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Pojo's Magic The Gathering
Card of the Day
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Spinal Parasite
Cost: 5 Mana
Artifact
Creature-Insect
P/T: -1/-1
Sunburst (this
comes into play with a +1/+1 for each color of
mana used to cast it) Remove Two +1/+1 counters
from Spinal Parasite: Remove a counter from target
permanent.
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Spinal
Parasite
Fifth Dawn Uncommon
Reviewed May 18, 2004
Constructed:
Casual:
Limited:
Ratings are
based on a 1 to 5 scale
1 being the worst. 3 ...
average.
5 is the highest rating
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our
Card of the Day Reviews
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Chris
Gerhardt
*
game store owner in CA,
ShuffleAndCut |
Uh... meh. Poop.
I'm not finagling 5 colors of mana for a creature
that's claim to fame is that it removes 2 counters
total from another permanent then dies. I just
can't imagine this as an ability so useful that
I'd pay 5 colors to use it.
In casual, this will be a
homeless body, I'm afraid. No, scratch that.
I'm not afraid...I'm happy to report that it's
crap. Forget it in
limited...you have better things to do with your
mana I hope. If you don't, please drop from the
tournament before you humiliate yourself.
Constructed:
1
Casual: 1
Limited: 1
Current Price:
Spinal
Paradise -
Fifth Dawn - $Not worth it
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Judge
Bill
*Level 2
MTG Judge
*game store employee
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Spinal Parasite
Continuing the trend
of breaking rules for starting the week, we get
the first card with a (base) power and toughness
of -1. This can also be a good card if a pesky
deck pops up that relies on putting counters on
permanents. However, I don't see one, so this is
rather useless in any format.
Constructed: 1
Casual: 1
Limited: 1
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Ray
"Monk"
Powers
* Level 3 DCI Judge
*DCI Tournament Organizer
*Game Store Owner (Gamer's Edge) |
Spinal Parasite
Like yesterday’s card, this
card is another “rule’s breaker,” this time by
making a card that has a “negative” power and
toughness. Now every casual player is going to
have to understand the concept of negative power
and how it interacts with the game. Poor players.
Even worse, he’s slightly weak.
For BURGW you get a 4/4 with the ability to
possible remove two +1/+1 counters from something
by killing itself… Not too amazing.
Constructed: 1
Casual:
2
Limited:
2
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Jonathan
Pechon
2 Grand
Prix Top 8's
Multiple Pro Tour
appearances |
Spinal Parasite
Ummm….why? I’m waiting for the
part where this card matters to anyone. It
doesn’t foil any of the actual constructed decks,
so just ignore this and move on.
I definitely see some fun
purposes for this in casual; stealing counters
from things like Darksteel Reactor could make for
a pretty sizable amount of fun. It’s got limited
use, but at least some fun could be had.
If you aren’t going to hit at
least four colors of mana, I don’t see this
serving any sort of reasonable purpose. It just
won’t be efficient enough otherwise; Arcbound
Bruiser is already a marginally good creature, I
wouldn’t fret about trying to fit anything worse
than that into your draft deck. His ability is
only really good with all five counters on it, I
think, so it’s practically ignorable.
Constructed: 1.5
Casual: 3.0
Limited: 2.0
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DeQuan
Watson
* game store owner (The Game Closet - Waco,TX)
* pro tour player |
Spinal Parasite
I'm not sure I totally
understand the concept of this card. It's not
good if you just cast it with one color. With
two colors you can't even use it's ability. So
you need to use a minimum of three colors to
even make this card useful. On top of that,
it's ability is extremely limited. I'd expect
it to see very little play. There might be a
few strange and interesting uses in extended
though.
Constructed: 1
Casual: 1
Limited: 1
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Jeff Zandi
5 Time Pro Tour
Veteran
Level 2 Judge |
Spinal Parasite
Imagine, a place where you would never have back
trouble, where spinal
injuries could never happen. Oh, sorry, I thought
this card was called
Spinal PARADISE. Spinal Parasite is another Fifth
Dawn card featuring
"Sunburst", meaning that it gains a number of
counters when it comes into
play equal to the number of different colors of
mana you used to cast it.
(the judge in me requires me to mention that you
don't get to invent new
colors, you are restricted to the five legal Magic
colors of mana) I think
this ability generally inflates the price of a
card that will be
underpowered for its cost unless you were able to
use four or all five
colors to cast it. I do think this ability is cute
in that it gives you a
colorless casting cost but encourages you to use
colored mana. This card,
and Sunburst cards in general, are a REALLY BAD
combo with Urza's lands. So,
for five mana, if you have all five colors, you
get a 5/5 creature. Anything
less is rather unexciting. This creature's ability
must have seemed like a
good idea during testing when the testing group
became entirely TOO FIXATED
on the creatures with counters, Clockwork and
Arcbound creatures, and so on.
CONSTRUCTED: 1.5
CASUAL: 2.5
LIMITED: 2.5
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Andy
Van Zandt |
Spinal Parasite
Sunburst = bad. This guy =
worse, since he's inherently smaller than your
average bad sunburst dude. At best he's a 4/4
for 5, and his ability does not make up for it.
He'd be extremely lucky if he ever saw a place
in a sideboard, I think. Maybe I'm missing
something.
constructed 1
casual 1.5
limited 2
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Jason
Chapman |
Spinal Parasite is fascinating
because it is the first negative power/toughness
creature we have seen. The downside of this card
is that you need at least 2 colors of mana just to
play it and you also need a total of 5. It does,
however combo with a number of interesting cards
including anything with cumulative upkeep. I think
we will see it in fun creative combo decks but I
fear it is too slow and requires too much support
for more competitive builds.
Constructed - Just seems
like too many cards are needed to support multiple
uses of the Spinal Parasite, too slow as well -
2.0
Limited - Probably an awful
pick since it is not an aggressive creature for
the investment, may act as poor creature kill for
weak Sunburst cards - 2.0
Casual - Some fun decks
especially with so many abilities that are kept
track of with counters - 2.5 |
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