Pointed Discussion

any idea why this card costs 2 more than Lifetap or Thoughtleech does?

Run Sanctimony instead or with this card.

Run Conversion instead...paralyzes their deck...

Why is this rated so low? You can gain some mad life with this and a couple blue cards to change the land type.

This was good back in the day when pretty much every red burn spell had a cost along the lines of Fireball, i.e. "pay X+1 to do X damage". Firebreathing creatures were also a big winner in those days, e.g. Shivan Dragon or Dragon Whelp. Shut down a lot of red strategies, though it paled in comparison to the usefulness of Conversion, provided your opponent wasn't using Sunglasses of Urza.

These days, it loses hard to Sanctimony. It's fun to play in casual for the nostalgia and "WTF is that" aspect, but other than that it's been rendered obsolete.

Old style color hoser, but really too overcosted...
I liked these cards a lot in the early days of Magic...

Dear Foolish wizard,
As you tap the power of your lofty keep, so grows my strength.
Love,
Melvin Xelionos

PS Your dog pooped in my yard. I WILL DESTROY HIM!

This would completely hose my RDW, idk whats up with the low rating

5/5 for the power it has
.5/5 for being a hoser.
____________________________
2.5/5 rating.

The comment by yyukichigai is spot on. For those of you wondering why this card is rated so low... its not that this card is horrible, its ok in the right deck or sideboard. Its just that there are much better options available. Sanctimony is strictly better because it gives you the option of gaining the life (if there is some odd reason you don't want to) and only costs half of what this card does. Conversion costs the same amount but will likely cause your opponent to suffocate rather than just delaying the game by allowing you to gain life. The only reason to use this card is for the absolutely amazing artwork by Mark Tedin....which is a good enough reason in casual games IMO.