[SCD] Night of Souls' Betrayal

[morgan_coke]

For reference:

Night of Souls' Betrayal
2BB
Legendary Enchantment
Rare
All creatures get -1/-1

Basically, for an extra B in the cc you get to Engineered Plague everything.

The reason I'm bringing this up now is that I recently began testing this for EXT and realized it completely shuts down two combos that are currently common in both 1.x and 1.5, namely, Vampire Hexmage/Dark Depths and Thopter Foundry/Sword of the Meek.

The card has additional utility vs. Dredge, killing everything but their zombies and making those too small to be a threat on their own. It also severely limits the effectiveness of Bridge from Below shenanigans, since the Dredge player is always forced to sacrifice tokens. The fact that it costs four mana may make it irrelevant in that matchup but it's worth mentioning.

Affinity is another deck that is completely hosed by this card, leaving them with 1/1 Frogmites and 3/3 Enforcers as the only creatures in their deck that don't die upon entering play.

Vs. Zoo and other aggro it's essentially worth one life per turn for each creature they have in play, in addition to the few cards it blanks (Hellspark Elemental, Grim Lavamancer, Dark Confidant)*

Unlike many creature hosing enchantments (Moat - flying, Humility - manlands, DoJ, +1/+1 counters) there is no way around Night of Souls' Betrayal. This is both an advantage and a drawback as it's harder to play around the card, but also harder to break it asymmetrically.

Night of Souls' Betrayal also makes toughness based removal stronger (burn, -x/-x spells) and does lots of other random things like turning off Kitchen Finks' Persist ability.

Finallly, when combined with Humility, it kills all creatures that don't enter the battlefield with +1/+1 counters on them as a state based effect.

Is this card worth exploring in control decks in Legacy? Or does its lack of asymmetry doom it to niche, creatureless control builds? Pretty curious to hear some opinions on this. Thanks.

*Those cards are not in all zoo lists, but they are in some zoo variants.

EDIT:
Theoretical off the cuff decklist for something like this:

EDIT2: In an attempt to make discussion more useful, I decided to put some thought into it and propose a list that does indeed suck less. Also, Needlebite Trap + Grove of the Burnwillows/Punishing Fire combination was just too funny to pass up. May not actually be competitive quality. Then again, a 10 point life swing for 1 mana is a lot, and this deck can trigger it easily. Some kind of 2 mana land like City of Traitors or Ancient Tomb may also be advisable.

Enchantments
3x Night of Souls' Betrayal
2x Counterbalance

Instants
4x Force of Will
4x Brainstorm
4x Thirst for Knowledge
2x Intuition
4x Punishing Fire
4x Needlebite Trap

Artifacts
3x Sensei's Divining Top
3x Chrome Mox
1x Crucible of Worlds

Sorceries
4x Innocent Blood

Planeswalkers
2x Jace Beleren
1x Chandra Nalaar
1x Sorin Markhov

Lands
4x Underground Sea
2x Volcanic Island
3x Polluted Delta
3x Scalding Tarn
4x Grove of the Burnwillows
3x Island
1x Swamp

[Aggro_zombies]

This card lies awake at night, crying, because it wishes it were Humility.

[MULocke]

Random thought for either of these enchantments: can we bring back a Rifter style deck with Punishing Fire?

[Aggro_zombies]

Random thought for either of these enchantments: can we bring back a Rifter style deck with Punishing Fire?
No.

