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One of the questions that comes up most often when looking at magic the gathering cards is how expensive of a card can you play in a tournament format. There are several factors that can effect the answer, for example how quickly does the card begin to effect the game when it comes into play and how quickly will it win you the game. These questions are reasonably easy to answer when looking at creature and many spells are immediate enough that you know all you really need is the mana and the card, but artifacts and enchantments are more difficult because they typically rely on other factors.

Akroma's Memorial is a rare artifact from the Future Sight expansion set of magic the gathering. It costs a whopping seven colorless mana to put into play putting it on the very upper end of cards that can be played outside of casual games and it gives all of your creatures flying, first strike, vigilance, trample, haste, and protection from black and from red. This is a very impressive list of abilities but is it worth playing with this card in hopes you can win.

The first question is immediacy. On this point the card works very well, as soon as you put it into play it becomes effective. And with haste on the card it also makes all of your other cards effective. What this basically means is that this has the same value in time as a non hasted six mana creature.

The second question is will it win games. And this is where it gets a little more difficult to know. In a deck of small creatures many of the effects that this gives are far less important. A 1/1 with trample is a joke, but if you have a progression of creatures which build up to reasonably large creatures this is going to make it very difficult for your opponent to stop them and it will be disastrous for your opponent if he relies on red or black for creature removal. My favorite card to use this with though is Akroma, Angel of Fury as she has most of the other abilities you would want a creature to have.

In limited this card is a first pick every time. It can be used in any deck and it is far more likely that your games will go long enough to use it.

Learn more about this author, Elton Gahr.
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