I was trying to think of an upside to this card, but yeah. It stinks.
I guess the upside is if you control both the biggest and the second-biggest creature you can do the old "kill all but one creature" thing. Of course there are ways to do that without jumping through so many hoops so this card is indeed garbage in EDH. But I guess that's why it costs so much mana, since it's an uncommon and in Limited such a thing could actually be dangerous at a low enough cost.
My favourite EDH deck is a nearly creaturelss Dralnu, Lich Lord. It can win without attacking by casting Torment of Hailfire or Exsanguinate multiple times. That said the small number of creatures in the deck has always included something capable of swinging for the win (currently Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger) so I maybe it's not quite pure enough.
Permeating Mass is...weird, and definitely feels like it could be blue to me, but sort of tangential to this. Inasmuch as turning something into a copy is "removal-like", that makes the Mass's ability "deathtouch-like" and deathtouch is fine for green.
I don't see how it isn't inconsistent. Neither color is supposed to be able to deal with creatures this way. Both colors get transformation to an extent, but it was never supposed to function as straight up cheap removal.
I mean, Mark Rosewater is literally the person in charge of deciding which colours are "supposed" to do what. You can have a different opinion but there really isn't any sense in which he can actually be wrong here. The whole thing is subjective and there isn't a higher authority to appeal to. In any case blue has always been better at dealing with creatures than green. Unsummon and Control Magic have been there since Alpha (not to mention countermagic). Green's answer to creatures has always been "play a bigger creature". Nowadays it also gets Prey Upon effects, in order to use its fatties to destroy utility creatures as well.
It seems that since around 2010, MARO has been increasing willing to stretch the "its transformation" flavor argument into cards that function more like PtE, while using the same argument to say cards like Beast Within don't belong in Green because, while being transformation they function too much like straight removal. Green and Blue are supposed to overlap very strongly on this front, and he still acts as if they do despite this clear divergence. Pognify, the Gatecrash semi reprint, and Beast Within were all pushing the same theme of blue and green transformation, which is driven home by Pognify and its cousin making green tokens.
No, transformation is supposed to be blue, not green. That's one of the main reasons why Maro doesn't like Beast Within. (The other reason is that green is not supposed to be able to deal with creatures without using its own creatures.) The cards make green tokens because Ovinomancer did it 20 years ago and it became a tradition.
None of this has anything to do with Willbender so it's probably best not to carry this on much longer. Your disagreement here is more with Maro than me, in any case. (I think Beast Within is fine for green.)
I'd argue that how good a card is does not have bearing on whether it's color appropriate. Even in standard, those effects are too direct of removal for blue. Yes, 2/2s and 3/3s are real drawbacks there, but MARO has also said Beast Within is inappropriate, and for essentially the same reasons I gave for these blue cards.
Right, because he considers it inappropriate in green. Not in blue. It's fine to disagree, but there isn't really an inconsistency there.
Oh god, i think i was the only one thinking this way. Everyone is quick to approve blue removals because "the flavor says it's trasformation" while mechanically they are wrong cards. I don't get how maro can hate chaos warp but not this
Because he doesn't really care all that much about Commander. (Or at least, doesn't care more about it than he does other formats.) Reality Shift is fine in "normal" magic because giving your opponent a 2/2 is actually a meaningful drawback.
Maro's problem with Chaos Warp is that is he doesn't want red to be able to deal with enchantments period, whereas blue transformation effects are fine as long as they're costed properly. It turns out that 1U is a reasonable cost for this effect in Limited and Standard and too high for the card to be any good in Modern, but for Commander it's a bargain. When people explained this to him, he basically said they should ask the RC to ban it. Which is kind of silly, but the point is that this card is fine (in fact, maybe a little underpowered) in Magic as a whole, it's just the peculiarities of Commander that make it so good here.
On the other hand he considers Swords and Path to be mistakes because those tend to be better than black removal in every format where they're legal, so they're a "Magic as a whole" problem rather than a format-specific one.
(NB: Not saying I agree with 100% of this, just trying to represent Maro's position accurately.)
The biggest difference you may not realize is that there used to be an "Interrupt Window" after each spell was played which was the only time that interrupts targeting a spell could be played. So if you cast Ancestral Recall and I didn't have a Counterspell in hand at the time, there was no way to counter it (as opposed to now where you can cast a Brainstorm in response to dig for one). The other weird thing about how batches worked was that damage always applied last.
I actually was more or less aware of that. The part that confused me is why you could counter a spell by fizzling it outside of the interrupt window.
Having done a bit of research, as best I can tell the story goes like this:
Originally, if you responded to an instant with another instant, they'd happen at the same time; if two effects conflicted with each other whoever cast the later effect decides on the order (so basically LIFO but not quite). Interrupts existed, probably, because it was seen as not really making sense to intermix "stopping a spell from happening" with the actual effects of spells. A spell fizzling probably wasn't considered to be the same as getting countered. My interpretation is that had buyback existed back then, killing the target in response to Capsizewouldn't have stopped the Capsize from going to your hand.
In Fourth Edition, "batches" were introduced and things became LIFO with various exceptions. The main real difference between this and the current rules is that you couldn't respond after stuff had started resolving. (So, you couldn't Brainstorm to dig for an instant-speed response to something, either.) As people have suggested, at this point the distinction between instants and interrupts was not so huge, and probably countermagic didn't really need to be its own card type, but it still was. Instead, there was a rule saying that only interrupts could target spells. Fifth Edition tweaked some of this but the broad strokes remained the same.
