Pointed Discussion

strictly worse than storm crow

Comparing this card to storm crow makes absolutely no sense, but anyways.. the issue I have with cards like this is in blue you don't want to be discarding cards, and the unlikelyness that one of your cards will have the exact same cmc, or that you will want to give it up vs. just having another counter spell in your deck is not very high.

good in a black deck if you want to mill cards out of your own hand...

An interesting stab at attempting a 'countercast' type effect. Not a very good stab, but an interesting one. Also have to laugh at the flavor text, having seen him whining on the 'Hero's Demise' card.

hey, he works with Training Grounds, doesn't he.

Basically, he's good if you're running a lot of two-drops.

Watch out for Eldrazi, though.

Play with _____, Since you can use its name-changing ability "anywhere, anytime." Sadly, using silver-border cards is the only way to make sensei good.

Sensei's Divining Top, on the other hand...

If you revealed the card instead of discarding it, this guy might be playable. As it's printed... it's a 1/3 vanilla for 4. Trash.

Good, or at least, not that bad, in a deck where you want to discard, like a black deck for example, like someone said.

This can be hilarious if you do stuff like throwing Dark Withering to counter a titan and kill another titan. It can be handy in reanimator in case the game goes long, you can throw your big guys to counter your opponent's big guys and then get yours back.

It also has uses with Squee, Goblin Nabob if your opponent favours CMC 3 for some reason. There are uses, but they're tricky to get at and probably not worth the time.

It would be worth it if you only had to reveal the card, discarding it is just asking too much for too little- especially with that activation cost...

I kind of like the idea of placing this guy in a Maro-style deck where your hand would ideally be filled with a variety of cards anyway. Still, you'd likely be using his ability only in a pinch, and an oversize hand in blue means counterspells shouldn't be an issue. Keeping this in mind, he's just... Underwhelming.

Kind of sad really. He seems like a cool old guy.

You could run Trinisphere along with Squee, and this.

I notice that a lot of the Kamigawa legends are a lot less badass in the novels than it would appear from their flavour text. Marrow-Gnawer is revealed to be less of a crazy skilled Nezumi Warlord/Assassin but rather a clumsy, unintelligent thug for example. But nobody was nearly as much of a disappointment as Hisoka. After all the big speeches and garnets of wisdom across so many cards in the set, the guy turned out to be a spineless, cowardly old fool who hid under his desk while Hidetsugu attacked the academy.

I think the moment that truly made him irredeemable for me is how pathetically relieved he sounded when he said something along the lines of, "It's okay. Keiga will save us now." like a child trying to reassure himself that everything will be fine. He did have that one moment of dignity where he offered Hidetsugu his life in exchange for the lives of his students but even that was kind of ridiculous as Hidetsugu had already won. He could kill anyone he wanted to at that point (and did).

I was really looking forward to Hisoka making an appearance in the books. I mean, look at him! I was expecting a Blue Mage equivalent of Mister Miyagi with tons of awesome philosophical remarks on the Kami War to boot. Instead we got the man who hides under tables at the first sign of any real danger.