EDIT: Nightmare:

A Rifter deck of this sort would still auto-lose to combo, which is something to consider given how popular combo has been recently (and in spite of the popularity of blue).
Rifter-style decks would also have problems dealing with both Merfolk and Counterbalance on the one hand and Zoo on the other, aside from hoping to stick Humility. Rifter was notoriously bad at changing gears because its control elements were all geared towards beating swarms of small guys, making it vulnerable to things that didn't field swarms of small guys due to having such a high load of dead cards.
Using Punishing Fire would make it vulnerable to graveyard hate removing the only real clock it would have; using manlands would mean it would have trouble winning within the time limit, something that has traditionally plagued slow control decks in this format.
Night of Soul's Betrayal is beyond useless on its own in this format. Humility is serviceable but costing four mana hurts it a lot, and the format is pretty capable of answering game-altering enchantments thanks to Counterbalance being such a design consideration. Relying on Humility to answer problem creatures is just begging to get yourself blown out at an awkward moment.
Rifter's draw engine of cycling cards is worse than Standstill because it's so mana- and time-intensive. Standstill is already pretty bad in this format, and a control deck without any library manipulation is just asking to get crushed. Control decks with library manipulation already have a hard enough time "coming together" when there's so many powerful pressure cards in this format.

[Nightmare]

No.
Why not? It's not very helpful to shut ideas like that down without a second thought. What makes it a bad idea? Instead of being snide, try to be of assistance.

[paK0]

I don't think this card will be viable, ever. At 4cc it does to little to be effective. And Plague shuts the combos down as well, for 1 less mana.

[Mark Sun]

I love this card, and it's probably one of my favorite cards from Kamigawa Block (admittedly, there are not many choices), but I think it's too slow for the format at the moment. The examples you listed are great in a vacuum, but consider:

- How do I make the stable manabase for a consistent Humility + NoSB lock?

- What are my support spells to work up to this?

- How do I find NoSB / lock pieces? Enlightened Tutor? And if so, how do I make up for the lack of CA?

- Are 3-4+ 4cc cards in a deck fine? Can I survive against Daze, Spell Pierce, and other forms of disruption?


For an example in terms of the Xcc (in this case, 4) issue, I'm having problems right now fitting four 4cc threats into a faster version of Landstill (Elspeth, Elspeth, Ajani V, Humility). One of those will bite the dust at some point before the final iteration, in order to keep the curve low and stay steady with the format. Just a few thoughts.

[FoolofaTook]

- How do I make the stable manabase for a consistent Humility + NoSB lock?

4x Marsh Flats
4x Scrubland
6x Swamp
1x Plains
3x Bojuka Bog
4x Mishra's Factory
4x Wasteland
4x Mox Diamond




- What are my support spells to work up to this?

4x Thoughtseize
4x Hymn to Tourach
4x Vindicate
4x Swords to Plowshares
2x Engineered Explosives
1x Runed Halo
1x Trinisphere
1x Crucible of Worlds
1x Lodestone Golem






- How do I find NoSB / lock pieces? Enlightened Tutor? And if so, how do I make up for the lack of CA?

4x Enlightened Tutor
2x Humility
2x Night of Soul's Betrayal





- Are 3-4+ 4cc cards in a deck fine? Can I survive against Daze, Spell Pierce, and other forms of disruption?

No, 3-4+ 4cc cards in a deck aren't fine at this point, even if they cast for free out of your hand at the start of the game. There's nothing about Humility-Night of Soul's Betrayal that suggests it would be a viable control deck in the format. This is the Leylines-Helm combo all over again but slightly better disguised as playable because both parts of the combo actually have a major effect in the meta. The real problem is that Krosan Grip removes all the pieces involved and if you have time to get to 4 mana to cast them then they have time to get to 3 mana and find grip.

[hi-val]

Combining Humility and NSOB requires you to establish that NOSB is significantly better than Orim's Prayer, which was the old combo in Standard with it. I'm not sure if it can overcome the admittedly weak Prayer. I like NOSB a lot, but also at the same mana cost is a card like Abyss. I want to play NOSB but there are just too few Faeries-style decks to stomp!

[coraz86]

It may actually work better in a heavy-black or Rock-style deck with accelerants like Sakura-Tribe Elder, Dark Ritual, etc. There are so many ways to build Rock that it's difficult to call any card choice abjectly wrong/right. I'm also thinking of that really cool "Trisomy" deck that just sprung up in the Established forum, which sports both Mox Diamond and Ritual. Having not had the pleasure, though, I couldn't tell you what you'd want to cut from that deck to make room for it, or if it even helps.

