by Elton Gahr

Created on: September 29, 2009

Counters have become a larger part of magic the gathering in the last years. +1/+1 counters are almost everywhere, as well as quest counters in Zendikar, time counters, counters on planeswalkers, counters on land and many others. All of this leads to the need for cards that can deal directly with the counters.

"Vampire Hexmage" is an uncommon vampire shaman from the Zendikar set of Magic the gathering. It costs two black mana and has two power and one toughness. In addition to this it has first strike, making comparable to cards like black knight if not as good, but it is the extra ability in "Vampire Hexmage" that makes it a card that may see some play in tournaments.

The ability requires that you sacrifice "Vampire Hexmage", but it has no other cost. This means that you could do it while the vampire is tapped, while you have no mana, and no cards in your hand. When you sacrifice it you are able to remove all counters from a permanent.

The biggest problem with this is that it doesn't remove the permanent itself, it only removes the counters. This is only a problem if you are using it on other peoples cards though. If instead you are using it on your own cards, ones that have some type of a negative counter it could be very useful. Removing a handful of -1/-1 counters may be well worth the sacrifice of a single vampire.

That said, more often you will likely want to remove the counter from other people's cards. The most dangerous of these are on the ascension cycle of cards, but there are others as well. And that is the reason that this card may make its way into play. It is more versatile in some ways than a card which could simply destroy an enchantment, an artifact or a land, and less versatile in other ways.

In limited the biggest reason you will play with this is because of the amount of powerful enchantments that use counters in zendikar as well as the power of first strike in limited. That you might be able to get double duty out of this card is simply an advantage.

In constructed it seems more likely that if this sees play it will be in a deck that uses a more controllable type of counter, such as counters that are put on its own creatures or artifacts in some way and are useful to remove.

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