There were a few problems with the Odyssey block, one of the biggest being that the rares from it, in general, were totally underwhelming. That's not to say that they were bad, but more so that there wasn't the pure concentration of Awesomium that you see, for better or worse, in a percentage of cards nowadays. I mean, M11 and M12 probably wouldn't sell nearly as well if Wizards didn't print
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| He cries himself to sleep at night now. |
Most of the block's power was put into the commons and uncommons that proved competitive. Wild Mongrel and friends (read: Madness cards) ruled as kings. Cabal Therapy is Legacy-playable. There were a lot of cool interactions on cards that lacked a gold symbol. Was the lack of power on rares due to cards like... this?
Quite possibly. This is a cycle, in case you were wondering, but the white one is arguably the worst of the bunch. Life gain isn't nearly as powerful as a horde of newer players would have you believe, and crappy amounts of it don't really help. Let's break it down.
You can have 4 copies of something in your deck. Assuming your opponent doesn't have any spells in common with you (not a ridiculous assumption to make), you're at most gaining 3 life. If you're so worried about gaining life, why not just stick 4 copies of Life Burst in your deck and call it a day? They scale when you have multiples in the bin, and they gain four times the amount of life you'd get off the incidental gain from the Shrine. There's no way you're gaining more than 12 life (2 Bursts, for those keeping track at home) off of a Shrine. The only way that'd happen is through a game of ridiculous attrition, in which case you're better off playing threats instead of life gain.
Seriously, put this in a deck. See how often you enjoy seeing it over the other cards in your deck. It makes Spike cry.
The one positive I can say about this card is "it combos with Relentless Rats." And anything that does that can't be all bad, right?
...right?
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