Nylea: I like your style, mortal. Your bow compliments mine rather well. We should go on a hunt together sometime.
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MTGS Wikia Article about "New World Order"
Every time I read a comment about "Well if this card had card draw/trample/haste/indestructible/hexproof/life gain...", I think "You're missing the point." They're armchair developer comments that fail to take into account the card's role in the greater Limited and Standard environment. No, it may not be as good as whatever card you're comparing it to. There's a reason for that. Not every burn spell is Lightning Bolt, nor does it need to be or should be.
PSA to everyone who keeps forgetting about the Reserved List:
You're on a website dedicated to talking about MtG. You're only a few keystrokes away from finding out what cards are on the Reserved List. You're also only a few keystrokes away from finding out why some cards on the Reserved List got foil printings in FtV, as Judge promos, or whatnot, as well as why that won't happen again. Stop doing this.
Assuming you've built with this in mind, 4 mana isn't terribly borderline. With 28 hits (so less than half the deck), you're looking at a 93% chance of hitting at least one creature, and likely (65%) having some room for selection. If you've built a low to the ground deck, the same 28 hits nets you an 86% chance of hitting on 3. So it's most likely to start hitting on 4, in a deck that's properly built for it. And in those decks, turning extra lands into dude selection is going to be printing money, since it likely doesn't need many lands.
And those are also the decks that can't really afford to be taking turns off to play do-nothing enchantments that won't advance their gameplay until turns later. These are a lot of hoops to jump through to give your 3 or 4 drops flash,
Flash and uncounterable.
It's just not worth it, especially while Vivien Reid is still in the format. A green deck looking for a way to keep drawing gas is almost certainly better off just playing her instead. At least in Standard.
If all you want is to draw gas, no, it's probably not as good as Vivien proper.
Every time I read a comment about "Well if this card had card draw/trample/haste/indestructible/hexproof/life gain...", I think "You're missing the point." They're armchair developer comments that fail to take into account the card's role in the greater Limited and Standard environment. No, it may not be as good as whatever card you're comparing it to. There's a reason for that. Not every burn spell is Lightning Bolt, nor does it need to be or should be.
Giant Growth into a free spell 4cmc or less... you still have 2 mana open
Tron won't use it because stirrings.
Reanimation decks generally just run looting.
You need to know why Vivien is good. You need to know that green ramps and this finds your payoffs.
Discarding a vengeful pharaoh is always funny as a combat trick.