Pointed Discussion

Overpriced. The target it provides for its ability (itself) already has evasion anyway. Would be more compelling if it said 'target creature gets +2/+0 until end of turn.'

Champ_Kitsune's comment does not make sense. This card sounds good. Not too good, but just alright good.

with a name like kami, this card should be better

Aaron’s Random Card Comment of the Day #52, 1/5/11

This card ended up in a spot that is unappealing looking, but typically necessary for limited play in a set with linear themes like Spirit/Arcane. I typically don’t like cards like this, meaning ones that you’d be hesitant to play outside of limited, even in a budget black “spiritcraft” deck, which is the only deck it could possibly go into. We still make narrow cards for linear limited strategies that aren’t very powerful on their own—Golden Urn from Scars of Mirrodin leaps to mind, as an example of a card that you sometimes play in dedicated metalcraft decks, but rarely at any other time—but ideally they don’t look overcosted and have some appeal to casual deckbuilders. I could see people having fun with Golden Urn in a constructed deck with Trinket Mage and proliferate, but I can’t see any particularly happy moments coming from this Kami.

That said, its text box went through some interesting changes during the design and development of Champions of Kamigawa:

1) : Target creature gains fear until end of turn.

It started out as a 1/1 Rat Cleric with the name “Witch Doctor.”

2) Flying
Sacrifice CARDNAME: Target creature gets +1/+1 and gains fear until end of turn.

It quickly became a Spirit that could be used for evasion or to win a fight.

3) Flying
Sacrifice CARDNAME: Target creature gains fear until end of turn.

The +1/+1 was removed because it was playing too often like a green card.

4) Flying
Whenever you play a spirit or mystic spell, target creature gains fear until end of turn.

The set was lacking in “spiritcraft” triggers, so it was changed to this. It also went from to , remaining 1/1. Note that Arcane was called “mystic”.

5) Flying
Attuned — Target creature gains fear until end of turn (Whenever you play a spirit or mystic spell, target creature gains fear until end of turn.)

We tried making “spiritcraft” a keyword—“attuned”. Note that we hadn’t embraced the idea of ability words at this point in Magic’s history. This is a particularly atrocious attempt at a template because all the rules text is repeated in reminder text.

6) Flying
Attuned — Target creature gains fear until end of turn (Whenever you play a spirit or mystic spell you may do the attuned effect.)

Here’s an attempt at shortening the reminder text and making it something that could be the same on all cards.

7) Flying
Attuned — Target creature gains fear until end of turn. (Whenever you play a spirit or Arcane spell you may do the attuned effect.)

“Mystic” became “Arcane”.

8) Flying
Tatari — Target creature gains fear until end of turn. (Whenever you play a spirit or Arcane spell you may do the tatari effect.)

“Attuned” became “tatari,” a Jápanese word meaning “curse.”

9) Flying
Sacrifice CARDNAME: Target creature gains fear until end of turn.

Back to this and ? What? A late change of heart?

10) Flying
Whenever you play a Spirit or Arcane spell, target creature gains fear until end of turn.

Finally during editing it was changed back to this ability—no keyword—and a mana cost of .

That’s a lot of work on what I consider an essentially forgettable card. And this “Card of the Day” entry is quite long as well for what I consider an essentially forgettable card, so I’m out.

Painsmith seems very similiar to this card for some reason.

use it with spirits like loch korrigan, chilling apparation or wicked akuba ftw
i also dont like the idea of creating forgettable cards, surely some would say "hey u cant expect every card to be awesome" but i would reply "hey but you can at least try harder"

Kitsune is saying that the only guaranteed target for its ability is itself so it is redundant in most cases to have fear and flying as they are both evasion abilities.

Has potential with Horobi, Death's Wail and Wicked Akuba in a dedicated Spirit deck. Fear is not something to be taken lightly in aggro. With one Long-Forgotten Gohei This will cost 1B and be a 2/2, which is a lot more acceptable and is what you should be paying for something like this anyway in a spirit/arcane deck.

I got back into Magic after a long hiatus during Kamigawa block, when one of my college friends organized multiple draft and sealed leagues for our fraternity. As RownKeltizar suggests, this little guy was a beast with Wicked Akuba and Horobi in Kamigawa limited. We also made a fun little song about him.

'Note that Arcane was called “mystic”.'

I don't know why either of those names were ever even considered, as nothing about them suggests spirits. Off the top of my head, I can come up with "spiritual", "etheric", "gnostic", "ephemeral", and with a mild stretch "primordial". But Kamigawa was mostly perfect in flavor terms (mechanics of course were another story), so I'll overlook one glaring error in its execution.

'Attuned — Target creature gains fear until end of turn (Whenever you play a spirit or mystic spell you may do the attuned effect.) '

Heheh, "do the effect", that's a bit too lax even for my standards. I have a lot of jokes I could make here but they border on family-unfriendly so I'd better hold my tongue.

@ Aaron:
Printing a card with evasion that gives some other sort of evasion feels really odd to me. I also agree with Champion_Kitsune that it's overprised... and I want to add, it's plain boring.

I'm glad this card isn't another black "sacrifice ~: " creature. There are so many black examples and this makes me wonder why a black creature gives up their life for such a minor effects. See Bile Urchin vs. Death Cultist.

@RowanKeltizar

Long-Forgotten Gohei does not reduce the cost of spirit spells.

Should've kept the cost at . It still wouldn't have been particularly usable, but at least it wouldn't have been terrible.