Monday, October 28, 2013

RCotD #218

Random Card of the Day #218:

Catalyst Stone - 2
Artifact
Flashback costs you pay cost up to {2} less.
Flashback costs your opponents pay cost {2} more.

Normally when I see niche cards like this I just brush them off to side thinking "there's no way someone would make a deck so specific just to use this card." And normally I'd be right--but I actually have made a creatureless flashback deck before while Innistrad was in Standard. It was probably my favorite deck to play, too.

One of the faults of the deck was the mana curve. There were plenty of removal flashback spells that could remove earlygame threats, and late game threats were also able to be bounced, killed, tucked, etc. But even when you had everything setup, unless you had two Burning Vengeance on the field, (which most of the time you only got one) you were still only doing 2-4 damage a turn. And if you couldn't eliminate targets you had to sift through the deck.

It wasn't a very good deck as it lost to both control and universal removal like Oblivion Ring, but nonetheless it was fun and somewhat effective. Catalyst Stone would have been a great addition to the deck to both speed things up and well, that all the deck really needed. But unfortunately, Innistrad got Altar of the Lost instead.

So I might be somewhat biased when rating this card, but even if it can find it's way into a niche deck of it's own archetype:
4/5 Constructed
2/5 Limited.. maybe 1/5 since there's not a whole lot you can do with it in draft, and I might actually prefer a land over it.

No comments:

Post a Comment