Magic: The Gathering’s spoiler season for War of the Spark continues in full force today with a powerful new sorcery card. The new expansion set has shown a trend of powering up cards from Common all the way to Mythic, and today’s reveal proves more of the same. Originally revealed on GameSpot.com, let’s take a gander at Finale of Promise, a card that features the return of the legendary Niv-Mizzet.
The Story
Based on the card art, the Izzet-flavored effect, and the spoiling of Niv-Mizzet Reborn shortly after this reveal, we can surmise this card depicts the act of Niv-Mizzet being reborn. But there may be more than meets the eye.
The original text of the Finale of Promise preview on GameSpot today, stated: “Niv-Mizzet being reborn through the use of the Elderspell.” This was quickly changed. While that could have been a simple misunderstanding of the lore that was later corrected, it also raises the question of whether this plot point was accidentally leaked earlier than intended. Was this a mistake, or does Niv-Mizzet steal the Elder Spell from Bolas? Will he consume Bolas’ spark and become a planeswalker himself?
This is an incredibly fascinating possibility to look forward to.
The Breakdown
Finale of Promise is an interesting card with quite a bit of versatility. At first glance, it’s a value card that lets you recast sorceries and instants that are in your graveyard. Its usefulness depends on what we’re trying to bring back and why. While this card does scale well later into the game, it’s very dependent on already having used high power spells.
I think you’re going to find the most use for this when X equals 1. Arclight Phoenix is all the rage in modern at the moment and this may find a slot in that deck. Even if the main deck is pretty packed, this card could pull some weight in grindier sideboard games. Once we’ve tossed an Arclight or two in the grave, we can bring back Lightning Bolt and Faithless Looting with just this card. That gives us the 3 spells cast to bring back our Arclights. Not bad for one card.
The other side of this is casting it where X equals 10 or more. While paying 12 mana for a sorcery comes with its drawbacks, the ability to copy those cards twice, making a total of three copies per card, is busted. I’m not sure what combination of cards would work best with this, but casting high-powered sorceries and instants three times should usually win you the game.
Of course, you’d have to build your mana base to support a 12 mana cost card. Modern Urzatron comes immediately to mind.
The Verdict
While Finale of Promise has a powerful effect, it will be interesting to see if it finds a slot in any major decks. What combos can you come up with? What’s the quickest we can finish someone with this card? What’s the biggest payoff we can do for the 12 mana? I can’t wait for War of the Spark to drop so we can put these new cards to use.
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