Cruel Reality

Cruel Reality


  • Color: Black
  • Type: Enchantment - Aura, Curse
  • Rarity: Mythic Rare
  • Set:

Buy from Card Kingdom - $ 1.99

Buy Ikoria Bundle Box - $34.99

Buy Commander 2020 Set - $169.99
Previous Spoiler: Soul-Scar Mage
Next Spoiler: Approach of the Second Sun


New MTG Spoilers in the same colors
Blitz Leech - Ikoria Spoiler

Blitz Leech

Boot Nipper - Ikoria Spoiler

Boot Nipper

Corpse Churn - Ikoria Spoiler

Corpse Churn

  • kevin

    CURSEESSSS YES!

  • Cthulhooo

    7 Mana curse? How good is that in EDH?

    • alexander macrae

      I’d prefer an enchantment like Painful Quandary (it costs less), since it will effect all of your opponents. Paying seven mana to set back a single opponent seems like a waste of a slot that should be going to a bomb, especially since you never really know who is going to be the first one out.

      • Cthulhooo

        Yeah, thought so. So another feelsbadman bulk mythic? Damn box openings will be full of salt.

  • Daniel Kaine Allen

    Too bad it costs so much, but its still cool. Maybe in some golgari deck with decent mana ramp

  • Bige Boiy

    if we get more curses we can finally build grixis curses with bolas

  • Michael Pepin

    I feel so bad for him at this point, as much as I don’t like Gideon he just had his faith rekindled.

  • k

    maby there will be an enchantment cost reduction artifact but we will see.

  • Donovan Davenport

    Control finisher maybe? Kinda cool with the old curse that searches for other curses.

    • Marvin Sürig

      my tougths Exactly. I would fo with 3x Bitterheart Witch 2x Curse of Misfortunes. Maybe I would change the numbers.
      That with alot of Counterspells and maybe 1-3 other curse cards would work quite well.

  • Necrachilles

    Gideon dies in this block =[

    • Daniel Scott

      It certainly looks likely that he will.

    • Serj

      I hope so

    • Kaiser

      I dont think he dies but he probably is the one who makes the gaterangers fail this time.

      • Necrachilles

        Actually, I think he sacrifices himself to save one or all of them. Kind of an amends for the times he believes he’s failed.

        Kinda funny though, the Gatewatch was originally kinda referenced/established 6 years ago. And in that it started with Gideon utterly beaten down by Nicol Bolas calling for help (Assemble the Gatewatch, albeit with a couple slight changes)

        So who knows, maybe they’ll bring that back full circle with Gideon on this new plane with Nicol Bolas and a Gatewatch.

        I predict: Someone is going to die and Gideon is most likely/leaned towards based on flavor text and the story so far. It won’t be Nicol Bolas, he’s too important and powerful to die right now. Ugin will certainly show up out of no where (and possibly gear an oath if he’s not secretly against us). Most likely the Gatewatch confront Bolas, gets their asses kicked and Gideon sacrifices himself to buy them time to escape, he dies and then Nicol Bolas corners the rest of the walkers before Ugin shows up and saves them by forcing Bolas to retreat (unless Ugin kills Bolas and then goes after the walkers having reveled his true ‘colors’) leaving the Gatewatch to lick their wounds and regroup. **Here’s where I’m going even further into outter space** Sending them back to Mirrordin to recover Karn to defeat Ugin’s colorless magic if Ugin is in fact bad and/or back to Theros to recover Elspeth/pay tribute to Gideon on his plane

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfFZ896k_f0

  • Dominic Ng

    So it is Gideon who got murdered or his crop-mate got murdered? Reading through the comment and saw how people get upset on Gideon’s “death” confuses me.

    • Marvin Sürig

      His Crop-Mate got murdered as part of the Trail. But I don’t know what a Crop-Mate is.

      • Dominic Ng

        After some thought, his crop-mate is Temmet right? That makes a lot of sense, considering Temmet is the Vizier of “Naktamun”.

        • dingoloid

          A crop is a group of people who’ve trained together and are taking the trials together, so I’m assuming in the black trial of “ambition”, they have to kill each other to prove their skill and commitment. I assume the flavour text means that all of the people in the art are in one crop, and they’ve turned on one of their crop-mates to kill him and stop Gideon saving him.

        • Marvin Sürig

          I don’t know if a Vizir is someone who helps out in the Trials. Most likely that guy is behind the Stuff that happens in Naktamun. If you know the disney movie Aladdin, the dude Jafar was the Vizir of the Sultan ;)

    • Bram Van Den Abeele

      Neither, the crops are groups of initiates (crop-mates) who prepare to take the trials of the Gods together. Gideon is all star struck with the Gods on this plane and is being a super fan-girl. However that’ll change once he faces the “cruel reality” that the crop-mates have to kill one another to pass certain trials.

