Solemn Simulacrum

I believe Machine Man from Nextwave encapsulates this card's general feeling: "My robot brain needs beer. Also? I want to die." The really great thing about this card is that it's immediate colourless land fetch as well as colourless card draw. Cards like Armillary Sphere let you look for more land for the same cost, but the fact that this lets you draw as well as search for land is what makes it awesome. This card is present in almost every EDH deck that I've ever seen for good reason. The one real problem is that it has to die to draw and a lot of players will purposely avoid killing this card in order to prevent the draw. However, it's still a Rampant Growth, Dredge, and Balduvian Bears all in one and that makes it great!

Pros: Rampant Growth on ETB, draw on death

Cons: Has to die to draw

Rating: 4.5/5

Giant Trap Door Spider

Green and red creature exile?! It exists?! Alright, alright, maybe I'm over-exaggerating things a little bit. Cards like Disintegrate and Red Sun's Zenith exist in red, but there's only 2 other creature removal cards in green (Treva's Charm and Whippoorwill being the other 2). This card is really good for that reason. If you're making a red/green deck (say a Stonebrow EDH), you're going to find yourself lacking a lot of good creature removal. This card was evidently popular since Wizards reprinted this card in Invasion under the name Hunting Kavu. However, it's not the greatest creature removal in the game. The creature does have to be attacking you and it has to be walking along the ground for it to be targeted. Also, this card has to be able to tap which means it has to be around for at least a turn to go off. Still, considering this is one of green's 3 removal cards, it's pretty not bad.

Pros: Green creature removal

Cons: Conditional removal, 1 turn warm-up

Rating: 3/5 

Artist: Jason Chan

How could I not do a post about Jason Chan? His art as of late has been some of the most beautiful and exquisite pieces to ever be put onto cardstock. My friends and I have come up with a general rule-of-thumb for Magic cards based on Jason's work: Did Jason Chan do the art for a card? If so, that card will  probably either be really powerful, really expensive (money-wise), or both (a friend priced out a Jason Chan-only 60-card and it came up to around $400).

Best Art: Luminous Angel

 

There are a couple reasons I really like the art for this card. First and foremost is just the quality of the art itself. The wings and the way the light plays off the angel's hair (especially noticeable in the foil version) just work in all the right ways. The other, more minor reason is the comparison to the old version. Now, Matthew D. Wilson's art isn't bad, but compare that art to this art and you'll see a clear winner.

Worst Art: Nimbus Maze

A friend of mine put it best: this is a watercolour background to a painting that someone spilled a little too much water on. It looks like there used to be art in the middle, but someone in editing decided to take it out (maybe it was too beautiful to behold with mere human eyes). I understand what Jason was going for, but the angle on the maze is too low and it just looks weird (look at Mystifying Maze for an example of what I think is a better angle).

Strangest Art: Massacre Wurm

I think this the strangest piece of Jason Chan's work simply because the wurm looks... way too happy. To me, it looks like it should be screaming "HI GUYS! I WANNA JOIN YOUR PARTY!!!". The art makes Massacre Wurm seem like the kid who shows up to your 11th birthday party, starts running around the house hyped up on sugar, and smashes face first into your mom's china cabinet, making it fall on the table with all your presents and your cake, ruining everything in the process. 

I love Jason Chan's artwork. Even his worst artwork is really, really good. I just hope Wizards starts putting him to work on more common and inexpensive cards soon so I can have more artwork without losing a limb in the process.

Imperial Seal

This card is a slightly worse Vampiric Tutor, but that's not really a bad thing. If anything, it's more balanced than Vampiric Tutor because of one thing and that's its speed. This card lets you looks for anything and put it on top of your library on your turn whereas Vampiric lets you look at the end of your opponents turn and that's what makes Vampiric Tutor arguably the most broken tutor in the game (excluding the 6 Wishes of course). However, let's get back to the card in question. This card is really powerful, even with the timing restriction. The loss of life is peanuts compared to the power of a first-turn unrestricted search. This card would probably like to see a reprint, especially since Avacyn Restored brought us the Miracle mechanic, but it never will. This is a card you will probably never see outside of a Vintage tournament since they cost $600+ each, but I figured that I'd keep my promise to review everything on Gatherer and not just the stuff us peasants will be able to see.

Pros: First-turn unrestricted search

Cons: Sorcery speed

Rating: 4.5/5 

Rain of Tears

Unconditional black land destruction is hard to find (11 cards in total) and this is one of the best cards that does it. The ultimate black land destruction card will always be Sinkhole, but this makes a great substitute. When you compare this card to another black land destruction card, Maw of the Mire for example, it's obvious that black isn't the best colour to deal with lands, but the attempt was made with this card and it at least works. It your deck really needs black land destruction, you can't really do much better than this card (except Sinkhole of course... or maybe Rancid Earth).

