Thing in the Ice

Oracle Text
Defender
Thing in the Ice enters the battlefield with four ice counters on it.
Whenever you cast an instant or sorcery spell, remove an ice counter from Thing in the Ice. Then if it has no ice counters on it, transform it.
- Other Side:Awoken Horror
- Rarity:Rare
- Type:Creature - Horror
- Set:Shadows Over Innistrad
- Reverse Card:Awoken Horror
- Banned in
- Legal in UKN MDN CMD LGC VIN CAS CLA
- Artist:Svetlin Velinov
With that said, I really like this creature. Modern playable for sure.
This card is insane.
Four instant or sorcery is an awful lot when those aren't advancing your board.
For this to get value, those spells have to be a) fast or b) good.
Fast doesn't really exist in standard.
They don't give us cheap cantrips anymore.
Now, you could be counting on playing removal spells to flip him. But your opponent can just wait to play creatures until they draw removal for your Thing, and then those removal spells sit dead in your hand and you can't even flip him.
Too much hype.
As for Modern, this guy is too slow, unless you are going full on Storm-count to flip him. But then he eats a Path before flipping and where did that get you?
Also, you're arguing that your opponent could just wait on playing Creatures to negate this guy's transformation effect? Are you kidding? If your opponent is that scared of it that they simply wouldn't play creatures for several turns potentially, you should have already won the game based off of sheer tempo value alone. If anything, that is a GOOD reason why you'd want to play this thing. But no, in real games, no smart player is going to just hold back on their creatures, losing out on board state and falling behind just because of this.