sansafro187-blog asked: I thought it was interesting that the concern with Detain was that it didn't look splashy enough, and there wasn't a similar concern expressed with Unleash. Unleash is the only mechanic that I've seen people show active hostility and/or dismissal toward, and while it might play better than it looks, you've got to admit it "sometimes this has a +1/+1 counter!" looks really rinky-dink at a glance. Why didn't R&D go with "Unleash N" templating, since you could theoretically do more with it?

We didn’t make it Unleash N because it didn’t need it. The point of the mechanic wasn’t to make you always put on the counter so making a bigger differential doesn’t help any.

I think Unleash is the mechanic most being undervalued right now. It is much better than the naysayers think. It reminds me a lot of exalted when it first came out and players were like “Why would I ever want to attack with just one creature?”

I recommend playing with Unleash before condemning it.