Smile at Death – Tarkin: Dragonstorm
Date Reviewed: May 13, 2025
Ratings:
Constructed: 3.5
Casual: 4
Limited: 3.37
Multiplayer: 3.75
Commander [EDH]: 4.13
Ratings are based on a 1 to 5 scale. 1 is bad. 3 is average. 5 is great.
Reviews Below:
A card with such a evocative name, that makes such an iconic reference, basically has to hit the mark for function and interest. I think Smile at Death more or less succeeds at this. You’ll note that you don’t actually have to do anything apart from keep it in play: as long as there are eligible creatures in your graveyard, it’ll pull them directly back out turn after turn. Even if all you’re doing is attacking with them, that’s hard to keep up with, and that’s before you get into sacrifice shenanigans or cards like Evolution Witness. It remains an open question whether that’s more generally desirable for aggressive decks than using a planeswalker to generate that value, but it depends on the deck and the planeswalker – and the answer will be “yes” in more cases than you might think.
Constructed: 3.5
Casual: 4
Limited: 3.5
Multiplayer: 4
Commander [EDH]: 4
Smile at Death is an interesting card, to be sure…though, admittedly, it slots in as a “do nothing” enchantment at first. But if you survive a turn with this, it starts making value very quickly, bringing back two creatures each turn based on power instead of mana value and making them more powerful. One turn can be enough to really push things in an aggressive direction, particularly since Mardu is a fairly aggressive color. I do think that this is an intriguing piece to grind out value in a long game in a gameplan sometimes bad at keeping the ball rolling.
Constructed: 3.5 (five mana is an issue, but this can grind out games if you let it)
Casual: 4
Limited: 3.25
Multiplayer: 3.5
Commander [EDH]: 4.25
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