Have We Got a Deal for You!
Are those annoying Burning Vengeance decks getting you down? Do you hate the thought of what this card will do in those decks?
Are you sick of Flashback cards?
You’d pay 2UU to end that menace, wouldn’t you? Of course you would!
But, thanks to the miracle science of Wizards R&D, we can offer you an even better deal on our hoser card!
You don’t have to pay the price of Moat – no, not even the cost of an Energy Flux to rid yourself of the threat of Flashback!
We can offer this:
Grafdigger’s Cage:
Players can’t cast cards in graveyards or libraries.
Isn’t that amazing? But we can go one step better – if you act now, Wizard’s R&D will eliminate the colored mana cost altogether!
Grafdigger’s Cage is colorless, so it fits in any deck, in any sideboard!
But wait, that’s not all!
Some Dark Ascension creatures have “Undying,” which means you have to swat the annoying pests twice, and even harder the second time. This can be a pain.
We can spare you all that!
Right, now, for no extra charge, we are offering this special bonus.
Buy Grafdigger’s Cage at the regular price, and we will throw in this bonus ability, totally free!
Creature cards can’t enter the battlefield from graveyards!
This stops Undying – and it also stops Persist, Bloodghast, the new set’s Bloodghast clone and – most of all – Grafdigger’s Cage destroys the ugly heartbreak of Dredge.
That’s right – Grafdigger’s Cage shuts down Dredge! Have fun hardcasting those Sun Titans and Elesh Norns, Dredge guy!
And we are offering both these amazing abilities on one card!
But wait – Wizards R&D wants you to have Grafdigger’s Cage so much they insisted that we Halve the Price!
That’s right – if you buy now, you can have both these great abilities on one card for the low, low cost of one colorless mana!
That’s insane!
And it is even better than that! Meet Grafdigger’s Cage.
Yes, it is that insane!
Wait, I hear some Classic players wondering if the Cage will be good enough to make their sideboards.
Yes, they say, it shuts down Dredge, but so do Tormod’s Crypt, Yixlid Jailer, Relic of Progrenitus, etc.
But take a closer look. Grafdigger’s Cage stops creatures from coming into play from libraries as well as graveyards.
Nice Oath of Druids, dude! With Grafdigger’s Cage in play, Oath reads “mill a bunch of cards until you hit an overpriced fattie. Put that creature back on top of your library.”
Grafdigger's Cage. It's so good it sells itself.
Order yours, now!
PRJ
35 Comments
roar card is pretty crazy.
You were right. This car is amazing.
Best preview card ever!
would have been better if it stopped fetchlands but still pretty good, it even keeps ancient grudge honest as long as this is the only artifact youre running
Very nice! Also really annoys polymorph, natural selection, tooth and nail, et cetera. Can be used positively with Boldwyr Heavyweights. I presume it isn't a hard lock with Omen Engine since that exiles.
It doesn't stop Tooth and Nail, since it searches for creatures, put them into your hand then put them onto the battlefield from your hand, not from the library (much in the same way as it doesn't stop a couple of Eladamri's Call + a couple of Show and Tell).
It does stop Natural Order, though (along with Defense of the Earth, Pattern of Rebirth, Chord of Calling, Birthing Pod and what have you), which is relevant in Legacy. I wonder if rumors about this card are the reason Natural Order's price has been losing steam recently, and if it will crash now.
Also important: it does NOT stop Living Death, since in that case the creatures enter the battlefield from the exile zone.
Thanx wotc :) i've been forced to play black far too often just for the most efficient yard hates..
Totally awesome preview style! They gave this preview opportunity to the right guy. I'm really glad you show it off in this funny, playful way. Just imagine how annoying it would be to hear Mike Flores or Evan Erwin gushing about how we are going to be playing this card "for years to come" and all those other overused expressions they use for every card they preview. But this time the card is the real deal.
Bee You Tea Full!! Great article, great card! I'm drooling uncontrollably....
bye,bye Tinker
It's more, "Meet your new nemesis, Tinker. Meet your new target, Force of Will."
easily going to become one if not the most desired card online lol
Wow. You were not kidding about your preview, Pete. Thats nuts.
Poor Snapcaster, YawgWin, Grudge, Oath, and Dredge.
I wonder if this is maindeckable in Haterade
Maindeckable in Shops for sure. Nuts.
This card is absolutely insane. I'm not sure that I like it being printed to be honest. It seems like they just printed a 1-mana colourless hoser for just about every combo deck (except storm) ever ever ever. I can't really imagine what decks aren't going to run 4 in the board (except the decks it hates, obv).
Also "players can't cast cards in libraries"? Does this mess with anything except future sight and panglacial wurm?!
Narcomoeba?
Green Suns zenith, fetchland for dryad arbor, natural order for progenitus to name a few.
