Today's card is one I've had stashed away for a long time now- Mark of Fury.
This card was originally in Heartless Hidetsugu's first 99 when I built the deck a couple years ago. I found Mark of Fury somewhere on the Internet, looking through other mono-Red lists that were adjacent to what I was looking to accomplish with HH, and I needed Haste so I could blast the table and accomplish my goals.
However, because it's an enchantment, and a pretty decent one that can be recycled for something that resembles card advantage, the incentive to remove HH went up.
Additionally, I realized that this card was doing something else that I didn't necessarily want to do, which was blast the table on my own turn. What I've found as I've played Hidetsugu is that taking damage before I start slugging the table is optimal, and in order to give myself a chance to win, I needed to keep that time-value option open as long as possible.
Although this is a great time to talk about Mark of Fury, considering that Heroic and Dash are in Standard right now, meaning that us Commander players are testing it out, I'm not sure we'll ever get another card printed like this. From flavor and color pie perspectives, I'm just not thinking that another enchantment like this will get printed, much less in red. Urza block is home to a lot of broken, weird things that Wizards Lead Designer Mark Rosewater has said they will never do again. While it's not Treachery, the value of this card has scaled well because of the power given to creatures, so much that I believe this would no longer be a Common, if they were to ever reprint this.
However, it doesn't mean we can't enjoy and abuse what we've got. There are a lot of times, I've found, in playing red decks where I said, "Damn, I wish I had Haste!" Well, in case you didn't know, we always did!
After finding this card, the problem diminished quickly. Whether's it's been in HH, its new home in my Common/Uncommon Uril, the Miststalker deck, or even designs I've been less proud of, like Herioc Anax & Cymede, Mark of Fury has been a solid play for support. Because Haste is a time sensitive mechanic, value is massive. Coupled with a cheap additional cost of one red per creature to cast it, and our opponents have a serious problem on their hands.
From a design perspective, this may not be in Red's wheelhouse, but the spirit and sentiment do produce something. The pressure and tempo this Mark of Fury creates for typically not-fast Inferno Titans or Utvara Hellkites is exactly the flavor of red, and the fact that they've continued to design cards that produce this effect with more attention to the color's restriction (Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker, Feldon of the Third Path, Flamerush Rider, Splinter Twin, Heat Shimmer), demonstrate cleaner precedent moving forward. Even Archwing Dragon and Dash are much sleeker implements of the card advantage going on here.
Anyway, this card has been really good for me, and I hope it will be for you too. It's another cheap spell that's got a market value of around a dime in US, and I can't imagine this being hard to find either, seeing as how it's a common and all. So pick a copy up and check it out.
Also, this week CMDR Decks did a spotlight on my Heartless Hidetsugu deck. Here's the link if you want to check out what it looks like today.
Heartless Hidetsugu CMDR Decks
Pass.
-UL
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