A solid body that hits hard, with an extra life
swing that helps you if you're on the defensive
and hurts everyone else if you're on offensive.
In a multiplayer game, you've got that much more
incentive to find a way to turn this thing
sideways, but everyone else has that much more
incentive to kill it. And its prohibitive mana
cost means you pretty much have to find a way to
cheat it out, while its status as an artifact
creature means killing it requires little more
than a simple Shatter. It's definitely a
high-risk/high-reward card, but if you can get
it out and keep it alive, it can do some solid
work for you.
I always figured that Sphinx Sovereign's
abilities were designed to encourage people to
attack with it. Certainly the prospect of nine
points offense every turn, three of which is
unblockable, should make everyone sit up and
take notice. At the same time, I wouldn't
underestimate the value of the other side of its
ability. While pure life gaining may not be very
powerful, this isn't that kind of card: you're
not only getting the three life but negating
whatever attacks the Sovereign can block or
deter. Depending on your perspective, the Sphinx
is either an oddly offensive Esper card or a
curiously defensive huge flyer, but either way
it's a good card.
Today's card of the day is Sphinx Sovereign
which is an eight mana White, Blue, and Black
6/6 with Flying and at the end of your turn you
gain three life if it is untapped or if it is
tapped each opponent loses three life. The
effect is very nice, as is a 6/6 evasive body,
but the mana cost is terrible. Aside from
cheating it out with effects it is fairly
unmanageable at three colors and the high cost
puts it late in the game where the tapped to add
damage effect is unlikely to have many triggers
outside of Multiplayer. Effects that can tap the
sphinx without requiring an attack are useful in
some situations and of course Master Transmuter
is the go to support card to bring this into
play. Overall it is a very powerful card that is
heavily weakened without an alternative method
to cast, though combined with one it can shake
up most games and make a major impact in
Multiplayer.
In Limited needing to run three colors is
normally a large drawback, but the block
encourages shard decks and has a reasonable
supply of color fixing to make it more
manageable. An Esper deck using this that also
has support cards is a major threat, though it
does have to actually enter play first. A
reasonable, if expensive and shard locking first
pick in Booster, that can win games or be a dead
card in hand depending on the situation and
available support choices from later picks. In
Sealed at least the Blue portion of Esper is
best to balance out the mana choices as a small
amount of Black and White can be included and
reliably be available by the time eight mana is
in play.
A side note for any format, but Sphinx's
Herald is not worth the effect with the negative
card advantage of sacrificing three creatures of
three different colors and even paying three
mana for the privilege.
