Quote Originally Posted by Fox View Post
Most of those things you've listed will have already taken place before you have mana online to cycle this guy. About half of them are either repeatable or create a situation where you'd rather have the 3/1. If you're passing up Clique's pseudo-discard, you're in black for actual discard (also, you're a DRS deck...that then means an amount of Leovold)...the question becomes why are you doing this? People justify Clique b/c it's "good vs combo," whereas this guy is kinda has a "coolness" factor (in the same way that people suboptimally run JVP over SCM, because it's "cool"). Optimal home seems like mono-U stompy deck or a fairly outrageous plan of cycle-to-Stifle followed by activate Volrath's Stronghold to redraw this guy off its own cycling ability still on stack...or some Oath of Ghouls nonsense (which actually is fairly oppressive in a Leovold/DRS shell, if not realistic).
You are overestimating how often these mid- to late-game triggers come down in accelerated fashion, and underestimating how swingy it can be to stop them without going down a card yourself (which is a relevant point).

Comparing this card to Vendilion Clique is incorrect. Clique may be a better card, but they don't really do the same thing. For example, Vendilion Clique doesn't do much after they DRS -> Agent -> Visions anyway. The interesting thing about this card is that in the mid-game, you can stop them from pulling ahead with a big play like AV or Terminus, but if you draw this late you just make a 3/1 and go to town.