Thisi s a fun and interesting card. With a
little lifegain, this card can be a card drawing
monster. It can really put your opponents on
notice and help you keep the pressure on. Also,
don't forget that the card itself is a Zombie,
so you will also get at least once card a turn
if you want it. It could potentially be a
replacement for Dark Confidant or Phyrexian
Arena in some decks.
A lot of people think you're supposed to put
this in a Zombie deck. No, you're not. That's
too much life lost too quickly to make all those
cards matter, unless you intend to sacrifice her
after one turn and use her like a Promise of
Power with Suspend 1 or something. Her real use
is as a Phyrexian Arena on a 3/3 body, giving
her less risk than Dark Confidant and more
combat relevance. As long as she's the only
Zombie in your deck, she's a powerhouse. Each
additional Zombie increases the risk, however.
Constructed- 3.5
Casual- 2.5
Limited- 4
David Fanany
Player since
1995
Graveborn Muse
As a replacement for Phyrexian Arena, Graveborn
Muse is pretty bad (especially since Phyrexian
Arena decks also like to play Damnation). As a
part of a mid-range creature strategy, though,
Graveborn Muse is all right.
Like with Dark Confidant, the fact that you get
a creature and an extra card draw for no extra
mana cost is attractive, and the Muse is easy to
get rid of when you're low on life. Of course,
Dark Confidant is so good because it's so cheap
(did you ever notice that white and green are
supposed to be the best at creatures, but the
best creatures around right now are blue and
black?), and Graveborn Muse costs fully twice as
much. I think the Muse will be played somewhere,
but probably not quite as ubiquitously as either
the Confidant or the Arena.
In limited, the Muse is clearly better than a
Hill Giant. The extra cards can be critical, and
as an attacker or blocker it's non-trivial and
more.
Constructed: 3/5
Casual: 3/5
Limited: 3/5
Arcane
Graveborn Muse
I’m back from Grand Prix Montréal! It was my
very first foray into the Pro Tour ranking 339
out of 739. I’m not terribly happy with that
result but the deck I was running was untested
and I didn’t have as much time to play with it
before hand as I would have liked. (I liked the
modifications I made to it before playing in the
PT – Valencia Qualifier the next day). But an
experience is good experience and I did get to
spend most of Sunday hanging out, joking and
chatting with the judges and Pro players like
Paul Cheon, Guillaume Wafo-Tapa at the feature
match tables and the top 8.
Constructed: There are some really good zombies
running around in Standard right now (Bridge
from Below, Undead Warchief, Lord of the Undead,
Withered Wretch) with the potential to be turned
into a powerhouse of a deck archetype again. And
if the rumors are true and Lorwyn is going to
have a tribal sub-theme then I’m sure we are
going to see even more zombie powered cards
coming out. Has the potential to draw you lots
of cards, but just remember that when you
overextend you leave yourself open to mass
removal effects.
Casual/Multi: Black is the color of the good
life gain cards, with cards like corrupt,
consume spirit and Tendrils of corruption making
it pretty easy to recover from the hits to your
life you’ll take while drawing double to trible
the number of cards your opponents are drawing.
Can’t get rid of the cards fast enough? Why not
use cards like Soul Spike or Contagion to pitch
cards for free spells. The only problem is going
to be not only getting a bunch of zombies out to
make the effect really strong but to make sure
you don’t get killed by the other players.
There’s just something about mass card draw and
armies of creatures that some players don’t take
too kindly to, so unless you only want to draw a
card or two (for which Phyrexian arena is better
for) the Muse might not be the best choice.
Limited: Now thanks to the spoilers that have
gone up for 10th there’s about 11 zombies at
common and uncommon in the newest incarnation of
the core set, meaning that zombies are very easy
to scoop up to make this card that much better.
On the other side of things, it’s a 3/3 for four
mana that draws you at least a card for a life,
which makes it a huge boost to any deck.
Constructed: 3
Casual: 3.5
Limited: 3.5
The Missing
Linc
-Balding
for just over 5 years
-Playing MTG for just over 10
Graveborn Muse
A card that has it's place in a zombie deck for
sure. However, outside of that narrow play area,
it is nothing. I really don't like it when they
make cards this narrow.
Constructed: 4 (in a zombie deck), 2 in any
other
Casual: same as above
Limited: 2
PsychoAnime
#1
Magic Noob in Canada since 2002
With Phyrexian
Arena gone in 10th addition, this is the next
best thing. A 3/3 body for 4 mana is really easy
to kill, but black can easily empty out a hand
via its discard, leaving this safe to net you
advantage every turn, and that's pretty much
game.
It still dies to a lot of stuff though so it
won't be as good as Phyrexian Arena, and having
2 of these out at the same time can easily
backfire, and if your opponent has Zombies out
too, like their own copy of this, you'll be dead
really quick.
In casual, this has an awesome picture and a
good ability. It does suck though if your
opponent happens to be playing tribal Zombie.
In limited, the advantage you get from this
pretty much seals the game.