Pros: Cheapish black land destruction

Cons: More expensive Sinkhole

Replacements: Sinkhole (if you've got $20 for each), Rancid Earth

Rating: 3.5/5

Artist: Wayne Reynolds

Here's a new segment on MCaD: artist's profiles. For these posts, I'll be looking at an artist's work in Magic and my personal opinions on their work (best card, worst card, most unfitting...). So, here's the first entry: Wayne Reynolds.

First, some notes on Wayne Reynolds's art style. Whether or not you know his name, you will recognize his art style. His hard, crisp lines give his work a very distinct feel and look and it usually looks really nice and unique.

Best Art: Ink-Eyes, Servant of Oni

Sexy, rat, ninja. Seriously, who would have thought those words could co-exist in the same sentence? But, Wayne Reynolds did it and it is glorious. I love this art and it is probably one of my favourite pieces of art from Kamigawa block entirely.  

Worst Art: Soulblast

I just don't like this art simply because it looks too silly. It really looks like the creature being burned is screaming "I'm meeeellllllttttingg...!" and it looks really cartoony. I know that Wayne was trying to go for an image of horrific burning, but it just doesn't fit. Also, the three guys in the bottom left look like they're calling a football game.

Most Ill-Suited: Tariel, Reckoner of Souls

Metal? Yes. Awesome? Yes. Does it make sense? No. This art is just too full of lines and tassels, almost to the point of looking like a Rob Liefeld character from the 90s. I just think a much cleaner and neater picture would have done a lot better.

And those are my thoughts on Wayne Reynolds. Wayne, if you're reading, keep doing what you're doing. You're easily one of the best artists for Magic right now.

Kor Sanctifiers

For the cost and versatility of this card, it's actually pretty good. It's an Alaborn Trooper with a better Nature's Claim attached to it. It's still within Lightning Bolt range, but it's already performed its duty once it's on the field. The really nice thing about this card is that it's two cards for one, which means you have card advantage, and since it's a creature, it can trigger ETB effects (like Aura Shards). The only real problem with this card is that it is at Instant speed, so it can't solve problem immediately like a Naturalize or Disenchant can.

Pros: Two cards for the price of one

Cons: Not instant speed

Rating: 3.5/5

Counterspell

Are there any sweeter words than "counter target spell" for blue players? This was the original counterspell (as if it wasn't obvious) and it is still glorious. It is near-perfect and it really can't be improved (except by giving it Split Second). For 2 mana, you can stop almost any spell in the game from getting played and there are no restrictions on what it can target. It's one of the most perfect cards in Magic. That being said, there is one teeny-weeny problem with it: its mana cost. Double-blue is something that multicolour deck may have problems getting out. In certain situations (especially in 3+ colour decks), that double-mana cost can be tricky to get out occasionally.

Pros: Hard counter for almost every spells (except those uncounterable spells and those with Split Second)

Cons: Double-blue mana cost may be hard to acquire

Rating: 5/5

Null Brooch

This is one of those cards that may seem like it is really bad, but it can be really good given the right situation.  The first situation is in decks where you run light on counterspells like a red or green deck for example. Having the ability to counter spells, even if it's for a high cost, is better than not being able to counter spells at all right? Especially since it's colourless counterspell (albeit it's only a Negate). Another situation that kind of fits in with the last one is in Hellbent, Madness, or any other decks that likes discarding their hands. The final situation is one of pure necessity. If you're engaged in a counter war with another player, you don't want to lose simply because you ran out of cards. If you've got this out, you've got a final counterspell to toss into the mix to try and win the war. Now, this does require you to toss your hand when you activate it, so it's not that great early game. It also cost 4 to put down, so it's really 6 mana for your first counterspell. However, it is colourless counter magic and that's pretty rare in of itself (Chalice of the Void, Not of This World, Nullstone Gargoyle, and Ring of Immortals are the other colourless counter magic).

Pros: Colourless Negate and a reusable stick

Cons: First Negate costs a total of 6, must chuck your hand

Rating: 3/5

Rend Spirit

NOTE: Just an update for my readers; I apologize for my lack of regular posts, but I've had a lot of work to do recently. But, now that that's done, I should be posting more often.

So, funny story behind this card. A friend of mine thought that this card was actually Rend Flesh, so he put a copy in his EDH deck. Needless to say, he was very sad when he tried to kill my Goblin Sharpshooter... Now, when you compare this card to its counterpart (Rend Flesh), you realize that this card is pretty bad. There are only 368 Spirits out of 6548 creatures, meaning that this card affects 6% of all creatures in Magic (not including tokens). That percentage is not very good. Since the printing of Murder, I'd honestly be surprised if I saw anyone use a deck with this card effectively or at all. Now, I will admit that in block this card was pretty good since Kamigawa had a lot of Spirits, but outside of block it's terrible.

Pros: Not colour-dependent creature destruction

Cons: Can only target 6% of creatures

Replacement: Murder

Rating: 1/5