  • Deadly Berry

    No traumatizing Gideon please.
    Plot twist: The crop-mate has embalm.

    • Hedronal

      That might traumatize Gideon more.

    • Necrachilles

      Gideon dies this block, sorry.=/

  • Bob

    Not sure the confusion here with ppl saying Gideon dying? It says nothing even close to that!
    Apart from that, this is a terrible mythic… sad days for black

  • Avery Standley
  • Kahai

    The return of Curse is welcome, but that CMC man…

    • Kaiser

      If this dealts 10 damages i will use it just because i HATE gideon XD

  • Dave

    Alleviate the cost with the flavour-wise fitting flipside of Accursed Witch in Standard. Could be fun as mono black control or something.

    • Kaiser

      or just use Bitterheart Witch and played this for 4 in a super cool casual deck like me.

  • Dr. Burn Crow

    I like suffering. A bit pricey, but it’d work in my monoblack EDH. That thing creates mana by the ton.

    • Kaiser

      I know that someday my Bitterheart witch will be useful to me, use her too my lord crow!

  • Tin Dol

    SPOILERS!!! (see what I did there)

  • Kaiser

    Gideon is blind because he belive in the ideals of her goddess. He forget that honor and solidarity can serve for evil porpouses too. The people of Amonkhet belive that sacrifice all for being worthy is neccesary.

  • Rœkja

    I see the intention. In B/G -1/-1 counters, you should be able to take care of most of your opponent’s creatures, and then this can remove any stragglers or kill them. And in B/G you should be able to count on ramp to alleviate the cost some. But.. that’s still a lot of mana…

    • MTG fan

      Remember green can mana ramp a lot. That’s just an idea

  • Ryan Cameron

    Wait so does this mean we have to wait until Hour of Devastation for Bontu? Or is there still a chance?

    • Aurore

      Bontu is guaranteed to be here, I don’t know why you would think this means he wouldn’t be, either.

      • Derek Niles

        he could be in the second set

        • Ryū

          The five gods are all invocations in this set. He’s in this set.

  • Red

    Mmm.. painful quandary for creatures and planeswalkers.

    • Marky Day

      Painful quandary costs less and does more. It affects each of your opponents.

  • Happy The Cat

    being a curse makes this so much less abuseable, if this was just an enchantment I could just animate it and Rite of reflection, since I cant my Painful Quandary is going to keep it’s slots.

  • joeymunn7 .

    Wtf Wizards. Every set they always give black a bs overcosted mythic for some reason. Im a black player and this annoys me. this should have been 5 cmc or 6 at most. They can just sac tokens also. Should say non token creatures. Getting real tired of wizards with giving blue and red a 3 drop mythic and then black gets a 7 drop one that sucks compared to the 3 drop ones.

    • Ryū

      Yeah, this card is almost cool. 7 mana is a tall order though when I have better things to play.

      • joeymunn7 .

        Its sad because the only deck I would even put this in which would be my Shirei Caretaker deck. but at 7 cmc it competes with other stuff thats just better in the long run like Sheoldred, Whispering One. I just hate how they never give black a good mythic at a reasonable cost. Hard to think of the last good one we got. But blue gets a 3 cmc that pretty much lets you cast free spells. So the mana costs on both cards dont make sense. they should be swapped lol

        • Aurore

          Last good black mythic at reasonable cost? I think it was Liliana.

          • joeymunn7 .

            I dont really count planewalkers because they are pretty much in every set and most are pretty decent. I mean non PW mythics.

    • Edward

      You realize blue gets it about as bad as Black does right? Blue Mythics are usually expensive or cards you have to jump through hoops to make useful. Occasionally Blue gets something good but usually the Mythics end up being played in Commander more than anywhere else.

    • Scathain

      Its meant to be used with bitterheart witch, or Curse of Misfortunes. I would not recommend using this outside of a combo deck. Kind of silly to print it with that high of a CMC when it is probably not going to be hardcast anyways. Almost playable in monoblack tron, though.

  • Cynical Bastards

    i mean you could use bitterheart witch…

    • Ryan Sullivan

      Never knew this card existed. Making a meren deck based off it. That’s amazing.

      • Cynical Bastards

        yeah I found it in a box of innistrad cards from a garage sale, wouldn’t have known about it otherwise

  • Blahblahblahbla

    Yikes. I mean.. If this were just rare, it would cause alot of big control decks to be played in limited as it’s got some serious inevitability going on, but otherwise, it’s pretty unplayable anywhere. I wouldn’t even play this in EDH. As far as limited goes though, i would play the **** out of this.

  • Vizzerdrix

    Can someone explain the seal on it? It seems very out of place

    • De’Elgathor

      It’s the Planeswalker symbol. They’ve been using it for a couple sets to denote Magic Story Spotlight Cards.