"Containment Priest: EDH Cheater Hater"

"Containment Priest: EDH Cheater Hater"

by:

Virgilio F. De leon Jr.

It is hard not to look at Containment Priest and not be reminded of some strict disciplinarian from school. You probably remember the type , the kind who stays by the book , every thing has to be done a certain way or every one has to to abide by the rules. Sometimes the rules emanate from this person. The kind of person who seems to kill the buzz out of every party or gathering. Yup exactly that kind of person. 

Containment Priest is an EDH game changer. I ask you to look beyond the Flash 2/2 2 mana cost weenie frame and look at the strict rule that she brings to the battlefield. The one that say , "If a non-token creature would enter the battlefield and it was not cast , exile it instead!"

Initially it was seen as an answer to Kaalia of the Vast so that she could not put down a Demon , Dragon or Angel into play whenever she attacks. It is an unfair advantage after all. Any one who has had an Iona , Shield of Emeria drop into play and made all of their existing cards at hand useless would know how unfair life can be when Kaalia is free to operate but come on! This more than just affects Kaalia. It affects Necromancers like me and all those other mages who want to put high mana costing , high impact creatures into play for free!

I mean See the Unwritten , Summoning Trap , Chord of Calling , Green Suns Zenith ,Genesis Wave , Birthing Pod ,  Kuldotha Forgemaster  , Wild Pair , Tooth and Nail would be able to look at your library but with the Containment Priest in play all the awesome creatures that could land on your side of the board would not be able to!Containment Priest would make them hit the ground , and like some giant trampoline they would hit it and bounce right into exile! Exile!

Quick Silver Amulet , Elvish Piper and Aether plasm would stand around helplessly while you have all these great creatures waiting to be cheated into play rot away in your hands! And you get more irritable by the minute because you keep on wishing that you would draw a much needed spell to take out the Containment Priest.

Wild Evocation , Temporal Aperture, Master Transmuter , Proteus Staff  , Polymorph and Mass Polymorph become pretty useless as well. There is simply no way that you would get anything into play unless you pay for its actual casting cost.Requiring to pay a gazillion mana for a high quality creature when I can just reanimate it for one mana just makes me want to cry. Almost.

 And even when the coast seems clear Containment Priest could just be cast like an Instant because of Flash and ruin your day with that "Surprise! Guess whos non-token creature is getting exiled?" look painted on her face.Yeah. She has that look all day long. She is there to ruin all those fun ways that we play Magic.

I would also love to point out Containment Priest and her color. She is white and she obviously has no token hate. She hates it when other colors try to cheat creatures into play but she could let Preeminent Captain come in with tokens attacking , all those saproling tokens and beast tokens that could be gained when she is part of a Selesnyan EDH deck. Yup , she would let the tokens in but block out all the rest. 

As a Necromancer who loves turn 1 Akromas and Turn 2 It that Betrays on the battlefield I know that this white card would affect me and my fellow Necromancers the most. It is a good thing that it is a creature and does not have hexproof. A 2/2 seems pretty vulnerable to removal and I doubt if any of the other combo EDH players around the table would let this card remain on the battlefield for a long time. It might buy a little time or prevent early necromantic shenanigans but it would only be a matter of time before it does succumb to removal.

Containment priest is going to be a headache for anyone who would want to cheat anything into play. She is trying to keep everyone to play fair and honest. Unfortunately this is never the case for EDH  players and sometimes those who make the rules are the ones taken out before they could impose more rules. Poor Cleric. Say Hello to the Doomblade I would be sending to your face for me.