That's all creatures entering play from libraries.
I can only think of future sight, magus of the future and panglacial wurm that are actually cast from the library. I wonder whether this ability is just to lend "symmetry" to the card, or whether it's forshadowing some kind of ability which allows casting of spells from libraries.
And most likely also mess with something in the next sets
We'll, you certainly weren't overselling the playability of your preview card.
While the card certainly is awesome in older formats, I think that at the end of the day printing this card in this block is going to be a huge, huge mistake.
It basically nullifies the majority of the block's mechanics. Undying, reanimation, flashback... these strategies are going to be all but unplayable in constructed because of this card. In block constructed it was already bad enough that Vengeance essentially had to splash green for Naturalize due to Witchbane Orb. Now you need to worry about this card too?
It wasn't bad enough that they printed a sweet reanimation spell and basically no creatures that you really want to reanimate -- they had to add in this hoser on top of it to make sure that the strategy is well and truly unviable.
I saw this card and essentially lost all of my excitement about Block Constructed and, to a lesser extent, Standard.
This card is scary. I don't know that I like it, as it effectively nullifies a number of my strategies... thank God for Singleton rules in Commander :-D
But holy mother of god, it kills a LOT of cards. And will completely change a number of archetypes across all of MTG. It's a good time to be in Magic :-D
I'll second the comments about being surprised that they printed this type of a card IN a block using many of these same mechanics. We couldn't get anti-poison cards in Scars, but we can have this?
Perhaps greater Classic and Legacy minds can chime in here, but doesn't this card actually strengthen blue based control decks? The Legacy blue deck no longer has to worry about certain combo decks (especially Dredge which could ignore the stack) and other random decks (Maverick) take splash damage.
That they printed such a hoser tells me the themes in the block are unusually strong. Solar Flare of out DKA must have *dominated* FFL for this to see print. It isn't really stronger than the hosers for dredge we already have (leyline of the void, yixlid jailer, etc), and the classic Oath deck already plays Show and Tell as a back-up.
I like that this card is getting printed. Like Extirpate, Pithind Needle and Cranial Extraction people will put this in their sideboards/side it in more often than correct but it's a powerful hoser that hits many situations. It's obviously worse than other hosers against dredge because they have their full graveyard to use if they kill it but it's still an option if you want a card that you can side in against other decks. It's also very useful for block because it's the only real graveyard hate card and even in T2 it might be useful.
Pretty interesting card. One thing to remember though is that most gy hate has a permanent effect even if the artifact leaves the battlefield (leyline, spellbomb and such) whereas this does not. It works until it's killed and that's that, while other forms of gy hate permanently exile cards from the other players gy.
I didn's know Panglacial Wurm was so strong these days to need this as an answer.
Seriously, I don't understand all the panic about the card... Afected decks should handle it just like they handle other ugly hosers... Tinker? Oath? Bridge? destroy/bounce it at eot, and go for the game next turn... just the same way like Canonist, Leyline or any other hosers are handled.
Djinn of Wishes lest you cats cards from a library. Also, I wonder what would happen to Garruk's Horde. You could cast the card, but the creature cannot enter the battlefield? I guess it doesn't come straight from the library, so it could enter the battlefield, hence only the second ability stops that. I'm sure there are other cards affected by this ability, but none of them is important. I guess library is mentioned in the second ability just for symmetry.
i like it cuz the same dex always show up in classic and maybe this will help change that, i would def use it in my 2hg dex stopping those big guys. It does not stop good ol fashion practical dex which is good.
Nice Article - but this card is just stupid. I am not excited about playing with or against it. DUMBDUMBDUMB printing, they WILL regret this.
Zach
Stay away from those fertilizer suppliers hillbilly!
Nevar - I must blow thingsz up.
I really like the Billy Mays take on this card. This card reminds me of when they printed Perish.
Jamie Wakefield wrote an article slamming Wizards for printing a hoser card as strong as Perish.
I'm no Jamie Wakefield fan, but I can see where people who enjoy playing certain kinds of decks
could see this card and have a Jamie Wakefield moment and get bent out of shape.
You should go hunt down the mothership preview article for Skullclamp. It was done by one the casual article others (Gottlieb?) and he just went on with "it can combo with this.....and this....and this....and, we'll shoot, it combos with everything. What a dumb card"
good times.
Note: I am not comparing this card to skullclamp in any way, shape, or form.
And here I was, fearing that Burning Vengeance would become the dominant deck in block constructed...
You know what's funny about this card in block? Say you have two of them in play. Your opponent finally draws that Ancient Grudge... but he can't flash it back to get rid of the second one. So it's gonna be "side in no less than four Grudges against every matchup" for graveyard decks in that format. Ouch.
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