Today on Card of the Day, we’re going to take a look at one of my favorite artifact creatures from the Darksteel set:

I got my first taste of this card when I picked it a week ago in a locally-organized Darksteel draft tournament (it was a repacked booster box, for those of you who are wondering how the hell anyone who isn’t a magician managed to get their hands on enough Darksteel packs to run a draft).  This card worked absolute wonders for me, and helped me power my way to an undefeated record on the night.  The Imprint ability is what really makes this card shine; you can steal almost any major keyword ability from the creatures in your graveyard.  Add this onto a 5/5 body and you’ve got yourself a hell of a creature.  The mana cost of 7 seems a bit weighty, but cards like Vedalken Engineer can help you power this guy out more quickly, so you might consider running those or similar mana acceleration cards alongside this beater.

This card works best in a deck that runs a lot of sacrifice outlets and makes use of “goes to the graveyard” effects.  Death-Mask Duplicant combos particularly well with the Mirrodin block’s Modular creatures; if those creatures hit the bin, you can give the Duplicant their counters and then imprint their keyword abilities, which can make the Duplicant practically unstoppable.  It doesn’t matter what kind of creatures you’re using alongside it, though; as long as you’ve got a good reason to put them into the graveyard in the first place, the Duplicant will make good use of them after the fact.  Be sure to try to imprint Protection abilities if you can, since that will help to keep the Duplicant from buying the farm itself.

I hope you enjoy using this card as much as I do!