Keening Banshee

Keening Banshee was originally illustrated by Greg Staples for the Urza's Legacy expansion of Magic: The Gathering, released in 1999. The card was designed as a black creature with an enters-the-battlefield ability that forces the sacrifice of a small creature, reflecting the flavor of a spirit whose wail causes physical harm. Its inclusion in the 2014 Duel Decks Anthology: Garruk vs. Liliana provided an opportunity to revisit the card with its established aesthetic, maintaining its role as a functional piece of removal for black-aligned decks.

The Duel Decks Anthology set was created by Wizards of the Coast as a commemorative collection, reprinting the first four sets of the Duel Decks series. The design of these decks was focused on recreating iconic matchups between planeswalkers to celebrate the history of the game's mechanics and lore. Within the Garruk vs. Liliana deck, Keening Banshee served as a thematic fit for Liliana Vess's reliance on necromancy and death-based utility, reinforcing the deck's established gameplay loop of sacrificing creatures to generate advantages.