneslayer Angel's nemesis in Standard. I think this card could be one of the "sleeper rares" in the set

Best Vampire in Zendikar.

I bought ten Zendikar packs and managed to pull two of these.
So I bought the vampire intro deck and to get some more synergy.
The booster in the intro pack had one of these.
That is 4 pulled already.
Awesome vampire deck here I come.

Best black card in Zendikar.

Lol i still think that Baneslayer is better than malakir BloodWitch
Baneslayer is 5 cost for 5/5 w/ protection from dragon and demons so it can stand up to some tougher flyers

Malakir is good but it cant stand up to some dragons and flyers

btw the ability is good =)

XxPainxX, they're not saying its better than baneslayer, they're just saying that this is going to have a sort of white knight-black knight relationship with it.

This is the finisher for vampires. Drain them to put them into single digits and swing in with your huge gul draz vamps and hasty bloodghasts. Or just drain them to death and not need to attack.

So does that mean, that in a multiplayer, you gain the total life lost, or just the base from each player? For instance in a four player with two Vampires under your control (including Malakir Bloodwitch), they each lose two life and you gain six?

Similar to a Kokusho, except this one has protection from all the white removal.

I always manage to get this out at just the right time. The most life I've ever gained out of it in one play, however, is about 5 health (including her as a vampire herself). Never disappointed to draw her, as my friend splashes white in almost all of his decks :P

ahhhh. this right here is my atomic bomb. anti-path, anti-doom blade. black creatures with pro white are sick. this makes baneslayer look bad. baneslayer would have being better if it said pro red and black. This queen is a finisher among vampires and with her friend Vampire Noctornus what else can i say.

great with Kalitas in mid-game... he brings out a ton of vampires then bloodwitch steals life for all of them. BOOM, someone just died

gotta love this card! for five drop isn't bad because of the effect when it comes to play and also it has protection from white! which is so yummy :)

4.0

Baneslayer Angel: herp derp lol wat do idk lol die.

Great design, flavor, and everything I like to see in a card. 5/5.

nice card, i specially like the protection from white part, even more than the draining or flying.

EAT THAT PATH TO EXILE.

(i get that a lot in the fnm)

i think its nice that they put this in the zendikar vamp intropack.

Does it include herself when counting the "number of vampires you control"?

"It can't be bolted pathed, or bladed" But now it falls to flame slash. Still my 2nd fav vampire, after Drana.

Can't Doom Blade it, can't Path to Exile it, and as long as you aren't going to counter her then Unsummoning her is just doing me a favor

...why did they hand out Foil bloodwitches in a theme deck?

love this card. so awesome. 5/5

so i picked up a couple zendikar boosters the other day and in one of those boosters i pulled not one but TWO of these sweet lil darlins (one in a beautiful foil that makes the blood shine so nice) from the same booster! i just love having an answer to baneslayer that is an actual creature. 5/5 imo

Looks like Ihsan's Shade +++ to me.
cheaper, tribal, cipt drain, flying. -1/-1. Dies to the new and great Flame Slash, but like Shade shrugs of single Lightning Bolts and white and most black removal.

hmm, the big question is does her ability count herself because it states as she enters the battlefield not when shes cast... help please....?

Yes, she absolutely counts herself as a vampire that you control when you play her. The moment she resolves, she's under your control, then her ability activates, so when she's cast, you at least get one point of lifelink.

@ lestat-

Turns out it can be double bolted.

Or Go for the Throated. Of course, as if that matters. Malakir Bloodwitch is very powerful. It swings games.

Could be interesting with the Bloodlord of Vaasgoth.

Erik's Random card 7/21/2011
At first Maro put a broken enchantment here. He knew it was powerful and cost it 4BBB, but it needed more work, and development kicked it out (maybe one day development will fix the card).

