I actually think it's a really good but balanced card. The fact that it's targeting creatures can come into play - obviously Hexproof creatures ruin its day, along with color protection, which white can give at instant speed. It's way too weak to cast it on 1 creature, somewhat good casting it on 2, then gets very good for 3 and beyond. That said, is still more balanced than if it were say 5 or 6 mana for a non-targeting board sweeper.
I wouldn't be surprised if the place this ends up showing up is in the formats with all the graveyard play. It'll be really nice in standard too, surely a $10+ card, but not Jace level goodness, the reason being it's very mana intensive to not completely get rid of the creatures. You may or may not be in a position to deal with the 2/2s. It'll often be mana intensive enough to open you up to threats on the opponents turns. Given this is a very enchantment-heavy set, there's always a possibility one of those 2/2s could get evasion from one of the Creature Enchantment hybrids along with a power boost and mess your day up anyways.
I think it's not necessarily a card that by itself improves most decks. I think there needs to be some planning when including them in - just to make sure it actually solves the problems you need it to when you're casting it.
It's definitely not a good aggro card, simply because there is no passive way of gaining the life and dropping this early without playing bad cards to accompany it.
So then fine, it could maybe be cheap beef on turns 4 or 5 with some decent lifelink creatures. But even if it is, it's still vanilla beef. You could have just spent a couple more mana and gotten something either harder to get rid of, that can make an impact in other ways, or that can continue to grow.
Why it's not great and not even in the realm of a Scute Mob type creature is because nothing changes after you drop it, unless you blink it with something on a turn you gain a lot of life. That would seem like a rather convoluted way to get value out of it.
There are a lot of cards that sound better than they really are, and this is one of them. I'm sure it can be amazing in limited if you get some lifegain cards, but I just don't see a solid seamless way to take advantage of him early without using a bad extra card to do it, and in a way you get 2 for 1'd in that circumstance if he's killed before he can attack.
Smart players will wait to cast this when you are tapped out and give 7 to your face for 1RRR. On top of all the damage dealt by then.
Or get chump blocked with a token or something. It's the lack of trample on this that is most bothersome. If you're lucky you'll actually do damage to the other player with this. Otherwise you'll kill their worst untapped create for effectively 1RRRR...whoopie.
Then of course destruction of creature, enchantment or land or bounce of land or creature stops it (they should have made it an artifact creature to complete the cycle!).
For the cost and given it's a mythic, it should count the cards in both graveyards and shuffle back both graveyards. Then it probably wouldn't be the worst mythic ever at least but would just be a bad mythic.
People loving this card see a mirage of massive card advantage and/or unblockability. People disliking this card see the reality that it will be in most cases a card DISadvantage vs. other cards that could be used in its slot.
You only have 60 cards in a deck and they all have to count. Historically, singular creature enhancers that do nothing to that creature's power have rarely ever seen play, and that has included unblockability. In most cases late game, you would rather have unblockability and would likely have enough mana open to cast a card to do much more than just that. In early game, you MAY be able to deal some more damage than you otherwise would have. Whether that damage would actually win you the game and whether having another card in its place would have had a similar if not better effect are 2 questions that many lovers of this card are ignoring. For people not realizing the situational nature of this card:
- You have to have a creature that can attack and would deal damage (sounds simple but if your opponent removes your creatures, your Lens does nothing for you)
- Your opponent has to have a creature (sounds simple but given many aggro decks like to kill opponent's creatures, there may be many cases when you're swinging freely into an empty battlefield anyways
- Your opponent has to want to block your creature with that creature (sounds simple too, but it would either have to be a creature they'd like to tradeblock yours with or one that would survive...i.e. Lens is ineffective if you are removing those creatures anyways) OR be a scenario where they'll die or be really close to death if they don't block.
- Your opponent has to be able to block your creature (popular evasion creatures are more than likely not going be what this is used on)
- It must not be a scenario where your equipped creature would not be blocked anyways (if you have 2 GG's and a Lens and opp has 1 WoO for instance, the Lens is absolutely pointless)
- The Lens needs to remain in play...may seem minor now til the artifact hate turns heavy with the inevitable Myr decks that start stomping. Remove the Lens mid-attack and all of a sudden you may have just done an attack you wouldn't have.
That's not even taking into account the rare time when the creature will actually get blocked so that the ability of the card will actually happen and whether you'll actually benefit from it or not.
