...makes me feel old. Very, very old.

Why so? Just because of power creep?

A creature that attacks naturally on turn 6 as an 8/8 trample is... slightly better than Terra Stomper, and obviously a heck of a lot better than Force of Nature or Crash of Rhinos. The fact that it's a 16/16 trample on turn 7, and that you can easily shrink those turn numbers by 2 with the help of elves, ramp, or Lightning Mauler, does make it pretty terrifying.

It's clearly mythic, where "mythic" is code for "absurdly pushed". But is it particularly worse than other mythics of recent years?

Power creep. I'm also utterly confused by reviews that look at that card and say "It looks good, but I'm not sure if it will be good enough." It's bonkers. Not "Break the game" bonkers, mind you, but any reviewer who doesn't recognize that this is the very definition of 'must counter/kill' is off his rocker. It's like an Overrun that doesn't need a damn army, thank you very much.

I just remember when Baneslayer Angel came out, and a pile of people thought that card was way too much for 5 mana. This card makes that card seem quaint by comparison. Sure, the Angel can make you win races, but this hydra wins with two swings, assuming you don't have 8 power worth of defenders to block.

I'm cool with the direction Magic's gone. I just can't help but feel like a dinosaur when I see cards like this, which are so far beyond the power level that I'd accept, it's silly. I was just thinking to myself yesterday "Gee, it's been a while since I turned some Reef Pirates sideways. I miss those guys."

I played Reef Pirates at my first standard tournament. (I lost terribly, so I don't know how good a card it was back then...)

If you miss the old cards, play with the old cards lol. I used to hold casual "Card Soup" tournies at my local LGS. Everyone took aprx 36 random cards of any colors of their choosing from the store's dozen 10 cent bins, then threw some lands in.

As for the card, the thing that makes it crazy to me is that it also doubles counters on other creatures you control; even if it attacks and is blocked, or killed, that attack has a lasting effect on your other creatures too.

Oh, I play with the old cards all the time, but in a different way. I have a big box... which is kind of like a very, very large cube... which I draft out of with friends on a regular occasion. But I can't play cards like Reef Pirates in a constructed deck nowadays if I want to win at least one out of five games.

But, yeah, I'm the kind of goofy bastard that makes an EDH tribal snake deck, then tries my damned hardest to win by Overwhelming my opponents with snakes, knowing full well that each of the 5 players I'm playing against will have at least 6 board wipes in their decks.

The quality of the Mythics and Rares keeps going up, and I keep making decks out of commons. I like playing the underdog... but staying an underdog is a hard wire to balance on when gigantic weights like this one are thrown on the line.