Xathrid Necromancer - Magic the Gathering

Remember, only humans can become zombies.

Xathrid Necromancer is a simple concept that has been making waves in Standard. Human dies, resurrect it as a Zombie. Necromancer is a perfect fit for the Aristocrats-styled decks, who already love sacrificing Humans. Also continues another tradition introduced, or at least popularized, in Innistrad. Zombies are very slow, meaning they enter the battlefield tapped. Its a little piece of rules flavoring that they have been keeping alive ever since.

Another thing Xathrid Necromancer does is a bit more obscure: It adds another Magic card that starts with the letter X. Awhile back, Magic had one of its special tournaments where pro-players are forced to play variant formats. One of them was a deck auction, with players bidding on preconstructed fan-made decks. The theme of the submissions that year was you had to have cards starting with each letter of the alphabet. X proved a bit tricky, since their were only a handful of cards (4 or 5) that started with X. In recent times, Wizards seems to be trying to alleviate that problem. Within a short span of time, the number of cards starting with X has doubled.

And finally, the Necromancer once again brings up Xathrid. For those who don't know, Xathrid is the predominantly black region on the plane of Shandalar. Shandalar has never been featured in any Magic block, with only a few odd cards in core sets and Planechase. No, Shandalar's claim to fame comes from an old Microprose PC game based on Magic the Gathering, the game taking place on the above-named plane.