Dance of Shadows

Mass evasion costed like a finisher, with the math leaning hard on going wide. Fear granted to a single attacker is a marginal upgrade; fear granted to an entire board, plus a small power pump, is the line that ends games against an opponent who has invested in green and white blockers and has nothing that qualifies as an artifact or black creature to stop the swing. What complicates the evaluation is the Arcane subtype. In the era when splice onto Arcane was a defining mechanic, an Arcane sorcery was never read purely on its own rate: it was a base that other spells could attach themselves to, so casting Dance of Shadows could become the moment you stapled an extra effect or two onto the same resolution, paying once and resolving a chain. That changes how to value the price. Cast cold and alone, the spell is a slow, expensive overrun variant that strands you when the board stalls and produces nothing if nobody can attack profitably. As the anchor of a splice deck, the same cast buys an evasive finish plus whatever riders the rest of the chain carries for their splice costs. The tension (a clumsy headline effect whose real value comes from a mechanic the card itself does not have, only invites) is why it reads as overpriced in isolation and reasonable to anyone who understood the chain it was built to begin.