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Moxonomy

Chill of the Grave

Instant2 generic manaBlue mana

Frost Breath and its ancestors sold a tempo effect by the pound: tap a creature, keep it down through the next untap step, buy a turn. What this design adds is the replacement clause every blue tempo player actually wants, which is a card off the top so the tap isn't pure tempo with no board of your own to fall back on. The Zombie discount is the honest lever. At full price it's a fair cantripping tapper, the kind of instant-speed intervention that blanks a blocker on your swing or taps down a potential attacker before it can enter combat; drop the cost by controlling a Zombie and the same effect starts looking like a genuine engine piece, cheap enough to chain and still leaving a card behind each time. That conditional is the whole balancing act: the effect is priced for a tribal shell that can turn it on, and merely playable for a deck that can't. The tap-and-doesn't-untap line is worth reading precisely, because it locks a creature down across a full turn cycle rather than the single beat a bare tap would buy, which is what makes it a defensive tool as much as an aggressive one.

Chill of the Grave (dbl)
DBL · #318common
Pricing
Normal: $0.31
Foil: $0.20
Oracle Text

Rules text

This spell costs 1 generic mana less to cast if you control a Zombie. Tap target creature. It doesn't untap during its controller's next untap step. Draw a card.
Legalities

Format Status

Standard
N/A
Pioneer
Legal
Modern
Legal
Legacy
Legal
Vintage
Legal
Commander
Legal
Pauper
Legal
Brawl
Legal
Historic
Legal
Alchemy
N/A
Timeless
Legal
Standard Brawl
N/A
More formats
Old School
N/A
Premodern
N/A
PreDH
N/A
Pauper Commander
Legal
Oathbreaker
Legal
Gladiator
Legal
Penny Dreadful
N/A
Duel Commander
Legal
Future Standard
N/A
COMPETITIVEBRAWL
Legal
TLR
Legal
Printings elsewhere

Other printings

1 set
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