Sixth Edition rules removed the distinction between instants and interrupts entirely, which probably had a lot to do with the fact that as mentioned the distinction didn't have that much reason to exist, and the difference between the two of them would probably have gotten even smaller if they had stayed around. (Basically the best you could do would be to have them work like split second except you could still respond with other interrupts. That would mean you could dig for a counterspell in response to Ancestral, but not in response to another counterspell, I guess.)
Some of that might not be quite right but that's at least approximately the timeline. I think largely the fact I was missing was that Fourth/Fifth Edition really did make big changes to timing, whereas I'd always had the impression that it just formalized the way things already worked. So I assumed that if there was a humongous difference between instants and interrupts in Alpha (big enough for them to be separate card types in the first place), there must still have been such a thing in Tempest, which is why I was confused.
As for Energy Chamber, it feels hopelessly slow when compared to proliferate and the multiple versions of "double counters" we have now. At least it's cheap and doesn't cost mana to use, though.
The advantage is that you don't need charge counters to begin with to use it, so you can do something like add a charge counter to Pentad Prism after already using all the mana.
That is true, it is one of the small number of Mirrodin-related cards that can do that. I think I like it less than either Coretapper or Surge Node, but maybe if you really want that effect you want as many copies as possible.
Icy Manipulator...meh, it's iconic, but it's not really all that interesting. Especially in multiplayer.
This is making me realize that I really don't understand pre-Sixth rules because I would've assumed that it would have to say "play as an interrupt" to be able to fizzle spells like that.
An interrupt (or ability that's played as an interrupt) just resolved first in the batch. It's sort of like there were two stacks, one with non-interrupts and one with interrupts, and the stack with interrupts always resolved first.
I'm sure it made sense at the time but I just can't quite wrap my head around the fact that Counterspell needs to be an interrupt to work but this other way of countering spells doesn't.
As for Energy Chamber, it feels hopelessly slow when compared to proliferate and the multiple versions of "double counters" we have now. At least it's cheap and doesn't cost mana to use, though.
This is making me realize that I really don't understand pre-Sixth rules because I would've assumed that it would have to say "play as an interrupt" to be able to fizzle spells like that.
Also, "is destroyed" at the time would probably mean damage or sacrificing (including edicting, had it existed back then) couldn't do it, only effects which say destroy.
It was changed to "placed in the graveyard" in Revised. I don't know that the distinction between "destroy" and "sacrifice" had really been worked out before that. That said, the Alpha rulebook does say
If the damage done to the creature in one turn is equal to or greater than its toughness, the creature is destroyed and must be put into the graveyard.
so it certainly would've worked with damage at least.
Edit: Reading further into the Alpha rulebook, it does specifically call out that you can regenerate from destruction but not sacrifice, so it's plausible that indeed sacrifice wouldn't trigger creature bond.
Canyon Drake - Not a good card really, but a discard outlet that can buff itself through discard? Yanky, gambling Alesha, Who Smiles At Death lists running Goblin Assassin and the likes might nod in approval. The only card i'd consider playable to some degree. Plus, lovely, classic art. If i ever stumble upon one i'll give it a few spins, feeling like the special snowflake i really am.
Daru Cavalier - The memories! I started playing MTG with Onslaught and would bet quite a sum, that i still have a playset of these. That decent Shredder-ish artwork was one of the first MTG artworks i've ever seen and will stick with me until i'm old and grumpy about those new formats that are alledgedly killing MTG.
I'm honestly shocked nobody's made a janky explore deck for Wildgrowth Walker.
Permeating Mass is...weird, and definitely feels like it could be blue to me, but sort of tangential to this. Inasmuch as turning something into a copy is "removal-like", that makes the Mass's ability "deathtouch-like" and deathtouch is fine for green.
No, transformation is supposed to be blue, not green. That's one of the main reasons why Maro doesn't like Beast Within. (The other reason is that green is not supposed to be able to deal with creatures without using its own creatures.) The cards make green tokens because Ovinomancer did it 20 years ago and it became a tradition.
None of this has anything to do with Willbender so it's probably best not to carry this on much longer. Your disagreement here is more with Maro than me, in any case. (I think Beast Within is fine for green.)
Maro's problem with Chaos Warp is that is he doesn't want red to be able to deal with enchantments period, whereas blue transformation effects are fine as long as they're costed properly. It turns out that 1U is a reasonable cost for this effect in Limited and Standard and too high for the card to be any good in Modern, but for Commander it's a bargain. When people explained this to him, he basically said they should ask the RC to ban it. Which is kind of silly, but the point is that this card is fine (in fact, maybe a little underpowered) in Magic as a whole, it's just the peculiarities of Commander that make it so good here.
On the other hand he considers Swords and Path to be mistakes because those tend to be better than black removal in every format where they're legal, so they're a "Magic as a whole" problem rather than a format-specific one.
(NB: Not saying I agree with 100% of this, just trying to represent Maro's position accurately.)
Having done a bit of research, as best I can tell the story goes like this:
Icy Manipulator...meh, it's iconic, but it's not really all that interesting. Especially in multiplayer.
As for Energy Chamber, it feels hopelessly slow when compared to proliferate and the multiple versions of "double counters" we have now. At least it's cheap and doesn't cost mana to use, though.
so it certainly would've worked with damage at least.
Edit: Reading further into the Alpha rulebook, it does specifically call out that you can regenerate from destruction but not sacrifice, so it's plausible that indeed sacrifice wouldn't trigger creature bond.
I'm honestly shocked nobody's made a janky explore deck for Wildgrowth Walker.