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We’re back with another card preview for Magic: The Gathering (MtG) with a quick look at one the cards featured in the 2022 edition of Double Masters: Pithing Needle thanks to our friends at Wizards of the Coast!
For anyone in the MtG competitive scene, you’re probably familiar with, or might even have written angry posts about Pithing Needle: it’s a powerful and versatile card that’s good for stopping your opponents dead in their tracks.
The effect of Pithing Needle is as follows:
As Pithing Needle enters the battlefield, choose a card name.Activated abilities of sources with the chosen name can’t be activated unless they’re mana abilities.
At a one-cost, this is a great card to play once you understand just how your opponent plans to run their deck- simply call out the name of the card whose effect they’re using and watch it become just a dud in their deck instead.
It’s even more deadly in the Commander format- since you can always see their Commander, you can greatly cripple their decks by getting them to lose their access to the commander’s abilities.
While it’s definitely very strong, it does have some drawbacks- for one, it lacks Flash, meaning you’ll have to be proactive in using it: either designate a card you know your opponent’s going to play next turn or only use it reactively against a card that was causing trouble last turn.
That being said, its lack of a colored mana cost means it’s a must have for any deck looking to mess with the opponent’s plays instead.
You can get Pithing Needle as part of the MtG Double Masters 2022 set, which releases on July 8th, 2022. The set features a compilation of some of the best cards released, and is perfect for people who like Draft-based play- making for a fun game as you and your friends construct the best decks you can with the pulls you get.
