Harnessed Lightning

Color Pie Consideration

You mentioned you don't like red burn spells to become basically kill spells, as that would infringe upon black part of the color pie(and to a lesser extend white's). How does Harnessed Lightning in any energy deck not violate this, especially since there is only 1 card in standard that interacts with energy?

Harnessed Lightning turns a resource into damage. Red’s been doing that since Fireball and Disintegrate in Alpha.

Alpha Black Color Pie Colors Disintegrate Harnessed Lightning Red Spells Standard White

Comparing Parasitic Mechanics

I think arcane and energy are very similar in a functionally parasitic sense. Stuff like Glacial Ray and Kodama's Might are optimizing-parasitic. I think this is VERY similar to the energy cards, like Harnessed Lightning and the Thrivers. And cards that just produce energy seem just as parasitic as all splice cards (besides Evermind). I think the way you've defined functional parasiticism, it applies to almost no cards, which is why we assume you mean optimization parasitism without context.

Here’s a different deferent way to think of functional parasitism. When you look at the card, ask “did I get to do everything this card says it can do?”. For Splice onto Arcane, that’s using the ability splicing it onto another card. That requires at least one other card, one that is arcane (specifically from that block which is what makes it parasitic). An energy card (that produces and uses energy) doesn’t require another card to function. That is the difference.

Energy Cards Evermind Glacial Ray Harnessed Lightning Kodama's Might Parasitic Splice

Understanding Parasitism

By your definition of parasitic, Evermind was the only "truly" parasitic Splice card. You can cast Harnessed Lightning or Glacial Ray as a mediocre removal spell, but there's not much point in doing so without other energy affects. (There's nothing wrong with Energy as a mechanic; I'm just nitpicking.)

There’s functional parasitism and optimization parasitism. The former keeps the card from fully functioning without the use of another card from its subset (unique to the set). A card that produces energy but can’t spend it has a part of the card nonfunctional without another energy card (one that can spend it).Optimization parasitism involves cards that can function completely by themselves without the need of any other cards, but because of synergy between cards can often be better optimized playing other cards with the mechanic.For example, a card that produces and uses energy (assuming the use is equal to or less than the production) is a lot like a Serrated Arrows type card which comes with a limited number of uses. Energy is mostly optimization parasitism. The designs allow you to drop just one energy card in a deck or a packet of cards rather than always having to play a whole deck of energy cards.

Cast Energy Cards Evermind Glacial Ray Harnessed Lightning Limited Mechanics Parasitic Serrated Arrows Splice

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