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Pojo's Magic The Gathering
Card of the Day
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Image from Wizards.com |
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Serum
Powder
Darksteel Rare
Reviewed January 28, 2004
Constructed: 2.6
Casual: 1.8
Limited: 1.5
Ratings are
based on a 1 to 5 scale
1 being the worst. 3 ...
average.
5 is the highest rating
Click here to see all
our
Card of the Day Reviews
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Chris
Gerhardt
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game store owner in CA,
ShuffleAndCut.com |
Now, I've heard a
few people talking about this card... that it will
be something that control freaks will find useful
in mulliganing toward their perfect hand to pull
off a super fast win. Dunno... I guess I can see
it actually. If it's playable, the blue or control
mages will find a way to break this. I really hate
to speculate much...the potential is obvious, but
the jury will be out for sometime on its true
playability. In my opinion, only time will
truly tell.
Interested in seeing
all the
Darksteel Rare pictures? I posted
them all yesterday. Check out the exact text and
the cool artwork in this very powerful new set!!
Constructed:
2 (until it car prove itself)
Casual: 3.5
Limited: 1.5
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Judge
Bill
*Level 2
MTG Judge
*game store employee
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Wednesday
The first card to dabble in the mulligan
process. If you have this in your hand, you
can remove the cards in your hand from the
game instead of shuffling them back in, and
draw as many cards as you removed, instead
of one fewer.
Unfortunately, I don't see this getting any
play. Although the combo deck likes it at
first blush, because it means 7 cards less
to deal with, you frequently have to worry
about losing a key component if you remove
the cards from the game. Combo decks are
usually tightly built already, and something
like this will tend to disrupt more than it
helps.
All other decks suffer from the similar
problem. Also, this card is VERY weak on its
own, so if you don't draw it in your first 7
and use its ability, you've essentially
wasted a card slot.
I don't know much about how casual players
would see this card, so the casual rating is
just a guess.
In limited, I wouldn't touch this either.
The smaller deck size is just too risky to
lose 15% of your deck.
Constructed: 2
Casual: 2
Limited: 1
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DeQuan
Watson
* game store owner (The Game Closet - Waco,TX)
* pro tour player
* Scrye writer since 2002 |
Wednesday -
Serum Powder
I had to keep pointing out all day at the
prerelease that I am not a big fan of this card.
What a lot of people seem to miss is that you
just throw your opening hand away. This means
that you are playing without seven cards. That's
not something that is really a good thing. Also,
if you are mulliganing it is most likely that
you had very few lands in hand. This means that
you just threw away a lot of spells. I don't
think that we like building decks with bad
spells, so this really is a bad thing. Sure, the
land produces colorless mana and such, but I
don't think that's enough to entice me to play
the card. Also, consider if you are playing a
deck with only one or two copies of particular
cards. This makes Serum Powder even more
useless.
In casual play, it's not very good. A lot of
casual games don't even use a mulligan rule
depending on hat variant you are playing. In
limited, you want all your cards, so I'm pretty
sure this is a no go.
The only saving grace this card might have is if
you want to search through your deck for a key
card to have in your opening hand in a
particular matchup.
Constructed: 1.5
Casual: 1
Limited: 1.3 |
Ray
"Monk"
Powers
* Level 3 DCI Judge
*DCI Tournament Organizer |
Wednesday -
Serum Powder
This card scares me. It really does. I dislike
cards that change the fundamental rules of play
within a game, and this one is no exception.
People argue that it won't be good because, by
its very nature of being a bad card to actually
PLAY, any hand with it in it will be one you
want to use Serum Powders ability on. But I
argue its not the mulligan that matters, its the
deck thinning. If you are playing a combo deck,
the ability to start with a 53 card deck instead
of a 60 card deck greatly enhances your ability
to draw the combo pieces you need. I fear this
card becoming a key component to any combo deck.
Constructed - 5
Casual - 1
Limited - 1 |
Jason
Matthews
* Level 1 DCI
Judge
*game store employee
* gaming for over 15 years |
Wednesday-Serum
Powder
Somewhere in America Richard Garfield was
smiling when he first saw this card. Garfield
was a man who liked innovation in the game and
saw players everywhere doing all kinds of crazy
things with his cards. Well this card is
something he could be proud of. It brakes one of
the main rules of magic. It allows you to play
card effects before the game has actually began
and change the size of your deck effectively
before the game has begun. I see this card
trying to be in a several deck in order to give
people that perfect hand. The best thing done
with this card was giving it the ability to
produce mana, so that it isn’t completely
useless if you don’t have it in your opening
hand. In constructed and casual it has the same
value to me because if you put it in the right
deck it should be fairly good. In limited I
wouldn’t play it because with your deck size
being so small you don’t want to put yourself at
that much of a disadvantage.
