"Thomil, the Destroyer: Five Mana for a Lot of Sacrifices"

 

"Thomil, the Destroyer: Five Mana for a Lot of Sacrifices"

by:

Virgilio F. De leon Jr.MD

Thomil, the Destroyer has the template of Liliana Vess, but with significantly weaker text than that wonderful black planeswalker.

Honestly, I find Thomil a little ho-hum for his mana cost.

Five mana is a significant investment, although in Magic Christmas Land, you can probably find a way to get him onto the battlefield as early as turn three.

His +2 ability creates a 2/2 black Zombie token. That's certainly useful, especially in a deck that wants creatures around for sacrifice effects.

Then there's his 0 ability, which allows you to sacrifice a creature for three mana.

It's essentially a weaker version of Culling the Weak. You're giving up a creature to generate mana, but instead of getting four black mana, you only get three.

Still, in the right deck, sacrificing creatures can actually be part of the plan.

And then we get to the big one: his ultimate summons a Lord of the Pit token.

A monstrous 7/7 flying, trampling Demon that gets hungry during every upkeep.

And by hungry, I mean you need to sacrifice a creature to it.

If you can't—or don't want to—feed it, Lord of the Pit takes seven life from you instead.

In an EDH game, where everyone starts with 40 life, seven damage doesn't sound like an enormous price to pay.

But you are now on a clock.

Once you summon this Demon, you need to win—or at least be building toward a win—before that recurring seven damage starts eating away at your life total.

Fortunately, anyone playing Thomil is probably going to have plenty of creatures that they don't mind sacrificing. Zombies, token creatures, and creatures that want to go to the graveyard anyway could all make Lord of the Pit considerably easier to manage.

That makes Thomil potentially useful support for mono-black token and sacrifice strategies.

But here's my problem with him.

I feel like Thomil is ultimately a watered-down version of Liliana Vess. Liliana is simply more efficient at doing what I would expect a black planeswalker to do, particularly when it comes to generating Zombies and providing value.

Thomil isn't terrible.

He's just not particularly exciting.

I can see him working in the right sacrifice or token deck, and I'm sure there are players who will find some wonderfully evil combinations with him.

As for me?

I hope I can pick up Thomil cheaply enough to add him to my collection.

But I probably won't be building him.

Five mana is a lot to spend for a planeswalker who asks me to sacrifice so much.