Pointed Discussion

Counter your Omniscience for 10 10/10s. And omniscience sees standard play

I welcome you with open arms Draining Snake Genesis.

Sweet! Get one of these in limited and watch the evolving magic!

lol, eff you sphinx's revelation, now gimme an 8/8 ooze (for those who don't know, a spell with an x-cost is zero anywhere OTHER than the stack, so if they tap-out for a sphinx's, just start laughing maniacally)

Sorry, as much as I love the design, I don't find it very competitive. Not like that's a bad thing, its still a fun card, but I would have liked something a little faster. Rewind is already pushing it a four mana, five as a little extreme.

EDH should like it though, considering those games run a lot longer than usual.

Excellent board advantage. Like a draining whelk/mystic snake.

If only it was one colorless less.
:(

Mystic Snake is better, I'm afraid.

A counterspell, first and foremost, is there to counter a spell, other benefits are just gravy. A 5cc counterspell is simply too expensive even if you get a creature after, and that creature may not even be big enough to be worth while. Mystic Snake can be bounced back to be casted again, and you can clone it with Cackling Counterpart for more counters, are just two of many strategies where Mystic Genesis cannot accomplish.

Kind of pricey, but it is an idea they had to use eventually.

Nice combat trick. Let me show you mine.

Good card considering how Innistrad-RTR standard is run by midrange, your bound to get atleast a 4/4 fatty out of countering something hideous like a huntmaster or an unburial rights.
This is card advantage plain and simple.
4/5

I'm just gonna say what we're all thinking. This is a terrible rare. It's bad for the same reason fall of the gavel is bad.

@Cyberium

I am here to make the case that you are quite wrong, though mystic snake is a great card, and I do enjoy it, You are not factoring in all the uses of this card. It the fact that is two parts, a spell and token.

When one looks at it as Tokens and Spells, you realize that you have to think of this card differently then mystic snake. First off, Innistrad has plenty of card in Standard that can help you. Snapcaster Mage can allow you to bring back the spell, or you can use Memory Search (A Blue card with a Green flashback cost) to grab this card and return it to your hand. Not to mention the many Izzet cards that help spells, that help in set as well.

As a token, once again, think of just both the standard set. POPULATE. You can counter a 5 cost spell, get a 5/5 ooze (Oozes are always awesome) And copy it for another 5/5! With luck you can spoil someone plan and turn that into an army! Or if we go back to Innastrad, we have a certain 4CMC card that copies all tokens you make. So now you get two 5/5 oozes, and when you populate, you get four 5/5 oozes.

This is all purely speaking of JUST STANDARD. If one looks deeper and looks at further sets you could find even more cards that really, really makes this a good card.

I think this was rated so low was because they thought mystic snake, and never thought of it as anything else. Purely against Mystic Snake? Without any other help? Yeah, It comes up short. Magic about see the big picture though.

Green-blue counterspells make me happy.

Low cost mana matters way more than any special effects you can get from it. Why do constructed players use narrow counters like spell pierce or even spell snare over cards like these? Because they're low mana. Why is force of will amazing? Because it can cost 0 mana.

Guess which card saw more play in standard; essence scatter or essence backlash? Hint: the mana cost matters more than the damage.

Draining Whelk was used largely because Teferi was around in standard as well, as well as other decent flash/instants (mystical teachings, remand, etc) in general, which could allow control decks to turtle until 6+ mana and hit those draining whelks. Right now in standard, draw-go barely exists.

This card sounds fun on paper, but after playing around with it in the prerelease, the X/X ooze barely mattered. It was mostly used when I was ahead on the board and this was to stop the opponent from getting back in the game, in which case it's hardly any better than a simple cancel or a regular cheap counter (granted, there aren't many counters in the set, but I don't see it being a different story in standard). If you are behind on the board, this will not bring you back, because your opponent won't be stupid enough to drop a giant bomb when he is already ahead on the board AND he sees you have 5 mana open but passed turn.

This certainly has EDH potential. But it will not make waves in standard unless draw-go returns, which I don't see that happening.

the le reddit r/mtg army and its leejun loves this card! 5 stars if you agree!

The Mimeoplasm is the flavor text realized

Oh wow, a counterspell that gives card advantage. Utterly Fantastic. At the prerelease I bounced my opponent's Foundry Champion using Simic Charm (because I was tapped out when I should have countered it the first time), then when he cast it again next turn I used this on it. Essentially, my two cards bought me a whole turn, removed a creature, and gave me a 6/6 ooze. Fantastic turn around. A conventional counter combined with bounce, however, would have given me card disadvantage. I really, really like this card.
Note to wizards - please more counters that generate card advantage!

i think this should've cost 2GU instead of 2GUU. then it might see constructed play in simic decks.

Better than Mystic Snake if you can counter something with a CMC of 4 or so. Of course, Mystic Snake can recur by itself. The Ooze can't. For that reason, Mystic Snake is the better card. This is pretty cool though. 3.5/5

Well, let's compare it to mystic snake. You pay one more mana for this thing, but quite often get a larger creature out of it. Still, what made mystic snake and draining whelk good is that they are creatures. You can reanimate them easily, keep cloning them with abilities, flicker them in and out, and thus abuse their "enter the battlefield" ability to create a lock the opponent can't get out of. That doesn't work with this card, since it's obviously not a creature. That it creates tokens can sometimes be an advantage (with cards like doubling season), but most of the time, this will be much worse than mystic snake or draining whelk.
That being said, this is still no bad card. Even though five mana is a lot for a counterspell. One more and you could get a spelljack. Or one less and you have a cryptic command. So... I give it 2.5/5.

My buddy thought he had me when he put infinite (well 10,000) mana into a fireball. I actually got him when i gave this trample.

Team up with the Golgari you say? Now there's an idea.

Forget the Golgari. I'd rather have the Simic join the Gruul. Or maybe the Izzet...

Drafted this thinking i'd never used it but ended up using it against a Merciless Eviction, evolved all my junk and won the tournament. It's GREAT when you're already ahead. You just smile and enjoy being ahead and punish them for trying to make it any different :)

Used this first time against Avacyn.

Someone wants to prove they're not just some silly counterspell...

Surprise. This saw 1-of play in a top 8 deck at States - Dallas. Welcome to the party, Mystic Genesis.

Maybe you'll get Lucky and catch a Blasphemous Act for a 9/9 ooze for 5 , but other than that this just feels like a balanced Mystic Snake

3/5

I, for one, would rather they didn't team up with Selesnya.

Because Populate.

I believe this is the first time since Mana Drain that they have made a counterspell that gives you a benefit based on the casting cost of the countered spell, but I could be wrong.