Challenge the Stats: Wilhelt, the Rotcleaver | Magic the Gathering 

I'm surprised Joey didn't kick in the door to the recording room and hijack this Challenge the Stats. :p

"Haymakers, life takers, and back breakers"

Sacrifice a huge champion of the perished to gisa goulcaller, that's such a flavorful play

Faces of the Past will also combo great with Gravespawn Sovereign, which was included in the Wilhelt precon. I'm definitely going to be grabbing a copy of Faces of the Past for my deck

I’ve build my deck with Faces of the Past as well, great underused card!

I've considered Faces of the Past before, but the issue is there are so many good enchantments for Wilhelt. I prefer Graft Harvest for a one drop to swing my zombies in with menace and Haunted One to give my non-token sacrifies undying. You honestly can't go wrong with so many options!

Great suggestion Dana!

You get the choice on faces of the past triggers regardless of who controlled the creature, so the "drawback" is actually a potential punish against your opponents

Dana dropping the challenge the stats AND dropping it for Wilhelt!? Somewhere, Joey is RAGING.

I like to play faces of the past in my other zombie deck with grimgrin, very useful for his effect when declares an attack. You attack with all your zombie , destroy a creature your opponent controls, and if he play tribal, you can tap all his creatures before declare block.

I just discovered faces of the past for my Bant tappers deck. Any removal spell from any player taps down an opponents board to boot!

I have this in my Zombie deck. It’s criminally underrated.

Thank you so freaking much Dana! I've been preaching to deaf ears at the LGS how PoC should be the first cut if you wanted to power up their zombie deck. At some point, I just accepted that they saw something that I didn't...

When are we getting a challenge the stats playlist on the channel?

Damn, I freaking love these but whenever they point out a card to remove, I already don't run it! This makes it so hard cause now I know of another card to add, but don't know what to remove... XD

Thank you for reminding me of this card, I ran it with my wizard deck from that same era for standard. lol, now I need to go rebuy it since I've started my collection over again. If its cheap enough, maybe I'll rework that old deck into a modern deck even! Disruptive Pitmage were you at! :D

Willet+faces+season of the witch = a great combo

Could you challenge the stats on minthara merciless soul, it's m'y favorite orzhov general right noW and pretty unique for these colors

Ayyy my main deck!

I was just reworking my wilhelt. Good timing.

I went with vehicles to make use of all of the decayed zombies. They've printed some good ones recently

Oh, this one is near and dead, err dear to my heart!

Inspiring Statuary in Sram, Senior Edificer

I still like champion, maybe for wilhelt I get it, but more often than not my other zombie decks love making tokens and perished helps keep pace with big green. Especially with the lord packages giving creatures menace and deathtouch champion always performs or at the very least is a threat that must be answered at some point and if a 1 drop makes my opponents use up a kill spell on that and not a commander that's cool too.

Damn it Dana, stealing the segue from Joey by posting a separate video

The synergies! One in particular that I like is unlimited nonblack creature destruction with Stronghold Assassin, Poppet Stitcher, and Wilhelt

Try playing Faces of the Past against a Krenko Mob Boss deck and you've effectively doubled their number of goblins plus and let them swing out every turn. Or against an Edgar Markov deck where they get to steal multiple creatures with Captivating Vampire.

I don't quite agree with the cut. Champion of the Perished gets prettty big pretty fast thanks to Wilhelt, and a huge zombie will always be a menace. There are many cards that give other zombies evasion. For a One Drop, I think it is amazing.

Champion of the Perished really is not that good. I am not sure I would play Faces of the Past, most of the Wilhelt list I've seen lean more into aristocrat style then activated abilities. I don't very often activate my zombies abilities. Most common wincon is Neecoduality or Rooftop Storm

While I like this card a fair bit, I find the problem comes with it not being a may ability, the the begining of combat, the opponent can just kill one zombie to shut off your swing for the turn

They probably stole this Challenge the Stats episode to continue with their inside joke 🤣🤣🤣

Imo just cause a 1 drop isn't explosive doesn't mean it's bad. That's why they're 1 drops, you put em down turn 1-3 and it's an early body on the field.

I do like Champion of the Perished turn 1 if you have a Ghoulcaller Gisa though

Untapping decayed zombies that have attacked is useless

I would argue there's probably better cuts for faces of the past specifically because i know you touched on untap synergies specifically it also just gives your whole board vigilance so Champion does kinda get to be a scary blocker in those scenarios. Don't blame anyone for removing it tho cuz it is just a biggun.

Zombies are not a tap tribe lol. Champion is overplayed tho

Just a 1/1 that might get a little bit bigger... wow. Understatement

I dont think there are enough good tap to activate abilities in UB Zombies to justify this card, there's only two in my list. And pseudo-vigilance for blocks? Pfft, zombies dont block. Literally, decayed zombies cant block and neither can gravecrawler or carrion feeder lol I think if you want a card for zombies that synergizes with activated abilites you should look at Agatha's Soul Cauldron; Zombies often mill themselves for value so you should have targets for it and it hits all of the non-tapping activated abilities, like havengul lich and the sac outlets. Not to mention it's just fine gravehate on its own that will once in awhile find a decent activated ability in one of your opponents graveyards.

HARD disagree that Champion is worth cutting. Ticking the counters up as you assemble your horde has a fun factor that needs to be taken into consideration. It's the perfect positive reinforcement. Even if you lose the game, ticking those dice up will make it at least 6% more fun.

Yo can you fix your website you put ads on there now it sucks. I'm fine with you guys making money off of ads. The quality of your website shouldn't go down too

I don't think anyone is playing champion of the perished for anything other than flavor. My guy gets so much hate, but he's just a little zombie guy who happens to get buff sometimes. He's one of the most fun flavourful, includes I've put in my list. The Faces in the Past is cool, but I think it's niche, only synergizing with a few cards that generally require you to hold up a bunch of mana.

it's called tribal

I don't see a drawback with Faces whatsoever, you get to do degenerate stuff and then you also hose anyone else that happens to be running tribal decks. Player 2 running the Ur Dragon? Anybody uses removal on one of their scary dragons? Boom! Tap their entire board of dragons. Faces of the Past sounds rad!

what's up with dana's mic this sounds bad

It's pronounced "tribal"

Tribal, tribal, tribal. Not typal, tribal, my woke friends.