"Nemesis of Mortals:Pushing Grave Affinity"

"Nemesis of Mortals:Pushing Grave Affinity"

by:

Virgilio F. De leon Jr.

     In EDH/Commander there are lot of people and a lot of cards that love having a full graveyard.A grave full of creatures is something that the Golgari love as exemplified by the current Guild Master , Jarad. He becomes stronger with each creature that you have in this pile. The Lhurgoyf , Splinter fright , Boneyard Wurm , Golgari Grave Troll and Bonehoard are all buying in on the concept too. There are other cards however that love a full graveyard because they have what I call Grave Affinity. They cost much lesser for each creature in your graveyard. Innistrad's 10/10 Ghoul Tree took advantage of this unofficial mechanic and was smashing faces way earlier than it should.

Another Grave Affinity Monster emerges from the Plane of Theros and would find itself welcome into my Jarad EDH deck. The Nemesis of Mortals.

The name alone is already cool but it does not speak of what this card actually represents. It is the actual Nemesis of planeswalkers. After all it is their life that it ends.Originally costing 6 mana , because of Grave Affinity and 4 creatures in your graveyard this snake becomes a 5/5 creature for 2 green mana! The Monstrosity 5 activation is a whopping 9 mana! Grave Affinity takes care of that as well. All is takes is 7 creatures in your graveyard and you have a 10/10 creature for 2 green mana. With the Golgari mage making full use of spells like Mulch or Grisly Salvage you could have the Monstrosity cost cut down and activated in no time.

However I find that the lack of trample makes this card easy to defend against. A measly 1/1 soldier could stand in its colossal path and stop it in its tracks. Not quite the image I wanted to picture in my head but it does speak the truth. Despite being a big brute as well it is easily taken cared of by a well timed spot removal which would ruin an aggressive players day.

Unopposed though it means the end. There are a lot of things in magic that could grant that.And protect it from removal too.

An Unblockable , Shrouded 10/10 creature for less just 4 mana with the graveyard affinity condition met?Isn't that the kind of monster a lot of us want to have? Jarad does. We have one now as well.