Pointed Discussion

If I don't sacrifice any creature then Oni Possession is thrown to the graveyard alone or with the creature it possess? and what does "Enchanted creature is a Demon Spirit" means? I'm new, I've only played MTG on the Xbox and I'm loving it.

This is one of the most brutal cards ever, in terms of art. Just intensely violent, and fits the card perfectly.

Oh, and Juparave, you must obey the card, otherwise it would have said "At the beginning of your upkeep, you MAY sacrifice a creature." So yes, you would have to sacrifice the enchanted creature if you had no creatures left.

The way to work this card, though, is with creatures with unearth abilities, like Viscera Dragger's. You unearth it, then enchant it with Oni Possession to give the resurrected creature extra strength.

Either that, or use it with a creature who has an ability activated when it is put into the graveyard. A Puppeteer Clique can strike for extra damage, then once sacrificed return to the battlefield and resurrect a creature from your opponents battlefield under your control!

The "Enchanted creature is a Demon Spirit" part changes the creature type of the enchanted creature.

Good stuff, this. You know, in two headed giant, you can enchant your teammate's stuff at no cost :P

If you attach this to your opponent's creature, you still have to sacrifice a creature: read the text of Recumbent Bliss. I'm confused, then why is this any good?

@Baconradar

The main aspect of Oni Possession is the fact it adds a sacrifice mechanism to your deck. Run it with Breeding Pit or any other token generator (Reassembling Skeleton works fine too), alongside Mortician Beetle and Butcher of Malakir. Now every turn, you sack a creature (preferrably a token), put a +1/+1 counter on Mortician Beetle, have your opponent sacrifice another creature though Butcher of Malakir, and you put another +1/+1 counter onto Mortician Beetle. At this stage you've lost nothing, your opponent's lost a creature, and Mortician Beetle just got +2/+2 on your upkeep alone. The fact that Oni Possession gives +3/+3; trample; demon spirit is simply icing on the cake. You don't understand this card at all; sacrifice isn't a weakness.

For all intents and purposes, just play Fallen Ideal.

@ Baconradar: By your logic, no aura is ever good.

A playset of Reassembling Skeleton and Mortician Beetle make this very, very playable. The point of cards like this is obviously to fuel sacrifice decks... so trying to make it work any other way is just plain stupid.

Fallen Ideal is a great card, but giving trample and +3/+3 upkeep still seems very useful to me. Especially for a very payable 3CC.

Pretty funny that most MTG players still don't fully understand how the benefits of sacrifice can so heavily outweigh the drawbacks.

Wizards totally missed a chance to make this a fair and interesting card: '...has trample and "at the beginning of your upkeep, sacrifice a creature" '.
Then it could double as high-stakes removal.
As it is, it's just the (admittedly several years newer) Demonic Appetite, plus trample for 2 more mana.

Hmm, DacenOctavio's Donate idea from the Demonic Appetite discussion page WOULD actually work here! Use Puca's Mischief or Confusion in the Ranks...

Its okay.

What? Why does this have a 3+ rating? This card is basically terrible. The drawback is huge and it's an aura which invites 2 for 1s anyway.

What do you do when they pacify your creature? You sac him and lose both cards for 1. Same if they kill him, same if they can in any way stall or block him. Bad bad card.

To those saying I don't understand how sacrifice is a good thing - you are wrong. I understand full well how a good sacrifice outlet (low or no cost, instant speed) is a powerful part of an engine. This card isn't even a good sacrifice outlet. It happens only once on your turn, at a time you can't control and is very open to removal.

So if you're playing it as a sacrifice outlet, why aren't you playing any one of the many, many better sacrifice outlets?

If you playing it as a buff, why not play with a buff that doesn't have a big drawback.

A deck that wants exactly both those things is pretty niche and even there the card is only mediocre at both - it's a poor sacrifice outlet and it's only a single +3+3 and trample (plus the cost of the stuff you're sacrificing) for three mana if you're after the buff.

I would like to point out that 'every' Magic card is 'broken' if you know how to use it/have the right deck for it. Visions of Beyond is TECHNICALLY Ancestral Recall (!), and not even that hard to enable (Jace, Memory Adept or any of a myriad of Innistrad cards, and that's just what's NEW. Mind Funeral and Glimpse the Unthinkable do great work as well.)

