Infernal Grasp

Instant

Destroy target creature. You lose 2 life.

Discussion (48)

PhocusEnergy on Battalion of Bones

5 days ago

Epicurus Thanks for the suggestions! I actually completely agree with you with the curve concerns here. With regard to the cheap sac/removal cards, I was running this with Eaten Alive and it worked quite well, but my issues with it were two-fold - I can only sac so many skeletons and bring them back so many times without burning a lot of mana, and that a lot of my sac synergies are in there to work with the triggers for Skeletal Swarming and Death-Priest of Myrkul, both of which trigger on any creature death, not just our own, which makes me want to keep our sac triggers and removal segregated to maximize our resource/death trigger ratio. As for bringing down the mana curve, I agree that that's likely a good move, I was testing with this more resilient, slower build, but I think replacing the Vraska's and two of the Hero's Downfall with Infernal Grasp or Heartless Act would be a great way to achieve this.

Phaeophyta on Steal Yo Girl for Connor

2 weeks ago

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lhetrick13 on I'll Raise you +1/+1...

2 weeks ago

Drestlin - I do like how Baffling End comes from one of my favorite sets! Otherwise, I feel like it is similar to a lot of the other low cost removal from {B} out there in terms of having a condition to meet to be effective, having a negative side effect, or losing those at the expense of cost such as Fatal Push, Infernal Grasp, Bloodchief's Thirst, Assassin's Trophy, Maelstrom Pulse, Vindicate...

The cheaper removal stuff from {W} also has limiting conditions conditions or negative side effects like Smite, Swallow Whole, Reciprocate, Condemn, etc...which was one of my problems to begin with, not being able to always removal the creatures I needed consistently with Swallow Whole. Not saying that my idea to use Retribution of the Ancients for removal is not without its faults as you have to have +1/+1 counters to lose but at least it does not give the opponent a boost in land or creatures or take a 10th of my health (which the high number or fetch, shock, or pain lands already do that and more!).

Playtesting Retribution of the Ancients so far has had mixed reviews. I have either lost playing against decks like Living End where creatures are not really a thing until they are a thing and its to late or I have gotten it out and it does work effectively to help clear the board of essential pieces or just enough so I can get unblocked creatures for the win.

RadicalCrawdadx on The Elven Swarm Drain

3 weeks ago

Chasmolinker Thanks duderino! Glad you like it! The original idea stemmed from when a bunch of friends and I did our own version of a Kaldheim draft together, and I pulled all these elves that wiped the floor with everyone. Needless to say, it was a fun night lmao.

I was using Doom Blade as a form of removal but recently came across Infernal Grasp as a better form of removal. That Plague Engineer is nasty lmao, and DB definitely wouldn't be able to remove it, but with my recent upgrade to IG, I think I have a good chance to address it.

I love the ETB on The Meathook Massacre, but I hadn't considered it since I had so many GY retrievals, reanimation, and mass reanimation spells.

Franks on Life ****ery

3 weeks ago

Hi Wallis,

I appreciate the feedback!

I've only been playing Magic for a month so love getting advice on how to better optimise my decks :)

I agree with Thrull Parasite, definitely seems like a better fit for the same mana cost.

I'll most likely readjust Vito, Thorn of the Dusk Rose & Sanguine Bond, the main reason was money irl as I can't seem to find Vito, Thorn of the Dusk Rose for a good price, but will make sure to balance those cards out in future.

Infernal Grasp is cool, not seen that card before and I guess would be better than Revitalize, I liked the idea of boosting by 3 life, when Vito, Thorn of the Dusk Rose or Sanguine Bond were out to chip away at opponent's HP, also giving me a card draw. But I see where you're coming from.

Unearth makes sense given the general low mana cost of my creatures so will look to work that in.

Sorin's Vengeance could probably be ditched, is there a good replacement for it or do you suggest adding more creatures in that gap? The reason I went for it was if I had Vito's ability active then it's pretty sweet, but I agree it is high cost and difficult to play in this deck.

The angle I was going for with this deck was to give myself a few avenues so I'm not dependent on X card as I seem to have screwed myself over in a few games that way. This is my first custom deck hence putting it under Unknown, I still don't actually understand the different Game Types, so maybe could do with focussing on one to better streamline the deck.

I appreciate your comment :)

wallisface on Life ****ery

3 weeks ago

Some thoughts:

• i don’t see how a game is ever going long enough for you to be able to cast Sorin's Vengeance. I would suggest ditching it.

• I would suggest Unearth over Blood Beckoning.

• Revitalize doesn’t really do much here, i would suggest ditching it for some interaction - you currently have no way to stop your opponent doing what they want. Infernal Grasp would go a long way here.

• I would suggest running the full playset of Vito, Thorn of the Dusk Rose and just running 2x Sanguine Bond. You need to get Vito online early to make use of the lifegain. Conversely, Sanguine Bond has a huge mana cost for modern, and you don’t really want to be drawing into more than one of these.

• Thirsting Shade seems really weak, there must be a better option than this… Thrull Parasite seems like a better fit.

• Sideboards are meant to have a collection of cards that help you in bad matchups (i.e answers for graveyards, combo, aggro, control etc), but yours currently appears to be “extra stuff not good enough for mainboard”. I’d suggest reworking your sideboard entirely.

Chasmolinker on I'll Raise you +1/+1...

1 month ago

First off, Thanks for the recognition lhetrick13. I don't know about infamous, but I'll take it. And thanks for reminding me to update that list ASAP. lol

As for the rest:
- Retribution of the Ancients, I never tried it. I don't know if you want to rely on it to heavily. If you go into {B} there is SOOO much removal that becomes available. Fatal Push, Infernal Grasp, Thoughtseize, Bloodchief's Thirst, Assassin's Trophy, Maelstrom Pulse, Vindicate...

- Swallow Whole can definitely go for something more reliable. At sorcery speed, you probably already took damage by the time you're casting this. The additional +1/+1 counters seems like an uneven tradeoff.

- Hopeful Initiate seems fine. Scavenging Ooze could replace one of the 3 copies currently in the list.

Daghatar the Adamant works really well if you need a mana sink. I would probably go up to 4 copies of Luminarch Aspirant though TBH.

abanoxious on UB Control

1 month ago

Yeah, Infernal Grasp is definitely more versatile. With the three Thoughtseize in the deck I'm concerned that having too much life loss will make aggro match-ups very difficult, but maybe a split between Go for the Throat and Infernal Grasp would work well. That way I won't be in a hopeless position against either artifact decks or highly aggressive decks.