Pointed Discussion

what a bad place to be buried, bad beats martyrs

"Despise the Wizards who thought,
Despise the playtesters who liked,
Despise the card they printed."

This card would be even funnier if it could prevents 1 damage to a player ;)

Yeah sure TreeTrunkMaster, but there are better cards to use instead, like Necrologia or Necropetence if you have it. That way you'd prolly draw a Dash Hopes to make sure it all goes down as planned.

It seems that in the line of Apocalypse cards, some of the other cards had to compensate for the power level of Vindicate.

Combo with Transcenence.

UTTER CRAP

Too bad such an important storyline piece got such a terrible card.

Wasted beautiful art too.

Awesome art.
Awesome flavor text.
Awful card design.

@TreeTrunkMaster: Damage doesn't even have to be being dealt. It says prevent the next 1 damage that turn, so you could just activate it out of the blue, probably to prevent the next 9 damage they would deal to your Magus in case they have some burn instants, then slap them in the face with your self-mutilation fetish. Well combo'd, my friend.

Why does this card have the same rating as cards that do almost nothing? Yeah, maybe because this card does almost nothing, too.. However, there are situations where I would happily pay life to prevent lethal damage to my favourite creature, although I wouldn't also spend one card and four mana.. Then again, I'd rather create a +1/+1 counter with Unspeakable Symbol to save my creature.. Still, this card probably deserves a rating of maybe 0.8 or 0.9 or even 1.0 because it's not one of the worst cards in Magic like the other cards with a rating of 0.6! :)

Now that is a foreboding piece.

What it should've said:

Pay 1 life: Prevent the next 1 damage to target creature or player, look at the top card of your library.

Perhaps it should've also been an enchant land.

Could you technically use this ability as much as you want prior to damage being dealt? (similar to the ruling on cards like Lancers en-Kor)
I'm thinking this to drive my life to a very small amount then pop a Magus of the Mirror.
@Omenchild Thanks. I thought it would work, I use that combo in a deck now except with Wall of Blood instead of this.

jade monolith

There are better ways to honor the dead than this.

Very poor card, even if its 1 life for 1 damage, there simply isn't much worth in saving your creatures (Platinum Angel is an exception but its a long shot...)

I thought this card was okay. It makes all your creatures nigh-unkillable with damage.

Works from a flavor standpoint, but terrible in every other regard.

Ihr trugt die Schande nicht.
Ihr wehrtet euch.
Ihr gabt das große ewig wache Zeichen der Umkehr,
opfernd Euer heißes Leben für Freiheit, Recht, und Ehre

-German Resistance Memorial

A good way to keep people from disturbing your tomb is to not lace it with treasure, as shown here.
Pretty sure this card has never been played.

I'm trying to think of some combo that could be made with this card to redeem it and failing.

While generally it's awful, I've seen it in combination with Horobi, Death's Wail. At that point, it's "Pay 2 life: destroy target creature" which is okay in my book. Still...

Mostly, the reason is this:
Your creatures take damage primarily during combat, either because they block or are blocked. The only reason you block (in general) is to prevent damage to yourself. When you use martyrs' tomb to save your blocker, you're generally going to take 4-6 damage anyways, meaning that the block that you made did almost nothing for you.
It seems okay on the attack until you realize that your opponent can simply race you if you continue to use the ability to save your guys. Additionally, if he plays a high power, high toughness dude, you can no longer use the tomb to force your guys through.

If it cost {W} or {B}, it might be playable simply because the ability is sometimes relevant. at 4CMC, though, it's pretty bad.

And @Enchantment_Removal: 4 of the 6 {W}{B} Apocalypse cards are rated above 4.2, the other (besides this) is around a 3. This is really the only card that suffered because of vindicate...