I wanted something that would be effective against light countermagic but without saying "can't be countered" on it. There's a place for "can't be countered", and in fact emergency responses to a runaway deck are probably a good place for it. But nonetheless I wanted to see if I could create something with wider resilience, but still fair. As a bonus, this version can also shrug off being shot at with Echoing Decay.

It's still solvable by white means; a better target for Pacifism is hard to find. And Anemic Rod works rather well against this.

The upkeep restriction might not be necessary, but was an attempt to prevent this being some obscene engine on its own, or being too good in other contexts like Dredge decks.

Amusingly, this creature doesn't really mind being blocked by Webbed Woozle; it gets far more irritated by 0-power blockers like Steel Wall :)

Two other approaches I considered:

• Some kind of Retromancer ability, as recently seen on Ashenmoor Liege. Retromancer would probably be fine in a modern Core Set.

• Avoid creatures entirely; a lot of Boney Control is set up to make it very hard to use creatures. So just establish the pieces for a close-to-creatureless burn deck. This is a somewhat dangerous dial to turn up too high as such a deck may well get good against a large amount of the field without trying, but it's possible there are ways to target it more precisely.

I sort of feel "2/2 haste creature" is already a light answer to countermagic, but I agree the recursion fits well :)

I kinda want to go in this direction too - but I don't think I like this version. It's just too annoying as pure aggro. Turn 2, starts hitting you for 2 a turn, and if you kill it, it hits you for 2 more before hitting you for 2 a turn again. It's a "The damn thing just won't die" with added "And I cast earthquake, oh dear,a bunch of my creatures died, too bad, so sad, I bring them back and they hurt you more and more!" Still, they do address the issue (until the opponent wises up and stops casting his 'and you discard them' enchantment, and sticks with pure bounce, anyway...)

I agree this is strong. I'd say it's comparable in power level to Strangleroot Geist. But when you're trying to hose a dominant control deck, you need the aggro cards to be strong.

It's possible this isn't tightly focused enough, and would get too irritating against other decks. But I don't think a competing aggro deck would care. "You want to tap your mana to deal me 2 without affecting the board? And then tap even more of your mana to make a little 2/1 guy? Sure. Meanwhile I'll make a bunch of tokens and make them gigantic / make a 5/5 trampler or three / drop twelve power of creatures on the table. Have fun playing with my life total while I'm smashing yours."

I guess. Not sure what you do if the opponent doesn't send it to graveyard though, and just bounces.