Each Time Spiral card was an homage to at least one previously printed card.
The card references Vesuvan Doppelganger. The little spider thing you see on the right side of the picture represents what a face-down creature looks like while morphed. Card's such as Break Open and Dermoplasm show the creatures emerging from the morph 'shell'.
Posted By:
Missile_Penguin
(12/2/2012 1:19:57 PM)
R.I.P. Quinton Hoover. Your art was iconic, and this is still among the best Magic art out there.
Posted By:
Magnor_Criol
(4/20/2013 10:27:47 AM)
Brine elemental
not my idea
Posted By:
Tezz
(1/1/2010 9:54:40 AM)
This is a great example of a Melvin card.
Posted By:
zombietomb
(2/3/2010 3:00:30 PM)
In a Morph deck, this card is one of the bests, allowing you to reuse turn-face-up abilities of your other creatures should they have already flipped over, for a very little cost, and once per turn. In my first game of my Morph deck, this card allowed me to combine with a Willbender and make opponent sacrifice two creatures with his own Chainer's Edict
Additionnally, you can copy your opponent's creatures to take care of them. Copy a creature with more or equal power than toughness, and you can kamikaze your shapeshifter on it. Copy a creature with less power than toughness, and you can stall it out. If the creature an opponent just summoned have a Tap ability, you can use it before he does. If you want a Legendary dead, you can force the Legend rule on it for an instant kill. And if you equip your shapeshifter with some good cards, you can get to kill the opponent's creature AND keep your shapeshifter!
Posted By:
Daikoru
(7/18/2010 10:46:37 AM)
A contemporary Vesuvan Doppelganger.
Posted By:
HairlessThoctar
(4/19/2010 12:15:35 PM)
Effin' LOVE THIS CARD.
Posted By:
Champion_Kitsune
(10/29/2009 9:16:49 PM)
Haha, you're so right, Tommy. This card has 1,000,000 and 1 goofy interactions like that. I love it for it XD
Posted By:
izzet_guild_mage
(6/2/2010 10:04:10 PM)
@Karma: No, it would work. Vanishing sacrifices the creature when the last counter is removed, not at any time that there are no counters on it.
Now the real question is, would the tokens be able to use the copying ability? I know they would still have the ability to flip down, but what happens when you have a face-down token? Is it removed? Does it flip face down but can't flip back up? Or does it somehow gain the text of the original card again?
I know that combo WOULD work with Vesuvan Doppelganger. But at that point, Mirror-Sigil Sergeant would probably be better.
Posted By:
littlebeast
(9/9/2010 8:59:58 PM)
Karmas: Look closer at vanishing. You sacrifice the creature when its last vanishing counter is removed, NOT when it has none on it. If it had none to begin with, you never removed the last one, now did you? Stifling the sacrifice trigger will, in fact, keep the vanisher alive indefinitely because of this.
Come to think of it, Vanishing 0 would be an amusing thing to use along with a condition under which the permanent gains time counters...
Posted By:
LordRandomness
(11/30/2011 5:19:22 PM)