Magic: The Gathering's Massacre Girl, Known Killer brings back classic game mechanic

One of Magic: The Gathering’s most popular creatures is back in a new way: Massacre Girl! Originally released during the War of the Spark expansion, she had the capacity to whittle away an entire battlefield with the right setup. She can do something similar while appearing in Murders at Karlov Manor, but she offers value for far longer than her initial arrival on the battlefield. The original card only gave you value for its ETB trigger, but that’s not the case here.

In Murders at Karlov Manor, the next Magic: The Gathering expansion, Massacre Girl brings back a fun mechanic for players who like throwing their weak tokens and creatures at an enemy. It’s time to take a look at the classic mechanic known as “Wither”.

During our Magic: The Gathering’s Murders at Karlov Manor preview, we saw many cards, including Massacre Girl, Known Killer. Like her original release, she’s a 4/4 with Mence and costs 4 mana (2 black, 2 colorless). The original card version gave all creatures -1/-1 until the end of the turn - and if a creature died that turn, another -1/-1 would go out to all creatures. It was potentially quite simple to wipe a board of threats.

However, the original version of Massacre Girl’s fun stopped there in Magic: The Gathering. Unless you flickered her in and out of play or simply cast another later, that was it. You had to really carefully consider when you put her into play. The new version, however, is a bit more flexible:

Wither is a classic Magic: The Gathering mechanic. Whenever a creature with Wither deals damage to a creature, it instead deals -1/-1 counters. That means that even indestructible creatures can be deleted this way. If someone transformed The One Ring - which is now owned by Post Malone - into a