It just makes a lot more sense to curve out with Blazing Bomb, Sahagin, The Emperor, Ultros and Shantotto, THEN start chaining together copies of Retrieve the Esper, rather than trying to play noncreature spells the whole game
MTG X Final Fantasy set details As part of the Universes Beyond series, Magic: The Gathering Final Fantasy joins the company of crossovers featuring Fallout and Assassins Creed to name a few
Another solution is simply to play Destructive Flow in a deck full of cheap cards and kill your opponent with one- and two-drops while no one can cast anything bigger
Part of whats so weird about Balance is just how long it took most of the world to realize how broken the card was
But in the case of this one, the core of this remained almost untouched the entire time
Judge's Familiar would be better for sure, you could run both but Raptor is certainly wrong if over the Familiar