Back in our Muse Vessel days, Daryl, Brandon, and I would pick through the spoilers, picking cards we wanted to talk about, and then each of us would do an article. Things are a little different now. When this goes up, Brandon will have recently arrived from his cross-country trip to Seattle, so splitting up the set three ways to look at the cards from a casual player’s perspective wasn’t going to happen.

Daryl and I have each laid claim to a few cards, but you’ll have the fun of seeing how we tell you a card is amazing/horrible in articles on the same day! Enjoy!

Let’s start this off with a bang! I know that Daryl loves black cards more than can possibly be healthy, but when I first saw this card, I laid dibs immediately. There is a lot going on with this card, so let’s break it down. 6 mana puts this guy on the heavy end of most mana curves. While multiplayer, generally, and Commander, specifically, have higher mana curves, 6 is still significant. Three in the cost eliminates a chance at splashing Mikaeus and likely means you are going to have to take great care with your mana base if you plan on anything more than two colors. If he is going to be your Commander, at 6 mana, this is a Zombie you don’t want to be constantly dying.

Being a legendary creature means Mikaeus is another mono-black Commander added to the ranks. Being a legendary creature also means a second Mikaeus does not give your creatures +2/+2.

As someone who loves a good theme deck, Zombies and Clerics get a nice bonus. I know that plenty of Clerics are Humans who would not get the bonuses Mikaeus offers to your creatures, but his benefits can’t be denied, so there will be difficult decisions for many players when determining if this will work for them.

Intimidate allows you to use this as a Voltron Commander or as a solid beater who will lead the troops. A 5/5 with evasion is a handy thing. Although really, if you are looking for a Voltron Commander in black, Skithiryx has far better evasion, costs less, and only has to deal 10 damage. What Mikaeus offers that other options don’t is the ability to deter players from attacking you with his other abilities. Opponents with Humans are not likely to attack you whether Mikaeus is tapped or not.

Some people are going to tell you that Mikaeus’ ability to kill Humans is a red herring. You can’t predict what your opponents are playing, so if you are choosing Mikaeus because you think he will kill your opponents’ creatures, you are overvaluing Mikaeus. Consider this: Prior to Dark Ascension, there were 6,344 different creatures in Magic. There were 1,323 different Humans. This means that when a creature does damage to you with Mikaeus in play, there is a 21% chance that it is going to be destroyed. It seems to me that the ability to kill one of every five creatures in Magic is not something to be slighted.

Finally, we get to the ability that everyone is talking about and looking to build around. All of your creatures (assuming you are watching your creature types) are getting a second life with undying . . . and they’re getting a little bigger. Players are looking to take advantage of a second enters-the-battlefield opportunity and to find ways to take advantage of these bigger creatures. Rather than come up with my version of a combo using this (then having someone describe something far better), I’ll suggest Carnifex Demon as an interesting option. Use his ability to kill off some creatures. Your creatures come back with +1/+1 counters. Use the Demon again, and your creatures are all set up to undie again. Just take care you don’t do it too often or Mikaeus will be the one in the graveyard.

Normally, when a card says “each upkeep” or “each end step,” I become interested. Wizards often creates a card that is far more interesting for multiplayer when these phrases are used. Last week’s Tombstone Stairwell, along with a more recent Magmatic Force are just two examples of cards that are better in multiplayer games. Séance is not among those cards. You are getting a different creature from your graveyard on each opponent’s upkeep, and then it’s gone forever. With three opponents then you, only one in four of your creatures will get to attack. Oh wait, it doesn’t have haste! I hope the “enters the battlefield” abilities on your creatures are worth the trouble. When it comes down to it, this is a Johnny card, aiming to set up some bizarre combo that I haven’t come up with yet.

Everyone hates paying extra for their stuff. Eventually, someone is going to pay the extra mana to kill it or someone will take the extra time to kill you . . . and all this for a creature with an ability that doesn’t really matter all that much in multiplayer unless you put multiple copies in play at once. Of course, then the legend rule kicks in and your graveyard gets a little bigger. Leave this one for the tournament players.

I love stealing creatures. It always seems to me that everyone else has creatures that are so much better than mine. This gives me an unnatural love for these cards. The Beguiler is interesting in that it only needs to tap for you to gain control of a creature. Every turn, you can take another creature. If you are playing with Seedborn Muse, you can take a creature on each player’s turn. Play it with Umbral Mantle and you can really ramp things up.

While being a 1/1 and costing 5 mana are issues you need to consider, the need to control a bunch of other creatures is the real problem for the deck. Most decks that are looking to steal creatures don’t tend to run a lot of their own creatures. While I can see this working in some decks (I have a Polymorph deck that produces many token creatures that would suit the Beguiler), this limitation makes this a build-around card.

