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Moxonomy

Howling Banshee

Creature — Spirit2 generic manaBlack manaBlack mana

A 3/3 flyer for four is a perfectly fair body, but the enters trigger does not target, does not discriminate, and does not spare its controller: each player loses three. That makes this a Spirit you have to underwrite with the rest of your deck before it earns its keep, the inverse of how black usually prices its life-loss effects, where the drain points the damage at the opponent and leaves you whole. The lineage here is the symmetrical drain creature, a recurring early-era experiment where the cost of the burst was that you ate it too. The card sits comfortably in a shell that is already ahead on the life total or already racing, where shaving three points off each player pushes a clock you were going to win anyway, and it sits badly in a deck that wanted the body and got handed a self-inflicted wound alongside it. The flying matters more than it looks: an evasive beater that also doubles as reach, closing the same three points it cost you to deploy. It is a creature whose value is entirely a function of who is winning the race when it lands, which is an unusual axis to build a midrange flyer around, and the reason it reads as a deliberately conditional card rather than a strictly efficient one.

Howling Banshee (m11)
M11 · #100uncommon
Pricing
Normal: $0.08
Foil: $0.20
Oracle Text

Rules text

Flying When this creature enters, each player loses 3 life.
Legalities

Format Status

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

Other printings

4 sets
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