Make no mistake, Mystic Snake is, was and will
always be a very excellent card for limited play
and perhaps only slightly less great for
constructed.
However, in today’s Time Spiral booster draft
environment, opening a Mystic Snake can mess up
your draft. All good drafters (and you and me
are good drafters, right?) like to play control,
we know that blue and green are great colors in
Time Spiral draft. That’s great, but Mystic
Snake as a first pick certainly can tie you down
to two different colors very quickly. This
card’s casting cost requires a serious
commitment to blue. Finally, I believe Mystic
Snake, as good as it is, can be too slow for the
current very speedy Time Spiral draft format. On
the other hand, today’s Standard constructed
environment may has slowed down just enough for
this card to be a big hit in constructed,
compared to when the card first arrived in
Apocalypse.
Man. I really want to be original here. I'm just
sitting here thinking there's very little I can
say about this card that hasn't already been
said. So, I'm just going to reassure you that
it's really, really good. :)
Plaxmanta makes Mystic Snake look bad. The
'manta can be cast just as a counterspell if
necessary without green mana while the snake
needs 1GUU all the time. Plaxmanta is a 2/2 for
2, while the Snake is a 2/2 for 4. But then the
Snake can counter anything, while Plaxmanta can
only stop spells that target creatures you
control. The Snake makes good permission in a
G/U deck, but I'd probably not want to leave
1GUU open.
Constructed- 2.5
Casual- 3.5
Limited- 3
Aethereal
Mystic Snake
What is this, creature-counterspells week?
Anyway, this is another good card for
blue/green, although it's a little slow. Still,
the ability to hit anything for 4 and get a 2/2
out of the deal is not shabby at all. Like
Plaxmanta, this is worthy of consideration if
you're building the blue/green deck.
In casual, it's essentially a counterspell like
the rest of the cards this week.
In limited, this is hard to play due to the
color requirements, and green is not very strong
in limited. Not a top pick, but I'd grab it if I
had a strong green-blue base and there wasn't
anything better in the pack.
