This guy has single-handedly kept legions of
players locked down and miserable. In any format
it's legal in, it screams "Build a deck that
abuses me or build a deck prepared to go up
against me."
Constructed- 4.9
Casual- 5
Limited- 5
Aethereal
Tuesday - Winter Orb
One of the most annoying cards ever printed.
This has not been reprinted in a long time and
there's a reason why: it's incredibly
frustrating to play against. (Actually, that's
not completely true, because it did get
reprinted in Masters Edition on Magic Online...)
The best way to abuse this is to use something
like Icy Manipulator to tap it in your
opponent's end phase; that way, you get to untap
your entire board during your untap step. A long
time ago, this got replaced by Static Orb, which
wasn't as good until it became legal with
Opposition. This card is only good if you build
a deck around it, but that's easy to do, not to
mention an easy way to get thrown out of your
casual playgroup. :)
In limited, you can't build around it, so it's
not nearly as good.
Constructed - 4.5
Casual - 3
Limited - 1
David Fanany
Player since
1995
Winter Orb
The polar bears know what many of us learned the
hard way: beware the Winter Orb. In its day, it
functioned as a sort of artifact Armageddon;
playing one of these when your opponent is
tapped out can be just as devastating as any
four-mana white sorcery. I once knew somebody
who swore that he would quit Magic and burn all
his cards if they ever reprinted Winter Orb;
that's not exactly a level-headed reaction, but
it is undeniably one of the most frustrating and
effective cards to deal with. If you don't see
it as much in modern Legacy and Vintage as you
used to in the old Standard and Extended, it's
more to do with the fact that their metagames
are unbelievably fast and decks tend to play a
small number of lands that frightens anyone who
is used to other formats.
