Orzhov Extort

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Happy Thursday MTG peeps,

Up here in Barrie, Ontario, we got a lot of snow last night - just up to your knee - which means a lot of snow clearing for us.  If we were evil, we would likely extort someone to clear all that white cr@p for us.  Oh - speaking of extort - the new Gatecrash Orzhov (black / white) mechanic is now out in the open with today's 'gift' preview on the mothersite.

If you cannot immediately find today's special Gatecrash spoiler on the page, click on the present appearing on today's article banner to open.  Today's new game card is appropriately a Thrull creature and features the new Orzhov guild mechanic.  Let's have a looky-loo . . .
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Treasury Thrull, 4wb
Creature - Thrull, Rare
Extort (Whenever you cast a spell you may pay {WB}, if you do each opponent loses 1 life and you gain that much life.)
Whenever Treasury Thrull attacks, you may return target artifact, creature, or enchantment card from your graveyard to your hand.
4/4
Illus. Mark Zug
#201/249
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On Ravnica, Thrulls are a signature race of the Orzhov Syndicate, who use them as unthinking servants. Like Dominarian thrulls, the Orzhov thrulls are created from magically animated dead flesh - sometimes even the dead flesh of prominent guild members who left their bodies behind to become spirits.
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This particular Thrull  has the ability to return any artifact, creature or enchantment from your yard into your hand every time it attacks, which is a really decent recursion ability.  Now - for the Orzhove mechanic - with Extort whenever you cast a spell you may pay {W/B}, if you do each opponent loses 1 life and you gain that much life, which is a very flavourful mechanic for Orzhov.  Essentially, you can pay only once for each trigger, and each instance of Extort triggers separately when you cast a spell.  All we can say for the moment is that we are getting our Godless Shrines and Isolated Chapels from MTG Mint Card now as we feel that Orzhov may be delivering big on fun gaming.

Edit - We want to include this comment from our friend 'Marvel Sutantio' in Jakarta (Indonesia) on the new mechanic - 

The new spoiled card for Orzhov is Treasury Thrall. A life drain kicker is pretty nice, especially in the late game. Play a couple of cheap spells and we can siphon the life out the opponent FTW. What interest me is the Extort ability (at least on this card) doesn't specify what kind of spell we have to play. It could have a lot of have other variations, where we pay 2,3 or even X. Or have to play black or white spells, etc.

Either way, I think BWU, BWG & BWR can be quite fearsome. 

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