The drawback hardly matters once you start rolling. Love the art, too.
Atali
★★★★☆ (4.8/5.0)(4 votes)
What drawback? Sure, f all you're after is the mana, it's got a downside, but being able to forcibly give your opponent a creature at instant speed can be downright overpowered if you build with it in mind.
DarthParallax
★★☆☆☆ (2.3/5.0)(10 votes)
Feels like a more successful drawback then City of Brass's. :)
On the one hand, if your deck is good, it shouldn't be 'shooting itself in the foot'.
On the other hand, that IS an extra creature a turn your giving them, which is a lot more than just pinging them for one, so it DOES make you think a bit. City of Brass vs. a Red deck or a Zoo deck, you probably don't even notice that it damages you, because either they have enough damage coming at you to kill you anyway, or you have the situation well in hand and are prepared for doing what you need to do to not lose.
This makes a creature though, which is a permanent, and might interact with your opponents' other cards in any number of ways, in addition to giving them a repeatable damage source. It's just a 1/1 flier, so in theory there are many things you should be able to do about it- a good sized blocker with vigilance is my first thought- but this land does present you with a puzzle that you can't just ignore- you have to solve it- even though it's easy enough to solve, it's something that does insist you actually solve it, rather than just skip it and figure it won't hurt too much- a 1/1 flier a turn is what Bitterblossom is, so consider this like casting a Bitterblossom for your opponent- can you beat Bitterblossom? If you can, all good. If you can't, make your deck better til it can.
LordRandomness
★★★★☆ (4.2/5.0)(8 votes)
@Parallax:
THEY. ARE. NOT. FLIERS. WHY DOES EVERYONE EVERYWHERE THINK FORBIDDEN ORCHARD TOKENS HAVE FLYING. GAH!
armogohma
★★★★☆ (4.8/5.0)(2 votes)
@LordRandomness
It's probably Innistrad's fault. I had the same problem with Sekki, Seasons' Guide when building a Rhys deck around the time of Dark Ascension.
This actually works fairly well in a Modern/Legacy legal Dredge deck; it lets you use Darkblast. That's fairly important in the early game. If your Putrid Imp gets countered, you don't have any way to discard your dredger. Forbidden Orchard + Darkblast gives you a powerful alternative against control decks.
Granted, in the mid-game you won't want to Darkblast an opponent's critter because its death would exile your bridges from below. Kinda screws up your plan. But this is less of a drawback than you'd think -- wait until you go off, dump your deck, make all your Zombie tokens, then Darkblast their Dark Confidant or Peacekeeper or whatever.
JimmyNoobPlayer
☆☆☆☆☆ (0.0/5.0)
Yah these are Kamigawa spirits, not Innistrad spirits.
Nucleon
☆☆☆☆☆ (0.0/5.0)
I use this in my mono-black EDH deck based on death triggers and adore it. "Why would you put that card in a mono-color deck", the non-Johnnies ask me. Well, the sheer political utility of being able to give "allies" chump tokens is one thing, but being able to spit out a token at the guy I stuck Curse of Death's Hold on, or just with Ascendant Evincar out, to trigger all my "when something dies" effects is utterly hilarious. Style points if it's Toshiro Umezawa's, who is the commander of said deck, morbid-flashback effect and I use the trigger to kill something else. And to drink a little sip of life with Blood Artist, and pump up Black Market...
Comments (17)
Love the art, too.
On the one hand, if your deck is good, it shouldn't be 'shooting itself in the foot'.
On the other hand, that IS an extra creature a turn your giving them, which is a lot more than just pinging them for one, so it DOES make you think a bit. City of Brass vs. a Red deck or a Zoo deck, you probably don't even notice that it damages you, because either they have enough damage coming at you to kill you anyway, or you have the situation well in hand and are prepared for doing what you need to do to not lose.
This makes a creature though, which is a permanent, and might interact with your opponents' other cards in any number of ways, in addition to giving them a repeatable damage source. It's just a 1/1 flier, so in theory there are many things you should be able to do about it- a good sized blocker with vigilance is my first thought- but this land does present you with a puzzle that you can't just ignore- you have to solve it- even though it's easy enough to solve, it's something that does insist you actually solve it, rather than just skip it and figure it won't hurt too much- a 1/1 flier a turn is what Bitterblossom is, so consider this like casting a Bitterblossom for your opponent- can you beat Bitterblossom? If you can, all good. If you can't, make your deck better til it can.
THEY. ARE. NOT. FLIERS. WHY DOES EVERYONE EVERYWHERE THINK FORBIDDEN ORCHARD TOKENS HAVE FLYING. GAH!
It's probably Innistrad's fault. I had the same problem with Sekki, Seasons' Guide when building a Rhys deck around the time of Dark Ascension.
Curse of Death's Hold
Let me google that for you: Oath of Druids.
If you like this card, you'll probably also like Varchild's War-Riders.
Granted, in the mid-game you won't want to Darkblast an opponent's critter because its death would exile your bridges from below. Kinda screws up your plan. But this is less of a drawback than you'd think -- wait until you go off, dump your deck, make all your Zombie tokens, then Darkblast their Dark Confidant or Peacekeeper or whatever.
You get the idea.