I wuv him

whats that silver medal symbol on the thread

Is it really that good tho? I feel like two power for five mana is overcosted, no matter how you slice it.

it probably has more value as a finisher than as anything else, I'd guess. 2/4 for 5 probably isn't terrible in limited but outside of that i imagine the body doesn't matter all that much.

I didn't play theros so idk how devotion works out but in theory it wouldn't be outlandish for this to hit for ~5-10 damage in the latter stages of the game if you've stuck a lot of black-intensive permanents, which makes it a more playable lava axe, if nothing else.

This card is my number one win con in Commander. It is absurd in multiplayer.

Just know that there are at the least decent if not straight up good cards at 1-4 that all cost only Black (like of course for the 1 cost but still). If you curve it out that's a bit of a dream hand scenario but 12 damage. Even without that you can reliably drop this on curve for a decent chunk. Beyond that, this standard also has Blood for Bones which can actually be a functional Blink for him or return him to hand and get something heavy on Black to hit harder the next turn, as well as Command the Dreadhorde. With this and Ayara, Dreadhorde can be a 6-mana Rise that gains life. Of course this is much less powerful than in commander but I think he'll sit comfortably in black decks as a higher end.

He's been doing well for himself since we saw him last. Quite a few obols in that sack.

That's a post icon. It's a system built into the forum software to make certain topics visually distinct. The admins here used to make the set symbols available as post icons in this subforum so you could easily see what set a certain spoiler was for, but in the end it was not worth the effort, so they stopped adding new ones. The one on this thread is the original conspiracy symbol, I think. Which gives you an idea of when the system was actively used.

You can also put them in individual posts, as I have done here.

I was gonna say.

Gary was always a card I undervalued. I heard people talk about how deadly he is, and I kind of scoffed. He's five mana and his body is basically trinket text to the ETB that does, what? If he's alone it's Syphon Soul, and while a 3-mana spell stapled to a 2/4 isn't terrible for 5 it's not great either. True, he's likely to hit for more than that, maybe enough to decide an aggro mirror by giving you the ability to alpha without concerning yourself with the crackback as much. but it's never going to be enough to be a control finisher like a real Drain Life effect can be, and certainly never enough to matter in the format I play most, EDH.

What I didn't account for in estimating his EDH worthiness was two things. First, It's easy to repeatedly ETB a creature. I kind of knew that in the back of my head, good old sac-and-revive in monoblack, but I didn't count it as heavily as I should have. Especially since he's a zombie, which adds tribal tech. And second, black is (along with green) REALLY good at pushing its devotion into the stratosphere. Most colors you sort of cap out at CC, black gets all the time, and enough more that an EDH deck built to take advantage of devotion can really put a ton of symbols on the table, and not just in frail creatures.

I still don't file this card in the "Cards that win by default" camp. It just takes too much deck manipulation. However, while he's no Craterhoof Behemoth, he is fairly comparable to a favorite of mine, Primalcrux... except combo friendly, which immediately means stronger.