Might be better than it looks on first glance. The front side does a janky Tamiyo, Inquisitive Student impression if you try hard enough. Untapping after transforming this will probably just kill your opponent, especially if you have any burn. And even if you hard cast the back side you can possibly one shot your opponent with some burn lying around. Like other TMDFCs, this works extremely well with cascade / Bring to Light / etc.
This is pretty cool. I don't have a way to make it go infinite, but the bar for a 1-mana creature is pretty low (it is not low enough for Lady Octopus, Inspired Inventor, though). I've tried to restrict these TMDFCs to ones that I'd only play the front side for, though, and I'm not 100% sure that the Bruce Banner side is good enough by itself.
I remember playing Agent of Raffine during the MTGA Arena cube (https://scryfall.com/card/ysnc/4/agent-of-raffine) and I wasn't that impressed as you really need to sink 4+ mana to be up a card and I think the ability being a sorcery could make it exponentially worse.
Ya, it's not infinite, but attacking for like 90 damage is infinite enough, lol.
Agent of Raffine is about on par with Bruce if you are ignoring the fact that it can transform into a 8/8 trampler that can end the game in a single combat step without too many hoops to jump through. Theoretically I wouldn't play Bruce Banner without the Hulk side, but I'm interested in playing this card as it's actually printed.
I like it quite a bit. Wouldn't play either side alone but the upside of these always seems greater than the sum of their parts. I think the Bruce side is perhaps better than at first glance. 2 to draw is really not a bad rate and it scales nicely. I guess Hulk is functionally unblockable, similar to Ahzrag.
I remember playing Agent of Raffine during the MTGA Arena cube (https://scryfall.com/card/ysnc/4/agent-of-raffine) and I wasn't that impressed as you really need to sink 4+ mana to be up a card and I think the ability being a sorcery could make it exponentially worse.
I'm kinda surprised since Agent of Raffine was one of those cards that was one of those IYKYK cards in Alchemy that I personally played a ton of and that people didn't get around to playing until Crokeyz finally found out that it was good, but I always felt that it was one of the better 1-drops in blue (it's no Tamiyo but that card is silly) in the Arena cubes (and in general) that always let you represent action during the opponent's turn, letting you virtually draw a card off of the opponent's deck if you didn't have interaction.
Someone had Bruce in a RG rampy deck. There was a game where he played the blue side but I don't think it did much, but that's not surprising.
The draw being gated to sorcery speed is annoying but I think there'll definitely be times when drawing is the right play, it just doesn't make it as easy of a decision - it's something that someone has to commit to.
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StaffMight be better than it looks on first glance. The front side does a janky Tamiyo, Inquisitive Student impression if you try hard enough. Untapping after transforming this will probably just kill your opponent, especially if you have any burn. And even if you hard cast the back side you can possibly one shot your opponent with some burn lying around. Like other TMDFCs, this works extremely well with cascade / Bring to Light / etc.
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StaffI think it'd be 10 extra combat steps. Not necessarily infinite, but more than enough to kill an entire table of EDH players.
This can go infinite with Caltrops.
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Agent of Raffine is about on par with Bruce if you are ignoring the fact that it can transform into a 8/8 trampler that can end the game in a single combat step without too many hoops to jump through. Theoretically I wouldn't play Bruce Banner without the Hulk side, but I'm interested in playing this card as it's actually printed.
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On spoiled card wishlisting and 'should-have-had'-isms:
I'm kinda surprised since Agent of Raffine was one of those cards that was one of those IYKYK cards in Alchemy that I personally played a ton of and that people didn't get around to playing until Crokeyz finally found out that it was good, but I always felt that it was one of the better 1-drops in blue (it's no Tamiyo but that card is silly) in the Arena cubes (and in general) that always let you represent action during the opponent's turn, letting you virtually draw a card off of the opponent's deck if you didn't have interaction.
Someone had Bruce in a RG rampy deck. There was a game where he played the blue side but I don't think it did much, but that's not surprising.
The draw being gated to sorcery speed is annoying but I think there'll definitely be times when drawing is the right play, it just doesn't make it as easy of a decision - it's something that someone has to commit to.
Unsure if that makes that bad, though.
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