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First of all, I feel compelled to mention that Ancestral Recall is only a 2 card advantage, since you have to cast it first.

Secondly, although I was going to agree with Mark, I just thought of a few points that make this a harder decision.

A) I can see now what Zac's comparison with the life-loss ability really boils down to.  Why print something on a card that is only a benefit to you in an incredibly small number of cases, and that you can safely ignore without making the card worse.  Yes, you can just ignore the word 'target' and no one gets hurt (actually, that's not even true, as I'll point out below).


As an aside, what if the ability instead read: (G)(5): Target player other than you gains 10 life.
Is it still a trap?  I'd argue not, since you can use it to benefit an ally.  Card draw is the same.

B) Life gain cards in M2012 also have no targets "You gain 7 life" or whatever.  I'm surprised neither Mark or Zac mentioned this parallel.  Or did they and I missed it?  

C) If you somehow gain shroud, you would not be able to draw cards using Mark's version of divination.  I'm wondering if this would come up even more often than using it to deck an opponent.

On the whole I'd still favour the targetted version, mainly because I mostly play multiplayer and would really prefer the chance to mess around / help my allies, or whatever.  I feel the arguement that only 10% of Magic games are multiplayer is invalid in this case, because the benefit to players that do want to use it in multiplayer far outweighs the damage it does to single player games (not very much.  Odds are it changes nothing)

PS: I also think that claiming that commons shouldn't lead to hard choices in MP is balony.  Casting Giant Growth on your creatures is the same as NOT casting Giant Growth on your ally's creatures. Duskblading a creature that threatens your board position is the same (in cases) as NOT Duskblading a creature that threatens your ally's board position, and so on.  That's just multiplayer, the cards involved are irrelevant.  The -ability- to make that choice with Divination would be worth it.

The Option Charm argument is completely bogus.  Consider the following card:

Option Blade

Instant
Choose one - Destroy target nonblack creature an opponent controls, or sacrifice a nonblack creature.

This card looks worse than just "Destroy target nonblack creature an opponent controls", right?  So does that mean that all harmful targeted spells should be restricted to target only your opponents and their permanents?

Option Charm is an even worse example than this because it gratuitously includes the text "lose the game", which was obviously inserted for the sole purpose of making the card look bad, even though it is not a possible use of targeted card draw.  (Okay, it is if you cast it on yourself with less than two cards in your library, but that would still be true with untargeted card draw.)

The key feature of both Doom Blade and Opportunity is that the "bad" options are mostly invisible.  You know in the back of your mind that they're there, but they aren't what you think about every time you draw the card.

I said it on MaRo's article and I'll say it here again. The defaut should stay as is, but I absolutely think there should be more targeted draw than there is now. Not at common, but uncommon should be fine to see it too. That seems like it would be a good compromise.

I'm going to give it to Maro because Zac's argument was so bad. He set up a strawman by designing ridiculous spells and saying, "See, complexity is bad! Vanilla's are good!" Not until the end of the article did he make a valid point. Maro had solid reasoning, examples, and better yet, didn't condescend to his audience. 

i was for targeted draw, after MaRo is was wondering why i was for targeted. And now i know why.
I ll stick to targeted draw. If only it is coz it can be redirected.