Sunday, June 3, 2012

Snapcaster Mage

WotC admitted that they messed up with Snapcaster Mage. I'm not going to sit here and look you in the eye and tell you that Snapcaster Mage is a fair Magic card.  Let me quote Zac Hill: "I worked with Tiago Chan to design it, and by the time they realized exactly how powerful it was in concert with the abundance of one-mana cantrips in Standard, the card was already out the door. We knew it was something we were going to have to attack in order to keep Standard in check. The challenge was deciding how best to do that. Now, before I dive into that process a little further, I want to spend a little bit of time talking about how we engineer cards that try to help put some reins on the environment. There are a couple of different kinds of hate cards. Some—like Grafdigger's Cage". With Snapcaster, you're just getting value along an axis. You might be Unsummoning twice, or cantripping, or countering a spell, or flashing back Dismember, or whatever. Snapcaster Mage, though, ensures that once your opponent has cast a single Mana Leak, it's actually more likely for your next spell to get countered than your first one, because in addition to the three remaining Mana Leaks, there are four more Snapcaster Mages capable of "turning on" that Mana Leak. This card is generating great card aventage, it has flash so that it can enter the battlefield whenever a player wants to. Therefore, you can even be killed by this creature if you are really low on life. I really don't see any drawback in this card. Snapcaster Mage is run in every possible format.

Why did I write about this right now? Well, soon WotC is going to announce the new ban list, many people are speculating that Snapcaster Mage is going to be on the list. Maybe now it is a good time to get rid off your Snapcasters.

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