Dies to Removal

Spoiled on DailyMTG
4WB
Creature -- Thrull
Extort (Whenever you cast a spell, you may pay w/b. If you do, each opponent loses 1 life and you gain that much life.)
Whenever ~ attacks, you may return target artifact, creature, or enchantment from your graveyard to your hand.
4/4

seems very meh...unplayable in constructed and not even very exciting in limited. for a rare it seems underpowered

edit: unless they are going to have extort 3 i'm not seeing a ton of use (at least for constructed)

Any idea what the pre-release style is for Gatecrash?

Because I have a feeling if it's the same as RtR, we are looking at our pre-release champions. In Limited, the card seems solid, but rather depressing to open in a pack for any constructed format...

I dunno, selective card advantage is pretty powerful right now. He'll never be a chase rare but he might make a 2-of in the right deck (or a 1-of if they give us a decent creature tutor).

he seems decent in limited as he can regrowth your old creatures and gives your spells kicker 1 your opponent loses one like you gain one life. He makes your stuff a little better late game as limited can turn into a grind fest.
That said, I don't see this mechanic making a huge splash unless we see an aggressively costed creature with this tacked on, and even then... meh.

The mechanic seems best positioned for decks like UW Flash that like to maximize their mana as much as possible and play a lot of spells (via Auger, Snapcaster, Flashback, and Resto), that tend to grind opponents down with incremental and strict card advantage. Extort just seems like a good way to tack on that capability, assuming it's printed on a quality and aggressively-costed creature since Standard is presently a lot of midrange grind-fests. Tacking on draining an opponent for 1 for each spell and a mana may not seem like much, but when most decks, particularly these UW decks, are playing 3-4 spells a turn between 6+ Revelations, having a lightning helix each turn (particularly if you can stack extort triggers) can go a long way in tilting games in mind-bending ways.

Clearly a 4/4 for 6 is not going to best illustrate how effective that can be, but a 2/1 for 2 or a 2/1 flash flier for 3 or something similar might be a
good example. Or not since it doesn't have any innate advantage.

The ability may just be a worse Hellrider effect, which I guess is my current barometer for effective abilities.

It's positioned best for 8 player kitchen table games.

i want to see a land with extort a la cathedral of war

i want to see a land with extort a la cathedral of war

this would be so playable