As with all forbidding walls and stalwarts, Abyssal Gatekeeper is most useful when you have more than one opponent with which to contend, proving an effective deterrent which promises mutually-assured destruction, if you will. (For the nuclear option, see False Prophet.) Coupled with some useful means of sacrifice (Phyrexian Tower?) the Gatekeeper may act as a pseudo-unblockable creature and remain a dire warning to your enemies even when tapped. The Gate doesn't stay locked for every threat you will face, since many cards in the multiplayer environment come with quirks like supertrample, protection from black or sufficient size to require more than one blocker, but thankfully those creatures tend to appear at a much later stage than this small wonder. A player may pair this card with a supply of Unearths to frustrate his or her opponents with a corruptive stream of attrition, (and the cherry on top of this one is that the card Attrition itself fits perfectly into the theme) and when the graveyards are suitably full of the sacrificed, Mortivore may come out to play, perhaps Spoils of Evil or Songs of the Damned may enable some of the more shamelessly evil planeswalkers to cast a giant Drain Life or Death Cloud... it is more true of black than any other colour in magic, that when a black mage appears to be stalling, it is often to reach some threshold at which they can cast their most powerful and inevitably crushing spells - think Nightmare, Corrupt, Mind Sludge, et al. Playing an early Abyssal Gatekeeper is just one of the affordable ways to survive those grueling early turns. If you want this effect to be more of a surprise, consider Innocent Blood. Can be acquired for less than ten pence a copy.
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