The cards keep getting stronger as I finish our the rares of the set, today we have some nice splashy designs and some cards that just keep coming back to you.
Dirgesinger is heavily inspired by Batterskull, one of only a handful of mythic equipment. The art is of a flute weapon from a game that I have never played, because I figured with a somewhat ambiguous name and effect, it really needed art. There’s no solid art of Tayuya’s flute either (a character from Naruto, of all places), which the effect was actually inspired by. She uses her song to control and summon demons, whose eyes she can see through, hence, some graveyard stuff, some vigilance and some deathtouch.
On Golbah, I try to go easy on any sort of repeated removal, so I decided to limit the effect to just when creatures are cast, giving it kind of a Cradle to Grave feel, but a little less wordy. Plus it means that the first part mirrors the second part, they both care when spells are still on the stack or being cast, and I didn’t want to make the second part “when creatures enter the battlefield” because I didn’t think it would trigger often enough. I consider it a bend, but not a break of what black can do.