The color pie was much of the way through shaking out (though Dark Ritual still had years before migrating into red), but Limited had only been supported for a few years
And if you crank the difficulty up, the AI can actually put up a good fight
That means if we get into unfavorable combat situations, we can use a card like Quicksilver Dagger or Thornbite Staff (there are unfortunately no Pirate Shamans) to continue getting damage in
It can serve as a tempo play when you are trying to set up your gameplan against aggro, and against a slower deck or just any game where you have time, you can use it to bounce Merfolk Secretkeeper to your hand, essentially drawing an extra copy of Venture Deeper
They are the foundation of any deck, providing necessary support for gameplay
I can lead with a Faithless Looting and discard two Bloodghasts and then I can put a fetch land into play to trigger the vampire spirits to come back