I'm tempted to put it in Aggro Loam, too--it has interesting synergy with Dreams, and Crush/Terravore laugh at it--but I have no idea what you'd cut.

I guess I'm with the crowd who loved it when it was in Standard and is having trouble letting it go. I just caught sight of an Ink-Eyes and a set of Horobi in my binder and had a similar feeling. Still, it'll be cool if someone can actually make this work.

[Elfrago]

The reason I'm bringing this up now is that I recently began testing this for EXT and realized it completely shuts down two combos that are currently common in both 1.x and 1.5, namely, Vampire Hexmage/Dark Depths and Thopter Foundry/Sword of the Meek.


It's been a while since the last time I played legacy, but I have yet to see a competitive legacy deck with one of those combos.

[morgan_coke]

It's been a while since the last time I played legacy, but I have yet to see a competitive legacy deck with one of those combos.

They've been making slow progress as the decklists get tuned. Many of the lists/players are migrating from Extended, much like NLU did last year.

[android]

I had a deck (for fun mind you) that ran NoSB, Kormus Bell, Blanket of Night, Humility, artifact mana, Myr Matrix, Screams from Within, Bad Moon, etc. Super bad deck but fun in multi-player. How is this relevant in the current discussion you ask?

Kormus Bell + Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth + anything that gives -1/-1 kills all lands. I don't know, something to think about.

[Aggro_zombies]

I had a deck (for fun mind you) that ran NoSB, Kormus Bell, Blanket of Night, Humility, artifact mana, Myr Matrix, Screams from Within, Bad Moon, etc. Super bad deck but fun in multi-player. How is this relevant in the current discussion you ask?

Kormus Bell + Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth + anything that gives -1/-1 kills all lands. I don't know, something to think about.
Null Rod and Mycosynth Lattice do essentially the same thing while shutting down all other activated abilities at the same time, being only a two card combo, and being completely colorless.

In other news, mass land destruction relying on a land (which itself gets destroyed, disabling the combo) and two different four-mana cards seems poor.

Affinity has never been a force in this format, so that shouldn't be a major selling point.

Hexmage-Depths is easily dealt with by existing and widely played cards in Legacy, the best of which is Wasteland.

Thopter Foundry is unpopular and only sees play in control decks that should be capable of removing NoSB. Even then, the deck in the OP has no way to beat a recurring Stream of Life.

Zoo can remove NoSB with Pridemage, but has to use Krosan Grip on Humility. Having your creature control element be vulnerable to four maindeck and three to four sideboard cards from your opponent seems poor.

3/4 Tarmogoyfs still hurt, though slightly less than 4/5 Tarmogoyfs. Killing them with Punishing Fire is unrealistic (:2::r::r::r: to kill a single Tarmogoyf and gain your opponent life is a model of inefficiency).

NoSB seems very, very weak unless you combine it with Humility, but then you have Humility pulling all the weight for this combo. Even if we assume that this card is an excellent answer to the combos in question and better than existing answers, I fail to see how combos that show up in maybe 2-3% of the field at most would merit a card that's so inefficient on its own, and in a color that's rather bad for control to boot.

[Aleksandr]

I had a deck (for fun mind you) that ran NoSB, Kormus Bell, Blanket of Night, Humility, artifact mana, Myr Matrix, Screams from Within, Bad Moon, etc. Super bad deck but fun in multi-player. How is this relevant in the current discussion you ask?

Kormus Bell + Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth + anything that gives -1/-1 kills all lands. I don't know, something to think about.

I got a Duelist from 1997 where this combo (Kormus Bell + Blanket of Night + Simoon) is presented. Right next to the infamous Ball Lightning + Berserk + Phyrexian Dreadnought combo.
Oh the days of my childhood...

What were we talking about?