Backdraft

Erm -- fear of the X spell, I suppose, but there's two huge problems with this card.

1. If an X spell didn't kill you, your opponent is probably doing something unusual or wrong. This spell doesn't help you if an X spell kills you.
2. There's 0 reason to put in all the stupid clauses and specifics into the card. It's just mindless, narrow clutter; there were no damage-dealing X instants at the time the spell was released, so it was written for sorceries -- and that's the kind of thinking that makes parts of this expandable card game clunk rather than purr. Similarly, why return half damage? Did it feel fairer somehow?

A smaller problem is this spell's color. It's a red spell that hoses red spells and Hurricane. Shouldn't it be hosing Braingeyser and Alabaster Potion? I mean, that's one of the themes of Legends -- opposing color hate, not color self-loathing. Save that jive for the Woody Allen expansion. ("What? 'Sleepers' has to wait three turns to do anything?" Ha ha movie snob joke! Emmy please.)

I propose that we either change what the spell targets or we change the spell's color. I'll do both, because they're both decent approaches.

This feels a lot better. It's in white, a color that has a history of screwing with incoming damage; it's clearly a color hoser, since only red consistently gets direct damage that can target players; and it plays into white's neglected vengeance flavor, which I think is actually a pretty strong way to convey mechanics. (Most players like a little in-game revenge.) Why drop the X shenanigans? Because that's crazy narrow. Very few decks run more than four X spells, let alone ones that deal damage, but plenty of decks across all formats run Lightning Bolt (or its baby brothers). One thing I don't like is that this still deals a chunk of splash damage to Hurricane, but them's the breaks.

This I like too. Red got blue's "grab a spell and muss with it" slice of the pie, and it's kept its foot in the "copying spells" bit of the pie, despite Twincast. Think of this spell like Wild Ricochet's small son; while Wild Ricochet both copies and redirects a spell, this either grabs that Mind Spring or it redirects that Demonfire. Either way, it's a little worse than Shunt, but it's also a little swingier -- people rarely go halfway on X spells, after all.