Accursed Marauder is a black mana Common from MTG’s Modern Horizons 3 set that is cheap to cast and easy to get hold of. Zombie decks and sacrifice strategies are set to receive a big, reliable boost once this card drops.
Magic: The Gathering’s Modern Horizons sets are well known for pushing the power level of the game forward, both in the intended Modern format and in other popular forms of play like Commander.
The power increase brought about in Modern Horizons sets can be a sore spot for many Modern players, as it effectively adds regular set rotation to a format that shouldn’t be restricted in such a way.
Still, it’s hard to argue that Modern Horizons sets have introduced some all-time great cards to Magic, with Modern Horizons 3 being the latest to add excellent archetype support and a number of new build-around cards.
Accursed Marauder can be cast for 1B and fits well into MTG’s ever-popular horde of Zombie Creatures. This card is a 2/1 for 2 mana, which is certainly nothing special without combat tricks, but MTG Zombies rarely focus on building up powerful individual Creatures regardless.
MTG’s Zombies often excel by overwhelming opponents, building up a wide board to swarm opponents, and using all kinds of control options and graveyard recursion to hold other players at bay while accumulating resources.
Accursed Marauder fits into the Zombie Control deck style, thanks to an ETB effect that forces each player to sacrifice a nontoken Creature. While this wide-reaching sacrifice effect does include Accursed Marauder’s controller, it’s a small price to pay for an archetype with such reliable graveyard options.
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Accursed Marauder works by trading value, with opponents almost always coming off worse in sacrificing their nontoken Creatures, while Zombie decks will barely be slowed down.
This effect works especially well in decks led by the all-time great Zombie Commander Wilhelt, the Rotcleaver. When you sacrifice a nontoken Zombie, Wilhelt will provide a token replacement to prevent you from losing any overall power.
MTG fans have been quick to point out just how good Accursed Marauder really is, especially for a Common rarity card.
As explained by Reddit user BlurryPeople, “The going rate for this kind of card (Fleshbag Marauder, Plaguecrafter, Merciless Executioner, etc.) has been 3 for quite a while, so to see it reduced to only 2, and with some filtering to ensure it doesn’t hit inferior targets is a little nuts.”
A usual get-around for this type of effect is providing each player the option to sacrifice a Creature, whether it be a token or not. Accursed Marauder does prevent you from sacrificing Zombie tokens or other cheap Creature resources, but ensuring opponents don’t have the same recourse is well worth it.
Accursed Marauder provides a better version of a classic Zombie ability at reduced cost, and it’s hard to argue that it serves as another example of Modern Horizons’ power creep. However, the legion of Magic players running Zombie decks will hardly be upset at receiving this cheap, reliable support.