It is very similar to duress in that it only costs one black mana and you get to look at opponents hand. But you get to choose a creature card rather than a non-creature as duress. This might be a lot more effective than duress in some cases but again it might not. Type 1 and 1.5 are pretty rare sadly. These kinds of 'combos' were never available before, because the required cards were never in the right expansions at the same time.
Art looks much better on cards than on the screen.
7th ed isnt as bad as some of you make it out to be. I just created a deck completely out of 7th that, with a few cards from expansion sets, could place in the top 8 in a card shop tourny. I dont know how it would do at the professional level, but it uses Static Orb. Everyone in my area plays 1.5. Well, I quit Magic a while ago, when 6e came out, for various reasons, one of which was the art was getting dull, ugly, and all looking the same.