This card certainly offers a lot of creative possibility, AND the potential of not even really having to pay for it! A 2-converted cost for a Flying, Deathtouch, Haste, 4/4 creature is unbelievably cheap, provided that you were able to orchestrate your "party" quickly. Of course, if your opponent sits there zapping your creatures with red spells, killing them with black, or countering them with blue, you'll have trouble doing that. On the one hand, Zagras is too powerful. On the other, there are WAY too many players that rely on cheap, non-creature spell tactics. So, as powerful as Zagras is, he won't do you much good against the wrong player. If I were making the game, I might do two things - First, place limitations on how many non-creature spells of essentially the same type that you can use. I haven't decided yet just how that should be done, but it would be essential to creating better gameplay. Second, Zagras needs to be penalized. It might be something like, "Zagras deals 3 damage to you at the beginning of each upkeep, unless you sacrifice it." Then, (if you decided to use him anyway) you would need to be gaining life somehow (probably lifelink), or killing your opponent so fast that it didn't matter. It would dictate that using cards this powerful is like going "all-in" on a gamble, but would still allow a smart player to calculate victory. THAT'S really dynamics in gameplay, not freebie, super-cheap cards that hand victory to undeserving revelers. |
