I've been playing with Feather for a few weeks now and she is seriously the most fun card I have ever played with in Magic. The durdles are amazing! She'll scry and draw, all while getting flickers and buffs. You can Lightning Helix her when nothing else is happening. Your opponent is over there playing FAIR MAGIC while you're casting Defiant Strikes and Samut's Sprints, and it's just a thing of beauty. Finally you hit her with Grapeshot, and she goes off like a gatling gun. Best card ever! =D

Happy you’re enjoying her card.

Between Abrupt Decay going in the wrong colors, lack of mortify, and a depressing and bad Zealous Persecution as a split card, will BW as a combination ever get an interesting non creature spell again?

No, R&D got together and said, “All right from this time forward, we shall never make an interesting non creature spell again in black/white. Everyone in agreement? Good. Just don’t tell grapeshot we’re doing this. Maro, are you even paying attention?”

What encouraged the seemingly abrupt banning of Grapeshot, Empty the Warrens, and Invigorate in Pauper? Did Wizards recently decide that it would be best to reduce the impact of combo on the format? If so, does this mean that Pauper will be undergoing a paradigm shift? Did I ask that last question just so I could find an excuse to use the phrase "paradigm shift?"

The banning team got a lot of input from people playing Pauper as well as looking at the data from Magic Online, one of the places where the format is the most popular. The general feeling, as well as what data crunching showed, is that storm was a little too dominant, so they did what banning teams do, they corrected.