I get it, but where's the setting where you want to play creature's from your hand without casting them? Make Death's Shadow uncounterable for an additional mana?

It also gives them flash and circumvents both additional costs and costs that aren't . 🤷‍♂️

...and still makes them uncounterable. I know that may seem like a minor point because small creatures are small. But sometimes any creature on the table wins a game against an oppressive control deck.

Also: "Where's the setting where you want to play creatures from your hand without casting them?" Aether Vial has barely avoided being banned multiple times since 2003. So I guess the answer is "every setting."

­Aether Vial is much more powerful than this, though, because it scales up and needs no mana commitment.

Agreed. My point was that putting small creatures from the hand on the table at instant speed is potent enough to warrant dedicate design. But yeah, most of the problem with Aether Vial can be summed up with "it's too cheap".

It can also be scaled up. But many Aether Vial decks tend to keep the charge counters at 1 or 2. I tend not to play aggressive creature builds like that, though, so maybe I'm wrong about how people play them.

I agree with the difficulty of balancing a small but intermittently powerful effect like this, but I like the flavour