So he made a vampire:

Torturous Vampire
3BB
Flying
B, Sacrifice a creature: Put a +1/+1 counter on each vampire you control.
4/4

Henry Stern, the set lead at the time, liked it, but wanted it to be 4 mana. He changed it to

Torturous Vampire
2BB
Flying
B, Sacrifice a creature: Put a +1/+1 counter on each vampire you control.
3/3

Later Aaron Forsythe was leading the set. He wanted it to be 4/4 flying, and made:

Torturous Vampire
3BB
Flying
An additional ability to be named later.
4/4

OK he didn't really type that, but that was where we were. His first try at an ability was:

B, Sacrifice a creature: Target opponent loses 2 life and you gain 2 life.

This was too much of a "kill this or lose" type of card, and wasn't well loved. What we needed was a vampire "count me" card. So we then had:

Guul Draz Bloodwitch
3BB
Flying
When CARDNAME enters the battlefield, target player loses life equal to the number of Vampires you control and you gain that much life.
4/4

We knew we were on the right track, but it wasn't quite right. Along comes the hero of this story, Steve Warner. Steve spends time on other games in addition to Magic, so he is less frequently on a Magic development team. However he builds a lot of FFL decks, and he liked this card. His multiverse comment was very useful:

sw 1/22: I really wish we could do something cool with this, like Pro White to your vampires or something, I like drain but we have a ton already in this set.

Ah hah! Vampires were pretty weak to white, and part of that was Path to Exile. We kept the drain, but added Protection from White. Thanks Steve!

If only this had five power, then we would have an answer to Baneslayer Angel

behold! the only good vampire over 4 mana! yes, she's THAT good.

Of course it's fantastic in a vamp deck - but even outside of vampires, it can have its uses. It's still a 4/4 flier which isn't terrible on its own. And it has protection from white - which is quite relevant, given that white has some strong targetted removal, especially in casual circles (I can't remember the last Wx deck I saw in my area that didn't have at least a playset of O-Ring, if not better).

However, the real boon of the card is the drain - though that much should be obvious. Combined with either blue or artifacts, the card provides great synergy with itself.

Blue has a plethora of clone style effects - Clone itself, Phantasmal Image, Phyrexian Metamorph and a bunch of others. The major one is, of course, Rite of Replication - at 9 mana it is expensive, but forms a 2-card super-punch with Malakir Bloodwitch, causing a 30 drain if not interfered with. Works even better in multiplayer, where even if some player does have over 30 life, you'll end up getting so much life that you'll be hard to touch.

Artifacts are a bit more limited, but off the top of my head you have Soul Foundry as your star, Mimic Vat that can give you weaker triggers (and can be used EoT then on your turn for a slight boost in the drain power), and Minion Reflector to get bonus drainage when you initially land the Bloodwitch.

All in all, a pretty solid performer all around, but best in semi-combo and vamp decks.

This is a 4/4 flying in Black for only five mana?!

Wow! That already should be nifty and eye-catching if you pay attention.

Not all colors are created equal in all things. THOUGH we ask much out of our creatures these days, and...we've come a little bit further since M10 and Zendikar were new and fancy...but still--

Blue and Black historically don't get good mana deals on P/T. the difference is that Black, and especially Vampires within Black, often have top-end cards that finish well (Grave Titan being the 'greenest'/Hulkiest of the lot.), whereas Blue has never really had its creatures be the focus of win conditions, except for their abilities.

I don't know why Merfolk are the exception other than "after we let Zombies be good, every color had a nice fast tribe and it would have been sad if no Timmy ever learned to play decks, ever."

But even though Merfolk and Zombies blur the lines a lot, REALLY, Blue and Black just don't get P/T as nice as Zoo. This is like, way better than Serra Angel! This card seriously needs to be a 5/5

@XxpainxX
Downrated for dumb comment and dumber name.

Hey, it's ol' period hands! I love youuuuu~<3
Also, I love how the first words of Erik Lauer's post are "At first Maro put a broken enchantment here" - oh, Maro!