Pointed Discussion

Having to tap the equipped creature really kills this card. What, I have to sacrifice a creature to get a measly +1/+0, and on top of that, my equipped creature must not attack or use any of its activated abilities?!?

Another solution would be to pay 2 and equip the knife onto the creature you want to sacrifice. Not the best way to spend your mana, and your turn, unless you have a grave pact on the battlefield. If you could find a viable way to add blood counters without all that sacrificing and tapping, maybe you could do great things with this card. Maybe.

You don't seem to realize that the sacrifice ability can be activated as an instant, which means you can and should use it to respond to any removal as long as you keep the equipped creature untapped and ready. The counters also stay on the knife regardless of what happens to your creatures, which gives it a plus over things like Blade of the Bloodchief. Insane card advantage once you've gotten a few counters on it.

this card could be coming back with the whole proliferate ability

Could be fun with Reassembling Skeleton, Everflowing Chalice and something that lets you proliferate. You could essentially use the tactic to stall an opponent until you get an eldrazi (which has a similar type of affect btw).

A good creature to use this equipment on is a wall. Wall typically is there to block and often has no other ability (and of course, no need of attacking) so tapping isn't an issue. The more counters on the Knife, the more deadly as a blocker it would be, and It can sacrifice itself if it needs to. On the same facet, Reassembling Skeleton can serve equal purpose, or token generator like Rotlung Reanimator.

Given how hefty the cost of this equipment is, I think the cost should be lowered. The reward, however, is huge. Proliferate also reduces the burden.

I would love this card if it was monoblack...
and it has nothing at all to do with the +1/+0 that's total crap.

Useful if you have a bunch of weenies that you don't need. For two mana you can eat one of your weenies and get a counter. Maybe even swing with one of them with a power boost. This card really isn't as bad as some people are saying.

I love the idea of sacrificing a bunch of tokens, then saccing the knife and making the opponent sac his entire field.

awsome flavor but far far too slow. it is not entirely without merit but for the amount of build-around the card requires to be viable you could win the game rather thn merely hamper opponent.

This is actually really easy to use, although it takes time to build up. Sac creatures at instant speed in response to some removal, or sac your chump blockers. The longer they go without killing it, the more dangerous it becomes, and the more they have to kill it. Never sac the knife itself until they try to kill it or if it will win the game. I like that it not only is a time bomb just waiting to go off, it also pumps your creatures in the meantime. A great card in EDH.

Also, It that Betrays and proliferate.

The rating for this card is currently 3.333... A tad bit eerie, and I don't really want to change this.

That aside, this can be a great card. Throw this in a casual jund deck and it can become quite powerful. Or, for that matter, a goblin deck. You equip it to a sprouting thrinax/token of your choice, tap it to sacrifice it, and pay 2 to equip it to another creature/ one of the tokens you just made, which you sacrifice again. By turn six, you could force your opponent to sacrifice five, possibly six permanents, which is pretty devestating.

Now, if the equip cost one, or you didn't have to tap to sacrifice, or just didn't have to sacrifice, this card would be broken. As it is, it's pretty balanced and a good card.

forgot to rate 5 stars all the way for a decent artifact that you can abuse in EDH

This card is taunting you with potential crippled by mediocrity so hard.
It almost hurts as much to think about it than getting stabbed by it.

I'd like this card if just it was for either one of these seven things:
(1)Tapping the equipped creature to activate the cost,
(2) The equipped creature got +2/+0 for each counter instead,
(3) The equipped creature got +1/+1 for each counter instead,
(4) Using blood counters rather than more comboable charge counters,
(5) The casting cost of ,
(6) The equip cost of , and most of all
(7) The activation cost to sacrifice it.
So many possibilites that would have made this more worthwhile. Argh!
Without (1), this would have been the biggest difference, since you could simply have mass-murdered all your exposable creatures then in one go and immediately wreck your opponent. Which might be why they added . But that makes the +1/+0 boost even less useful, since you'll always want to built up the counters so you can eventually pop it rather than using it for a measly +3/+0. (2) would have made it much more viable, since it would turn into an n-fold Bonesplitter. (3) would have made it much more useful for defense (or repeated attack) with the extra toughness. (4) would have made it grat with cards like Coretapper or Energy Chamber. (5) would have made it faster allowed a lot more interaction with trinket cards like Trinket Mage. (6) would have made equipment change much more viable. would still have prevented "bombing" as described about (1).
And, oh god, (7). If just saccing it would have been instead or even for free, I'd have liked this card so much more. Like that, you always want to keep two mana open to make sure your opponent won't shatter it. Or you have to rely on cards like Intomidable Archangel.

Like this, you have to pay six mana, tap a creature, and sacrifice a creature to make your opponent sacrifice one permanent. And when it's initially equipped, it does absolutely nothing.
In a proliferate deck though, you could also use Throne of Geth for example to add blood counters.

I made a sacrifice themed jund deck with this, savra,lyzolda,jund hackblade, some devour dudes, more hybrid colour dudes and gilder bairn, with a few planeswalkers like sarkhan or garruk for control and fixing.


This goes on gilder bairn, you sac tokens from mycoloth or sprouting thrinax and you use this guy to double the counters on the knife or a planeswalker, repeat if you have the mana, then somebody loses the game and somebody else loses a field.