Great Designer Search 2 - Essay 05: Badly Designed Card In Standard

Name a card currently in Standard that, from a design standpoint, should not have been printed. What is the card and why shouldn't we have printed it?

Baneslayer Angel should not have been printed from a design standpoint. While many players may complain about the power level, that is a development issue rather than a design issue. The likewise maligned high secondary market cost of the card stems from the development not the design. The problem with Baneslayer from a design standpoint is the fluffy rules text giving her protection from Demons and from Dragons.

First, this seems to be a case of cramming extra rules text on a card that it doesn’t need. A 5/5 Angel with Flying, First Strike, and Lifelink for only five mana is jawdropping by itself. It would see plenty of play at every level of the game.

Second, it is not normal for White. White is number one with Protection but normally from colors. If this card had Protection from red and black it would be nutty and smiting evil and perfectly fit white. Protection from something other than color is blue’s domain these days per Mark Rosewater’s Keyword Play article: “I decided that while I thought it was okay to put protection secondarily in blue, I needed something to make it feel different from white. When I looked through old blue cards with protection I realized that blue has a history of having protection from things other than color. This seemed like a flavorful way to add protection to blue while still keeping white king of protection.”

Third, the ability seriously trumped a Mythic Rare in the same set (Bogardan Hellkite) and made irrelevant a rare from the very next set (Halo Hunter). If not for her protection abilities, both Hellkite and Hunter could kill Baneslayer with their Enters The Battlefield triggers but would still die to her via combat damage because of First Strike.

I think many essay writers may have punted this question by ranting about the power level of Baneslayer or Jace Mindsculptor. Those people would need to learn the difference between Design and Development.

Had I not been able to fill the word count on Baneslayer I had a fallback card to write about: Chandra's Spitfire. Red very infrequently gets non-Dragon flyers. So why the heck is one a Planeswalker Signature Spell??? Also, Kiln Fiend gets pumped if you burn a potential blocker. Spitfire requires you to burn their face - in your precombat main phase. That's just encouraging bad play.