It Looked Good On Paper...And Now It Really Is

Back in December of last year I posted a list of cards that looked good on paper, but in real life, not so much.  One of the cards I profiled there was Dark Depths.  A land that would eventually yield a 20/20 black avatar had to be awesome right?  The cost of counters, though, seemed to ruin the whole idea.  Case closed?  No, its not because along comes Vampire Hexmage and that's where things take a turn.  Recently someone pointed the combo out to me and that's when I had one of OMFG moments.


Lets's review...

Dark Depths

Card Name:

Dark Depths

Types:

Legendary Snow Land

Card Text:

Dark Depths enters the battlefield with ten ice counters on it.

: Remove an ice counter from Dark Depths.

When Dark Depths has no ice counters on it, sacrifice it. If you do, put a legendary 20/20 black Avatar creature token with flying and "This creature is indestructible" named Marit Lage onto the battlefield.

Expansion:

 Coldsnap Rarity: Rare Card #: 145

Sure a 20/20 black avatar creature with flying named Marit Lage sounds awesome.  It sounds like a game winner, but unless you're playing Ramp mixed with crystal meth there doesn't seem much chance that it will see much actual game owing to the sheer cost of removing those counters.

But wait!  There's More!

Enter Vampire Hexmage

Card Name:

Vampire Hexmage

Mana Cost:

 Converted Mana Cost:2

Types:

Creature — Vampire Shaman

Card Text:

First strike

Sacrifice Vampire Hexmage: Remove all counters from target permanent.

Flavor Text:

When the blood hunt lost its thrill, she looked for less tangible means of domination.

P/T:

2 / 1

Expansion:

 Zendikar 

Rarity: Uncommon Card #: 114

Suddenly you play Dark Depths as your land, play the 2 drop Hexmage, sac it and voila, the Marit Lage avatar is out in one turn.  That's a Holy Shit  moment if I ever saw one.

It's quite probable that many of you already know this and that as per usual I'm just out of the loop, but for those, who like me, were clueless, here's your own Holy Shit moment courtesy of The Mana Pool.