What is good about this card is that it's not just a sacrifice outlet: it's a flavorful one. It was printed in a Duel Decks, and while precons and DD in particular can have some great cards (destroying the myth that precons suck, look at Premium Graveborn's ENTOMB or this very deck's DEMONIC TUTOR), it is still true that these products are tailored to please Vorthos before Spike. For example, that Demonic Tutor could have been a Vampiric Tutor, or a Mystical Tutor, which arguably possibly better for costing less....but there was no way the Demon Deck would have run the Vampire Tutor.

The fact is, there ARE better sacrifice outlets-among artifacts especially-but they picked this card because it fit the Theme. As an aura, this is easier to destroy, because it is only as strong as the combined weaknesses of TWO cards, not one: the enchantment itself, which has no protection, and the creature it is dependent on to survive. This card was picked for this deck because it's kind of a top-down card and it's 'thing' is "It turns your creature into a Demon!"

So that's the cons of it, given fair exposure. While it's easy for all the cards with good art and a possibly useful ability to get a fanclub on Gatherer, I felt that people were brushing aside Baconradar just because he didn't fall for that.

On the other hand, there ARE good uses for this card, and one thing that Baconradar got sorely wrong was "A deck that wants exactly both those things is pretty niche and even there the card is only mediocre at both" Compare Grave Pact to Butcher of Malakir, or Anowan, Ruin Sage to Abyss (?) I think (?) Forgive me if I'm mixing up my enchantments, but there are some new black Vampires that mimic classic old cards and functionally the vampires are just better: You get the effect of the Enchantment, AND you get the flying damage and blocking of the body. In game 1, which kinds removal your opponent has might be relevant, but every 75-card Deck/Sideboard combination should be able to come up with an answer to each major card type, making that factor less important in game 2. The point I'm trying to make is that the card with 2 uses- being both a creature and an enchantment or other effect, is better than the card that just does one of those jobs. Maybe a deck isn't going to be looking for exactly those two effects, but if you think of this as a split card, where one side says 'pump creature' and the other side says 'sac engine', then it begins to look more like one of those good vampires I was talking about before.

That all being said, I find that Sacrifice-effects are somewhat difficult to exploit for some reason, and in order to keep even or better on tempo and card advantage, you almost always have to run a Grave Pact-like effect that punishes your opponent/s whenever something of yours dies. I'm not saying that it's a bad way to go if you have all the cards, just pointing out that it does need more support than the average strategy. My final rating is 2.5-3 stars. In other words, I think this is a balanced card, which we need more of.

This would be an interesting card if it read "sacrifice another creature" (similarly to Demonic Taskmaster).
Like this I'd rather play Demonic Appetite and pass on trample and the creature type to pay less.

Then again, this allows you to cast it on your opponent's creature if they only have a single one and make them sacrifice it. Otherwise i probably wouldn't risk to cast it on one of their creatures since they might even benefit from it if they sacrifice one they don't need anymore and attack with a buffed trampler that you actually wanted to get rid of.
Unless you're playing cards like Intrepid Hero and Big Game Hunter, in which case you will lkely even hope that he sacrifices another creature :D Hidden Predators could be a thing in this case, too.

Its interesting to note that this is the only card to turn another nonspirit, into a Spirit (besides i beleive, Xenograft, or changeling effects) I run it in a mainly Orzhova EDH deck, along with Drogskol Captain.

Perhaps not the most powerful of decks, but flavor and always amusing.

T4 Puca's Mischief
T5 grab one of their creatures, play oni possession
T6 give them oni-possession (which is enchanting a creature you control

Now you can steal something every turn, on top of which they have to sacrifice something every turn and you get +3/+3 and trample! Kinda neat..

Works decent with mark of the oni flavor and mechanics wise. Why? You use Mark to get a beater and eventually it becomes a kill card (due to sacrifice), but you choose which turn that happens because you also control a demon.

Oni Possession can do many things that Fallen Ideal can't do very well. For example, it can potentially be used outside of a heavy sacrifice deck. For example, you could use Oni Possession with Carrion Howler. First get out the howler, then next turn put this on it. Pay 4 life, attack with your 13/1 trampler. Another good creature to put it on is Mortis Dogs. Get out that guy, out put this on it, attack. Not only are you attacking them with a 7/5 trampler, but if they kill it, they lose even more life. You could even potentially sacrifice the dogs to the aura's upkeep, making the opponent lose life anyway.