You have missed my point completely . If you are evaluating a card , in a cube , you do not consider only the base case . Everyone KNOWS that a 7 mana card is not effective when you are on your second land drop . That is obvious . I ' m not arguing with you on mana cost and a fundamental principle of Magic The Gathering . I ' m telling you WHY this card is a bad design based upon how it performs at various points of a typical game . I am not arguing that playing 6 mana threats ahead of the curve is powerful , that is not the crux of my argument . Everyone knows that most cards are costed accordingly to their effects and impact . I ' m saying that Hornet Queen is a card that has a major impact at any stage of the game . There are cards that are bad late in the game , great when you ' re ahead , terrible when you ' re behind , etc . Hornet Queen is almost always a positive play that jumps you FAR ahead no matter the board state , no matter your position . Only in the most specific of scenarios does it have minimal impact where it doesn ' t warp the game completely Yes , you have me wrong , and it ' s a matter of a difference of design principles . If you value power and efficiency for cards in your environment , that ' s fine . I do NOT believe that that should be the primary goal when designing an environment . If it were , Limited for example would be so much less appealing to the average drafter . I mean , there ' s a reason why Fate Reforged was critically panned as part of either Khans or DTK draft you only had one pack but the rares were gamewarping . People love drafting and playing bombs , but I ' ve been on the other end of an Archangel Avacyn in SOI draft . If you deal with it , you feel great . If you don ' t ? Miserable , more so than if you had lost a well fought match . Game warping bombs detract from the overall game experience from what I ' ve seen over the years . That is the camp where cards like HQ , Wurmcoil and Grave Titan fall into for me . I don ' t think you need to beat drafters over the head with an obviously powerful goto decision in a given pack . They will identify the themes and follow their own instincts most of the time unless they are completely new . Your job as a designer is to provide them with the necessary tools to make their decks possible . If that ' s powerful payoffs like Consecrated Sphinx or Hornet Queen , fine . Go ahead . I ' m never going to do that though because they do not promote the environment that I want . The goal of game design , for me , is not centered around maximizing the power output . I want people to be engaged in the entire process from draft to games . Approaching drafting with an eye towards more card interactions is fun . Building a deck that maximizes synergies between cards is exciting . You don ' t need these incredibly powerful cards to design a good environment , that ' s just what I believe . I want both players to have fun during the games with meaningful decisions all throughout , more of a Legacylite vibe than anything . I think obviously powerful cards that warp the game from a battle of attrition , synergy development or gaining edges to Answer this or you lose are not worth including . Games where you get locked out by a Sword of X Y that invalidates your entire strategy during draft feel terrible . You draft within your colors , read the correct signals , assemble a sweet deck , and then some guy happens to draft a card that invalidates your entire deck . That ' s absolutely shitty to me . There is nothing fun to me nor most people about an unstoppable bomb that warps the game and leads to an easy win for a player . Playing against a Jitte becomes a race of whether you can answer it quickly or just get completely shut down . Losing because you don ' t have a way to deal with an uninteractive card is not fun for most people . I think we just have completely different opinions on overtly gamewarping cards . That ' s fine though , we don ' t need to agree on design principles when building our own cubes .