Laboratory Maniac

[RyuumiGaroukuni]

Eye'm a Genius!!!

[Darkjester7]

This must be the card that turns a loss into a win... doesn't seem very useful though.

[RazeEmAll]

Hahaha, he seems so funny to build around. Mirror-Mad Phantasm, Skaab Ruinator, etc. all play nice with him.

[ragda]

Now that self-milling Phantasm makes a little more sense with this in the picture. Interesting...

On a side note... "The Strongest" has made an appearance here?!

[Rodiqio]

Jace, Memory Adept dedicated decks in the near future? Anyway, that Mirror-Mad Phatasm just loves this thing.

[Magus Jr]

This one's just funny.

[hotsauce]

Awesome.

One of those very simple effects, that upon seeing it I am left to wonder why we didn't already have it.

Probably more powerful than it looks. A card that rewards you for milling/drawing your entire deck has a ton of potential. A lot of combo potential, especially when combining with older cards.

[vger]

I do predict that several enthusiatic players may soon be playing this guy the wrong way or will be building decks that over-rely on him.

The fact that the alternate win condition is tacked onto a creature card rather than on another permanent card (an enchantment or artifact), makes it a rather risky and inconsistent one since it's so much more easily removable.

That is still not assuming that the decks that would be playing him, will be self-milling themselves in order to accomplish his alternate win condition. In such a process, the pilot could possibly mill a few copies of Laboratory Maniac and therefore if his/her opponent were to kill that very lone copy of Laboratory Maniac in play, it would literally mean that the pilot has just committed suicide.

Yet one may argue that the mill cards can be now redirected to the opponent instead and so all hope is not lost even if you lose the win condition in Laboratory Maniac. Still that's not forgetting how he/she has already utilized a bunch of mill cards on himself/herself, with another bunch of cards in the graveyard and that means he/she is actually left with very few tools to work with. And we all do understand how much easier is dealing damage than milling someone.

But I'm merely speaking the above in regards to the decks that over-rely on Laboratory Maniac to win.

I do feel that he should be only be sought after as a Plan B or even Plan C in any possible decks that play him. That's probably the more realistic and smarter way of playing him in my opinion.

For example, he could be utilized in Legacy as an alternate game plan for Dredge and/or Cephalid Breakfast. For Standard, he could also possibly be used in decks that pack Skaab Ruinator, Mad-Mirror Phantasm and the sorts. Such decks do have dominant strategies (being beatdown or combo), with Laboratory Maniac merely being a complementary strategy and yet not replacing the former.

Don't get me wrong though, he's actually not that bad of a card to say honestly. I mean there's nothing much to complain about a 2/2 blue creature that provides an alternate win condition and only costs 2U (splashable).

I'm also however not implying that he's definitely going to see tons of constructed play because he probably won't, but if mill were to become a viable and successful archtype, we could possibly see this guy in some sideboards real soon.

[agracru]

MillMyselfFTW.dec would be hilarious. I'd love to see someone try it; with no more than two Mirror-Mad Phantasms, it could be a thing, though it'd probably be pretty slow. If Mill decks become popular without using this guy, then I think Vger's right, he'll be a sideboard card to defend against them for sure.

[mani]

I'm so ready to be one of those enthusiastic clowns that vger is talking about, and run a deck around him :>

As far as protection goes...ideally, I'd have him under a Shelldock Isle, and pop him out the upkeep after i've played Leveler :>