Zendikar is hitting the streets in the paper magic world soon. The prereleases for the set happen during the 26 and 27 of September in the paper world. After the set releases on October 2nd, it will be on MTGO soon thereafter. If you've followed the offical previews on magicthegathering.com you know some of the cards that we can expect to play with already. I am pretty excited, not just about the beautiful full art basic lands (and do not go getting used to lands looking like this in the future, Mark Rosewater has said as much already.) but about some of the cool new cards we're gonna get to play with.
Standard is after all, getting kind of dull. Landfall looks like an exciting mechanic. New Planeswalkers look fun, and who does not love getting a 2/2 for one mana? Did I mention that this guy has haste? What has been spoiled looks awesome, and I can not wait to get my hands on some of the new set!
I know I'm talking too much, let's take a look at the preview card!
What, you've already seen this card? It was on Facebook you say? Yeah I guess it does look a little bit familiar. Well maybe you have not seen this preview card yet? It's..
You're telling me you read that article already? I promise you we have a preview card that has not already been done by someone. I guess WotC will be hearing from me in regards to this snafu! Let's see if this card is the card I am supposed to be previewing. A...
You got that email too? Man, I'm pretty sad now. Trap...
IT'S A TRAP!
Now that I have gotten that out of the way, let's take a good look at the real preview card for us at PureMTGO.com!
When I build decks, I expect a lot out of my seven casting cost instants. Making my opponent lose five life, while I gain five life myself seems to be a lot. If the card was just that, I would say that it is a bit unimpressive. However, there is a good deal of text before the juicy goodness that is a ten point life swing.
If your opponent gained life this turn, you may pay a black mana rather that pay Needlebite Trap's Mana cost. That's right. For the low low price of one Black, you can activate this trap.
So what does that mean in the world of Magic? There is plenty of constructed quality life gaining effects in the standard format. Currently Captured Sunlight, Behemoth Sledge and Rhox War Monk spring to mind. Wall of Reverence sees play and Cruel Ultimatium let's your opponent gain five life. With this card, you can negate an attack from Baneslayer Angel or Battlegrace Angel.
If I were to build a deck around this card, I would have to think it looks a little something like this.
The cards marked with stars have been spoiled via one of Wizards of the Coast's official previews.
To me it feels like Needlebite Trip has a home in a black aggro deck. What I tried to do was not build around the trap too much, and instead wanted to use it in such a manner that the deck had much needed reach. I consider the trap cost to be the best portion of the card, but really, a five point instant speed drain life could not be terrible could it?
I imagine that this deck would get off and running quick. With the removal package of Doom Blade and Tendrils, not too many creatures are actually going to be around to block. Nocturnus will make your guys giants, and Needlebite Trap would undo any hits from the Baneslayer Angel (Or other life gainers).
This preview card may not have the most broken thing previewed, what it is though, is an effective tool in fighting off one of the banes of the aggro deck. Life gain has long been key in stabilizing a board position. Needlebite Whip makes sure that you can offset any potential life gain your opponent has in their deck for a really low price.
Thank you for reading!
12 Comments
In the right context, that's definitely Classic playable. All in AdN puts Tendrils on the stack and you mess up their kill turn with them being emptied of resources. Burn might splash for this for their sideboards. Grove of the Burnwillows can trigger this at will which would be cool if you can somehow tutor for all the copies easily (or make your own). The latter is getting a bit janky, but shows potential if another piece arrives.
Plus this combos really with Sanguine Bond in Standard. With SB out, just cast two of these for 20 damage.
This is an amazing sideboard card. Blightning Aggro will love this. Excellent.
LE
At first I thought of it as nothing special, but my Blightning Burn will looove to have access to this card. Lifegain can be such a pain in the behind for a burn deck.
The card seems fine :)
This card has savage synergy with grove of the burn willows and fiery justice. works with swords to plowshares as well!
At first i thought of this life flames of the blood-hand, but flames still burned for 4 when the opponent doesn't gain any life, wheras this does nothing. I guess it's potentially sideboard material if there's a very lifegain heavy deck out there, but i'm not really convinced.
I've seen many decklists with Dragon's Claw in their sideboard especially against BR Aggro. This new card will punish them for playing Dragon's Claw. You gain 1 life and all of a sudden for a mere B, you lose 5 life and I gain 5 life.
Also please note that it doesn't deal damage but makes the opponent lose life. That is also very important. I think that it will be worth sideboarding this new one in BR Aggro decks after ZEN.
LE
The thing is, it doesn't stop the initial life gain, so it's unlikely to ever kill anybody because your 5 life loss has already been offset to some extent with their life gaining. I certainly think it could lead to some fun mind-games, but realistically I think the best situation you can imagine for it is trapping from an attacking rhox war monk or something. In that case, you've payed B for a fog and a syphoning of 2 life. That sounds ok, but I think terminate would usually just be better?
The other thing with this trap is that it's absolute unplayable rubbish at it's real CMC, wheras most of the others are poor value at their real cmc, but not absolutely awful. Maybe in a meta with massive amounts of lifegain this might be a role player, but I don't see a meta that skewed emerging. Remember, it basically just fogs baneslayer angels, and is only ever going to turn up in aggro.
Obviously, I could be wrong!
It seems to me to be a huge difference between alive and dead. Particularly with 2 in hand. You gained life this turn to keep you alive from my 3 point swing but now at the beginning of your end step Im dealing 10 to you...how alive could you be?? Yes there are ways to make this less effective but I think its fans are a bit justified in singing its praises.
It's a nice card that won't be played except casually. A deck will have to make too many concessions in order to realize the full potential of this card.
It's good in the same way that Nulltread Gargantuan is good; a 5/6 for three man with what seems to be a minor drawback except the kind of deck that wants to play it can't afford that kind of drawback.
It's just not as good as it seems it to be.
I don't play a ton of competitive Standard, but I do follow it in articles and tournament recaps. Agree with StealthBadger and tempesteye, it seems too conditional to be good, with removal pretty much always being superior when it's a creature causing the life gain. It may be a foil for non-creature life gain, but with only 15 sideboard slots, it feels like there would have to be a very specific and unusual metagame for it to see competitive sideboards.
Johnny might find some ways to have fun with it, but I'm doubtful that Spike will adopt this card.
Thanks for the preview!
In order to make this consistent you need a way to make sure your opp will gain life in your own deck, like grove of the burnwillows. Strictly as an answer this looks really subpar.
Would it have been too much to ask for it to be able to hit creatures too. If I can't play it until my opponent is hitting me over the head with a Baneslayer Angel, the last thing I want to do is point a drain life at my opponent.
I mean from a flavor standpoint, shouldn't a trap designed to hurt vampires be able to kill a vampire. This card can't even hurt Sorin Markov