Born of the Gods Set Review: Threats

Welcome to The General Zone's set review of Born of the Gods! I am your host, Grandpa Growth, and we are going to be taking a look at the new cards from the set together! I will share with you my thoughts on how they are going to be used in Commander and other casual formats. First, let's begin by laying the ground rules:

• I will not be reviewing any of the Legendary Creature cards from the set. For a complete article discussing the new potential generals, that will happen in a separate post by Uncle Landdrops.
• I will not be reviewing any reprints, only new cards. For old cards, it is already clear what their place is in the format and reprints usually only affect the card's availability, not its playability in casual formats.
• I will not be talking about every card in the set. Only cards that I believe will have an impact on the format at-large will make it into the article. If I miss talking about your favorite cards or you think there is a case for something that I left out, let us know in the comments!
• The review will be broken down into parts based on how those cards are used in decks: threats, answers, utility, and mana, with another post dedicated specifically to the Legendary Creatures, as I mentioned.

In today's installment we will begin with the threat cards. What is a threat? A threat is something that you use to win the game. It pressures your opponent, creates an advantage, or ends the game outright. These are often Creatures, but Planeswalkers and certain Artifacts or Enchantments definitely fit into this category.

A caveat before we begin: Among the mythics and rares of the set, almost half of the Commander playable threat cards are Legendary. The power level in this set is also very low across the board. Because of this I am going to be talking about some cards that wouldn't normally make it into my reviews. Most of the juice from this set is eaten up by the five ally-colored god cards and there wasn't enough to go around. Also, this is a small set, so expect this review to be shorter than others from the past.

THE CARDS

For our very first card, we have a representative of the Archetype cycle. They all share the common characteristic of giving your whole team a keyword ability, First Strike in this case, and denying that ability to all your opponents creatures. This one in particular stands out because it gives the most relevant ability of the five, has a reasonable cost, and existing White token decks can actually take advantage of it. The others in the cycle are much weaker comparatively. Expect to see some of this, but not much, and very little of his brothers.

My second comment about this cycle is the waffling that is going on within R&D. Back in the day all "banner cards" were templated this way. Stuff you have has this. Then they decided that was confusing and made it look like Rhox Pikemaster. Now it seems they have transitioned all the way back with last year's slivers and now this. All I want is some consistency. The game is complex, having multiple ways to template the same thing isn't helping make it less complex. Quite the opposite. If you wanted to remove complexity from the game to make it easy for new players, stop printing six new mechanics in every block.

At this point, I am going to assume you are all familiar with the "First World Problems" meme. That is what this reminds me of. "I have a huge army of dudes, but I can't win the game." What are you doing? In the game, I mean. Your deck is finely tuned to make a huge board and then...do nothing? Attack. Win. If you can reliably build and protect a huge army you don't need anything else, you won. Congratulations! There is basically no reason to play this outside of limited, but someone will try and I can't wait to explain to them the error of their ways.

It is a sad day when even the "play it in Commander" cards aren't playable in Commander. Actually, for the most part, it has been that way since Rise of the Eldrazi, but oh well. This card is over-costed, undersized, and generally unexciting. Zur and Bruna decks are already very good, so it seems like this would have a place, but they aren't interested in junk like this. Only getting back one Enchantment at a time is too slow for the voltron combo decks. They need to lock up the game in one or two successful swings, and can already do that at a cheaper cost.

If I have learned one thing from Final Fantasy games, it is that gods are rarely interested in serving justice. The model of Greek mythology helps reinforce the pettiness and selfishness of the deities of Theros. I just don't know if a single line of dull flavor text is doing anything to enhance that theme. Phew, successfully made two critical observations about religion without alienating the entire fan base. Nailed it.

It's cheap, sized for beatings, and stops people from doing degenerate things, this has to be awesome right? Well, it's really not much of a road block, more like a speed bump. Basically every removal spell ever printed hits this thing and it can't survive combat with anything. It doesn't have evasion or protection. It is a cute hate bear, but not much else. Bonus: more horrible flavor text.