Constructed: 2.75
Casual: 2.75
Limited: 1 |
Jonathan
Pechon
2 Grand
Prix Top 8's
Multiple Pro Tour
appearances |
Serum Powder
Combo decks, here’s what you’ve been waiting
for! Free mulligans!
Except…which combo deck is it that you’re
talking about? For one, I can’t really think of
a combo that’s really viable in standard. In
1.x, the combo-style decks there already have
their hands full with the cards to fuel their
engines. Honestly, while this mechanic is really
interesting, I just don’t see a practical
application for it.
In limited, you will probably very infrequently
use the mulligan part of the card; there isn’t
much of a need to aggressively mulligan in such
a way in this environment. The 3-mana producer
of one colorless mana isn’t terribly exciting,
especially when Darksteel Ingot is available,
and that even helps to smooth out your color
problems. In other words, eh.
I really don’t think this card has too much
appeal for casual players. Mulligans aren’t
terribly important, and there are plenty of
solid mana-producers available. Move on.
Constructed: 2.0
Limited: 2.0
Casual: 1.5 |
Jeff Zandi
5 Time Pro Tour
Veteran
Level 2 Judge |
Serum Powder
I give Research and Development credit for trying
to invent a card that
affects mulligans. Unfortunately, Serum Powder
does not have much to offer
in this respect. Often, when you have a hand you
have to mulligan, your hand
has many very good, even great cards, but just not
enough land cards to make
the hand playable. Removing this hand from the
game will cost you access to
these cards for the entire game with the only
benefit being that your next
hand will have one more card in it than if you had
taken the normal
mulligan. In limited, using this card's ability
will put you in the position
of starting the game with as few as 33 cards in
your library, possibly as
small as 26 cards after drawing your new opening
hand, making it much more
likely that you could lose the game by simply
running out of cards to draw.
I played this card in a sealed deck yesterday only
because I needed it as a
mana accelerator. Of course, Serum Powder doesn't
do this job very well
either, because it costs three (a cost of two
sounds very reasonable for
what this card does) and only produces colorless
mana.
Constructed: 2.0
Casual: 2.5
Limited: 2.5 |
Jason
Chapman |
Serum Powder is
a card that may be very powerful in combo style
constructed decks that can use it to help force
powerful starting hands. Without the alternate
mulligan wording it is a weak card and it must
be seen whether that will slow decks down more
than it will speed them up. I haven't had a
chance to read the FAQ and if a mulligan with
this card lets you total up to a 13 card hand
then it is much stronger than indicated - for
every format.
Constructed - For decks that are already willing
to mulligan aggressively it is awsome - 3.95
Limited - Probably too weak to draft - 1.50
Casual - Doesn't jive with the spirit of Casual
at all - 1.00 |
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Chase |
Serum Powder
This was one of the submitted card ideas for the
first You Make the Card at magicthegathering.com
originally called “Mulligan Man”. They decided
to put off the idea for a later set but who knew
it would end up in Darksteel?
Serum Powder isn’t totally bad but it’s not the
kind of card that you would put four of in your
deck because it’s major ability can only be used
at the beginning of the game. But you can also
use this to accelerate (have 5 mana on turn 4).
I don’t think it’s bad but you only need one in
your deck (for it’s effect) however, you need it
in your opening hand (and therefore in order to
raise the probability of drawing it, you need to
play four). So, I dunno, he may be useful in
Affinity. I guess people will try him out.
In Casual, you don’t usually mulligan that much
so this is pretty much useless.
Constructed: 2
Casual: 1 |
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Spooks |
Serum Powder
Wow. Mr.
Rosewater and his guys are trying to really
mix things up. All the major rules of the
game are getting cards designed to change
how things are done. First we had upwelling
giving us nice big mana pools that never
overflowed. Then we had Gleemax, the all
powerful mindslaving head in a jar take your
opponents turns for them. Now we take this
sucpicious looking powder and we can
mulligan for free (well..you lose 7 cards
from your deck, but... *shrugs*)
In constructed,
I like how it works with affinity. Affinity
has been described as teh new U/G madness.
It either goes off or it doesnt. With the
help of this card, it would increase the
chances of it going off. However, they
would have to remove some artifact lands to
ge this in, so maybe it doesnt make the cut
after all.
Limited, this is
only really helpful if you don't know how to
build limited decks, and put in too few
lands. Only once in a blue moonw ill you be
mana screwed.
Constructed
rating - 2.5 (sure I like it, but it is a
colourless land. That's about as high as
you can rate this card to be honest)
Limited rating -
1.5
Promoting the
use of illegal substances rating - "dude,
stand watch and tell me if anyone is coming"
10
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