Budget Alternatives: Baneslayer Angel

Budget Alternatives is a series that points out replacements for the $200 playsets that plague Magic. We start things off aggressively by looking for cheaper alternatives to the $50 mythic rare, Baneslayer Angel.

A big part of my magic career has been creatively working around the fact that I am too cheap to drop a few hundred dollars to make a deck. I try to keep my budget around $60 a deck max since I am no longer a competitive player. Sadly trying to add a baneslayer angel to my deck would result in me having the filling the rest of the deck up with 59 plains.

WARNING: Since I enjoy coming up with deck lists for cube drafting and EDH the cards I review will not be limited to standard legal cards.

Breaking down the card

Baneslayer Angel
3WW
5/5
Flying
First Strike
Life Link
Protection from Demons and Dragons

Price: $50

At a glance This seems to be the most undercosted card that has ever been printed in the history of magic...maybe even more so than Ancestral Recall...Which is saying something. 5 abilities on a 5/5 creature for 5 mana? When I first saw this card I thought it had a cost of 6 and I was still floored. I am amazed there is room for flavor text with all of those awesome abilities on one card. I am still in shock just thinking how much better this is than my old personal favorite white flier from the 4th edition days, Serra Angel.

I spent some time looking at options of cards with the same converted mana cost in white. I can't honestly say that things are too pretty...I have color coded the individual abilities of the Budget Alternatives in the following way:

Green - Advantage
Yellow - Even or same ability
Red - Weakness

Lets just jump right in taking a look at Battlegrace Angel.

Battlegrace Angel
3WW
4/4
Flying
Exalted (Whenever a creature you control attacks alone, it gains +1/+1 until end of turn)
Whenever a creature you control attacks alone, it gains lifelink until end of turn

Price ~$2

Alright so best case scenario this card on it's own is a 5/5 Flying, Lifelink. That leaves us short first strike and the 2 protections. Honestly, I could care less about the protections as they are very specialized corner cases of protection from Red and Black but losing the first strike certainly does make the card weaker. Also if you aren't playing the the strength of the exalted ability what you really have is a Serra Angel without Vigilance. In an exalted theme deck I would still say the power level of the card is closer to a Baneslayer Angel, but if money is no object then the mythic rare still wins out by a long shot.

World Queller
3WW
4/4
At the beginning of your upkeep, you may choose a card type. If you do, each player sacrifices a permanent of that type.

Price: ~$1

I know what you are thinking...this article just jumped the shark (not yet it does that later). It may not look like a baneslayer and it really even isn't a close approximation of it in terms of abilities, but it does have the ability for card advantage if you are using it to remove card types that you do not have in play that your opponent does.

The Johny in me is screaming at myself to make a deck around this card. The Spike in me tells him to shut up and buy a baneslayer. The penny pincher in me tells him to shut up and that I need to spend my money on others this time of year. I think I might play this card in a white/control deck just because it is interesting. This is very much a your miliage my vary kind of pick however.

Oversoul of Dusk
W/G W/G W/G W/G W/G

Protection from blue
Protection from black
Protection from red

Price ~$2

Now here is a card that I loved to see in a draft. It is a shame that it is not standard legal anymore because this card is good against pretty much everything except a Baneslayer Angel. While the lack of First Strike and Lifelink are noticeable losses I feel that the overall evasiveness and defensive ability of the Oversoul of Dusk makes it a better card in many ways. While it can't fly the Oversoul does dodge 3/5 of the color wheel. Sadly though the casting cost makes it much impossible to splash white to add it to a deck, something that can be done with the Baneslayer much more easily.

Will an Oversoul of Dusk win you the game when your opponent has the Baneslayer out? No...at best he negates the lifelink ability on the Baneslayer and worst case teaches you to bring a creature with protection from white next time. I still love this card though even though it is no Baneslayer.

Divinity of Pride
W/B W/B W/B W/B W/B
4/4
Flying
Lifelink
Divinity of Pride gets +4/+4 as long as you have 25 or more life.

Price ~$4

Another non-standard legal card but at least this one looks promising. If we learned anything from the oversoul it is that we need lifelink to beable to outpace our opponent. On turn 5, It is clear that the baneslayer is still the better card, however if a Divinity of Pride is on the table longer than the baneslayer there is a good change that the divinity will be the larger creature and be able to take on the the Baneslayer head on. For your $4 a pop this might be the winner for a non standard mono-white deck replacement.

An $8 - $12 playset is too much you say? alright fine, we will go down to the uncommon rarity but I am going to warn you going down to a 50 cent playset budget is going to take it's toll. Let's take a look at Shepherd of the Lost.

Shepherd of the Lost
4W
3/3
Flying
First Strike
Vigilance

Price $0.10

If this card was printed back in visions I am pretty sure it would have been a rare. Honestly this card can't hold a candle to Baneslayer Angel. This suggestion is only being thrown out there for completely casual magic players who buy 1 pack a year of whatever booster is sitting on the checkout counter at WalMart. The only advantages it has is one less white in the casting cost, Vigilance (so you can attack and still chump block your opponents Baneslayer after attacking), and that it is $49.90 cheaper. It certainly seems like it might be a decent limited creature, but it quickly gets the wind taken out of it's sails when compared to a card of the power level of the Baneslayer Angel. Honestly though if this was a 3W creature it probably make the cut a little bit better but as it is it is far from a replacement for the Baneslayer

Maybe you can convince your little brother that you will trade him 4 Shepherds of the Lost for his Baneslayer to help make his angel deck better. You can even throw in a Coat of Arms to sweeten the pot even more so his Shepherds will all be 6/6. 5 cards for one? That is totally card advantage for your brother (Now the article has jumped the shark)!

Conclusion

Sadly after taking a look at the options it certainly doesn't look good for standard players. Casual players have many more choices available to them and will have a much easier time trading for some of the rares from shadowmoor that are no longer standard legal. I might actually make more sense in this case to not try to worry about playing an approximation of such a powerful creature but to maximize your ability to simply remove such a threat. As a white player dropping $20 for a play set of Path to Exile (or $0.50 for a play set of the slightly less reliable Journey to Nowhere) to protect you from $200 worth of angels might be the right choice for a budget player in this economy.

Are their any obvious 5 converted mana cost white creatures that I missed readers? I only really looked back as far as Shadowmoor for the article seeing as that newer creatures seem to be more powerful than most of the older cards that I from long before that. Feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments.