It's subtle but interesting methinks.

It says "nonland". It can't be cast easily turn 1. I'm not a fan of instant speed over sorcery speed.

Also not very Davriel. He only temporarily removes spells

@dude1818: Wiki says that while the lore is true, the two card depictions, Davriel's Shadowfugue and Davriel, Rogue Shadowmage, just use discard, so this is no less Davriel than how he's already been depicted mechanically.

I too am hesitant at putting discard, caster-chosen discard particularly, at instant. It's narrow where the card could have a home. As SecretInfiltrator said, it cant easily be cast on turn one, but in the right environment that was legendary-heavy it could have a potential home, or a wanted decks to play below their curve.

(Edit: Alex fixed the link to Davriel's Shadowfugue.)

I think the instant speed is the best way to make up for it's inability to be cast on turn 1. A discard spell in the later turns sucks because it can only hit cards they don't cast, but if you jump through a few hoops to have a legendary out, you can timewalk someone who's top decking.

Imagine that you're on jund having emptied an opponents hand with Liliana of the Veil. Aside from Liliana you could tweak the deck to include more legends so when you draw this you can pull their drawn card for the turn. That's a high ceiling.

The reason there's a fairly hard rule against instant-speed discard it to prevent locking people out by making them discard during their draw step, after their draw for turn. At 1 mana and with the incredibly poorly received drawback of being a legendary spell, this will either be broken or unplayable, and no one will like it either way

As for Davriel's existing cards, they were both designed before being flavored as Davriel as he was the closest fit. Unfortunately, Davriel's actual powerset shows up on Ashiok's cards, and Ashiok's actual powerset hasn't really been explored until their most recent planeswalker card

I think it offers counterplay. If you know they're running this card in their deck, keeping their legends off the field means you're avoiding this.

> I think it offers counterplay. If you know they're running this card in their deck, keeping their legends off the field means you're avoiding this.

It costs one mana. They can easily cast it in the same turn cycle as their legendary. The only real counterplay of that sort is casting your removal in response to their EOT/upkeep Davriel's Inquisition and also otherwise only having lands in hand.

That is unless they were curving out with their legendary or something.

Sure, if they've had this card sitting in hand for a while they could drop their legend and fire this immediately but if they don't have this in hand, but you know they've got it in their deck, that could be the reason why you remove their legend. Just in case they draw this.

It's like killing their artifacts so that if they draw a Mox Opal, it won't be able to make mana. Or destroying permanents so if they draw Flood of tears, they can't replay a permanent.