Meh. This card is certainly not spectacular, but neither is it the herald of the end of blue control. If one are to believe the mass hysteria, that place has already been taken by Cancel.
If you compare it to the aforementioned hard counter it does, in fact, have its uses. You can throw this in a blue/green deck to provide a more mana flexible soft-counter which with the right mana ramp can provide a respectable card advantage.
Anyway, it's certainly better than Spell Snip, at least. And of course, as everyone else has observed, the illustration is hilarious!
Posted By:
Tiggurix
(6/5/2010 3:35:03 PM)
Now that everyone in Standard has an insane amount of mana, this might be awesome?
Posted By:
jstorrie
(8/11/2010 11:17:06 PM)
Would be better if kicker was {1} and increased the soft counter by {1} ...that way it'd still be worse thant Mana Leak when unkicked, but would be more playable..
Posted By:
tcollins
(3/1/2011 11:52:16 PM)
For 1 more mana it's far worse than Cryptic Command. Go figure.
Ok, maybe that's unfair, but realistically it's just waaay too expensive. If the kicker had increased the payment required, it might have had potential, especially if the card draw was dependent on that. 5 mana for "counter target spell unless its controller pays 4; draw a card" is only a 2 for 1, when many 5 mana cards give 3 for 1s (like Jace's Ingenuity). Allowing you to pump more mana into it would also allow for a Mana Leak style spell that can still be used to hard counter late game, but requires much more mana to do so.
Alas, lost potential unless they eventually decide to do multikickers again.
Posted By:
JaxsonBateman
(7/30/2011 12:04:11 AM)
Fun with Riku for those drawn-out EDH games. Use it when someone taps out for a big {X} effect, and draw like 8 cards.
Won't be many tears shed when it rotates though.
Posted By:
Lyoncet
(9/19/2011 11:01:47 AM)
It's an...interesting spell. To say the least.
...
And the most.
Posted By:
DoragonShinzui
(4/11/2012 8:52:19 PM)
2U for "Counter Target Spell unless its controller pays {2}"
--I'd rather run Mana Leak
3UU for "Counter Target spell unless its controller pays {2}. Draw a card"
--I'd rather run Cryptic Command
4UUU for "Counter Target spell unless its controller pays {2}. Draw two cards."
--I'd rather run Overwhelming Intellect
This card just isn't good.
Posted By:
Ansem717
(5/23/2014 11:45:52 PM)