Great card. Unless your opponent has far more life or creatures than you, it wins you the game by itself, since your opponent won't have the mana to get rid of this threat (except the moment it's trigger is on the stack before it resolved, so better play it when your opponent is tapped out or has no cards on hand).
If you want an easy combo, play ghostly prison and then this guy. That way your opponent cant attack you anymore at all for a few turns.
4.5 Stars easily
MasterOfEtherium
★★☆☆☆ (2.1/5.0)(6 votes)
I Really Like This Card Due To Flavor Art And Kicker Cost It Could Be The Flying Realm Razer
Ace_Rimmer
★★★☆☆ (3.9/5.0)(4 votes)
Ghostly Prison (as mentioned earlier) and Planeswalkers, bad ass.
Alicanto
★★☆☆☆ (2.2/5.0)(2 votes)
this would be sick in a black/ white deck. First, get Safe Haven out in the begining turns. Hides all your creatures away. Then Bam! First Damnation or Planar Cleansing or Plague Wind and then This card could win it for you. As soon as Safe Haven is gone, all creatures come back. No more opponent.
AlphaNumerical
★★★★☆ (4.1/5.0)(4 votes)
Still my favorite angel, even over M2010's Baneslayer Angel. I disagree with all the aforementioned combos - the best ways to combo with this card is probably either Planar Collapse or Nevinyrral's Disk.
nekosan
★★★☆☆ (3.0/5.0)(1 vote)
in an old fun-deck of mine i coupled it with mageta the lion, the combo turned out quite well and it timed right a few times, mageta do the creature killing and in the same turn the angel erases the mana pool. so i used to be the only one with a 3/3 and a flying 5/4. One of my favourite angels, the art is wonderful too
True_Smog
★★★★☆ (4.3/5.0)(3 votes)
Destroying all lands is always a good option and destroying all lands with a creature is even better.
Kimbote
★★★★★ (5.0/5.0)(3 votes)
Awesome card and a great combo card. Not to mention great art. Wish it had some flavor text, but no biggie. Didn't give it a full 5 stars as I've had times where bringing it into play would hurt more than help.
Dohyden
☆☆☆☆☆ (0.0/5.0)
i wanna play this guy with Copper-leaf Angel and 7 lands. you tap ur lands, add 7 to ur pool, tap the copper leaf and kill all ur lands to make copper leaf a 9/9, with the mana in ur pool cast desolation angel and weee, 5/4 flying and a 9/9 flying. weeee and ur opponents have no lands to use to fight back
LiXinjian
★★★★☆ (4.0/5.0)(2 votes)
Wrath of God is bad for your opponent, but Evacuation just adds insult to injury... at the end of your opponent's turn, of course.
Nice card, but the kicker is kind of useless - there seems to be no good reason to play this card without buying the kicker too. At this state the kicker-ability is downgraded to be simply more mana-cost...
XTwistedsoulX
★★★★☆ (4.8/5.0)(2 votes)
As much as i like angel of despair, this angel makes her look bad. Once you have the board advantage theres almost no reason not to do this. Hard to recover from armageddeon with a 4 turn clock. (Assuming they even have 20 life left at that point.) Good art to I might add.
Justice1337
★★★☆☆ (3.5/5.0)(3 votes)
Kicker is necessary for balance issues, making the ability only useful when hardcast. As much as I think mass land destruction has a purpose in multiplayer/EDH, I would not want to face decks that could Defense of the Heart into a creature with an ability like this and a Timber Protector, or even be able Animate Dead something like this.
Well designed card, giving the community something it wants and needs without going overboard.
DarthParallax
☆☆☆☆☆ (0.5/5.0)(1 vote)
Not that you actually need to hear it, but I enjoy stating the obvious: you need to Kick it to make it good. :)
sarroth
★★☆☆☆ (2.8/5.0)(2 votes)
Great in a Kaalia of the Vast deck. Kaalia won't give you the Desolation Angel for free, but she'll allow you to build up a lot faster than your opponents as you're putting into play cards like Akroma, Angel of Fury for the low, low price of attacking.
Tap all ur lands, put your mana into your mana pool, tap: Copper-Leaf Angel; sacrifice all your lands. Play desolation angel with kicker!
zk3
★★★★★ (5.0/5.0)(1 vote)
What an interesting and elegant one-card combo.
