A-Geological Appraiser
The "A-" prefix on this card is the whole story: it marks the rebalanced Alchemy version, and the reason it exists is one of the more dramatic corrections to a discover creature. The original printing already read "if you cast it," but at just three mana it was cheap enough to deploy repeatedly, and paired with ways to recur it, that turned into a free-cast engine that spiraled fast enough to warrant a Pioneer and Explorer ban, an unusually quick death for a creature this efficient. The Alchemy rebalance is the surgical fix: bumping the mana cost to slows the engine down while leaving the honest line intact. Cast it from hand, hit discover 3, discover into a nonland spell of mana value 3 or less and either cast it free or bank it. What this version preserves is the good part of the design (a red creature that generates a burst of tempo the moment it lands) without the part that let players build a machine around the trigger rather than the card. It is a rare case of the fix being visible on the card itself: the rebalanced text is not a rewrite of when the ability is allowed to speak but a change to how easily it can be cast.
