Thread by @JasonILTG

Short thread today about Mercurial Transformation. ALSA 7.94, making it the lowest-drafted lesson in Bo3 (next lowest is Start From Scratch, which is also underrated at ALSA 7.26; I'm surprised both are lower than Containment Breach actually). 1/x

My guess for why people don't like this card is that they see it as a sorcery speed bad combat trick, and therefore think it's unplayable. And to be fair, the effect *is* very niche, and is unplayable as an effect to put in your deck, but as a lesson that doesn't matter. 2/x

The power of a lesson is that you only get it when it's good. Just having Transformation in your lesson board will win you games you wouldn't otherwise, and the only cost of taking it is not having the other cards from its pack. It's much better than a card you wouldn't play. 3/x

So, let's talk about Transformation's uses. First of all, there's the "oops, you're dead" cases: sometimes making one of your creatures a 4/4 is lethal. This is less common in blue decks, but does come up, and I've even cast it off of a 5c source at least once for lethal. 4/x

It's worth noting that you can also target any nonland permament. So if you have a treasure, you can make it a 4/4 (though not with haste). And it affects base P/T, so gives Fractals +4/+4. Plus, there's some situations where it isn't quite lethal, but forces bad blocks. 5/x

There's also the case where you make your opponent's creature a 1/1. This can work like a targeted Falter: making a creature a 1/1 prevents it from blocking without dying, and prevents it from blocking fliers, which helps enable attacks for tempo (doesn't work on Fractals). 6/x

You can also use it after combat or with a damage-based removal spell to finish off a creature: if any damage is marked on the creature, it'll die when it becomes a 1/1 (again, be careful of +1/+1 counters). You can similarly combine it with Academic Dispute for a clean kill. 7/x

Conclusion: Mercurial Transformation is a conditional lesson that can win games where you just need a bit more tempo to win, and combos with conditional removal. It has no cost outside of drafting, so you should pick it a good bit higher than cards you won't play. 8/8

Here's some situations where I got Transformation (including two UW decks lol):

17lands.com/history/88d184… <- this is the one where I could cast it off a 5c source; didn't cast it but it helped lethal
17lands.com/history/ae130d…
17lands.com/history/ae130d…
17lands.com/history/6ddd27…

@threadreaderapp unroll (oops almost forgot)