Back in Arabian Nights, the Erhnamgeddon deck (Erhnam Djinn and Armageddon) revolved around the strategy of playing a big creature on turn 4 to get ahead on the board, then clear your opponent's resources on turn 5 so you STAY ahead.
Desolation angel plays both the role of Erhnam and geddon, as its 5/4 flying body gets you ahead on the board, and its ability ensures you stay ahead. Its power and evasion is a very efficient racer, too. My argument here is that you don't need Wrath effects with her stats.
The obvious comparison to this card is Desolation Giant, but the two sides of that card are a lot more redundant by only making sure you are +1 creatures to your opponent, but even a 3/3 gets outclassed in 4-5 turns before the damage becomes a significant guaranteed clock. Angel can outrace many creatures, and a B/W deck back in apocalypse/7th edition had the best removal (Vindicate, Terror, pacifism) so keeping the threats low early on was relatively simple.
Unfortunately, the main downfall to this card was its colors, and the only "dual land" back then was Caves of Koilos, and neither of these colors had card draw/mana fixing to find more lands. Great card in concept, and I feel it would still make a huge impact on today's game if it was reprinted.
Black angels are always nice. Even without having a devastating ability, the art and flavor here make this awesome too.
Gheridarigaaz
★★★★☆ (4.5/5.0)(1 vote)
Combos? She's a finisher... plain and simple. its almost like making her have shroud. definitely not worth doing while there are still formidable creatures on the board, i'd run her in a control deck if i had any of these angels... and at turn 7 would be ideal to cast her. they've spent their time getting as much land out of their deck as possible and now they can't do anything cause they spent all their lands in hand and have to rely on topdecking... just make sure they're tapped out... a single unsummon and floating blue mana could wreck the whole plan
TheWrathofShane
☆☆☆☆☆ (0.5/5.0)(2 votes)
Play it without the kicker, no balls.
auriscope
★★★★★ (5.0/5.0)(1 vote)
I witnessed a Redirected Rise from the Grave to a Desolation Angel. One of the greatest things I've ever seen, bar none.
SerGarlan
☆☆☆☆☆ (0.0/5.0)
This card has saved my ass wayyyyy too many times for me to ever take her out of my deck. I once utterly destrolled a friend's Valakut land fetch deck with her. She's so valuable that I actually splash in Dual lands for my otherwise mono black demon deck. The white is just for her.
Go vulture hat!
TPmanW
☆☆☆☆☆ (0.0/5.0)
Kind of suspect this switched abilities with Desolation Giant at some point during development. The giant can be seen throwing boulders around like he's destroying the landscape, whereas this screams "angel of death!" and you'd think it would kill creatures instead of lands.
Comments (31)
If you want an easy combo, play ghostly prison and then this guy. That way your opponent cant attack you anymore at all for a few turns.
4.5 Stars easily
Now my opinion of her is slightly tainted.
Well designed card, giving the community something it wants and needs without going overboard.
Back in Arabian Nights, the Erhnamgeddon deck (Erhnam Djinn and Armageddon) revolved around the strategy of playing a big creature on turn 4 to get ahead on the board, then clear your opponent's resources on turn 5 so you STAY ahead.
Desolation angel plays both the role of Erhnam and geddon, as its 5/4 flying body gets you ahead on the board, and its ability ensures you stay ahead. Its power and evasion is a very efficient racer, too. My argument here is that you don't need Wrath effects with her stats.
The obvious comparison to this card is Desolation Giant, but the two sides of that card are a lot more redundant by only making sure you are +1 creatures to your opponent, but even a 3/3 gets outclassed in 4-5 turns before the damage becomes a significant guaranteed clock.
Angel can outrace many creatures, and a B/W deck back in apocalypse/7th edition had the best removal (Vindicate, Terror, pacifism) so keeping the threats low early on was relatively simple.
Unfortunately, the main downfall to this card was its colors, and the only "dual land" back then was Caves of Koilos, and neither of these colors had card draw/mana fixing to find more lands.
Great card in concept, and I feel it would still make a huge impact on today's game if it was reprinted.
Go vulture hat!