It's not a horrible card...maybe not even a bad card. It's not a GREAT card though.
Entwine would be interesting if it could be used with more than just 2 spell effects. For instance the Charm spells all have 3 effects to choose from - having new Charms but with Entwine ability to do all 3 effects would be kind of neat.
You can't always expect to win by turn 8, but just think of all the things you'd rather have in your hand on turn 1 besides this. It's a cool idea for a card, will probably win a rare game here or there in the rare times it would actually live to make dragons, but there's just way too many cases when this would be a non-factor. It may as well cost 7 mana.
It's not a card that belongs in every deck with red, but it could fit in a couple of existing decks and who knows what decks can contend post-WWK that could use this.
I wouldn't be surprised if the place this ends up showing up is in the formats with all the graveyard play. It'll be really nice in standard too, surely a $10+ card, but not Jace level goodness, the reason being it's very mana intensive to not completely get rid of the creatures. You may or may not be in a position to deal with the 2/2s. It'll often be mana intensive enough to open you up to threats on the opponents turns. Given this is a very enchantment-heavy set, there's always a possibility one of those 2/2s could get evasion from one of the Creature Enchantment hybrids along with a power boost and mess your day up anyways.
I think it's not necessarily a card that by itself improves most decks. I think there needs to be some planning when including them in - just to make sure it actually solves the problems you need it to when you're casting it.
So then fine, it could maybe be cheap beef on turns 4 or 5 with some decent lifelink creatures. But even if it is, it's still vanilla beef. You could have just spent a couple more mana and gotten something either harder to get rid of, that can make an impact in other ways, or that can continue to grow.
Why it's not great and not even in the realm of a Scute Mob type creature is because nothing changes after you drop it, unless you blink it with something on a turn you gain a lot of life. That would seem like a rather convoluted way to get value out of it.
There are a lot of cards that sound better than they really are, and this is one of them. I'm sure it can be amazing in limited if you get some lifegain cards, but I just don't see a solid seamless way to take advantage of him early without using a bad extra card to do it, and in a way you get 2 for 1'd in that circumstance if he's killed before he can attack.
Or get chump blocked with a token or something. It's the lack of trample on this that is most bothersome. If you're lucky you'll actually do damage to the other player with this. Otherwise you'll kill their worst untapped create for effectively 1RRRR...whoopie.
Then of course destruction of creature, enchantment or land or bounce of land or creature stops it (they should have made it an artifact creature to complete the cycle!).
Initially looks much better than it really is.
You only have 60 cards in a deck and they all have to count. Historically, singular creature enhancers that do nothing to that creature's power have rarely ever seen play, and that has included unblockability. In most cases late game, you would rather have unblockability and would likely have enough mana open to cast a card to do much more than just that. In early game, you MAY be able to deal some more damage than you otherwise would have. Whether that damage would actually win you the game and whether having another card in its place would have had a similar if not better effect are 2 questions that many lovers of this card are ignoring. For people not realizing the situational nature of this card:
- You have to have a creature that can attack and would deal damage (sounds simple but if your opponent removes your creatures, your Lens does nothing for you)
- Your opponent has to have a creature (sounds simple but given many aggro decks like to kill opponent's creatures, there may be many cases when you're swinging freely into an empty battlefield anyways
- Your opponent has to want to block your creature with that creature (sounds simple too, but it would either have to be a creature they'd like to tradeblock yours with or one that would survive...i.e. Lens is ineffective if you are removing those creatures anyways) OR be a scenario where they'll die or be really close to death if they don't block.
- Your opponent has to be able to block your creature (popular evasion creatures are more than likely not going be what this is used on)
- It must not be a scenario where your equipped creature would not be blocked anyways (if you have 2 GG's and a Lens and opp has 1 WoO for instance, the Lens is absolutely pointless)
- The Lens needs to remain in play...may seem minor now til the artifact hate turns heavy with the inevitable Myr decks that start stomping. Remove the Lens mid-attack and all of a sudden you may have just done an attack you wouldn't have.
That's not even taking into account the rare time when the creature will actually get blocked so that the ability of the card will actually happen and whether you'll actually benefit from it or not.
It's not a horrible card...maybe not even a bad card. It's not a GREAT card though.
Otherwise, my vote is for Imprint.
It's not a card that belongs in every deck with red, but it could fit in a couple of existing decks and who knows what decks can contend post-WWK that could use this.