Failure on so many levels
This card is such a great example of what's wrong with Universes Beyond. The text bloat is crazy. Bob, reluctant HYDRA agent has to inform us of his name, disposition, and allegiance, because there are sk many characters in Marvel we otherwise wouldn't even recognize the uniform of this HYDRA agent. The keyword bloat is a disaster going forward - Legendary Creature (really?) - Human Coward Villain - obligatory Villain synergy and throwback to Boldwyr Intimidator, don't go thinking that an Agent of Hydra is necessarily a soldier or assassin like Red Skull or the Winter Soldier or w/e, this guy's just a human. The art contains so much and so little detail at the same time; without any motion blur it looks as though we're seeing a freeze-frame of him carefully stepping over the bodies of his comrades to sneak away.. but Cap & Iron Man are finishing off the last dude behind him, so he ought to be running. The effect: whenever he attacks alone, he runs away and does a thing. How does this work? What? Why? In the art, he clearly attacked with a wave of allies and is running away while they're distracted. He's not attacking alone. If he attacked alone he wouldn't be able to sneak away into your hand in the first place. This is part of the enshittification; if he only needs to attack alone, he enables himself. He's a one card combo. No need to jump through any hoops. God forbid a card have a requirement to meet, that he cannot attack alone, and when he attacks, he returns to your hand. This would make more sense but just isn't simple enough. Instead of a more flavorful ability we get an unfunny line of flavor text. You want to make MtG a mess of zany references and cheap cash grabs at least make his flavor text "Are we the baddies?" reference. What's he even doing while running away that is draining 2 life? Maybe if he was tossing a gas canister over his shoulder to make a getaway.. but.. how does attacking alone and draining 2 life while returning to hand make any sense? I used to sing high praise for how well MtG wove mechanics and flavour together. Elusive Tormentor is awesome. I used to sing high praises of the traditional art that felt uniquely grounded and feasibly occult, as if the cards were, themselves, magic. The story told through images, quotes and anecdotes in bits of flavour text that felt heavy, like they were tidbits from a greater story in a bigger world. Idk doods Id have sold my collection for a fraction of its value by now if I wasn't too lazy to sort it and bring to the store. I think that the janky old-timey EDH in 2016 was the most fun before everything power crept so bad we needed a convoluted bracket system. It feels like you're sitting down for an any% speedrun and any commander over 3 mana is trash. If I bother to play again I would just proxy everything and use alters of any unavoidable UB staples that otherwise leave a bad taste in my mouth. Putting an Ancient Copper Dragob in my Minotaur deck feels ok, but The RMS Titanic, Dr Who spaceship? Ugh..