Yeah, that mirrors my experiences with
mesmeric fiend, which is why I cut him for
augur of skulls. Augur
is a great card, though I have no idea how high up the power ladder it can climb.
The other thing I like about this, is that it gets us talking about breathing some soul into midrange decks. B/W and B/R puts us in those jund/junk attrition strategies, though obviously its important that they foster a
real attrition strategy, rather than just being a collection of good stuff.
I never really could bring myself around to
raven's crime, even with the bouncelands. There was a point where I had this whole idea worked out where I was going to go deeper on using bouncelands to fuel spells that want you to discard (I already have compulsive, insidious dreams, and the red discard spells). This was to make people question auto-running 15 lands in every deck because bouncelands are so good. Than I was going to tie it in with madness to actually have a legit madness theme in cube. Unfortunatly, when I had the cards lined up, it just didn't look worth it. The cards I was going to add (raven's crime etc.) were just not strong enough to make someone run a higher land count.
They really need to bring madness back in a set, power creep has left it so far behind that only the lowest power of formats is going to find
arrogant wurm a real play.
Also, no one should run this card, but this thread gives me an excuse to post it. BEHOLD