Because his ability counts any creature dying, Sephiroth makes combat an absolute nightmare for your opponent, and transforming him is very much on the table, especially when he has a nice "enters or attacks" trigger
If the target permanent is an illegal target by the time Stroke of Midnight tries to resolve, the spell doesn't resolve
This is incredible fixing, and the fact it enters untapped early is really, really nice
While this card is on the table, if the rest of your deck is doing what it's supposed to be doing, you can essentially stop your opponent from having a viable win condition
Used correctly, shifting cards in allows players to field relatively cheap offensive units early in the game and then convert them to powerful scoring machines later on
Its visually portrayed as a board where you add colored markers to gain abilities, Holt explains