Pointed Discussion

What the hell does the upside down text mean?

When 3 creatures die in a turn, you turn it upside down and its other text becomes its abilities.

Reminiscent of The Abyss. I would think this card would be great for a deck full of sweepers, but if he dies too that's useless. He does survive Infest.

Excellent card for non-creature decks! Otherwise, not worth the effort.

The requirement for the trigger simply don't work that nicely with the flipped effect.

The Abyss is that good because it simply means Diabolic Edict for your opponent each turn once it's cast without you being required to do anything else but not running (non-artifact) creatures.

But by the time you manage to get three creatures into the graveyard in a single turn, you either did so with creatures on your side, which means that this effect will cost you creatures as well, or you won't need that effect any longer since you already hosed the battlefield anyways.

It can still find some use though with recurring creatures like Bloodghast, Nether Traitor, or Myr Servitor.

Unfortunately the mana cost of this guy really asks for using this in a mono-colored deck.

EDH deck with lots of sacrifice outlets. It works.

Teysa, Orzhov Scion EDH. He's a truck.

Most ogre cards are, obviously, flavored to be pretty brutish, but this one's insidious. Kuon's Essence embodies the flavor of black Kamigawa. Great for emasculating Creakwood Liege and the like.

I run him in my Endrek Sahr, Master Breeder EDH. I always try to have Demon of Death's Gate out when I play him, unfortunately that does require a bit of setup.

Dread Return.

A cruel, cruel card, and makes for a vicious commander. Harder to get going than The Abyss, but once he's flipped the effect is more powerful. Don't expect him to flip easily though, since once you summon him, every kill spell will be aimed at him. Best way to do it is to trigger him yourself with sac outlets.

I like how the Enchantment has P/T of 2/4. Gatherer always has some fun Easter eggs.

@auriscope: Even better, Endrek Sahr. If you have a sac outlet, Kuon can feed his own thrulls to the outlet, and flip first turn.

I run a deck based purely around sacrificing and creatures dying. I want this guy so hard.

I actually took this card out of my B/G token deck because it was too good and my friends hated playing against it. If you can make all the tokens you want, and no one can deal with this quickly, it just shuts everyone else down.

Plus, it's a black creature (hard to kill) and then an enchantment (also hard to kill).