Viscerid Deepwalker MTG Card
| Mana cost | |
| Converted mana cost | 5 |
| Rarity | Common |
| Type | Creature — Homarid Warrior |
| Abilities | Suspend |
| Released | 2006-10-06 |
| Set symbol | |
| Set name | Time Spiral |
| Set code | TSP |
| Power | 2 |
| Toughness | 3 |
| Number | 91 |
| Frame | 2003 |
| Layout | Normal |
| Border | Black |
| Illustred by | Heather Hudson |
Key Takeaways
- Enables card advantage with a steady hand refill via its sacrifice ability, essential for maintaining strategy.
- Ramps up mana resources efficiently, integrating well into decks harnessing creature death for gains.
- Instant speed sacrifice disrupts opponent plays and adapts to game shifts, enhancing its combat prowess.
Text of card
: Viscerid Deepwalker gets +1/+0 until end of turn. Suspend 4— (Rather than play this card from your hand, you may pay and remove it from the game with four time counters on it. At the beginning of your upkeep, remove a time counter. When you remove the last, play it without paying its mana cost. It has haste.)
Card Pros
Card Advantage: Diving into the capabilities of Viscerid Deepwalker, players find an ally in subterranean tactics. This card, through its repeatable sacrifice mechanism, allows for steady card draw, ensuring your hand remains flush with options and your strategy well-fueled.
Resource Acceleration: Beyond the depths, Viscerid Deepwalker emerges as a beacon of mana versatility. Particularly useful in decks that capitalize on creature death, it can ramp up your resources, seamlessly transforming loss into a potent gain of mana.
Instant Speed: The true power of this creature lurks in its use beyond the main phases. Its sacrificial ability can be unleashed at instant speed, making it a formidable tool to disrupt opponents’ calculations, react to sudden threats, or simply advance your board state as the tides of play shift.
Card Cons
Discard Requirement: Unlike the usual cast-from-hand process, Viscerid Deepwalker requires a discard for its alternative casting method. This can deplete valuable resources in hand, particularly when your card advantage is already teetering on the edge.
Specific Mana Cost: Viscerid Deepwalker comes with a blue-oriented mana cost, making it a less flexible option for multicolored decks that might not prioritize blue mana sources. Deck building can be constrained to accommodate this aquatic creature.
Comparatively High Mana Cost: With a casting cost that includes three generic and one blue mana, Viscerid Deepwalker’s entry onto the battlefield comes at a steep curve. In contexts where tempo matters, players may find that other creatures or spells could offer more impact or versatility on the board for the same or lower mana investment.
Reasons to Include Viscerid Deepwalker in Your Collection
Versatility: Viscerid Deepwalker offers flexibility in blue-based decks. It can adapt to various in-game situations, thanks to its shadow ability, ensuring it can sneak past creatures for consistent damage or block those elusive shadow creatures. Its ability to pump its toughness also makes it a resilient blocker.
Combo Potential: With decks that capitalize on creature sacrifices or graveyard mechanics, Viscerid Deepwalker can be a crucial piece. The sacrifice ability meshes well with cards that benefit from creatures hitting the graveyard, potentially unlocking powerful interactions.
Meta-Relevance: In environments where slower, more deliberate play is common, Viscerid Deepwalker can provide a persistent threat that’s hard to neutralize. Its shadow ability makes it a card to consider when tweaking your deck to overcome creatures that traditional removal might miss.
How to Beat
The Viscerid Deepwalker has quite the presence in underwater battles within Magic: The Gathering. This creature’s ability to sink into the depths makes it a unique adversary, often bypassing conventional blockers with its shadow. Unlike other creatures that rely on power or toughness to dominate, the Deepwalker can slip through defenses, which poses a unique challenge.
In terms of strategy, cards with the ability to remove or exile creatures from the game can be particularly useful. Counterspells also stand strong against Viscerid Deepwalker by preventing it from entering the battlefield in the first place. If the creature has made it into play, consider using global effects that don’t target individual creatures or effects that alter the rules of combat to neutralize its shadow ability. Additionally, enhancing your creatures’ reach to block or using spells that affect all creatures regardless of their abilities can provide a solid defense.
Ultimately, to triumph over the Viscerid Deepwalker, versatility in your deck construction is key. Include a mix of removal, counters, and global effects to ensure this sea creature doesn’t deliver a surprise victory from the deep.
Cards like Viscerid Deepwalker
Viscerid Deepwalker is a niche creature card in Magic: The Gathering with an interesting twist. Comparable creatures exist, such as Waterfront Bouncer, both sharing the ability to be more than just a creature on the board. Waterfront Bouncer has the option to bounce other creatures to their owner’s hand, but lacks the self-reviability of Viscerid Deepwalker. The Deepwalker can rise from your graveyard, offering a recurring threat that needs to be managed multiple times.
