Evaluating Soul Extraction

The most powerful card revealed to date

Soul Extraction:
Cost: 1
Speed: Immediate
Effect: Kill an ally. Gain mana equal to its cost.

Initial impression: This card will act as a powerful and efficient enabler for strategies that want to
a) Kill their own stuff
b) “Borrow” their opponents stuff
c) Accelerate into a large threat quickly

Lets start by taking a look at cards from other games that appear similar to Soul Extraction.

A card powerful in both MTG (left) and Shadowverse (right). Village Rites and Soul conversion have identical effects. This card allows you to convert your junk into card advantage. In Shadowverse especially, soul conversion was an archetype defining card. Essentially, any deck that had access to Soul conversion would play the maximum number of Soul conversions allowed at all times, no questions asked.

The main difference between Village Rites / Soul Conversion and Soul Extraction, is:

Rites / Conversion: Provides card advantage. Value later

Extraction: Provides raw tempo. Value NOW!

Ashnods Altar and Ironworks are both classic MTG cards. Both incredibly powerful sacrifice outlets. Nowadays, Ashnods Altar is a feared card in Magics “Commander” format, often setting up combos where its controller goes infinite to outright win the game on the spot. Krark-clan Ironworks similarly finds itsself banned in the modern format, for allowing the artifact player to generate infinite mana with the help of Scrap Trawler and other cheap artifacts (occasionally referred to as “eggs”)

Ashnods Altar and Krarg-clan Ironworks have 2 key differences from Soul Extraction

1) Ashnods and Ironworks are repeatable.
2) Ashnods and Ironworks always provide 2 mana. This means that you can convert trash like a free token, into a mana advantage.

Generally, Soul Extraction will not allow you to go mana positive. Instead it allows you to sink mana into a card, and later, get refunded on that mana (-1). While the deal you get isnt as sweet, it still allows you to cheat out a card early.

For example: on turn 4 I play a 4 cost unit.

On turn 5 that unit gets into a fight, surviving, but with significant damage.

I already got value out of my 4 drop, since it dealt and received damage.

Now I can sacrifice my 4 drop with Soul Extraction, and get refunded 3 mana (since I spent 1 on Soul Extraction) leaving me with 8 mana left over on my 5th turn. Enough mana to play a late game bomb.

Yes. Seriously.

Black Lotus and Innervate are undeniably some of the most powerful cards to exist in MTG and Hearthstone.

Realistically, Soul Extraction asks much more from you than Black Lotus and Innervate, since you need to have a creature in play to generate mana. I am not trying to say Soul Extraction is on the same power level as black lotus and Innervate, because truthfully it is not. However, Soul Extraction can still enable similar degenerate lines of play that these cards can provide.

Probably the closest card I can think of to Soul Extraction. While writing this article, I could not find any resources from the past proving this card has seen significant competitive play, however I am confident that there have been strategies in the past that have seen success using this card in a storm shell. Unfortunately, google and chat GPT could not help me dig up any old decklists.

Infernal plunge has 1 major flaw, that Soul Extraction does not share. Its spell speed. Infernal plunge is at sorcery speed, which means it cannot be used in response to an opponents play.

Soul Extraction being Immediate makes the card significantly more playable, as it can be used in response to your opponents kill spells.

Some examples of cards that enjoy being sacrificed. Often the types of cards you will want to sac will spawn another body like Nerubian Egg, or will have extra abilities from the graveyard.

The amount of cards I could list that would have direct synergy with a card like Soul Extraction would go on for pages. I will save us both the time and note:

Often times, these sacrifice affects will look underwhelming until there is a blatant use case. In the case of Nerubian Egg, the front half makes your board resilant to AOE effects, while the back half is a highly mana efficient threat.

As for Bloodghast and Hogaak, these cards are better in the graveyard than they are in play. They can easily be recurred / looped. By putting them in the graveyard with Soul Extraction, you get extra mana along with putting them in the Graveyard. Exactly where they want to be.

More examples of cards that actively want / need to see other cards die. All 3 of these cards have been the definition of metagame staples in their respective games.

Cards such as Blood Artist, Black Spear and Corridor creeper need to see other cards die. Often the strategies that play these types of cards will hit a critical mass of synergy. They require:

Enablers: just like Soul Extraction
Fodder: Such as Nerubian Egg posted above
Payoffs: Such as Blood Artist and Corridor Creeper.

I would like to end this tangent with one final bit of history. Aristocrats.

An Aristocrat is a creature that allows you to sacrifice another creature in a costless, repeatable manner. Historically, Aristocrats tend to become a top tier strategy in most TCG’s at some point in their lifespan.

http://www.mtgtop8.com/event?e=4363&d=225422

Please take a look at this decklist from Pro Tour Gatecrash. This list in particular was piloted by Tom Martell, who would take the deck to 1st place. A historic run to say the least.

This deck has a wide range of enablers, fodder, and payoffs. The critical mass of synergy is what allowed Tom to have such an impressive performance.

One key synergy that I have yet to mention in this write up is the use of “threaten” effects

A threaten effect is one that allows you to temporarily gain control of an enemy creature.

Threaten effects are extremely powerful in an aristocrats style deck, since they allow you to take control of your opponents best card, attack with it, then sacrifice it right before you would have to give the card back.


To wrap things up, I believe Soul Extraction is the most powerful card spoiled so far by the Aradena team. The card has multiple functions, acting both as an enabler, and a ramp tool. In addition, the card is extremely cheap at 1 mana.

That said, Soul Extraction is a key player in a specific type of deck. If Soul Extraction ends up not having solid Fodder or payoffs to go along with it, its possible the card simply does not have the tools it needs to thrive. However, I believe it is highly unlikely that Soul Extraction never gets the tools it needs to reach its full potential.

Power level: 9/10