Magic has a long tradition of bizarre cards that essentially ‘transform’ the player. Lich turned the permanents you control into Horcruxes. Form of the Dragon set you to five life but gave you a repeatable free burn spell and immunity to ground creatures. These cards have rarely been good, but they’ve always been interesting. The latter is certainly true for Marina Vendrell’s Grimoire, a new transformative MTG artifact coming in Duskmourn. It protects you from traditional death via life loss, but, as with most dark magic, there’s a steep cost to pay in exchange.
Marina Vendrell’s Grimoire MTG
- Mana Value: 5U
- Rarity: Rare
- Card Text: When Marina Vendrell’s Grimoire enters, if you cast it, draw five cards. You have no maximum hand size and don’t lose the game for having 0 or less life. Whenever you gain life, draw that many cards. Whenever you lose life, discard that many cards. Then if you have no cards in hand, you lose the game.
Appropriately enough for a Grimoire, there’s a lot of text to unpack here. When people say Magic cards are looking more like Yu-Gi-Oh! cards year on year, this is the kind of card they mean. To boil it down to the basics, however, the card draws you five cards, then essentially makes your hand your life total.
That’s a pretty risky play, even when you factor in the five cards this draws on entry and the cards you get to draw whenever you gain life. There are plenty of scenarios in the mid to late game where dropping this will set you to around seven life, based on the cards in your hand. Even if you survive a turn like that, you’ll likely have to discard most of those cards to opposing attacks. This will obviously leave you in a pretty bad spot the next turn.
The dynamics of this card are really interesting to consider. You essentially gain a life each turn with your usual draw, but you also lose one each time you play a card. Life gain and card draw spells become much more useful, as a means to keep you alive. You also gain access to an easy source of discard effects, but these are especially dangerous. You can’t hold off death without any cards in your hand, after all.
A Puzzle To Be Solved
Where exactly could an MTG card like Marina Vendrell’s Grimoire find a home? It’s hard to say. Cards this unique tend to fall on the extreme ends of the power spectrum, more often than not on the ‘underwhelming’ side. That said, I can see a few different strategies trying it out.
The first thing that springs to mind is Domain Ramp in Standard. Despite the name, this really plays more like a Control deck, with board clears and removal aplenty. In a deck like this, Grimoire has a chance to really shine. When you can hold off most damage, this just becomes an incredible card draw engine. Especially combined with Atraxa, Grand Unifier, and her seven power Lifelink body.
Going back further, there’s real combo potential for Grimoire too. Simply play Sheoldred, the Apocalypse into this and you’ll draw your entire library right away. Got a Laboratory Maniac in play? Congratulations, you just won the game. There are other potential enablers here too, like Queza, Augur of Agonies. You don’t even need a third piece for that one, since Queza’s damage will kill your opponent before you deck out.
Offbeat potential aside, it’s difficult to ignore the huge downsides Grimoire brings to the table. Six mana for something that doesn’t impact the board at all is a tough sell. Especially since it can easily have a negative impact on the turns that follow. Even in dedicated decks, there’s an inherent risk to playing Grimoire that makes it pretty much a no-go in any serious format.
Unfortunately, despite its fun, flavorful design, it’s likely that Marina Vendrell’s Grimoire will spend more time gathering dust on the shelf than in your actual library.
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