by Elton Gahr

Created on: November 06, 2009

Two of the keyword abilities in magic the gathering that I was most skeptical about when I heard of them were hellbent and madness. Both of them generally went against my typical play style which likes to have as many cards in my hand as possible but I made the attempt on both and in the end they both impressed me in that they worked quite well, and though it never struck me until I saw it they, naturally, work quite well together.

Gibbering Descent is a rare enchantment from the future Sight expansion set of magic the gathering, it costs two black and four colorless to put into play and has a madness cost of two black and two colorless, meaning that if anything forces you to discard it you can pay the madness cost to put it into play rather than the casting cost.

The card reads "At the beginning of each player's upkeep, that player loses 1 life and discards a card. Hellbent - Skip your upkeep step if you have no cards in hand."

The first part of this is the reason that most people are going to play this card. And it is valuable in part because it strikes your opponent before you and helps to ensure that they are never going to have more cards in their hand than at the time that you play this. In addition it slowly weakens them and while the 1 damage a turn isn't likely to kill them it can be enough to put a real dent in them if you can get this out early enough.

The hellbent ability is actually marginally funny because it is not as effective as it may seem in aiding in this card. The reason for this is of course that if you have no cards in your hand you can not discard any cards so from this card the only thing that would happen would be that you would lose one life, hardly a problem for a black mage who reveals in pain.

But being able to skip the upkeep is a valuable ability in its own right. Upkeep typically is a negative time for most mages where they are forced to pay upkeeps, and if you build your deck around not having to have one then cards with cumulative upkeeps become far better as do those which have basic upkeep costs.

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