Its cheap to cast, gives you a huge mana advantage, and its impact on the early game is greater than almost any other card in the game
1 Otepec Huntmaster
Protecting the battlefield with various counter spells and board wipes, UW Control seeks to unleash a single good threat, nearly always Dream Trawler and then keep anything from dealing with it while it does its work
Unless the opponent has a specific action spell to clear him from the field, he will reliably generate points every single turn until victory is achieved
This means you cant wait to see the result of a flip before playing a spell that might protect one of your permanents from the result of the flip
I don't believe it saw much, if any, Constructed play at the time (I may be wrong on this, but can't seem to find anything from researching online), but the card was considered quite powerful stat-wise and featured some keywords not commonly found on Green cards