tezcat is right about the defining characteristics of colors as they stand now, but when I started playing and 4th edition was the most recent core set, blue had lots of spells with effects like this:Psychic Venom, Erosion, Mana Vortex, Backfire, Blue Elemental Blast, Energy Flux, Feedback, Mind Bomb, and even Volcanic Eruption. I think players should be more open minded about what colors "can and can't do."
Wouldn't it be amazing if you didn't know what your opponent was up to after you saw their first few land drops?
Posted By:
themlsna
(1/26/2011 8:18:32 PM)
Blue damage = Interesting tricky damage. While black's sort of taken over this area, there's certainly still room for shenanigans in blue that aren't based on counterspells and card advantage.
Posted By:
Himborg
(7/10/2012 5:38:36 PM)
@themlsna
THANK YOU. You said it. The 5 colors shouldn't be so predictable and limited, to the point where you know exactly how it's going to go down when you've seen a couple islands hit the table.
Red doesn't need to just be burn spells, swarms of ugly goblins, and annoying "haste" creatures you can never block.
Green doesn't have to be limited to undercosted trample creatures, irritating swarms of 1/1 insects, and "artwork" that hurts your eyes.
And so on. And yeah, blue eventually did get too many powers - particularly when the Urza block turned the whole game into a bad joke, but back in the Alpha days blue had clever ways to deal damage, and we liked it.
Posted By:
DrJack
(9/6/2013 8:42:51 AM)
Don't know why they stopped printing this all the way back in 4th. Its a very useful card. Bond something, then Terrorize it. Or just bond a creature to force the other guy to play more cautiously.
This thing worked well with Wall of Ice back in the day. He got a 7 toughness wall for cheap? You have a 7 damage spell for cheap if you have a kill spell to go with it.
Posted By:
Draugnor
(9/9/2009 11:59:40 AM)
Regardless of the original motivation for removing this card from the core set, doing so was a good idea, since this effect is really a Black ability, and in fact, is duplicated in Shards of Alara's Banewasp Affliction. Black has a long history of doing this sort of thing: Binding Agony, Treacherous Link, Festering Wound, Ragged Veins.
Posted By:
tezcat
(10/19/2010 5:11:54 PM)
I miss the days when blue's portfolio included some damage-causing psychic powers, like Prodigal Sorcerer, this, and that card that did someone two damage any time they tapped enchanted land Psychic Venom.
Posted By:
Salient
(4/15/2012 6:01:55 PM)
Agreeing with themslna here, nowadays stiff colour pie makes the cards somewhat predictable and... dull. That's part of why I really enjoyed Time Spiral block.
As for this, works certainly well with black removal and some white too, allied colours both.
Posted By:
velkaarn
(4/1/2013 8:23:59 PM)