According to Art Director Mark Winters, the island came before the fishbut nevertheless I love the relationship between these two cards
Dropping more creatures next turn to even having mana for abilities and other spells, since it doesnt specify what to spend the mana on, is worth the wait
You don't need Trinket Mage to play Explosives or have them be good by any means but they are a really good pair, rather like Stoneforge Mystic and Batterskull
2026 features seven Standard-legal sets, the most in a single year: Lorwyn Eclipsed (23 January) Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (6 March) Secrets of Strixhaven (24 April) Marvel Super Heroes (26 June) The Hobbit (14 August) Reality Fracture (2 October) Star Trek (20 November) Alpha's print run was around 2.6 million cards, compared to modern estimated print runs of about 2.5 billion
Having access to a card that can snipe a pesky enchantment, remove a creature (as long as you do the usually-trivial extra work of having a creature in play), or draw cards when neither of the other modes are relevant, means this spell is never going to rot in your hand
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