RCotD #57

Random Card of the Day #57:

The Dark Barony
Plane - Ulgrotha
Whenever a nonblack card is put into a player's graveyard from anywhere, that player loses 1 life.
{CHAOS}: Whenever you roll {CHAOS}, each opponent discards a card.

Initial thoughts:

To be honest, I forgot about Planechase cards. It wasn't really a multiplayer mode that appealed to me. I have played it, and have had some pretty insane games. I don't remember the Planes names but I do know the effects. One of the popular chaos rules in my group was the Chaos roll which always did Incremental Blight's effect; the chaos roll that caused Soul Conduit's activated ability; and probably the one everyone hated the most, Planar Cleansing whenever you left the plane--at least these were the most memorable ones.

Back then, I was still pretty new to magic, so most of us just played the biggest creatures we can. I believe the strongest card I had at the time was Ethersworn Adjudicator when I really liked the Esper shard. I got him when I had bought my first two booster packs (M10) in seven years and was really happy to see exactly what I wanted in the first pack (or at least what I remember of it): Lightning Bolt, Doom Blade, Pacifism, and the only card I really wanted, Royal Assassin. The next pack was good because I got another Pacifism, but I was confused at my rare. I didn't remember this color for the rare symbol before: Baneslayer Angel. I was lucky enough that some guy  next to me really, really wanted to trade for it, so I got basically all the commons/uncommons I could ever want along with some powerful rares, many of which I still use today: Rakka Mar, Loxodon Warhammer, Jace Beleren come to mind among many others. Oh, and Ethersworn Adjudicator.

I was glad I didn't really get ripped off. I was just a dumb little Timmy player who didn't know the prices of cards and this guy was nice enough to tell me what everyone else is playing, what to watch out for, and just general good advice about card advantage, etc.--things I really didn't know. But he gave me everything I needed to kick start a good deck. He could have just as easily traded me that Jace for Baneslayer and I wouldn't have known a difference between a $10 card and a $45 card.

Anyways, the card itself is like a fully quested Bloodchief Ascension, except without the may ability and not losing two life, or gaining two life, just loss of life. It is important to note that milling does tremendous amounts of damage, so Glimpse the Unthinkable is going to hit pretty hard.

It's also difficult to rate a Planechase card because 1) it's a pretty unpopular format 2) each of the planes contribute to a different style, many of which can negatively effect even the player who planewalks to it and 3) it may just be me, but when I play Planechase there is a "community pile" of Planes and a discard pile, very similar to how UNO is played. This differs from an Archenemy "scheme deck" because you can't customize it.

On the other hand, if I am wrong and each player brings their own Planes to the game (assuming I could get all my friend to buy one) I suppose I would give this card a 3/5. It doesn't fit in every deck and it would most likely be a blue/black mill deck that has two copies of this card--I just assume it's like Scheme decks where only 2 copies of the same Planes are allowed. It's still a highly situational card and it seems difficult to put this Planes in your favor--all you have to do is play monoblack but then you are highly susceptible to artifacts and enchantments.

Whatever. I'll still play EDH and if politics are really bad against me I'll just play Archenemy for the next the game.