by Elton Gahr

Created on: October 30, 2009

Black has always been remarkable in its willingness to do anything to achieve its goals. Paying life, making deals with the devil and more all forward the power of black and it typically has been powerful in doing so so it is hardly surprising that it would discover a way to destroy creatures by letting them do damage to him.

Dread is a rare Elemental Incarnation from the Lorwyn expansion set of magic the gathering. It costs three black mana and three colorless mana and is a 6/6 creature. It has three abilities each of which have a different value to the card.

The first of these is fear. This means that the creature can not be blocked except by black and artifact creatures. This is a useful ability on any creature but the larger the creature the more impressive it becomes. This is because if your opponent is unable to block the creature it puts them on a very short clock. If they can not kill Dread and can't block it they will be dead in four turns even if it is the only card in your deck that has been able to do damage.

The second of the abilities is the most interesting and unusual. This reads "Whenever a creature deals damage to you, destroy it." this is simple elegant and makes it very difficult for your opponent to mount a good offense because while you will take damage from creatures which attack, allowing them to attack only once before they die makes them far less important. Combine this with the ability to attack through them on your opponent's side and you can easily put him in a very difficult situation.

The third exists primarily to limit the power of dread. This ability reads "When Dread is put into a graveyard from anywhere, shuffle it into its owner's library." this has been added to a number of high power cards in the last years in order to assure that they do not become major players in reanimator decks, but it is of some value. If you are playing against any type of decking strategy a single set of a card like this can make it very difficult for them to ever win since any spell or ability that they use will return these four cards to the library so that you have something to draw and while eventually you will have drawn all four, if they don't kill them putting them into your library, or counter them putting them into your library it is going to be hard to survive them.

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