This guy's making a lot of people sweat,
especially Faeries. When so many cards are
multicolor, you need a lot of nonbasic lands. In
the higher tiers of play, sometimes you barely
have any basic lands at all. And given this
guy's unearth cost of 5BR, that's easily six or
seven damage to the face plus the attack,
uncounterable. And that's after it came into
play-- or ate up a counterspell-- the first
time.
I would just like to point out that "Anathemancer"
might be one of the best card names ever
invented. I would also like to point out that it
might be one of the best creatures in modern
Standard. When "five-color good stuff" is one of
the top decks, and there are two-color decks
that only have three basic lands, you're on to a
winner.
-Balding
for just over 5 years
-Playing MTG for just over 10
Anathemancer
This card can easily deal 5 to 7 damage on its
own through the course of the game and that's
really efficient for 1 card. It's even pseudo-uncounterable
in the form of unearth which makes this card
just awesome. Against decks with little
creatures like Planeswalker Control, not killing
this means they get beaten down and killing it
means they eat more damage next turn. Just
nasty.
In limited it's not as good, in fact quite bad,
with the drastic decrease in non-basic lands.
Constructed:
This is the ultimate answer to all of the
non-basic lands everone is running in their
decks. 5 color decks will be punish hard when
this little critter hits play. And he is cheap
to.
Casual & Multiplayer:
A good card, but most causal players stick with
basic lands. There are few fun or tribal decks
that will fear this card.
Limited:
With all of the high picks for tri-lands and the
other non-basics in this block this is a
fantastic card to pick and hate draft. Plus it
can come back for more damage later on.
Overall this card will be the best uncommon from
Alara Reborn.
Costructed: 4
Casual: 3
Multiplayer: 2
Limited: 4
Later
Miguel
Paul
Magic The Gathering COTD: Anathemancer
Welcome back faithful readers, stop and stare at
the card and read it slowly and carefully. Good
now while you pick your jaw up off the floor
today we have another zombie wizard this one
with a greater likelihood of seeing constructed
play in nearly all formats. Anathemancer is a
2/2 body attached to a killer effect for 3 mana.
When Anathemancer comes into play it deals
damage to target player equal to the number of
non-basic lands he or she controls. Obviously
this cards primary function is to punish 5CC
players, whose mana base is almost 95% composed
of non-basic lands. Not to mention the fact
nearly all competitive decks in Standard have a
majority of non-basic lands in their decks
turning this zombie into a decent 2/2 body with
either a Shock, Incinerate, or Flame Javelin
attached to it. The Unearth ability is what
truly puts this card over the top as even if its
countered the first time you play it can be
Unearthed late game for a huge uncounterable
life swing. This card at its converted mana cost
of 3 is reminiscent of Blood Moon and Magus of
The Moon, as it is a three drop that helps to
punish players who use pain lands and man lands
to achieve consistency in their mana bases. In
Extended the amount of players playing non-basic
lands increases exponentially, as the most
powerful archetypes use seemingly the most
versatile lands, this card turns non-basic lands
into a liability and could fundamentally change
the way opponents play their land drops and
force them to play around your little zombie
wizard.
Legacy may or may not be able to use this card
depending on the build, Magus of The Moon and
Blood Moon see a fair amount of play this little
creature could be a useful little addition.
Vintage I think will most likely pass on this
guy. Casual and multiplayer games in my
experience have few players that run a lot of
non-basic lands if any, depending on your local
playgroups this guy could be a bomb or a dud up
to you to determine for yourself. In limited
most likely this guy is nothing more then an
expensive Unearth creature that will more than
likely never do more than a couple damage,
lacking more than a few copies hurts the cards
playability in limited, where as in constructed
you can take advantage of being able to use this
guys effect possibly up to eight times! This
card I feel helps turn the tables on 5CC and
other top tier decks in Standard, if you are
playing red and black there is most likely not a
good excuse to not run this guy maindeck or in
your sidedeck. And if you’re only running red or
black it’s a strong excuse to possibly tweak
your mana base to utilize this beast of a card,
but in the process of doing that you can leave
yourself vulnerable to your opponent’s copies of
Anathemancer. I may be highly overrating this
card but the situations it’s relevant in are
astronomical, worst case scenario this card is
still an above average Shock with a body and an
uncounterable flashback later in game. This card
is simply an efficient creature that can turn
the tide of a game in your favor. Look out for
this card!
