One of the creatures that had been iconic to me personally from the Zendikar set is Bloodghast. I recalled playing a set of it in my Rakdos Vampires deck which got me my first money finish and my first Pro Point in a Magic: the Gathering professional event way back in Grand Prix Singapore 2011.
That is where I got in 54th place and faced a lot of well-known and strong Pro players of the game. The most memorable one was against the Dragonmaster Brian Kibler where he played a Dimir Tezerret deck. I was on the edge of losing in Game 2 after a mull to 5 but I luckily top-decked my second land to kill off his Myr mana dude. It ended up for him being stuck to only three lands while I was able to drop my attackers in the next turns and go all the way from there.
Back in the present in this MTG spoiler month, I saw this Zendikar Rising card preview which somewhat got some similarities with that of Bloodghast’s abilities. Check out Skyclave Shade.
[ZNR] Skyclave Shade
byu/UVSpyro inmagicTCG
A two-drop for 3 power is already good in itself, more so when casts in the late game with the Kicker mana access, giving it two more +1/+1 counters. It is of the Shade creature type rather than the Vampire, so it makes sense. Though we are used with the old prints with “B: This creature gets +1/+1 until end of turn.”
The Landfall trigger ability, in comparison to that of Bloodghast, is somewhat weaker as you still need to pay for the mana cost and also only if it is your turn. That means though that the dropping it early on to deal damage or trade with opponents’ creatures and then casting it with Kicker. It makes it an efficient attacker in all modes of the battle gameplan.
As per the Standard play, it will get a slot if Rakdos Sacrifice will still be a viable deck archetype post-rotation. Mono-Black aggro will auto cater to this in 4 copies of course as some of its parts will be out in the format.
That is a wrap for this Zendikar Rising card preview, until the next blog post.
Reference: https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/event-coverage/grand-prix-singapore-round-final-standings-2011-06-05