Oversoul
The Tentacled One
When it comes to card recursion, Regrowth is simply the greatest of all time. It's nothing fancy. It harkens back to the beginning of the game, when some spells were as simple and straightforward as they come.
That's about as clean and clear as they come. Even the Alpha printing, in a set notorious for strange ways to say things, is just one word off from the Oracle text ("any" was changed to "target").
Much like Counterspell or Dark Ritual or Stone Rain, it's just an efficient piece of utility. Not the basis for a deck, but the kind of card that fits into lots of different decks. A workhorse. It's the best at what it does, and that's about it. People generally don't think about it too much. It's good, but unremarkable. That describes lots and lots of cards. What does not describe most of those cards is "Restricted from 1994 to 2013." Nineteen years. And not for a card that was once broken and infamous, but whose time has passed. Regrowth was never scary. Regrowth isn't Mind Twist or Black Vise. It was a workhorse. It was unremarkable. It was unremarkable at the time it was restricted. It was unremarkable while it was restricted. And it remained unremarkable after it was unrestricted. Oh, it saw play. It saw play while it was restricted and it saw play after it was unrestricted. It's just that no one really cared. And that description is almost suspiciously bland. Nothing gets away with being that unremarkable. Such a level of unremarkability is, itself, remarkable. And hence, by my twisted logic, Regrowth is extraordinary.
I'm only being kinda-sorta facetious. Every card that was restricted in 1994 seems to fit into one of these categories...
That's about as clean and clear as they come. Even the Alpha printing, in a set notorious for strange ways to say things, is just one word off from the Oracle text ("any" was changed to "target").
Much like Counterspell or Dark Ritual or Stone Rain, it's just an efficient piece of utility. Not the basis for a deck, but the kind of card that fits into lots of different decks. A workhorse. It's the best at what it does, and that's about it. People generally don't think about it too much. It's good, but unremarkable. That describes lots and lots of cards. What does not describe most of those cards is "Restricted from 1994 to 2013." Nineteen years. And not for a card that was once broken and infamous, but whose time has passed. Regrowth was never scary. Regrowth isn't Mind Twist or Black Vise. It was a workhorse. It was unremarkable. It was unremarkable at the time it was restricted. It was unremarkable while it was restricted. And it remained unremarkable after it was unrestricted. Oh, it saw play. It saw play while it was restricted and it saw play after it was unrestricted. It's just that no one really cared. And that description is almost suspiciously bland. Nothing gets away with being that unremarkable. Such a level of unremarkability is, itself, remarkable. And hence, by my twisted logic, Regrowth is extraordinary.
I'm only being kinda-sorta facetious. Every card that was restricted in 1994 seems to fit into one of these categories...
- It is a mana-producing artifact. It was restricted because a surfeit of explosive mana production fundamentally changes the nature of gameplay.
- Its restriction was short-lived, either going away with the list cleanup in 1997 or before that.
- It has been the subject of extensive commentary, either for Type 1 tournament usage as a restricted card, or as as a regular card following its unrestriction.
- It is Regrowth.