Pointed Discussion

Actually a nice combat trick for blue!
If this would have been a cantrip it would be great. Like this it's rather mediocre till bad.

The art on this is fantastic. Pity the card's not as good.

If it was 1 CMC, or if it did...say, -4/-0 perhaps.

Or cantripping, yeah. Making this a cantrip would've been excellent.

I don't know what you guys are talking about this is a solid sideboard for blue mages against their primary nemesis: aggro. Def not a mainboard card but that's not what it's meant to be. Anything that can shut down goblins/elves/white-weenie between turns 3 and 5 is amazing. It is also a great limited card not first pick by any means but in a format where every extra turn is a valuable commodity mass shutdown for 2 cmc is really good.

Problem, infect?

I absolutely love the flavor text.

Army of 2/2 tokens on your back turn 3?
Turn the Tide's got your back, leaving them with no blockers for a turn.

still prefer white's choking fumes when i was running a W/U, or attempted to, at prerelease.

At least it's more useful in a chaos / multiplayer game.

Well, it's more useful than Disorient and Fleeting Distraction since like NoobOfLore and Achija_el-Shuwal said, you can shut down or at least slow down a lot of aggro decks turns 2-4 with it. Still, this leaves a poor taste in my mouth, especially since so many aggro decks by Besieged are running Battle Cry, which diminishes this card's usefulness. I don't know why Wizards is so set on printing blue instants that lower creatures' power if all of them are either of negligible effect or way too expensive. There are so many ways this could have been made decent, but as it is, it's pretty lackluster and too dependent on your matchup (and not even that great where in it's good matchups) to cut it.

It slows down damage, and it only costs 2. And its less circumstantial than most blue damage-regulators due to its board-wide effect. True, its not quite as good as White damage-mitigation, but nothing is. I didn't mind pulling four of these in a draft, since my blue infect/control deck took a lot of time to really get working.

I think Lethargy Trap might be a better sideboard option against aggro, but I really like how this one can be used as a combat trick when you're attacking.

WOTC gruntling-- "I have the perfect flavor text quote for Jace, the Mind Sculptor!"

WOTC manager-- "There's no room for flavor text on planeswalker cards."

WOTC gruntling-- :(

WOTC manager-- "Don't worry. We'll find a use for it. Somewhere."

...overpowered flavor text for an underpowered card aside, this card's art is as perfect as it could possibly be, and by the same artist who painted All Is Dust.

So is it just me (or just people who supported Mirran) but is it sort of sad to go and read these 'we will defeat phyrexia!' flavour texts considering how the story turned out (plus finding out it could only have ever been that way as wizards always intended Phyrexia to win)

Compare with Hysterical Blindness

I'm sorry to do this, guys, but:

Sombrero.

Cannot be unseen.

This is the closest blue is getting to Fog for awhile.