In the latest Latest Developments article, Devin Low discusses the origin of monocolor hybrid. Did you miss that? Back when they previewed a booster, one of the standout cards for me was Beseech the Queen, which can be payed for with BBB, BB2, B4, or 6. When I saw that, I wrote to Mark Rosewater about just how cool that looked to me.
Now, here's the whole card:
A tutor! I do love a tutor.
It will take some testing to see how this works out in practice. If I stick this in a B/G Rock build, will I tend to be playing this at BB2 with four lands in play? Who knows? But the land-based restriction is fascinating, and in combination with the price puts a sort of limiter on when this will be played and what you'll be picking up with it.
...and it's Uncommon, which is quite nice.
Now, setting my enthusiasm aside for a moment, Diabolic Tutor grabs any card, sans restriction, for BB2, and isn't played. After all, 4 mana to put a card in hand suggests that the card really, really needs to do something impressive, because you probably aren't playing it that same turn. This is why, in contrast, Primal Command is exceptionally strong. Tutoring for a solution against aggro? Tutor and gain 7 life. Tutoring for a solution against a control or combo deck? Tutor and bounce a permanent to put them off tempo. Primal Command succeeds because, even though you "lose" a turn to the tutoring, you don't have to get completely helplessly kicked around for that turn. Diabolic and Beseech, on the other hand, mean you have to hand over a turn in exchange for tutoring.
Good or not? We'll see. Cool? For sure.