What a monster this is in 20XX. I remember playing an opponent who slapped this down on turn 4 while I was playing black... I couldn't help thinking that I would have much preferred dealing with Wall of Light. Besides the obvious anti-discard silver bullet that this thing provides, and no discard at end of turn, it knocks out using discard as a resource, which 20XX is full of. It probably makes some card, where discarding as part of a balancing effect, go nuts... but that card and/or cards are currently beyond me.

It's interesting. It doesn't break with Avatar of Discord or Vexing Sphinx, it just kills them. Seems strong.

It makies all of the "Draw some cards and then discard some cards" effects massively undercosted. Presumably, however, it also just completely prevent 'discard a card' as part of the cost, thus preventing massive blue abuse. (It does kinda kick blue filtering in the nads, mind you. They deserve it.)

It does seem strong, but since forcing your opponent to discard is black, and it's a non black, non artifact creature - well, it's not exactly going to be long lived.

I don't see the difference between "blue filtering" and "Draw some cards and then discard some cards"...

"Discard a card: Draw some cards" being the rather more usual way of doing it - it knocks one form on the head, and makes the other form awesome. Which is kinda funky.

But that really isn't "the more usual" way of doing it. Effects phrased like that are pretty rare: Compulsion is the only one that springs to mind, and that was only phrased that way because it was part of the Narcissism cycle. Virtually all looting spells are turbocharged by this card: see Merfolk Looter, Cephalid Broker, Looter il-Kor, Frantic Search, Careful Study, Desperate Ravings, and I could go on and on.

Ah - I was thinking, for some reason, that the draw-a-card form of the spellshapers was the common way of doing it. But anyway, this wall hoses spellshapers; I hadn't realised that, but it could really hurt some strategies.

On the other hand, bwahahaha, it's awesome with Pyromancer's Swath :D And Grafted Skullcap for the same reason. But, amusingly, not Mindstorm Crown, the other card-draw artifact in my Swath deck.

You guys are also making me realize that this card is bonkers with Magus of the Bazaar (and Bazaar of Baghdad, but that's a bit off the radar...). I'm going to pretend that combo doesn't exist, since I usually don't think too hard about Modern combos. It does a fine job of sketching me out further, though.