Soulless Revival MTG Card

Soulless Revival - Champions of Kamigawa

Mana cost
Converted mana cost	2
Rarity	Common
Type	Instant — Arcane
Abilities	Splice
Released	2004-10-01
Set symbol
Set name	Champions of Kamigawa
Set code	CHK
Number	144
Frame	2003
Layout	Normal
Border	Black
Illustred by	Ron Spencer

Key Takeaways

Strategically retrieve key creatures from your graveyard to maintain pressure on your opponents.
Accelerate resources indirectly by resurrecting mana-generating creatures with Soulless Revival.
Utilize the card’s instant speed to surprise opponents and optimize your tactical plays.

Text of card

Return target creature card from your graveyard to your hand. Splice onto Arcane (As you play an Arcane spell, you may reveal this card from your hand and pay its splice cost. If you do, add this card's effects to that spell.)

Card Pros

Card Advantage: Soulless Revival offers the strategic benefit of returning a key creature card directly from your graveyard to your hand. This retrieval method is instrumental in regaining important pieces lost earlier in the duel, ensuring a steady flow of resources to keep the pressure on your opponents.

Resource Acceleration: While Soulless Revival itself may not directly accelerate resources in terms of mana, it efficiently recycles creatures with powerful enter-the-battlefield effects or other abilities that can lead to indirect resource acceleration. By bringing back creatures that fetch lands or generate mana, Soulless Revival effectively contributes to your resource acceleration strategy.

Instant Speed: The ability to cast Soulless Revival at instant speed gives players a tactical edge, allowing them to wait until the end of an opponent’s turn before deciding the best creature to return. This flexibility preserved by the instant speed of the card can keep opponents guessing, making it a powerful tool for any player’s repertoire.

Card Cons

Discard Requirement: Soulless Revival forces players to discard another card when casting it. This trade-off can deplete your hand, making it less ideal when you’re trying to maintain card advantage over your opponent.

Specific Mana Cost: Requiring both black and colorless mana, Soulless Revival’s cost may not always align with the mana available, potentially causing delays in gameplay or being unusable in decks that don’t have a reliable black mana source.

Comparatively High Mana Cost: The combination of two black mana and two colorless mana makes it a mid-to-late game play. Some players may find that at this cost, there are alternatives for reanimation that provide more value or have lower mana requirements, giving them an edge in faster-paced games.

Reasons to Include Soulless Revival in Your Collection

Versatility: Soulless Revival slots into a multitude of decks with its ability to bring creatures back from the graveyard. This instant can be a crucial play in both aggressive and control strategies alike.

Combo Potential: This card offers potential in combo decks by reanimating key combo pieces. Its synergy with cards that benefit from or trigger upon creatures entering the battlefield can be game-changing.

Meta-Relevance: Given the ever-present use of graveyard strategies in various formats, Soulless Revival holds relevance by providing a quick answer to reestablish board presence or recover essential creatures targeted by opponents.

How to beat

Soulless Revival can be a tricky spell to face in a match. The card offers players a swift way to retrieve a creature from the graveyard and put it back into their hand. It’s a nimble one-mana spell that fits smoothly into fast-paced, creature-centric strategies, ensuring essential pieces return to the fray. Unlike some reanimation spells, Soulless Revival doesn’t put the creature directly into play, which provides opponents a window of opportunity to counteract its effects.

To effectively counter Soulless Revival, consider running graveyard hate cards that can remove creatures from the graveyard before your opponent has the chance to target them with the spell. This shuts down their strategy and wastes their mana. Cards with exile effects, such as Tormod’s Crypt or Leyline of the Void, can play a significant role in disrupting your opponent’s plans.

Moreover, using counterspells such as Negate or Dovin’s Veto can be incredibly effective strategies. These can stop Soulless Revival directly on the stack, thus maintaining control of the tempo and resources in the game. By understanding and anticipating the play, you can strategize to best its potential impact and sustain your position in the game.

Cards like Soulless Revival

Soulless Revival is a niche spell in Magic: The Gathering that allows players to reclaim creatures from their graveyard to their hand. This functionality echoes the essence of other retrieval spells like Disentomb, which specifically targets creature cards in the graveyard without conditions. Soulless Revival offers something a bit more with its splice onto Arcane ability, providing potential for additional value in the right deck build. Disentomb, while straightforward, lacks this additional layer of utility.

Analogous to Soulless Revival is the card Footsteps of the Goryo. Although the latter resurrects a creature card directly onto the battlefield, it has the drawback of sacrificing the creature at the beginning of the next end step, unless some clever play circumvents this. Footsteps of the Goryo shares the Arcane type with Soulless Revival, making them compatible for splice strategies, yet they serve different purposes in a player’s strategy.

Evaluating these spells reveals the depth of MTG’s strategy when it comes to bringing back lost creatures. Soulless Revival stands out for its splice potential, providing strategic versatility that can enhance gameplay and offer cunning avenues for experienced players to explore within their matches.

Footsteps of the Goryo - MTG Card versions

Cards similar to Soulless Revival by color, type and mana cost

Where to buy

If you're looking to purchase Soulless Revival MTG card by a specific set like Champions of Kamigawa, there are several reliable options to consider. One of the primary sources is your local game store, where you can often find booster packs, individual cards, and preconstructed decks from current and some past sets. They often offer the added benefit of a community where you can trade with other players.

For a broader inventory, particularly of older sets, online marketplaces like TCGPlayer, Card Kingdom and Card Market offer extensive selections and allow you to search for cards from specific sets. Larger e-commerce platforms like eBay and Amazon also have listings from various sellers, which can be a good place to look for sealed product and rare finds.

Additionally, Magic’s official site often has a store locator and retailer lists for finding Wizards of the Coast licensed products. Remember to check for authenticity and the condition of the cards when purchasing, especially from individual sellers on larger marketplaces.

Below is a list of some store websites where you can buy the Soulless Revival and other MTG cards:

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Legalities

Magic the Gathering formats where Soulless Revival has restrictions

Format	Legality
Commander	Legal
Legacy	Legal
Paupercommander	Legal
Modern	Legal
Oathbreaker	Legal
Pauper	Legal
Vintage	Legal
Duel	Legal
Predh	Legal

Rules and information

The reference guide for Magic: The Gathering Soulless Revival card rulings provides official rulings, any errata issued, as well as a record of all the functional modifications that have occurred.

Date	Text
2013-06-07	A card with a splice ability can’t be spliced onto itself because the spell is on the stack (and not in your hand) when you reveal the cards you want to splice onto it.
2013-06-07	If all of the spell’s targets are illegal when the spell tries to resolve, it won’t resolve and none of its effects will happen.
2013-06-07	You choose all targets for the spell after revealing cards you want to splice, including any targets required by the text of any of those cards. You may choose a different target for each instance of the word “target” on the resulting spell.
2013-06-07	You reveal all cards you intend to splice at the same time. Each individual card can be spliced only once onto any one spell.