Another relative in this realm is Veilborn Ghoul, which can also return from the graveyard to hand, but only when a Swamp comes into play, making it a more limited option compared to Viscerid Deepwalker’s flexibility. Additionally, the ghoul requires discarding a card, whereas the Deepwalker self-sacrifices for the greater strategic advantage. On the other hand, Cadaver Imp retrieves a creature from your graveyard when it enters the battlefield, offering immediate value but without the repeatable self-recursion.
When comparing the self-recurrent aspect among similar creatures, Viscerid Deepwalker stands out for its combination of versatility and resilience, capable of being a continued presence that must be reckoned with and offering strategic depth to any game.
Cards similar to Viscerid Deepwalker by color, type and mana cost
Where to buy
If you're looking to purchase Viscerid Deepwalker MTG card by a specific set like Time Spiral, 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 Viscerid Deepwalker and other MTG cards:
- eBay
- TCG Player
- Card Kingdom
- Card Market
- Star City Games
- CoolStuffInc
- MTG Mint Card
- Hareruya
- Troll and Toad
- ABU Games
- Card Hoarder Magic Online
- MTGO Traders Magic Online
See MTG Products
Legalities
Magic the Gathering formats where Viscerid Deepwalker 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 Viscerid Deepwalker card rulings provides official rulings, any errata issued, as well as a record of all the functional modifications that have occurred.
| Date | Text |
|---|---|
| 2021-06-18 | A creature cast using suspend will enter the battlefield with haste. It will have haste until another player gains control of it. (In some rare cases, another player may gain control of the creature spell itself. If this happens, the creature won’t enter the battlefield with haste.) |
| 2021-06-18 | As the second triggered ability resolves, you must cast the card if able. You must do so even if it requires targets and the only legal targets are ones that you really don’t want to target. Timing permissions based on the card’s type are ignored. |
| 2021-06-18 | Cards exiled with suspend are exiled face up. |
| 2021-06-18 | Exiling a card with suspend isn’t casting that card. This action doesn’t use the stack and can’t be responded to. |
| 2021-06-18 | If an effect refers to a “suspended card,” that means a card that (1) has suspend, (2) is in exile, and (3) has one or more time counters on it. |
| 2021-06-18 | If the card has in its mana cost, you must choose 0 as the value of X when casting it without paying its mana cost. |
| 2021-06-18 | If the first triggered ability of suspend (the one that removes time counters) is countered, no time counter is removed. The ability will trigger again at the beginning of the card’s owner’s next upkeep. |
| 2021-06-18 | If the second triggered ability is countered, the card can’t be cast. It remains exiled with no time counters on it, and it’s no longer suspended. |
| 2021-06-18 | If the spell requires any targets, those targets are chosen when the spell is finally cast, not when it’s exiled. |
| 2021-06-18 | If you can’t cast the card, perhaps because there are no legal targets available, it remains exiled with no time counters on it, and it’s no longer suspended. |
| 2021-06-18 | If you cast a card “without paying its mana cost,” such as with suspend, you can’t choose to cast it for any alternative costs. You can, however, pay additional costs. If the card has any mandatory additional costs, you must pay those if you want to cast the card. |
| 2021-06-18 | Suspend is a keyword that represents three abilities. The first is a static ability that allows you to exile the card from your hand with the specified number of time counters (the number before the dash) on it by paying its suspend cost (listed after the dash). The second is a triggered ability that removes a time counter from the suspended card at the beginning of each of your upkeeps. The third is a triggered ability that causes you to cast the card when the last time counter is removed. If you cast a creature spell this way, it gains haste until you lose control of that creature (or, in rare cases, you lose control of the creature spell while it’s on the stack). |
| 2021-06-18 | The mana value of a spell cast without paying its mana cost is determined by its mana cost, even though that cost wasn’t paid. |
| 2021-06-18 | When the last time counter is removed, the second triggered ability of suspend (the one that lets you cast the card) triggers. It doesn’t matter why the last time counter was removed or what effect removed it. |
| 2021-06-18 | You are never forced to activate mana abilities to pay costs, so if there is a mandatory additional mana cost (such as from Thalia, Guardian of Thraben), you can decline to activate mana abilities to pay for it and hence fail to cast the suspended card, leaving it in exile. |
| 2021-06-18 | You can exile a card in your hand using suspend any time you could cast that card. Consider its card type, any effects that modify when you could cast it (such as flash) and any other effects that stop you from casting it (such as from Meddling Mage’s ability) to determine if and when you can do this. Whether you could actually complete all steps in casting the card is irrelevant. For example, you can exile a card with suspend that has no mana cost or that requires a target even if no legal targets are available at that time. |
