Kinda hard to tell how this card works IN THE
REAL WORLD, far from the baby-steps innocence of
the Starter Set. To the best of my
understanding, this card would work like a
sorcery-speed Mana Short. Worse than Mana Short,
Piracy would allow your opponent to respond to
any attempt to tap their lands for mana by
tapping them themselves. Unlike with Mana Short,
your opponent's mana pool would not empty,
allowing them to hold on to their mana, if they
like, until the end of your first or second main
step.
BUT...you COULD cast Piracy, attempt to tap your
opponent out for a spell.
If your opponent responds by tapping all their
mana, you could then move to your attack step.
After your attack step, your opponent's mana
pool would be empty and they would have no more
untapped mana to react to whatever it is you
wanted to play. Quite a long way around the
problem, I would say.
This is one nifty card. Against mono-blue it's a
must counter. Against other decks, if gives you
a chance to "double up" your mana so to speak,
which can be pretty good for decks like Tooth
and Nail and some of the combo decks. In
vintage, where it seems like it might be the
most broken, quite often the majority of mana
sources out there are non-lands, so its not
quite the amazing card I think some people want
it to be. In limited, heck if you can draft it
and some big green fatties, this has some nice
potential as mana acceleration, but only if your
opponent leaves his lands untapped.
This is a very bad thing. For the past two or
three years, we've been telling everyone that
piracy is bad. Now people will rediscover this
old card and see that Piracy isn't as bad as
people think it is. Getting extra mana for
spells is neat. I could see this going into a
combo deck. Also, this is great fun for casual
games.
I'm almost positive this card is obscenely good,
but I haven't seen it in action. You have the
potential to produce an obscene amount of mana
in just one turn, and as we have seen from past
cards, that can be an excellent benefit for your
side of the table. The card doesn't fit into
every deck, especially with the double blue in
its casting cost, but I fully expect Piracy to
make an impact.
Piracy is actually better in limited play. Why?
Limited usually consists of two people trying to
one-up their opponent in the creature
department. What better way to drop your bomb
early than stealing your opponent's mana?
Drain Power pops it's head into the Type 1 and
1.5 realms. It's a sorcery, so you really can't
use it on your opponent's upkeep, which would be
really ideal for Blue. The question I have is
this... if you tap your opponent's land for
mana, and don't use all the mana, who takes the
mana burn, you or him? I'm sure there is an
oracle write up on this....Judge Bill, we need
you!
In constructed, a nice trick for Blue to ramp up
with. In casual, I'm sure you can really make a
few friends mad with this thing. In limited,
it's amazing, allowing you to get something huge
on the board early.