I am going to call shenanigans here. This whole "Enchantment Creature" thing is a very stupid gimmick. I didn't complain because Bestow is fun and it made sense. I didn't complain about the gods because they weren't always Creatures. Now I am complaining. There is no reason this should be an Enchantment. This is how Wizards tells us that card type doesn't mean anything unless Tarmogoyf is in play. All hail the hypnogoyf.

Here we get a look at our first Inspired card...and it is anything but inspired. This is a six drop that is slightly undersized and doesn't give you anything unless it untaps. It is funny how nitpicky we have all become, but this just isn't a realistic card anymore. Frost Titan, this is not. There is little if any value to be found short of pipe-dreaming until you slam an eldrazi into play. Honestly, I don't have any idea why they made this card miss on Enchantments of all things. I am sure they have their reasons, but without the bonus putting any permanent straight onto the battlefield this is going to be a limited-only rare.

Inspired is a horrible name for this mechanic. In fact, I don't think it should even have a name. They ran out of original ideas, so the crack design team just dusted off something old and handed it to the creative team to vomit on. I can't wait to try and Bestow my Observant Alseid onto an Inspired guy and just frown my way to the loser's bracket.


As you can see here, there is a precipitous drop in quality with these lesser Archetypes. In fact, this is your archetypal bad card: costs too much, doesn't have good stats, does something most decks in Commander don't care about, and the decks that do want an airborne finisher for their team have better options. RUG decks, Bant Decks, and perhaps Momir are the only things capable of producing a big army and Blue mana, but they also have access to Overrun or Craterhoof Behemoth already, which provides plenty of power to finish the game and punch through to unreachable opponents.

This is our first look at the Fated cycle. These all have triple mana requirements and mediocre effects! I don't know if that is a unifying characteristic that I can get behind. Much like the Time Spiral block cycle that included Careful Consideration, this cycle gives you a bonus for playing your Instants on your own turn. Scry 2 is not irrelevant, but unfortunately that doesn't help this card much. With the M14 rules change, copy effects are at their lowest power level of all time. Ambushing an attacker by copying the best creature in play and blocking is the only value you could ever hope to eek out of this, but then you have to forego the Scry effect. Pretty miserable. It's like the version of the "punisher" mechanic that only punishes you! .....Wait, what? That already happened? Ten years ago? Crazy...good thing they won't do that again!....Wait, WHAT?! "Punisher" is back, in this very set AND it's worse than ever? I quit.

All sarcasm aside. This is a beautiful and flavorful adaptation of the myth of Narcissus. And look, they didn't even have to cheese out the story by changing the names or beating me over the head with flavor text! Look Wizards, we get it. Now stop punishing us with bad cards...and puns.

I admit, I am perplexed, but also...intrigued. This card is all kinds of weird. I don't know how I am going to win with it, but there just has to be a way to get an advantage out of this. I am not saying it is good. In fact, I am not saying anything else about this card at all; it's just too strange to evaluate.


This card is fated to drown in obscurity. There are very few instant-speed effects like this, mostly because of how powerful they are, but this is far too expensive to be realistic. At seven man with a triple Black requirement, you are competing against some seriously game breaking spells. What else looks like this? Army of the Damned. Rise of the Dark Realms. These cards just do so much more than Fated Return. Adding Indestructible is of very little benefit. For this much mana you should be getting something back that can win the game by itself and, while that helps increase the power of the Creature this becomes, you won't win unless that Creature was awesome to begin with. Again, what I said earlier about the potential Scry effect is equally true here. If you cast it on your turn, you can't ambush attacking Creatures. If you cast it on their turn, you don't get to Scry. I know it seems silly to complain about having a "good problem" like this, but honestly, why play this when you could already play cards that are cheaper and let you have your cake and eat it too.


