right, this is interesting variant on Ancient Spring. this can be sacced for mana the turn it enters play. a poor man's lotus petal. or later on sacced for UW or UB as you said. or keep it as an island as long as you like.

I keep reading this card's text box as Ancient Spring. It isn't quite: it sacs for or , not . More excitingly, though, this can give you mana when you're tapped out, for when you really need that surprise Erase.

... I wonder what the 'test' mechanic used to be.

I always misthink its name and call it the imperator. For me, it usually sits in my groundstall looking relatively innocuous and hard enough to remove that they'd rather kill other stuff.

And then I finally persuade them to attack and it wrecks them utterly. Glad I'm not the only one that likes it, though.

I’ve played it. It does tie up a lot of mana. It’s also frequently the last spell you cast before winning. It’s wildly flexible protection and removal all in one, it repeats, and it dodges targeted creature removal. These things usually make a card worth a notable mana investment.

It turns something into, uh... Zealous Inquisitor that's the bunny.

And that card is very much underrated and wonderful.

You reckon? This does a lot to help the enchanted creature stay alive, and in fact helps every one of your creatures stay alive. It's expensive enough to use that you can't leave mana up for it all the time, but if you attack with anything (even while leaving the enchanted creature back to block) with 4 mana up, the opponent can't block without risking their 1-toughness utility creatures. With 6 mana up, any creature has effectively +2/+2. And that's the kind of ability that has a lot of effect without actually needing to use it, so the opponent just lets the creatures through and you can spend that 6 mana in second main phase. I like it.

In testing, controlling Evidence wasn’t as big a deal as it might seem. In fact, the moments where it was the most fun were the ones where it wasn’t expected, or the ones where it added tension to cards getting milled.

There was also a general response that there wasn’t much lost when an Evidence trigger was “paid off”; the effects come across as a nice little bonus when they work, but aren’t so strong as to feel like something you’re going to count on or build around. In other words, the cards with Evidence are intended to be worth playing even when you know your opponent will pay them off.

Having the evidence triggers on creatures feels pretty natural when playing too. It comes off as no different than a creature with a “dies” trigger, which we’ve seen plenty of. They’re absolutely better if you have a way to sac them at will (and there are ways to do that in the set), but they’re totally playable without one. There’s also a very strong focus on combat and blocking in this set, which means that having some disposable chump blockers around is a good idea — especially against a deck full of Feint tricks.

I can understand your concerns about the blue trigger. We debated the possible “may” clause at a few tests, and decided that it would add more layers to that particular ability than were necessary. The number of cases where looting is a strictly bad thing is small, even in an environment where mill is a strong strategy.

Green’s trigger is absolutely strong — in a straight-up creature build with very few combat tricks. Fortunately, this is a set that puts a big emphasis on combat tricks, especially in green builds. Feint-based all-creature decks are possible (and solid), but few players seem willing to cut back on removal or other tricks to boost their possibility of Evidence draws. The story line for the set puts blue and green in the roles most interested in exploiting Evidence — they are the biggest “truth seeker” colors — and the evidence triggers there were built accordingly.

Could there be more ways to exploit Evidence? Sure. I like the balance in Soradyne Laboratories though. If I were to make the Evidence more exploitable, I think it would work best in the third set, Terminus, where the truth behind all the suspected conspiracies is untangled.

You don't seem to have very much control over when evidence goes off; it has little mechanical connection to the set except for when your opponent mindstrikes you. For new players, it's a little weird to think of adding the effect to all of the instants and sorceries, though I guess they'll figure it out. Your opponent's decision of whether or not to pay mana also seems very strange; it seems like it would lead to a lot of "feel bad" moments where the player controlling the evidence was counting on the ability and got let down. It seems like the pay mana clause is there mainly so that mindstriking opponents don't get blown out by a lot of evidence triggers.

The green evidence ability also seems seems significantly better than all of the other ones, as some green decks (especially in Limited) will be almost entirely creatures and land. Some of the creatures are also not designed very well such that they can trigger evidence when you want them to; only Pendarvian Scout has a "sacrifice this creature: effect" clause. Some discard triggers (other than blue evidence) would also be nice; it could feel pretty good to say Faithless Looting or Wild Mongrel away 2 evidence cards, deal 2 damage to opponent.

­Lifelink plus totem armour? Verra nice.