Pojo's Magic The Gathering news, tips, strategies and more!

Pojo's MTG
MTG Home
Message Board
News & Archives
Deck Garage
BMoor Dolf BeJoSe

Columnists
Paul's Perspective
Jeff Zandi
DeQuan Watson
Jordon Kronick
IQ
Aburame Shino
Rare Hunter
Tim Stoltzfus
WiCkEd
Judge Bill's Corner


Trading Card
Game

Card of the Day
Guide for Newbies
Decks to Beat
Featured Articles
Peasant Magic
Fan Tips
Tourney Reports


Other
Color Chart
Book Reviews
Online Play
MTG Links
Staff



This Space
For Rent

Pojo's Magic The Gathering
Card of the Day

Daily Since November 2001!

Dark Deal
Image from Wizards.com

 Dark Deal
- Fate Reforged

Reviewed Jan. 26, 2015

Constructed: 3.33
Casual: 3.50
Limited: 2.67
Multiplayer: 3.67

Ratings are based on a 1 to 5 scale:
1 - Horrible  3 - Average.  5 - Awesome

Click here to see all of our 
Card of the Day Reviews 

BMoor

Deck Garage

Dark Deal

It's an interesting effect, to be sure, and not always one that you want. You have to pitch your own hand, but your opponent does as well, which could make it a reasonable tactic if there's a specific card in your deck you need to fish for, or if you just have nothing of consequence left in your hand. Playing out all the rest of your hand and then casting this while your opponent still has cards would be an interesting play.

On the other hand, playing this when your opponent has one card left would basically just make them discard it, making it a less efficient Raven's Crime sans the retrace. But just playing this for its own effect isn't really the point: this is at its heart a combo piece. The flavor marks it as a Sultai card, so the cards you discard can fuel future Delves. Sultai is also blue, so you could bounce an opponent's creature, Dark Deal to make him discard it, and them possibly even re-animate it out of his graveyard. Moving out of Tarkir block, you could play this in a deck full of Megrim and Underworld Dreams as the "finisher", or maybe you'll think of some other clever use for it?

Constructed- 3.5
Casual- 4
Limited- 2
Multiplayer- 4.5


David Fanany

Player since 1995

Dark Deal
 
Many of you were probably not around to see it, but one of the most dangerous cards in Alpha was Wheel of Fortune. Somehow it's never been considered one of the Power Nine or even the Nine Plus X (when people started adding things like Sol Ring and Library of Alexandria), despite the fact that it's been enabling reanimator combos and Underworld Dreams and messing with opponent's carefully stocked hands for more than twenty years. But somehow I doubt that putting it in a different color and adding some kind of nominal tie to the current game state is going to make it that much weaker. First of all, there's no chance that this will ever be the only draw effect in a deck, and I expect it will rarely draw fewer than three cards when used appropriately. Second of all, sometimes you don't care what or how many cards the opponent draws, or even how many you draw - if you know they have something expensive and nasty in their hand, this gives you a decent shot at replacing it with something more manageable. I simply can't imagine this card failing to make an impact in some form.
 
Constructed: 3/5
Casual: 3/5
Limited: 3/5
Multiplayer: 3/5

Michael "Maikeruu" Pierno

Today's card of the day is Dark Deal which is a three mana Black sorcery that has each player discard all the cards in their hand and draw that many minus one.  This Black variant on Wheel of Fortune is excellent when paired with Fate Unraveler (the creature version of Underworld
Dreams) or Blue bounce and is a fairly low cost way to fix a problem hand or put some cards in the graveyard for other effects like Mortivore.  Overall this is a card that will see some play in decks that benefit from some self-milling and the advantage gained by an opponent of new cards is mostly outweighed by a Black or Black/Blue deck built with Dark Deal in mind.
 
In Limited this has some advantages and can be timed to clear out a bomb card from an opponent's hand, but is more situational when the deck can't be tailored around it.  In Booster it is safe to pass in most situations and for Sealed it is more of a hand fix or Delve feeder than anything else which leaves it in the sidedeck fairly often.
 
Constructed: 3.5
Casual: 3.5
Limited: 3.0
Multiplayer: 3.5


Copyright© 1998-2014 pojo.com
This site is not sponsored, endorsed, or otherwise affiliated with any of the companies or products featured on this site. This is not an Official Site.