Pointed Discussion

Playable only in a splice-heavy deck, even then it should have a cost of 2G.

Aaron’s Random Card Comment of the Day #25, 10/29/10

This card went through quite a few iterations.

1) Instant / Destroy target artifact or enchantment. If you have 7 cards in hand, destroy an additional target artifact or enchantment.
2) Instant – Arcane / Destroy target artifact or enchantment. If you have more cards in hand than an opponent, destroy an additional target artifact or enchantment.
3) Instant – Arcane / Destroy target artifact or enchantment with converted mana cost less than or equal to the number of cards in your hand.

My Multiverse comment on #3: “AF 7/1: I hate this.” Could have been for many reasons. Developer Randy Buehler added a mana to it.

4) Instant – Arcane / Destroy target artifact or enchantment with converted mana cost less than or equal to the number of cards in your hand.

Designer Brian Tinsman’s Multiverse comment on #4: “BT 7/20: Wow this feels like a horrible version of Naturalize. Can we distance it a little?” He was right.

5) Instant – Arcane / Destroy target artifact or enchantment with converted mana cost less than or equal to the number of cards in your hand. Draw a card.

That’s essentially how the card was printed, except, as you see, the cost changed one more time to .

Rending Vines encapsulates a lot I don’t like about the Kamigawa block. It has the subtype Arcane, which is meaningless (and flavorless) in a vacuum. But the worst is the hand-size-matters mechanic. Yes, there were plenty of difficult gameplay decisions around those cards. But most of them were very “arm-twisty” as I like to say. In order to extract maximum value from your card, you have to do things you don’t want to, like hold a ton of cards in your hand. Destroying an Umezawa's Jitte with this thing isn’t so tough, but if you need to blow up a Honden of Seeing Winds, you’re going to be sitting on your cards for a few turns, and that can be miserable. On top of that, the comparative hand-size stuff is also quite flavorless, at least as it’s implemented in Saviors of Kamigawa. It’s there just to force people to make decisions they don’t normally make.

There is value in making people make decisions they normally wouldn’t, but there needs to be significant upside to doing so. You can get Naturalize effects—even cantrip ones—in other sets without tying yourself up in knots.

It's not all downside, if you have an empty hand and a target, it cycles for 1GG.

man, the "wisdom" mechanic really sucked. 9 times out of ten i'd rather have naturalize; or wear away if i'm playing an arcane deck.

this card has been nothing but great for me in EDH. slice in twain/mystic melting #3.

This card is one of my favorites that I just can't ever find a justifying reason to play with. I really like the cantrip effect, but it's hard to make fit into a deck. This spell can only really kill small artifacts too, and when played with a bunch of spirit guys you want spells that are both proactive and reactive.

I like it and I frequently pull it out as a questionable inclusion into random green decks, but it never seems to make the final cut.

I'd want it to draw the card before counting your hand, just because it feels odd to have 5 cards in hand including this one to be able to destroy a 4CMC card, but that's still not really enough to make the card good...

"In order to extract maximum value from your card, you have to do things you don’t want to, like hold a ton of cards in your hand."

Or, alternatively, DRAW a ton of cards, which is EXACTLY what I want to do.

I love this card!!! I use it on a Maro/mage of the library and a lot of green cantrips, i played a lot with it and get very goods results.

Is it just me, or is the typesetting on this card a little... Unintuitive? I'd assumed the first sentence ended after "enchantment", and had to go back to figure out why there was a line break before "Draw a card".

What's worse, I like my version better...

This would be a much better card if it let you Naturalise regardless of hand size but drew you a card if you met the wisdom requirements. In fact, that's a much more build-around-able wisdom design; it feeds other cards that do a similar thing and maintains your hand size, pretty much what 'wisdom' is all about.

I killed a Reaper King with this once. It was a pretty crazy EDH game.