One format's trash...

There’s a funny story about this card. My old playgroup did a shards of alara “league” (mix of sealed and block constructed), and when we saw this card each of us had to take a turn reading it to fully appreciate how bad it was (seemed). For seven mana you might deal damage if a creature dies... even in that format it was unlikely for someone to have more than a card or two in hand if there was 7 mana on the board so you were looking at trying to kill four creatures just to make the damage comparable to a lava axe. This was of course, before any of us had heard of EDH/Commander.

What the card needed was extra players around the table, longer games, and more prolific card drawing or card advantage... sound familiar? EDH provided the environment this card really needed, propelling it from absolute trash to borderline overpowered. It is not uncommon to be able to 1-shot a player with vicious shadows the turn after playing it. A 5 player game will usually have at least 5 creatures around the table - sometimes a lot more. Firing off a wrath after laying down shadows is usually good for 5-10 triggers, and most players maintain hands of 4-6 cards throughout a game of EDH. That’s 20-60 damage to distribute as you please in a single turn.

The upside of the card is it creates an incentive for people to dump their hands so that they aren’t vulnerable to it. The downside is sometimes its just not possible to do before you get dinged for massive amounts of life. A hand full of situational answers, or 7CMC bombs, just cannot be dumped at will.

Another upside is that it can be a straightforward equalizer if you go for the players with the highest life totals rather than the ones with the most cards in hand. Its only as much of a bastard card as you make it - although sometimes its too hard to resist hitting the guy with a 7 card grip, whatever his life total may be.

Macaroni or Cheese?
I’m on the fence with how brutal this card is. Its really a question of how much you can do about it before you succumb to the shots-to-the-face. Often you’ll have just one turn to respond, and if you don’t have a disenchant in hand too bad for you. So yeah, its an EDH bomb - on the line between tolerably and intolerably cheesey.