The art for the Planeshift version of Terminate
depicted the death of Darigaaz, a dragon who
allied with Urza against the Phyrexians. For the
Alara Reborn version, they depicted a moment
that was probably of equal emotional impact to
someone, but we don't know exactly who because
there were a lot fewer novels and similar
fiction at that time. It's unfortunate. Still,
this is a contender for one of the best removal
spells of all time - certainly it made history
as the first significant black card to destroy
any creature with no restrictions. Requiring two
colors seems superficially like somewhat of an
issue, but it's actually remained very strong
even as Magic has grown - there may be more
creatures with protection than there were in
2001, but there are still many more without it,
and Grixis and Mardu had not yet gotten any real
official support as color combinations back
then.
Today's card of the day is Terminate which is a
two mana Black and Red instant that destroys
target creature and it can't be Regenerated.
This is an excellent removal option for Rakdos,
Jund, Grixis, or Mardu builds as the low cost
and open targeting with the Incinerate clause of
countering Regeneration is about as efficient as
it gets. This has been a popular choice in
competitive decks and will remain a top removal
choice across formats for a very long time.
In a Limited format this is a two mana removal
that targets without an exclusion making it one
of the strongest cards available. Even
with the two colors this is an easy early pick
in Booster to follow a Red or Black first
choice, a hate draft when out of color, or even
a first pick in an otherwise weak pack. In
Sealed it can be splashed with one color or the
other and should not be sidedecked unless the
other side of the pool works better overall.
When you absolutely positively gotta kill
something while running red/black, accept no
substitutes. Seriously, i'm surprised that it's
a common. You could run hero's downfall, or
dreadbore, and they're all good options, but
this is low cost, instant and stops regenning.
