Torrent Of Souls – MTG Throwback Thursday (2008)

Torrent Of Souls [Shadowmoor]

Date Reviewed:  August 3, 2023

Ratings:
Constructed: 2.00
Casual: 4.25
Limited: 4.13
Multiplayer: 3.50
Commander [EDH]: 3.75

Ratings are based on a 1 to 5 scale. 1 is bad. 3 is average. 5 is great.

Reviews Below: 

Part of a series of cards from Shadowmoor with hybrid costs, but with effects dependent on how the spell was cast, Torrent of Souls is either a reanimation spell, an alpha strike enabler, or both. There are cases where you can cast this to end the game on the spot for five mana, by either bringing back one threat to swing big or just buffing an army to go wide. The issue here is that it demands set-up in graveyards to really work, and it costs five mana to go live while also being useless if you try to cast it for free; it only gets its effects if you paid colored mana into it. This has long been relegated to more casual tables, as it’s not quite good enough to justify the legwork needed to make it work in Modern, but it’s a potent casual card that can swing a game out of nowhere.

Constructed: 2
Casual: 4.5
Limited: 4.25 (almost never dead, even if you’re not using the graveyard a lot)
Multiplayer: 3.5
Commander [EDH]: 4

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This has always been an odd sort of spell. Back when it was in Standard, there were four-mana reanimation spells legal (most notably the unlikely hero Makeshift Mannequin), so it was considered below rate for that role. And the best aggressive deck was Kithkin, which was generally mono-white in Standard and either mono-white or with a minor amount of blue in Block Constructed. Not everyone adopted it outside of the tournament scene once its block started to rotate, either, perhaps influenced by its recent history; yet it’s actually reasonably good in casual Magic, as you would generally need to use more than one card and perhaps even more than five mana to get both of these effects on the one turn. Reanimation effects have obvious synergy with haste – Wizards of the Coast themselves considered and cancelled reprints in Time Spiral which would have allowed a deck based on Avatar of Discord and Anger – so we may as well take advantage of it outside of the Pro Tour stream.

As a fun fact, if you somehow manage to cast Torrent of Souls without spending either black or red mana, it does nothing at all. The easiest way to do this is probably with cascade, with giving it suspend a close second. I say nothing, although it does still count for storm counts, prowess, and the like; though there’s surely an easier way to increase those counts. This way might, of course, be funny if you can pull it off once.

Constructed: 2
Casual: 4
Limited: 4 (outside of Commander, hybrid mana costs are an “or”, not an “and”; use it in your red-green goblin draft decks)
Multiplayer: 3.5
Commander [EDH]: 3.5

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