Articles

Ichorid
R, Creature - Horror, 3B, 3/1
Haste
At end of turn, sacrifice Ichorid.
At the beginning of your upkeep, if Ichorid is in your graveyard, you may remove a black creature card in your graveyard other than Ichorid from the game. If you do, return Ichorid to play.

Expansion: Torment

Danesh Jogia
Email: daneshj@optushome.com.au
Forums Nic: omegaideal

In Limited, well, it's a body. Not a particularly good one and not a particularly bad one. Certainly useable, but certainly not your first pick either.

In constructed, Ichorid definitely has potential. Whenever a set comes out, I tend to look at them with a mind to all the different formats they'll be played in. In particular, once Invasion block rotates out and takes with it its incredibly undercosted powerhouse cards, things like Ichorid could become very useable indeed.

Lets look at the kind of deck that might be able to use it. Obviously you will need some ways to put guys into the graveyard. If they have an effect on the game state while they're around then that will actually make it worth it.

So there are two ways to get them into the graveyard, either by pulling them straight from the library with Buried Alive effects or by getting them into play and then getting them into the graveyard. So Buried Alive for, say 1 Ichorid and 2 black creatures will get you an Ichorid on the 4th turn and an Ichorid on the 5th turn....well, we could have gotten that just by hard casting him once, so it is debatable that this is worth the effort.

However, suppose we are using a whole host of (black) creatures. Then against another creature deck, a simple reset button like Wrath of God will be much more effective since Ichorid should come bouncing back for a few rounds (at least) whereas they simply lose their creatures. And I don't even have to say how effective Ichorid is against a counter-burn type deck. Just a quick note, extended wise, I suppose this card could be added to the Wild Zombie archetype. With the right timing in the stack, you get get out a whole host of 3/1 haste guys to bring the pain. But I'm not too familiar with how useful extra 3/1 guys are to Wild Zombies, so I'll shut up now. Here's a hastily thrown together sample decklist:

Anyway, to summarise my take on Ichorid: not too crash hot while the overpowered under costed Invasion block is still dominant, but definitely useable post Invasion and during OBC.
Yarkshamarsh

Danesh

Dan Gow
Email: manaflares@yahoo.com
Forums Nic: Deleted Member

Limited: Not bad, it can pressure an oppenent if you're trying to overwhelm him. Inneffective in a stale mate. Board it out v U/W. Very situational. (5/10)

Constructed: Suicide might return with cards like this, but the casting cost is a bit steep. With the amount of good graveyard removal it's a little to easy to board against. (3/10)

Probable market price: about $6, interesting enough for people to try things with, not quite good enough to have an impact on the standard scene. Maybe something to go with Traumatize finally.

Dan

Adrian Rimmer
Email: atgr@ozemail.com.au
Forums Nic: Adrian Rimmer

Limited: Playable, maybe even good in the right deck, but with many Torment black cards requiring cards in graveyard to be removed it becomes very hard to use, obviously the sacrifice at end of turn effect is a major hindrance to the playability of the card, it may be able to get in 3 attacks at best.

It works better in U/B due to cards like Cephalid Looter and Cephalid Broker and their ability to dump cards into the grave.

Constructed: Not Likely, but still, in the right deck, maybe with Braids and many other black weenies such as the new 2cc Shade it could become playable, when the full Torment spoiler is analysed we should get a good idea of whether it is playable or not.