Necromancer's Familiar MTG Card

Card Pros

Card Advantage: Necromancer’s Familiar provides an edge in the battlefield through its ability to potentially return another creature card from your graveyard to your hand when it dies. This cycle of revival sustains your hand resources, offering a form of card advantage that keeps your game resilient against removal strategies by opponents.

Resource Acceleration: While Necromancer’s Familiar on its own may not directly produce additional mana, its synergy with other cards that benefit from creature death or sacrifice can lead to indirect resource acceleration. This acceleration can manifest through various graveyard interactions that are central to necromancy-themed decks, ensuring you’re consistently maximizing your resources.

Instant Speed: A key capability of Necromancer’s Familiar is its deployment at instant speed if a flash-enabling card is on the field. This makes the familiar a versatile and unpredictable force, as you can hold mana for counterplays and respond immediately to your opponent’s actions, catching them off guard and potentially swinging the tide of the game in your favor.

Card Cons

Discard Requirement: Necromancer’s Familiar demands a card discard to activate certain abilities, which can be counterproductive when your hand is already dwindling in size. This can disrupt your game plan, especially if you are forced to throw away a pivotal piece of your strategy.

Specific Mana Cost: The casting cost for Necromancer’s Familiar includes black mana, which may not be ideal for all deck types. Decks without black mana or those that are mana-color restrictive might find it challenging to integrate this card efficiently into their strategy.

Comparatively High Mana Cost: Investing three mana, including both generic and black mana, for a creature of its caliber can be steep. Considering the investment, players must weigh if the cost is justified by the benefits, particularly when other cards could potentially provide a better performance to mana cost ratio for similar or even lesser mana investments.

Reasons to Include Necromancer’s Familiar in Your Collection

Versatility: This creature card easily slips into numerous deck archetypes, particularly those favoring graveyard manipulation or requiring reliable blockers. Its capacity to provide consistent benefits each turn makes it a flexible addition to any black-themed deck.

Combo Potential: Necromancer’s Familiar interacts synergistically with strategies that leverage creature sacrifices or death triggers. It can serve as both enabler and beneficiary in a well-tuned combo setup, providing fuel for various powerful interactions.

Meta-Relevance: Given that creature-based decks are frequently encountered across different formats, the Familiar’s ability to stave off aggression while slowly grinding advantages can tip the scales in matchups, potentially shifting the dynamics of local and broader metagames.

How to beat

Necromancer’s Familiar is a uniquely resilient creature in the world of Magic the Gathering. This card presents a challenge with its potential to return to the battlefield, creating a recurring obstacle for opponents. To effectively counter this card, players should consider using exile effects or graveyard hate strategies, which prevent the card from returning once it hits the graveyard. Cards such as Leyline of the Void can stop creatures from hitting the graveyard in the first place, while instant removal like Path to Exile ensures that Necromancer’s Familiar stays out of play. Utilizing these strategies is essential as simply destroying the creature won’t guarantee it won’t come back. On top of that, continuous board control is vital to prevent the Familiar from leveraging its undying ability.

Additionally, countering the spells or abilities that intend to bring Necromancer’s Familiar back from the graveyard is also a viable option. This can be achieved through counter spells or abilities that specifically target actions on the graveyard. As a player facing Necromancer’s Familiar, it’s crucial to keep a close eye on graveyard interactions and maintain a set of control tools ready to handle its undying mechanic.