The Dearly Departed

The Dearly Departed
3 Mana 2/3 Neutral Creature
Soulless.
Roar: Obliterate a creature in your opponent’s hand.
Afterlife: Add a base copy of the obliterated creature to the opponent’s hand.

One of the new Light’s Verdict cards that was overshadowed by the powerful chase cards is The Dearly Departed. It is a neutral creature with a unique effect of obliterating a creature in your opponent’s hand. They can get the creature back if they can kill Dearly. But if you can transform Dearly, you can avoid the afterlife and prevent your opponent from getting back their creature. Cards that affect your opponent’s hand are normally reserved for Deception but Dearly opens up hand disruption for other gods.

My first thought for making Dearly work in a deck was to build around transforming creatures with negative afterlifes. First the transform cards, there are very few cards that beneficially transform your own creature, the only ones being Metamorphosis, Reflection Elementalist, and possibly Shines on Us All. So making a Magic deck with Metamorphosis and Reflection Elementalist is a start, then on to the creatures.

There are a few other creatures with negative afterlifes that are good transform targets, Pyramid Warden and Netherborne Binder. Creatures with roars and low-stats are also good transform targets, Demetrios, Warp Engineer, and Frenetic Bibliomaniac. A meta deck that runs some of these cards already comes to mind, Card Draw Magic.

Decklists

Version 1

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The initial build of the deck is based on Card Draw Magic since it already runs some cards I mentioned. I made room for the transform package by cutting some of the spell synergy cards, e.g. the spell boost, some spells, and Pallas’ Wand.

There are some neat synergies in the deck. Warp Engineer and Arcane Transcendent can reduce Metamorphosis, making it easier to play. Frenetic Bibliomaniac gives you two low-stat creatures to transform and Warp Engineer can discount Reflection Elementalist to be played together, so you are likely to have targets for Reflection Elementalist.

In the end, the deck just feels like a pile of cards, who thought that jamming in a bunch of creatures and transform effects would be so bad 🙃. The two parts of the deck didn’t mesh together at all. This creature heavy magic deck doesn’t work since it doesn’t have buffs to make use of having creatures on board. All the other creature aggro decks have strong buff cards, Wildfire, Canonize, Dark Knives, etc.

V2

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Second take, I cut the cards that weren’t good by themselves, Arcane Transcendent, Rune Moth, Demetrios, and Unbound Flames, for Martyr of Whiteplain and Blade of Whiteplain. They should help the deck feel less bricky and give me more tempo to play Dearly. Martyr summons itself back as a soulless 2/2 so it could work as another transform target. Martyr getting back your roar creatures to play again is a good idea in theory but it is hard to line up properly. Blade does so much by itself, it’s draw, it’s removal, it’s a body. The Whiteplain cards are strong. They gave the deck a sort of midrange vibe, running my opponent out of cards. But they didn’t help the deck a lot. It still feels clunky in the end.

V3

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Third take, maybe Card Draw Magic isn’t the right deck. Back to the drawing board. Why would you run Dearly - to get rid of a specific creature. When do you need to do that - against combo decks. What deck would tech against combo - control I think. Control can afford to run tech cards, so having Dearly snipe a Coronet or Schoolteacher could be useful. Turns out running 4 narrow tech cards is terrible. Spending 3 mana for a creature that doesn’t impact the board or get you closer to your board wipes is terrible. You end up dead most of the time. The situations where you can afford to play Dearly and transform it never come up. You are rarely ahead enough to afford the tempo loss from playing it. 11 games with Dearly and I’m ready to put this idea on the shelf.

Strategy

They are a few tips playing Dearly if you want to try it out yourself.

You can take Clear Mind to foresee for Dearly if you know they are on combo. It might be worth it to take it more often as Control so you can stack your deck for better draws, you don’t need the ping that often.

Protected from Ancient Text and frontlines can protect your Dearly from being run over. Vow of Learning could give Ward but committing a 3 mana spell to a creature you want to transform isn’t worth it.

You don’t need to transform Dearly if you have enough momentum where you can win on the next turn like sniping a Demogorgon out of your opponent’s hand so you have lethal on your turn.

There are very few scenarios happen where you can reset the stats of a creature in your opponent’s hand, handbuffing effects are almost never seen in the meta. The window of opportunity is small for sniping a Coronet out of your opponent’s hand.

Conclusion

You can read my thoughts on Dearly when it was first revealed here @meltysquid/lights-verdict-set-review. After playing with Dearly, my thoughts haven’t changed since then. The main idea of the deck of transforming Dearly isn’t worth the effort it takes. It dies easily with its weak statline. Pulling off the combo is very hard. You need Dearly, a transform card, the mana, and the time to pull off the combo and at the end you only get rid of a creature from your opponent’s hand. Most of my games, I didn’t want to see Dearly, the situations where I wanted to play it rarely came up and it’s terrible from behind. Being able to see the creatures in your opponent’s hand is decent, but that can’t stop a spell from killing Dearly afterward. Also, Metamorphosis is awful, the random transform means you can’t rely on it and rarely feel good about using it.

Dearly is a neat tech card to stall an opponent’s creature in hand and possibly get rid of it, but the narrow upside isn’t worth running it. Looking back at it now while writing this article, you need to make a new deck for Dearly to work in, splashing it didn’t work out for me. There might be a deck that can be made of these ideas that make Dearly work well in Magic.

Gameplay

Here is some gameplay of the various decks I tried out. It is hard to record Dearly working. It is not likely you will see Dearly and have a good opportunity to play it.

I won a game that was probably because of The Dearly Departed, but I wasn’t recording it. I used Dearly to get rid of my opponent’s Guild Enforcer in hand that I wouldn’t be able to answer, then I used Ancient Texts to protect my Dearly so it wouldn’t die to the Archangel Bruiser I saw in hand. The next turn I used Reflection Elementalist to transform Dearly so my opponent couldn’t get Guild Enforcer back.

0:00 Aggro Nature, Version 1 of the deck

I brick on Metamorphosis and Reflection Elementalist in the opener. My opponent curves out and my draws brick me harder. Wildfire is the last nail in the coffin.

3:02 Clone Coronet Magic, V2

I take Magebolt out of habit and didn’t bother looking up my opponent’s deck. Lo-and-behold, it is Clone Coronet Magic. You wouldn’t know beforehand if they are a combo deck until after the god power selection unless you took a wild guess or looked them up. I probably should have held the Shadow Scryer so they don’t have a 1-drop target. I guessed they were more likely to have a 1-drop rather than LITD in hand. You think I should be favored but you only have around a 2 turn window where you can play Dearly to snipe Coronet before they can play it. I draw the Dearly too late and die to the combo.

8:48 Control Magic, V2

I keep Metamorphosis in the opener, thinking I’ll get an opportunity to use it on a damaged Pyramid Warden or on a soulless Martyr. My opponent ramps a ton and I’m stuck with a bunch of situational cards in hand. I don’t have enough pressure to put on my opponent and die to their big guys.

21:52 Aggro War, V3

Metamorphosis and Dearly are stuck in my hand as I get run over by Vikings.

28:24 Control Deception, V3

Typical control vs control grind. Dearly shows me Reflection Elementalist that they stole from me, the Blade Borrow echo, and Demogorgon. I take the Reflection Elementalist since they have a cheap creature to play with it and it’s hard to kill. The Demogorgon can be taken by my 2nd Dearly. I probably should have expected for them to have Rapture Dance when they took Reflection Elementalist. The Metamorphosis they stole from me shows off how bad it is by transforming their Witherfingers into a useless 8-drop. I wear them down enough where I can burn them out.