Pointed Discussion

my life is going to end because of cancer from bad puns causing death wow that was shit

It costs 1 mana more than Reanimate with the same effect.

i thinks it's fun to make the card names correspond, but it's not about the name, i'd have to say life could be very useful to play with a Garruk over run. turn all your lands into 4/4 tramples, nice sneaky attack for ur opponents to crap themselves over

It's odd that a card simply called "Death" actually brings something back to life.

I think Death didn't bring anything back to life, just back to the battlefield to fight again. It could be a ZOMBIE O_O

That's an old split card. I've only seen ones from Ravnica.

A powerful reanimation spell and the ability to turn your lands into creatures for a mass attack in one, nifty little package.
Also, this doesn't combo very well with Overrun: Remember that casting Life and Overrun in the same turn requires 6 mana, meaning that 6 of your would-be manlands are going to be tapped by the time your combat phase starts.

If you really want to abuse Life, you should use it in a deck based around Earth Surge and manlands.

Grimjawxrules: He said Garruk overrun, not regular Overrun.

Pelakka Wurm approves this.

Infinite combo potential with Aggravated Assault

Death is playable and excellent by itself, aside from being strictly worse than Reanimate. Life is just gravy.

Double win condition:
-Win by swinging with weenie lands
-Win by reanimating fat

Works great for it's versatility. You may still choose Reanimate over it for it's ability to target opponent's graveyards; saving you $140 while allowing you play tarmogoyf :)

Each of the two cards is more versatile in it's own way. I'll be trying both, but I feel that it's much harder to deal with an instant swing of 8-10 land damage than it is to deal with a reanimated goyf. One is hastey and not vulnerable to main-deck hate most of the time; and it works with almost any kind of hate the opponent can reasonably expect to have. You can even mid-game swing for 5-ish. Consider Gaea's Anthem in casual to make those lands hit hard.

@ScissorsLizard: It's not only odd, it's extremely ironic. "Death" should, well, cause something to die.

This card is full of Irony, since the Trampling 1/1s will cause a player to die! ^_^

(you *DID* give them Trample, right? o_O ARE YOU A GREEN PLANESWALKER OR NOT?)

I love this card-- although it's cheaply costed enough to be a win-condition on either half, it's also a card that's easy to play around in a number of ways:

Having a good Wall creature.

Having a multi-blocker creature.

Having a creature that *must* be multiblocked.

Having a Bigger creature.

Are ALL ways to answer it from the other side of the table, and that's just in non-meta Magic (which is not EXACTLY "Unstrategic" Magic, since I say Tactics are kind of like Strategy), where you don't consider deliberate focused bullet-answers like Counterspell, Terror, Wrath effects, or Lightning Bolt and Drain Life before the opponent can kill you.


It's both consummately fair and yet undeniably powerful! A-TRIPLE-plus Design and Development :)


Gatherer thinks so too: I looked up "Invasion Block, in order of Community Rating", and this is sitting pretty next to Phyrexian Arena, far ahead of anything like the MULTICOLORED DRAGON cycle, things with KICKER, or you know, VINDICATE.

I wouldn't compare death to reanimate despite the obvious similarity, but reanimate is strictly better than the death side of this card, that's obvious, in your reanimator deck you'd run reanimate over this any day. What about exhume though? They're both reanimating sorceries that cost with a drawback. If your metagame is dredge and reanimator heavy, exhume is a bad option, if your meta is aggro heavy this is a bad option. It all depends on the flavor of the month. The card is by no means bad or obsolete. It really shines in the mirror.