Is it possible that Wizards has finally given us
a green gain life spell that's worth playing in
competitive formats? No. Nourishing Shoal is a
waste of time in general. You just can't waste a
card in your deck for a spell that just gains
you life. In the case of this card, you either
have to tap out to gain a lot of life, or give
away a lot of card advantage using this card's
alternate casting cost. I don't think so. If the
alternate cost was DISCARDING a green card
instead of removing a green card from the game,
this card could have been a fun part of a
reanimator deck.
CONSTRUCTED: 2.0
CASUAL: 3.0
LIMITED: 2.0
Ray "Monk"
Powers
* Level 3 DCI Judge
Nourishing Shoal
I never played Stream of Life, even as a new
player. I certainly don't want to pay an extra
green to do play Stream of Life. And I
definitely don't want to pitch an extra card
just to gain some life. This card goes down for
me as 'suckiest rare printed in a long long
time.'
OK, I only think this card is useful in
casual decks and possibly reanimator decks.
There may be other uses, but those are the
only obvious ones to me. This is another
reason I hate rating cards before I've had
time to play with them.
Okay, here's
where the shoal equation breaks down. You
definitely lose the advantage of the
alternate casting cost - lose 2 cards to
gain a little life is a bad deal. Even if
you are playing something large, like
Myojin of Life's Web, it's just not
worth the loss of 2 cards in hand. So you
are left with its regular casting cost, in
the hopes that you can generate huge amounts
of mana. But then that is called
Stream of Life, and Stream does it
better - though "better" is a relative
term. Lifegain is and should be relegated
to the most casual realm, except in extreme
rogue situations, and then only as a side
issue.
So, if we take
this card in the purely casual sense for
lifegain purposes, it can be a nice addition
to Stream of Life in your deck... did I just
say that? =/
