One of the most popular and requested characters in the history of Magic: The Gathering is here. As the War of the Spark spoilers continue pouring in, one of the latest revealed Legendary creatures is a special one: Massacre Girl. This sadistic dame has been around in MTG lore since 2012. She was once ranked #1 on the “Azorius Ten Most Wanted” criminals list. Her crimes? All of them.
Effect
For anyone who has played Hearthstone, the effect on Massacre Girl may seem familiar. In Hearthstone, there are two cards with similar effects: Defile and Lord Godfrey. Both these cards deal a round of damage to every creature on the field and then repeat that damage if a creature died. While Massacre Girl’s ability is a little different (she gives -1/-1 instead of dealing damage, her effect repeats for *every* creature it kills), it’s definitely reminiscent of these two Hearthstone cards.
Background
When we were last on Ravnica, we never actually saw Massacre Girl. But we did see some interesting flavor text on the Thrill-Kill Assassin card. We also got the aforementioned Most Wanted criminals article from Wizards of the Coast. Now we’ve gotten a new dev blog that fleshes out her story to coincide with her official reveal. From these sources we can deduce a few things:
- She was the number one most wanted criminal in all of Ravnica when we were last there
- Her excessive violence and public displays of artful murder has inspired copy-cat killers
- She’s a contract killer who avoids capture by threatening officials who would detain her
With such an interesting back-story, she’s been a long-awaited addition to the Magic: The Gathering game. The community is predictably stoked that she’s finally arrived.
Where might she see play?
Right off the bat, Massacre Girl is a phenomenal card against token strategies. This is most likely Wizards of the Coast’s answer to overwhelming token boards once Goblin Chainwhirler rotates from Standard. She’s also mono-black, meaning she is much easier to cast than Kaya’s Wrath which may see a fall-off in play once the Dominaria rare lands rotate. In addition to all this, I imagine her being a solid card for Cube and Commander since both those formats tend to like creatures with strong enter the battlefield abilities. Modern is probably too fast for her, and Legacy is too spell-oriented for her ability to get much value. She may be a sideboard card in those formats, but I wouldn’t expect a deck to show up around her.
