This is a clever way for a white aggro deck to
fill out its ranks. The flavor behind it is
cool, too, but honestly the Spirits' best use
isn't sacking themselves to save others, it's
flooding the board and benefiting from effects
like Intangible Virtue or Paragon of New Dawns.
With this on the board, you have that much less
to fear from an Anger of the Gods or such, not
only because your Spirits can save your
non-Spirits, but because you can repopulate the
board that much faster.
I am a little bothered by the way the card is
worded, however. You get Spirit tokens by
playing non-Spirits, but any Spirit can
sacrifice itself for any non-Spirit. Imagine
this and Geist of the Moors in the same deck:
the Geist gets you a token, but that token can't
sack itself to save the Geist; in fact the Geist
can now be sacked to save some other creature. I
wonder if there's a combo here...
Today's card of the day is Spirit Bonds which
is a two mana White enchantment that allows you
to spend one White mana whenever a non-token
creature enters play under your control to put a
1/1 White spirit token with Flying into play.
Also, for two mana you can sacrifice a spirit to
make a target non-Spirit creature Indestructible
until end of turn.
This is a very solid support card for otherwise
non-token based swarm decks, particularly those
with mass power ups to make the tokens a little
stronger. The low cost is easily managed and
works well with otherwise off tempo creature
plays. The second effect is primarily for saving
support or finisher units, but the relatively
low cost should keep it in mind as a response.
Overall this is a useful card that will see
play, though possibly not often competitively as
the play and mana usage slows down the
aggressive builds it is strongest in.
In Limited this is an easy first pick in
Booster as evasive token creation plus
protection for your bombs in one card are both
very powerful in the format. The flexibility is
slightly reduced in Sealed, by needing enough
White mana to keep it running, though it gives
high value to White compared to some other rares.
Some cards are easy to look at and tell if
they are good or not. Others, you have to really
try them out to get a good feel for how good
they are. This is one of the second type.
It's easy to get lost in all this card can
do. First, any time a non-token creature enters
the battlefield, you can pay a white mana to
summon a 1/1 flier. This, in and of itself is
pretty good. I can imagine playing this in a
white weenie deck and quickly overwhelming the
opponent with lots of little creatures. Also, if
you'll notice, this doesn't require you to CAST
a creature, only that it enters the battlefield,
meaning if you have a way to blink creatures in
and out of the battlefield (i.e. Skybind?), you
can use this then as well.
Secondly, if you have 2 mana available, you
can save your best creature from removal at the
cost of sacrificing a spirit. This could be
useful when a Supreme Verdict or another board
sweeper is played.
I really haven't had the chance to play with
this card much yet, so I could be wrong, but I
think this might not quite be good enough for a
serious constructed deck, but will work very
nicely in a dedicated casual or commander deck.
In limited, this is pretty much a bomb, since
you'll undoubtedly be casting creatures to
trigger this, and making a steady stream of
flying creatures is more than most decks can
defend against.
I like how closely the mechanic of this card
matches its concept: the creatures bring along a
spirit ally, and the spirit allies protect the
creatures. This is much more successful as
flavor based design than going "Look! It's yet
another hydra! And hydra is a Greek word!"
Note that the ability that grants
indestructible lets you sacrifice any Spirit,
not just one of this card's tokens. This means
that it actually goes into the Innistrad
white/blue geist deck too, and makes Drogskol
Captain even harder to deal with than before. If
it feels odd to sacrifice a ghost to make a
second ghost indestructible, don't forget that
you were previously allowed to use Moorland
Haunt to exile a ghost from your graveyard to
create a different ghost. Conventional "logic"
and ghosts do not always mix.