This card requires a bit of work to get going, but it can be very powerful in the right context. The ability to return multiple Creatures directly to the battlefield is huge! It is easy to come up with two-card combinations that win the game immediately and this is a great enabler to add redundancy and recursion to decks that are looking to combo-kill their opponent or simply attrition them out. Sedris Self Mill has access to Kiki/Pestermite. Mono Black or Glissa can use Triskelion+Mikaeus. If you are just looking for value, constantly upgrading useless tokens or other dorks into gruesome encores of your best threats is a good way to exhaust removal and seal the game with things like Grave Pact. The trick, as usual, will be protecting this card while you set up. Also, this card is too small to win on it's own and is completely blanked by a well timed Tormod's Crypt, so that is pretty unfortunate.

Another card for the too expensive to matter file; you just don't get enough out of this for the cost. Why do I have to sacrifice two creatures to kill something?! Attrition let's be do it for one Black mana and a single creature...and it only costs three to play. Weak card is weak. This is a couple light-years behind Dark Imposter, another card that sees absolutely no play because it is garbage.

On a darker note, if you live in Hope, South Dakota, you might want to consider relocating. This guy sure looks hungry. Look at how skinny he is!


Cards like this have seen a meteoric rise in popularity with the release of the Commander 2013 decks late last year. As of yet, Nekusar decks haven't reached a critical mass of powerful effects like this. This is a big upgrade in playability over the old school Underworld Dreams, mostly because of damage output. This is a creature. It can attack. It can carry a Jitte. That alone makes it more valuable than other similar permanents. This has a decent, if a bit bland, body for its cost and can easily block other Creatures at three and four mana, which has been a core weakness of these decks so far. They needed to commit so many slots in their list to junk invest-e-nchanments, that they have to skimp on removal and Creatures. Their "threats" are often a Howling Mine or other such nonsense that doesn't actually provide a presence on the board.

This flavor text makes me think about that silly Weezer song where he explains how it feels to have your sweater thread come undone. Yea! That song sucks.


This has the right size and cost to function as a pure beater in a format like Commander. It is not unreasonable to think that you could get in several attacks with this card while slower decks use the early game to set up their mana or dig for combo pieces. Bestow gives you a great way to transform a board stall into a profitable attack and it gives you built-in protection from Wrath of God. I wouldn't expect to see much of this around the table, but that doesn't mean it isn't a decent pick up for casual or budget lists.


Bob doesn't see a ton of play in Commander and with good reason. Dark Confidant forces you to take a significant risk of damage. Pain Seer is harder to get going and sustain, but it is easier to shut off when you need to conserve your life total. I am not sure what implications that has for Commander, but this probably isn't anything to get too excited about.


Well. If you get this going you can do some...things. As a total package, this card is a little bit too weak to make it in my opinion. Because this is a triggered ability and not an activated ability like Kiki-Jiki, you can't get a loop going very easily. You need both a way to tap and untap it while simultaneously generating mana to pay for the ability. This is a safer design for modern Magic. It won't break. It won't ruin Standard. It won't ruin Modern. R&D can sleep soundly tonight knowing that their game is safe from degenerate combos and valuable cards.

This is a Mythic. A pretty pathetic one though. Here we get a look at the newest iteration of the "punisher" mechanic. This is essentially the idea that you punish your opponent by forcing them to choose between two different undesirable alternatives. The tricky bit is that they will choose the alternative that is decidedly less bad for them, meaning you always get slightly less than the expected value from your card. Let's look here, do you want a 5/5 Flying for 2RR with no drawback? Ehh, not exciting these days. What else do you got? Well, how about a 3/3 Flying Haste guy that comes back when it dies for the same price? I don't care about that either. If your opponent has removal, then he will just get rid of it. He isn't going to give you the opportunity to recur it. If he doesn't have removal well, you would  rather have Hell Rider.

The only unifying characteristic among punisher cards is that they are all too bad to play.