Fiend of Shadows is a Vampire Wizard, but it is more like an interesting Specter to me. Initially, I suspect players using the Fiend will go for the home run. They will attack players using the same colors they are in the hopes of getting something good out of their opponents’ hands. I can completely understand the allure of making that happen. You get 3 damage, you get to force the opponent to essentially discard a card, and you get an extra card to play for yourself? I know I would be tempted.

I think the better play, though, is to pick the most threatening player and try to reduce his hand size. No player is going to give you his best card in hand. He is going to look at his situation and try to give you the card that benefits him the most or damages him the least. The opponent is choosing the card he is exiling—not you. Doesn’t it make more sense to attack the player in the strongest position, doing 3 damage, and exiling a card from his hand, rather than attacking the weaker player who may be able, down the road, to help you against the player who is currently dominating the battlefield?

Another option is convincing the mana-screwed player to give you something good so you can better attack the bigger threat. It could be tough to convince someone to take 3 and give you a good threat, but if I were the mana-screwed player, I’d go for it. I mean, if the Fiend of Shadows player kills you off, he loses the goodies he got from you. The mana-screwed player needs to stop the dominant threat on the board just as badly as you do. If he can’t play his spells, why not give those spells to someone who can?

Just a single comment: Wasn’t this card made for that Zombie Horde deck you have that just doesn’t seem to have enough punch? This card packs plenty of punch and brings that Horde deck back up to vicious really quickly.¹

I looked at the Werewolves in Innistrad, and I was unimpressed. Most of the Werewolves were, in essence, Craw Wurms for 2 or 3 mana that required your opponents to play along. I know there were some that were more impressive, but the decks were pretty straightforward and linear. A Werewolf in a deck either meant it was a straightforward, attacking deck or it meant someone wanted to try it and see how it would play out.

In multiplayer games, it seemed to me that the likelihood of transforming the card would be even less. Maybe someone wouldn’t have a spell to cast, but a different opponent would certainly have two spells to ensure that your Werewolf was always a Human when it really counted.

Reality proved to be a little different. Players build decks along a curve, with the optimal play being to use all your mana every turn. For most decks, this means using all, or most, of your mana on a single spell. Generally speaking then, most opponents will have to dramatically change how they play if they are going to play two spells and transform your night-side Werewolves back into day-side Humans. This means most players can’t or won’t play the second spell.

Something as mundane as where you sat also played a part in the likelihood of transforming Werewolves. Most groups have some aggro, some combo, and some control players. If you have the combo or control player sitting immediately to your right, the likelihood of transforming goes way up. These players are not going to play two spells to ensure your Werewolves return to the day side; they aren’t even going to play one spell to keep them on the day side. These players understand that keeping their hands full and being ready for the entire table is better for them than using up cards to stop one player while the rest of the table is left to do what they want, unfettered by the restraints those players normally have.

If the aggro player is sitting to your right, he is looking to keep up pressure at all times, so playing two spells in a turn is often part of the deck’s plan—or at least it makes sense to do it when possible. If the player immediately before you is constantly dropping two spells on his turn, your Werewolf deck is not going to function well.

What all of this means is that a Werewolf deck can work in multiplayer in the right circumstances. Up until now, though, even when the deck worked, it wasn’t all that impressive or fearsome.

Then along came Dark Ascension. Now your group has to pay attention to you constantly pulling the card out of a sleeve and resleeving it backward. Tovolar's Magehunter asks, “How often are you going to be willing to take 4 damage to shut down my Werewolves?” or, “How thrilled are you to have to pay whenever you cast a spell?” This extra damage is annoying and effective. Once the Mondronen Shaman is cast, all the caster has to do is sit quietly on his turn. Doing nothing now allows you to deal at least 4 damage to one opponent, and you don’t even have to attack. If this makes you chuckle at the thought of free damage, keep in mind that the Shaman is not legendary; I like the idea of two of them at once.

While I won’t discuss Immerwolf in depth, it just makes this guy even better, forcing players to kill the Magehunter (or Immerwolf) if they want to stop taking damage.

I hope all of you get a chance to take part in the coming prerelease. If you haven’t already done so, call your local store. I am a tournament organizer, and my prereleases are regularly sold out long before the day of the events. Don’t be left out in the cold.

Bruce Richard

P.S. I want to share this with all of you. I was asking some judges online about a rules interaction. Please enjoy a good laugh at my expense.

My thanks to all the online judges for their instant-speed rules knowledge!

¹ For more on Horde decks check out this link to Peter Knudsen’s original article and my article about two hordes at once.