You’re wrong! Snapcaster only “doesn’t work” with alternate costs, such as FoW or Disrupting Shoal, since flashback is also an alternate cost. You can only pay with one alternate cost at a time. Retort and Lightning, like Treasure Cruise or Goblin Electromancer, simply reduce how much the spell costs to cast, no matter where it’s cast from or how.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but, Snap gives flashback equal to the card’s mana cost. He doesn’t work with cost reducing effects such as this.

It hoses plenty of tier 2-3 decks, but Tron and Storm are the most obvious/popular targets for Sphere. Only have so much word space!

Reread the card. Won’t let you target your own creatures, but it’s still been over-performing even without that ability.

This seems correct

Tapping the land does not cause the land to add an additional mana to your pool, it triggers the mana ability of sprawl which adds the mana to your pool. So it doesn’t work the way you think it does. The mana come from sprawl’s ability, not the land.

I don’t think this is correct. Newer Wild Growth effects like Sheltered Aerie give the land an additional mana ability (“Enchanted land has…”) but Utopia Sprawl uses the original Wild Growth template (“Whenever enchanted land is tapped for mana…”) under which the source of the additional mana is the aura, not the land. As I understand it, the land auras with the newer template are affected by Damping Sphere, but ones with the older template aren’t.

Wouldn’t really call that a use since Sphere would never (right?) come in against Ponza.

As I understand it Utopia Sprawl modifies the enchanted Forest’s mana ability, adding an additional mana of the chosen color alongside the normal mana.

Does it work that way? I would think sprawl is a triggered mana ability and not a replacement effect, so the land is tapped for one mana and the trigger adds another mana, not the actual land, so sphere would not affect it.

Wow, targeting Shadow is really cool!

I’ve been thinking about it replacing The singleton tasigur in the more scour focused version of traverse shadow. It can easily pay UU to cast it, and removing a blocker on a critical turn is about the floor for it, It can also kill goyfs and act as a 3rd but worse TBR targeting shadow after it swings to get in for 13. Tasi has been feeling worse and worse as fewer decks are completely reliant on push now.

Not if opponents kill Snap in response to the target! Merfolk is privy to running Unified Will in the sideboard, which to its credit casts off Mutavault, but that’s maybe something to consider as well.

Moreover, a lot of Merfolk are Wizards, including Cursecatcher.