Hearthpwn

Like most Tempo players, I swap secrets in and out trying to adjust to the meta or whatever & to see what works.  I realize that Mirror and Counterspell are popular and so is Effigy & Duplicate.  I'll tell ya what though... Spell-bender can be a BRUTAL secret that your opponent wil never play around.  They just dont expect it and nothing causes more grief that Priests using Velens Chosen on YOUR minion.  Or, Blessing of Kings which gives you a 5/7 Body?  Or, having it out there and Priest uses Entomb on your 1/3 minion when they hoped to use it on something much better?  Or Warrior using Bash/Execute/Whatever on the "wrong" Minion?  You can tell its a great card because there is always a looooooong pause after they see what just happened. They are certainly pissed, LOL.

I dunno, its been a great card for me lately and has caused more than one rage quit. I understand that my sample size isnt large and maybe over time this secret wont be so good but the fact that it works with removal AND buffing spells makes it a great "tempo" card IMO.

Give it a shot in place of Effigy or Counterspell.  Ive always got sick value out of it :)

Spellbender is just a worse counterspell against everything other than buffs. And since most classes don't use buffs, well, there ya go.

Problem is, it doesn't protect you against board clears, which is a very big drawback. It also doesn't do much in the way of cards like Feral Spirit and Arcane Intellect, in which case a Counterspell would have been better. If the meta shifts to one where there's a lot of buffs, then I expect it to be run over Counterspell.

Like Soulzek pointed out, you must ask yourself why to run Spellbinder over Counterspell.

All right.  Maybe I over valued it then.  That's why I asked. :).  The problem with counter spell is that I've been burned by that numerous times with the damned coin.  If the scientists death pulls counter spell early and your opponent has the coin.....you know how that ends up.  Ugh.  

I do agree though that counter spell takes care of board clears and stuff like that.  

I may run one of each which would give my tempo deck a mirror, a counter spell and a spell bender.

I personally do not like counterspell because of the same reason: everyone expects it after Mirror Entity. So I just play Loatheb; Effigy; ME and Duplicate - sticky stuff vs CW; priests and helps vs zoo (i think so), though less useful vs face decks.

But there are tempo deck absolutely w/o secrets, which reached legend, so playable.

Also, what bugs me the most, it procs only from minions. It will not , for the least, save you from Quickshot, Kill Command, Fireball etc to the face.

Also-also, token costs 0 mana, so in an unlikely event of an effigy it will be worth nothing. With 1 mana cost it may be at least something.