Let's take a look at another example. This is basically always going to be a 5/3 Haste unless you have very few cards in hand. It can certainly do some damage very quickly, but it gets significantly weaker if the opponent knows the contents of your hand. If you get to the late game with a decently full hand and an empty board, THEN you can toss a dog a bone.




This certainly doesn't seem very fair. The existence of Hexproof has warped the way we have to interact with threats. It has broken at least one format and produced some of the least fun decks in recent memory. Unfortunately, this card is the exact opposite of good. A single Hexproof creature can't be dealt with by targeted removal, so it usually demands a board sweeper. Having multiple Hexproof Creatures doesn't give you any additional protection from removal. Now you are just going lose more Creatures in the same board sweep. Removing Hexproof from your opponent's Creatures is a tangible benefit, but too narrow to be useful against the entire format.

Six power accross two bodies isn't a horrible deal and Scry 2 is a nice bonus to any threat, however, 3/3's are a bit undersized in Commander. All of the comments I have previously made about "punisher" and the distracting counterplay within these cards apply here as well. The effect of this card is generally going to be much weaker than the other members of the cycle, making it the worst of the bunch.


This isn't going to replace any of our beloved Commander standards. It is particularly bad against Planeswalkers. Most pdubs have a way to deal with a creature anyway, so your opponent is likely to just pay the tribute and still come out ahead in the deal. Whereas if you had just kicked a Mold Shambler or some such, you would get to actually kill their Planeswalker. "Punisher" cards make particularly bad answers because your opponent can usually align the choice to make your card not actually deal with their threats. If you need to blow up their Elspeth before it goes ultimate, or destroy their Doubling Season before they 'go off', then you must answer it or die. With this card, your opponent isn't going to choose to lose the game on purpose and a 6/6 isn't going to help you much after that.



Let me tell you how this is going to go: Someone is going to play this. I am not paying Tribute because, let's be honest, I don't have any creatures in play that I care about losing. Then I am going to Doom Blade this thing and move on with my life. I have said it numerous times before. If all your finisher does is damage, that isn't good enough. Removal is so cheap that your creature has to be absolutely enormous to be important. Even a 12/12 for six is not coming close. If it were at cmc 2 or 3 then I'd be impressed, but this is basically useless outside of limited. there are far superior 6 mana Creatures in EVERY color.


There is an old adage that says the fastest way to a man's heart is through his stomach. That is pretty true, but for me it is just as quick to go through the funny bone. I love hate puns. I love portmanteau. Wizards has made a lot of bad puns, but that lighthearted feel really adds to the appeal of the game. If you take yourself seriously and you suck that is bad. BUT! If you don't take yourself seriously and you suck, you are instantly hilarious. This card is terrible, but lovable.


Now we are onto something! The Planeswalker from the set, and it is very appealing. It does a lot of the things that I really like in a 'walker. It allows you to positively affect the board and lock down your opponent's best threat while INCREASING loyalty. It doesn't give you any real andvantage for doing so, but the "ultimate" ability is very realistic and will give you a constant stream of threats with which to win the game. I am most interested in the minus ability. The longer you can keep activating this, the further ahead you get on resources. There have been other Planeswalkers, that consistently draw you cards every turn and that is awesome. This gives you an extra card and an extra land drop every other turn, which is also very potent. Advancing your position on two resources at once is tough to beat.

This card also features a finely crafted piece from artist Scott Fischer, who I am not familiar with at all, but if this is any indication of his talents, we need him working on this game. It is a special achievement to combine multiple different layers and different styles for the water coloration. Lesser artists would not be able to blend these elements without sacrificing a consistent look for the entire piece. There is also something to be said for making a fish-woman sexy. Where does Wizards find all of these talented people?

Well, that concludes today's segment. This will be the longest of the review pieces by far, so expect shorter posts for the following parts. Make sure to check back later this week for Landdrops' Legends segment as well as parts two and three as they go live. Let us know in the comments how you feel about the articles, the set, the blog, or anything else!
-GG