#284 words

"Uh, I wanna ask you something." Cai stammers out, nervously fidgeting with the napkin he had used to wipe off his mouth earlier. Cai looked down at the yellowish stain he had left on the napkin.

Sora smiles his warmest smile. "Go ahead, hon, I don’t bite."

"Okay. Okay, right." Cai takes a deep breath. "Uh...I'm not good at words, or - uh, anyway. My point is - I like you. I mean like a lot. Shit, I sound like a teenager confessing his crush. Uh, I mean - I love you. A lot. And you're just. You're great. Uh. Yeah, uh, and my point is, kind of, I-"

"What exactly are you trying to say?" Sora interrupts, raising an eyebrow.

"Uh. Um." Cai goes red and keeps trying to stutter out a response. "What I was going to say was-"

"Spit it out."

"Haha. Uh. Yeah. So." Cai bites his lip, sticks his hand into his pocket, and pulls out a ring.

"Uh...would you marry me?"

Sora's eyes go wide. "You - seriously?" He kind of suspected it, but he wasn’t really prepared for that. Now it was his time to go red and stutter.

"Uh, yeah, that, uh, that’s what I was trying to ask," Cai admits, looking down at the napkin again.

"Yes," Sora says. "I will totally marry you."

Cai looks back up at his soon-to-be husband and can’t help but smile. "Oh my god! Okay! Yeah!"

He slips the ring onto Sora's finger. It's broad and made from carbon and steel with an intricate pattern engraved into it. Sora seems to love it.

"Is it - is it, uh, okay?" Cai asks nervously.

The card is Whirlwind Adept. It's a 4/2 blue creature with hexproof and prowess at common. This package is a powerhouse of frustrating game play.

Hexproof already brings certain frustrations as there is nothing worse than not being able to play your spells. The Adept puts this at common and the prowess turns any instant speed spell into a combat trick. So even if you block the Adept, you need to at least consider the possibility that your opponent has instants in hand (a blue or Jeskai player with instants? no...) and your blocking creature will die without getting the kill on the Adept. And those instants likely netted their controller other advantages, like bouncing a potential blocker or card draw, or canceling your own combat tricks, all with that added bonus of making the Adept stronger and tougher.

The card doesn't warp or break any formats. It may win games, but isn't a bomb to be built around. As such it may fly under the radar of many. But when the Adept is on the battlefield, the resulting game play is not enjoyable, and that is the biggest offense a card can make. If you don't block it you take four or more damage. If you do you may lose your creature without getting the kill. Blue has access to all sorts of evasion, which also likely buffed the Adept when cast. Both creatures and spells, short of a board wipe, are not effective. Hexproof alone makes counter play difficult. Prowess compounds that.