Nice anti-enchantment tech, can be mainboarded and swapped out if your opponent isn't running heavy enchantments. Good in a 'Rebecca Guay' deck built around Unhinged's 'Artist Matters' cards.
VampireCat
☆☆☆☆☆ (0.0/5.0)
It's a useful card, but Qasali Pridemage is a better choice if you can fit the colors.
Good card. But the more interesting thing about this card is that it was the only card besides Pestilence and Flood to have its rarity changed from its most recent printing when it was reprinted in the Battle Royale box set. Unlike those, though, this didn't have its expansion symbol updated to reflect its new rarity (well, Flood didn't need to anyway, because its expansion symbol was already appropriate for both rarities).
This begs the question: why? What was going on here? Perhaps we'll never know.
Perhaps an even better question: why did they bother swapping rarities at all, since this was a box set, and all the cards had a fixed rate of appearance anyway?
DarthParallax
★★★★★ (5.0/5.0)(1 vote)
The Murderauder: actually, now that we've seen a great number of Box Sets get printed, it's almost always a good thing to have the Expansion symbol colored:
Yes, the EXACT reprintings in the Box Sets are all about equally rare, but when a Rare card gets reprinted it's just different than a Common card getting reprinted.
Some striking examples I can think of that seem to not really make sense is Demonic Tutor not being a Rare in the Duel Deck, and Urza's Rage is not the best card to update as a Mythic. (although I think Mythic is kind of the best rarity for it, it just doesn't look good next to many Mythics today. It compares fine to Shards of Alara block.)
Demonic Tutor remained uncommon because for Duel Decks, they have a set number of rares they were allowed to use. Really, keeping such cards at Uncommon means they are 'stuffing the decks' with more 'basically as good as rares' than they strictly are promising. "Great Uncommons and Commons" are like "Bonus Rares" in these situations. (Kinda like Daze in Duel Decks Jace v. Chandra and Swords to Plowshares in Duel Decks Elspeth vs. Tezzeret).
Even though every single card in the box sets should be just as valued as each other, they aren't, because they're different power levels, and though the box set adds the same number of cards to the market for each, the card's original rarity holds a lot of sway over it's supply and demand, USUALLY. So reprinting cards in Box Sets and retaining their rarity symbols is actually a good way of trying to let people know that some of the cards in the Box are more valuable than others. The only sad thing is that cards like Counterspell and Demonic Tutor and a scary percent of Premium Deck Series Graveborn could have all gotten Rare Symbols to help people realize that....umm....Good Cards are Way Good. :D
Comments (5)
This begs the question: why? What was going on here? Perhaps we'll never know.
Perhaps an even better question: why did they bother swapping rarities at all, since this was a box set, and all the cards had a fixed rate of appearance anyway?
Yes, the EXACT reprintings in the Box Sets are all about equally rare, but when a Rare card gets reprinted it's just different than a Common card getting reprinted.
Some striking examples I can think of that seem to not really make sense is Demonic Tutor not being a Rare in the Duel Deck, and Urza's Rage is not the best card to update as a Mythic. (although I think Mythic is kind of the best rarity for it, it just doesn't look good next to many Mythics today. It compares fine to Shards of Alara block.)
Demonic Tutor remained uncommon because for Duel Decks, they have a set number of rares they were allowed to use. Really, keeping such cards at Uncommon means they are 'stuffing the decks' with more 'basically as good as rares' than they strictly are promising. "Great Uncommons and Commons" are like "Bonus Rares" in these situations. (Kinda like Daze in Duel Decks Jace v. Chandra and Swords to Plowshares in Duel Decks Elspeth vs. Tezzeret).
Even though every single card in the box sets should be just as valued as each other, they aren't, because they're different power levels, and though the box set adds the same number of cards to the market for each, the card's original rarity holds a lot of sway over it's supply and demand, USUALLY. So reprinting cards in Box Sets and retaining their rarity symbols is actually a good way of trying to let people know that some of the cards in the Box are more valuable than others. The only sad thing is that cards like Counterspell and Demonic Tutor and a scary percent of Premium Deck Series Graveborn could have all gotten Rare Symbols to help people realize that....umm....Good Cards are Way Good. :D