If you are the kind of player who finds himself
needing to mulligan down to three cards very
often, Imaginary Pet might be a very serious win
condition for you. Okay...mulligan to
three...Island, Island, Imaginary Pet...yeah,
I'll keep! This is a very cool idea, a 4/4 for
two mana, but at what cost?
The cost is that you must constantly keep your
hand empty or else your Imaginary Pet pops back
in your hand. Really, the worst case is that
you'll have to tie up two mana each turn putting
a big fat 4/4 potential blocker into play each
turn. The interesting upside is an aggressive
constructed red/blue deck that can drop multiple
Imaginary Pets and lots of cheap burn spells. In
limited play, the Pet can be worth playing in
many cases as well.
CONSTRUCTED: 3.0
CASUAL: 3.0
LIMITED: 3.0
Tim
Stoltzfus
Imaginary Pet
Imaginary Pet is the wrong color. If there is
any color that wants to hold onto cards in hand,
it is blue. While it is exceedingly cheap for a
4/4 creature, you will never be able to
effectively play it on turn two, unless your
first turn consisted of playing a Chrome Mox and
a land, and your second turn consisted of
casting the Imaginary Pet followed immediately
by One with Nothing. And if you’re using One
with Nothing to get an Imaginary Pet down, well,
you need more imagination. In limited, Imaginary
Pet isn’t terrible, as it is functionally a 4/4
blocker with an upkeep of 1U that can help stall
out the ground fight while your blue flyers are
beating your opponent. Late in the game, it get
even get in the fight itself once your hand is
empty.
Okay...If you can empty your hand, Pet is pretty
good. But Blue doesn't tend to want to hang with
an empty hand, so Pet may not be a great Blue
choice. Too bad Wizards didn't make it Red or
Green. Probably best relegated to limited decks.
