Archfiend of Depravity
This aint your regular fiend.
That's his slogan, I'm pretty sure.
That, or, this one.
He's fiendy!
If you follow this blog, you know that I have a demon (tribal) Commander deck (Oops! All Demons). Before Griselbrand was banned, it was my pride and joy to slam demons onto the table and cackle. After the banning, the deck lost some shine. Still, every new set brings demons to the party, and Fate Reforged is no different. It's party time.
Archfiend of Depravity, in addition to being depraved, is a 5 power flyer for 5 mana. With creatures getting pushed further up the power curve, this is par for the course. But, I like my demons to have drawbacks. Not regular drawbacks, mind you. Interesting drawbacks. This guy, however is all upside. His ability causes your opponents to sacrifice creatures. He leaves a couple creatures around to worship him, I guess. But, that isn't really a drawback so much as simply not the most powerful version of his ability.
For those of you who are wondering what I'm talking about, a more powerful version of his ability might be something like, "During each opponent's end step, that player exiles all creatures he or she controls." Even less interesting.
To make him more demoney (it's a word!), it would have been cool if it affected all players including the controller, but with a loophole, like it only affected "non-demon" creatures. Loopholes are what makes demons, demons. We are starting to lose the flavor of making questionable deals with demons.
Reality Shift
Here's something fun.
This blog is about the Commander format, so I'm looking at cards from that perspective. That said, I suspect Reality Shift will make waves in several of the constructed formats. It is an efficient removal spell that has the magic word, "exile."
When I was reworking my Grixis control deck built around Nicol Bolas (Bolas Is Behind It All!), I was looking at spot removal spells in Red, Black, and Blue. Red has burn. Black has destroy. Blue has bounce. Right?
Right?
Well, in Commander, the efficient burn of Red isn't big enough. You could make an argument for the flexibility of Fireball, but Lightning Bolt doesn't do enough. Black has great spot creature removal available. Hero's Downfall, Dismember, Go for the Throat. Nasty stuff.
Which brings me to Blue. The color that bounces problems. The color of tempo and impermanence. Blue gets Pongify and Rapid Hybridization. We're dancing on the very edge of flavor here. These are both spells that flat out destroy a creature, and for only one blue mana! Sure, the creature's controller gets 3/3 creature to play with, but in Commander that's hardly worth mentioning.
As I built Bolas, I kept coming back to the Blue removal spells. They made the cut over other removal spells. They are low-mana-cost, instant speed, destroy a creature, spells with a negligible drawback of leaving a vanilla 3/3 creature in their wake. Plus, they are thematically funny. Here, have a frog.
Reality Shift is like that. A low-cost, instant speed removal spell. Except this one exiles the creature entirely and leaves a 2/2 behind. If that 2/2 happens to be "not a creature" underneath, then the party is over. If it is a creature, the controller can turn it face up later. I'll take those odds.
How often is it not a creature? Roughly two-out-of-three times. Maybe less. Many decklists cap out at around 35 creatures.
So, now Blue has (at least) three efficient creature removal spells at instant speed. Oh, good.
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