Saturday, February 16, 2013

Domri Rade (By Tobi)


“Domri Rade” is a new planeswalker from Gatecrash, and in the trend of red planeswalkers, he is boring (But nowhere near as bad as Tibalt, thankfully). At a cost of a red, a green, and a colorless, he’s certainly priced right. 3-mana planeswalkers have all been constructed-playable, and Domri is no exception. He comes into play with three counters, which is certainly reasonable.

His +1 looks at the top card of your deck, and if it’s a creature, you reveal and draw it. Using the average deckbuilding metric, you’ll draw the card about 1 out of every 3 times, and moreso if you skew your deck’s composition in his favor (Bloodrush helps with this). His -2 has one of your creatures fight target creature. This is decent for protecting himself, but still relies on another creature holding back to block for him, which is not what a R/G deck wants to be doing. Finally, his -7 gives your team the kitchen sink – most every ability your team could want (sans lifelink and unblockable), they get.

He’s a solid card, to be sure, he’s just boring. A ho-hum minor card advantage +, a destructive/protective -, and a big, flashy ultimate. He’s costed appropriately, but there’s little to no good flavor behind him. He’s a guy who likes to fight. Go, go, fight guy! Fight! As obnoxious as Jace’s ever-present character is, there’s at least a reasonable story behind him. This guy is basically a smaller, whinier Garruk, and the only reason he isn’t a Garruk is because there are already two of them in standard right now (both of which are more exciting than this guy). He’ll fill his role in the deck as a minor card advantage engine and gaining you a couple life, but this guy is a huge flavor miss for me.



Good:
-          -Reasonable abilities
-          -Cheap Cost
-          -Not Tibalt

Bad:
-          -Boring as all get out
-          -Seems like a filler “we needed another planeswalker” card.
-          -Not Garruk

Scully Rating: 8.9 out of 10

Projected Settled Value – 15$