Pain Seer

Greven's Rating system:


This isn't really a great limited card. It's certainly playable if you know what you are doing. Would be pretty hilaripus with Whip, or even the crappy tap to gain life enchantment. In the 3-3.5 range depending on how comfortable you are drafting and playing around it.

I thought it was bad, but then I saw it in action, and it's good. Thing is, you don't have to tap it if you're low on life. And sometimes you hit a land, and it's all upside. No special drafting around it required, just a bear++, with even more potential in the right deck.

You don't really have to draft around it so much as draft a deck that can afford to take some early damage. For example, I would be very concerned about playing it in a control deck that has to survive an early heroic onslaught.

A bear that you can't attack with because it might kill you when it untaps is not always a Bear++. Defender Bear is a bad card.

The problem with it is that it is hard to tap it later in the game. It works best in where there is plenty of scry so you can tell what the top card is and can play cards like Retraction Helix in order to tap it or Stratus Walk/Aqueous Form to give it evasion as it pretty much dies to every creature it runs into.

On the basis that it is only good in a narrow deck and even then it is horrible to top deck when you are behind I'm going 1.5. There are many many commons/uncommons I would take over it.

I don't like this card in limited. A lot of the time you want to go big and you don't want to risk taking 4-6 damage off your Pain Seer.

1.0

I have only played against it (UB deck) , but I remember actually being conflicted about blocking it early, since I was the beat down and I would have been happy for him to hit himself for 4+. I did eventually leave a blocker back before he got too many cards.