This will never destroy more than one creature.
Your opponent will not re-equip the Hexed
Equipment without dealing with the Hex unless
somehow forced to. It will rarely kill their
best creature either, since it triggers on YOUR
upkeep and thus gives your opponent a turn to
move the Equipment onto the creature they most
want to sacrifice... and one last turn to swing
with that equipped creature. I suspect that far
more often it'll simply sit in your hand because
your opponent doesn't have an Equipment out.
If your opponent does have Equipment, though,
it's a pretty good play. You nab one creature,
and you render their Equipment un-usable unless
they're willing to sack an additional creature
to the Hex. This makes it a good way for Black
to deal with Equipment (something it can't
normally do) as well as with creatures they
can't usually handle-- a creature wearing
Swiftfoot Boots is untargetable, but the Boots
themselves aren't. The usefulness really depends
on your local metagame though, and how often you
see an Equipment on the other side of the field.
This is a rather interesting card to
evaluate. On the one hand, a characteristically
black way to punish equipment decks is welcome.
On the other, the fact that it kills the
creature on your own upkeep means that your
opponent still gets to attack you using the
equipment in question, as long as they can keep
playing creatures every turn. Not everyone can
do that, of course, and Artificer's Hex will
certainly make them think about how they use
their equipment cards, but a lot of the time
you'd rather just kill their creatures outright.
Today's card of the day is Artificer's Hex
which is a one mana aura for an equipment that
destroys the creature the equipment is attached
to at the beginning of your upkeep. This is an
interesting sidedeck option for Black decks to
respond to key equipment threats when necessary,
but the likelihood in current formats is quite
low. The option for an opponent to equip it to a
less valuable creature exists and there are
easier way to sacrifice your own creatures as
opposed to trying to use this in a combo.
Overall there isn't much value in this card
currently and barring a big change in the next
block it probably won't see much if any play.
In Limited there are exactly three cards this
can affect and one of them can function with no
creatures in play. The chances of having this in
hand a target to play it on are too remote to
bother including in a deck and it can safely be
passed in Booster and kept in the sideboard in
Sealed.
Artificer’s Hex provides black with some much
needed and thematic equipment control. Why
destroy equipment when you can have it do the
killing for you? Be careful when using this
along cards like Stab Wound because it provides
your opponent the opportunity to kill off their
cursed card. However there is an easy way around
this card, since the creature is only destroyed
if its still equipped at the beginning of your
upkeep, your opponent simply has to equip it and
un-equip it each turn.
When drafting in M14, “Some treasure’s aren’t
worth finding…” I recommend grabbing this card
in a latter pick if you’re in black. This year’s
summer release only has three equipments, and
Haunted Plate Mail’s 0 ability ignores this
card.
In casual I’d run this if you know your
playgroup tends to run equipments. It’s got a
nice Indian Jones and the Last Crusade vibe to
it.
