Mercadian Masques common. Though white excels at destroying mass amounts of creatures (with spells like Wrath of God), it hasn’t had much of a tourney-level removal spell for individual creatures since Swords to Plowshares. Arrest and Pacifism have been taking turns over many of the game’s blocks as something of an answer to individual creatures, and both are excellent in Limited formats, but neither has made much of a jump to Standard tournaments.
Antiquities uncommon. Because of the way the Antiquities version was templated, Feldon’s Cane was reusable! The remove-from-game effect wasn’t part of the cost, so the effect could be announced and then its user could destroy it in response with an instant-speed effect. The Cane would then be destroyed, the remove-from-game effect would fail to find the Cane, and the graveyard would be shuffled back into the deck with the Cane in it! (Later versions of the card corrected this templating problem.)
Odyssey rare. Decimate features an interesting twist on the old formula of giving extra power to a card by adding a compensating drawback. In this case, the extra power is the drawback, as Decimate can only be cast when all the required targets are in play.
Unlimited uncommon. Mark Rosewater has been trying to get a new version of this card into the game for even more sets than he can remember. The challenge is that the ability is out of flavor for blue. Generally speaking, one way to deal with that is by adding enough of a drawback that it’s not out of place on a non-red card. (Though it does have a drawback, as printed, Psionic Blast is way too powerful.)
