Innistrad Spoilers 4

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Happy Tuesday MTG peeps,

We survived the Labour Day long weekend and hope you did too. September marks the end of summer for most with the start of school. For us here at MTG Realm, it marks the ramp-up to the release of the fall Magic the Gathering set. With prereleases on the weekend of 24th / 25th September and launch parties the next weekend of September 30th to October 2nd, we have little time to explore the flavour of the world of Innistrad as well as all the new amazing cards. Let's get to some of them now . . .
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Grimgrin, Corpse-Born, 3
Legendary Creaute - Zombie Warrior, Mythic Rare
Grimgrin, Corpse-Born enters the battlefield tapped and doesn't untap during your untap step.
Sacrifice another creature: Untap Grimgrin and put a +1/+1 counter on it.
Whenever Grimgrin attacks, destroy target creature defending player controls, then put a +1/+1 counter on Grimgrin.
5/5

Here's a Legendary Zombie previewed by Gathering Magic and it's sure to see play in Commander (with the likes of Thraximundar, etc.) but perhaps also standard constructed. Grimgrin's best buddy is likely to be Reassembling Skeleton which will allow a cheap sac which can be called back or perhaps something running token generators.
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Skaab Ruinator, 1
Creature - Zombie Horror, Mythic Rare
As an additional cost to cast Skaab Ruinator, exile 3 creature cards from your graveyard.
Flying
You may cast Skaab Ruinator from your graveyard.
5/6

This most certainly feels like a black card, but Wizards has this placed in blue. Here is yet another mythic rare zombie to consider for inclusion into a possible reanimator deck. A very beefy 5/6 flyer for 3 is a good deal. The drawback is the additional cost of having to send 3 of your creatures into the graveyard. Many players are already considering how to cheat this out into play via Birthing Pod or perhaps getting this out of the graveyard and onto the battlefield via Sun Titan. Whereever this may take you, we think that players will have to overcome the potential stumbling block of the double blue in the mana cost.
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Essence of the Wild, 3
Creature - Avatar, Mythic Rare
Creatures you control enter the battlefield as a copy of Essence of the Wild.
6/6

This card has the potential to win games in limited or with the correct token / mana ramp build but our gut feeling is that it won't quite make it out of the gates to see popular play. For casual players, we want to know how you might use this - with a weird token engine (Druidic Satchel, Garruk Relentless ?), or with a slew of mana dorks.

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Army of the Damned, 5
Sorcery, Mythic Rare
Put thirteen 2/2 black Zombie creature tokens onto the battlefield tapped.
Flashback 7

Magic players looking to flood the game table with a ton of Zombie tokens are sure to be happy with the new Innistrad cards Army of the Damned and Endless Ranks of the Dead. Without saying, this card should do well with Commander but were hesitant about it's value for limited and standard constructed games. Certainly a very decent finisher, so perhaps we could see a singleton of this in mono-black decks.
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Balefire Dragon, 5
Creature - Dragon, Mythic Rare
Flying
Whenever Balefire Dragon deals combat damage to a player, it deals that much damage to each creature that player controls.
6/6

If this hits the battlefield and sticks, you should be smiling - especially if your opponent has no creatures with flying or reach to block it. Altough those are several 'ifs' to consider, we still would love to churn this out early with the likes of Geosurge and blow up their side of the board. We're thinking it will see play in Commander games but limited popularity with other formats.
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Our friends over at MTG Mint Card is having yet another contest on their Facebook Page.

They are looking to give away to two lucky participants an Ajani vs. Nicol Bolas dueldeck.

This contest closes on the 18th of September, so don't wait too long to enter.

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