A Shadowy Tool for Protection and Evasion

In the depths of black’s strategic repertoire, Patriarch's Bidding sneaks onto the scene with a room-shaking, brain-tickling effect. A Modern Horizons 2 sorcery costing {3}{B}{B}, it arrives as a rare that whispers about tribal power while shoving players into a game of mind games. When you cast it, each player secretly names a creature type, and then both graves speak in unison: every card of the chosen type from each opponent’s graveyard rises back into the battlefield. It’s a pose-for-the-photo moment with real teeth, because the board you get is a mirror of your own graveyard plus your foe’s—an unpredictable, often game-changing reanimation spell. 🧙‍♂️🔥

Protection and evasion in this context aren’t about shields or unblockable strats so much as they are about resilience and timing. The spell doesn’t grant protection from removal, but it offers a different kind of protection: it densifies your legwork into a late-game board that can weather sweepers and wrath effects. By returning creatures of a chosen type, you can assemble a cohesive frontage that your opponents must answer, or risk watching a themed army stomp across the battlefield. In multiplayer formats or combotron games, the type you name can swing the balance toward you, provided you anticipate your opponents’ graveyard stock and ready an answer for whatever type they might come back with. ⚔️💎

Strategic angles you can lean into

• Choose a tribe you actually want to see back on the battlefield. If your deck leans into a specific creature type—say Zombie, Vampire, or Witch—Patriarch's Bidding can reanimate not just one or two cards, but an entire cadre of threats. That mass return can swing the tempo, flood the board, and pressure opponents who rely on wipe effects to reset the table. 🧙‍♂️
• Anticipate your opponents’ choices. Because both players pick a type, there’s a social pressure aspect to consider. If you predict they’ll choose a type that benefits you, you may play the spell with confidence; if you expect they’ll spite you with a type that hurts, you might hold back or cast earlier to limit the impact. It’s a quiet duel of wills that happens while the spells are in transit. 🔥
• Pair with graveyard recursion and ETB triggers. Reanimating a type you care about can set off a cascade of enter-the-battlefield effects, death triggers, and synergy with sacrifice outlets. In black, those interactions often create a tempo swing that you can ride into the late game, turning fringe cards into a sweeping board presence. ⚔️
• Protect key threats with board-wide resilience. If your chosen type reanimates several important bodies, you gain a form of indirect protection: you’re forcing your opponent to answer multiple threats at once, potentially drawing them into suboptimal trades or overcommitting resources. The resulting board pressure can be a shield against removal-heavy decks. 🛡️
• Mind the flavor text and the lore. The card’s flavor text—Ferrick’s wary warning about the night’s darkness—hints at a village ward with a rising fear of power meddling. It’s a reminder that with great reanimation comes greater responsibility: the battlefield becomes a stage where dark bargains pay off in spades, but the cost of misreading your opponent’s plan can be steep. “There’s some new darkness in the air tonight. If I were you, I’d stay home and lock the doors.” —Ferrick, village warden. 🧙‍♂️

  There’s some new darkness in the air tonight. If I were you, I’d stay home and lock the doors. — Ferrick, village warden

  Deck-building notes: how to weave this into a protection-and-evasion arc

  Patriarch's Bidding belongs in black-focused, tribal-leaning or graveyard-centric shells where you can maximize the returns of your chosen type. In a Zombie-heavy build, you can flood the board with undying horrors, while in a Vampire or Pirate shell, you unlock a surge of evasive and dangerous threats from both players’ yards. The card’s rarity and its MH2 reprint status signal a historically strong value play; you can expect it to show up in trade chats and casual tournaments as players chase the right synergy. The mana cost is steep, but the payoff can be immediate and overwhelming when timed with other graveyard interactions or with a protective aura from a card like Liliana, or a greedier plan that turns single-card plays into a multi-turn march. The non-foil, foil, and etched finishes also keep your collection diverse—great for display, yes, but even better for surprising your friends in a kitchen-table session. 🎨

  For example, in a deck built around the type Zombie, you might name Zombie in response to a graveyard-wide hazard and reanimate a wave of the undead to block, crew, or swing. If you’re facing a tribal-immune board wipe, Patriarch's Bidding can snag the very creatures your strategy depends on to rebound after the dust settles. And because the card is a mass return rather than targeted recursion, you gain a certain unpredictability—your opponents may be momentarily forced to recalculate their lines of play as their own graveyards wake up. The result is not just a board state; it’s a radiating sense of control, tempered by the risk of unplanned reanimations that can tilt the table in surprising directions. 🧙‍♂️🎲

  Flavorful design, strategic payoff

  From a design standpoint, Patriarch's Bidding embodies a classic black approach to graveyard politics: it’s potent, it’s dramatic, and it invites a social contract around what type you choose and how the table will react. The set—Modern Horizons 2—emphasizes reanimation and weird interactions that feel both familiar and fresh, giving players a sense of discovering new corners of the multiverse with every casting. The art by Ilse Gort adds a moody, village-ward vibe that fits the flavor text like a lock on a forbidden door, and the rich black mana cost anchors it firmly in black’s wheelhouse. The card’s flexibility—usable in several viable archetypes, not just one narrow build—makes it a valuable addition for players who love protection and evasion tactics that are less about blinking or bouncing and more about resilience through layered reanimation. 💎

  Practical takeaway

  Patriarch's Bidding is a trap for overconfident opponents and a lifeline for players who understand the power of graveyard symmetry. When used thoughtfully, it allows you to shape the battlefield by choosing a creature type that your deck can exploit while denying your foes the chance to predict your lines. Embrace the mind games, plan your recurrences, and let the dark bargain pay off as your board swells with a coordinated, fearsome presence. 🧙‍♂️🔥

  For more card insights, practical tricks, and a deeper dive into protection-and-evasion strategies, check out related guild and tribal discussions across our network.

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