Cards like these are why black gets to exile
cards in graveyards. Well, actually, I don't
really know why black felt the need to call dibs
on that ability-- outside of blocks like Odyssey
and Innistrad that ability is completely
useless. But Empty the Catacombs isn't useless--
it's a great way to restock in the late game.
You may be bothered by the fact that it gives
your opponent all his dead creatures back too,
but in addition to graveyard exile, black can
reanimate creatures straight out of opponents'
graveyards before playing this, or it can follow
it up with a discard spell. There's plenty of
ways to work with this if you're prepared to. I
just don't think I'd want to indiscriminately
add it to any black deck without having some way
to mitigate the symmetry.
This is far from the most famous card from the
Ravnica block, but it is nonetheless notable for
being one of the cheapest mass (partial)
resurrection cards ever printed. All it asks is
that you find a way around its symmetry, which
has always been surprisingly easy to do. Perhaps
you control some kind of hard-to-kill permanent
like Scrabbling Claws or Junktroller that keeps
harmful stuff out of your opponents' graveyards.
Maybe you cast Ravenous Trap or Suffer the Past
the turn before this. Maybe you just don't care
because your creatures are all bigger than
anything your opponent might get back, or
because your teammate is getting stuff back that
will help you out. Any recursion card holds
within it the potential for an insurmountable
advantage, and this one is particularly
interesting to build around.
Welcome back readers todays card of the day is
Empty The Catacombs an interesting graveyard
based card from Ravnica. Currently in legacy and
vintage and modern this card is certainly unique
but not very competitive. The fact it affects
both players give your opponent more resources
to work with is just bad. In casual and
multiplayer giving two or more people access to
powerful creatures in their graveyards is just
asking for trouble, you can build your deck to
abuse this card but it doesn’t seem like it’s
worth the effort and the deckslot. In limited
this card is bizarre allowing both players to
get their bombs back meaning this card could
backfire more often than not. Overall an
interesting card with few applications and an
effect that helps everyone making it quite
narrow.
Today's card of the day is Empty the Catacombs
which is a four mana Black spell that has each
player return all creatures from the graveyard
to their hands. A deck that is designed to
take advantage of the effect will usually fare
better against a random opponent, but combining
this with something to remove their creatures or
graveyard first is a big benefit. Black
has other methods of getting creatures from the
graveyard back or even directly into play
without potentially helping any opponents, so
overall this is a card that while strong
shouldn't see much play.
For Limited games where this is legal the risk
of giving an opponent back anything they had
somewhat outweighs the benefits of using it,
particularly with four mana tied up in casting
it which should give them an edge on refilling
the battlefield. Barring a really strange
pool it is probably better to leave this in the
sidedeck in Sealed and pass on it for Booster
unless a clear advantage can be made through
other available cards.
In Multiplayer this should not be played unless
a combination is used that greatly benefits from
the number of cards that each opponent has in
their hands or all opponent graveyards are
somehow removed. Otherwise the risk
outweighs the reward and any gain from replaying
some of your creatures will likely be
overwhelmed by an entire field of refreshed
opponents.
Welcome to
the Pojo.com card of the day section. Today we
are looking at Empty the Catacombs from Ravnica.
Empty the Catacombs is a rare black sorcery that
costs three generic and one black mana. Empty
the Catacombs says each player returns all
creature cards from their graveyard to their
hands.
In today’s Magic world, Empty the Catacombs is really
just not that great of a card. there are much
better spells that allow YOU to get creatures,
not your opponents. For example, I would rather
use Grimoir of the Dead instead. One more mana
and some effort, and you gain all creatures from
all graveyards onto the battlefield under your
control. Or for that matter, use Liliana Vess’
final. Returning them to your hand can be fun, I
just wish it wouldn’t benefit your opponent as
well.
