MTG Salvation

For Dreamscape, another batch of weird and wonderful rares

Lucidity Guardian 2W
Creature - Griffin (R)
Flash
Flying
Whenever a spell not cast from its owner's hand would resolve, exile it instead.
2/1

Aleen, Prophet Unwoven
Legendary Creature - Human Wizard (M)
Whenever you cast a spell, put the top three cards of your library into your graveyard.
At the end of each opponent's turn, if you have fifteen or less cards in your library, take an extra turn after this one.
3/4

Focusing Astrovus
Artifact (R)
If Focusing Astrovus is in your opening hand, you may reveal it then search your library for up to five cards and exile them. Then shuffle your library.
T: Add one mana of any color to your mana pool.
Was originally designed around making Advantageous Proclamation as a leyline

Blurred Horizons
Land (R)
, Pay 1 life, Sacrifice Blurred Horizons: Choose a basic land card you own from outside the game and put it onto the battlefield.

Lucidity Guardian - "If a spell would resolve, if it wasn't cast from its owner's hand, exile it instead."
I like this. Interacts with premonition and other mechanics in your set quite nicely.

Aleen, Prophet Unwoven - A pretty neat build-around mythic rare creature. I don't have any problems with this.

Focusing Astrovus - There is no point to having this permanent on the battlefield prior to turn 1. By the time the ability could first trigger, the trigger event will have already past.

Blurred Horizons - Not so sure this has the immediate effect appeal of being a rare, though I can see it being so for power and frequency issues. Does this work in limited? I'm not sure if players are allowed to just stockpile a bunch of basic land cards just to keep in their sideboard.

Quote from Thought Criminal »

Blurred Horizons - Not so sure this has the immediate effect appeal of being a rare, though I can see it being so for power and frequency issues. Does this work in limited? I'm not sure if players are allowed to just stockpile a bunch of basic land cards just to keep in their sideboard.

At any limited events players have access to any number of basic lands in their sideboard.
http://blogs.magicjudges.org/rulestips/2011/02/constructed-vs-limited-sideboard-use/

Blurred Horizons is a five color fetch land that "costs" a sideboard slot. Is very exciting for spike deckbuilders and tournament players. If you run 4 of these, do you give up 3 sideboard slots? 5? 8? 15? (If you want to get any color.)

This is a cool batch. I like how the griffin hoses premonition and other shenanigans.

Aleena's second ability is really cool. This a great Johnny card.

You could probably fix the Astrovus by giving its first activated ability a T activation. (Unless there's something I'm missing.)

Since Blurred Horizons is the "eleventh fetchland" and because it does something weird (getting cards from outside the game), I think its rare status is well-deserved. I also like how it shows off your "make Magic feel strange again" theme in a very elegant and simple way.

Just for my own edification, how does Premonition work with milling? If I have a premonition card face up under the top card of my library and I get Tome Scoured, do I put the top card of my library into my graveyard, cast the premonition card, and then mill the next four cards?

I honestly think blurred horizons is overcosted. I don't think you need to pay life for the effect when you are having to fill essential sideboard slots with otherwise useless basics. This is a huge cost in constructed.

I also doubt it will be played in legacy - as the ability to shuffle after a Brainstorm is a big reason why Fetchlands are so popular. That said - I think it is a very cool card.

Quote from DashPrague515 »

Lucidity Guardian - Nice card... But I don't think it should appear in same set as Premonition, in my opinion it's not very good idea to have so efficient hate against one of your main themes or mechanics in your set... It's obviously good thing to have something like this in Standard, but it can lead to some very bad moments in limited.

This, and personally I don't like that this actually counters the spell. If it were blue I'd be fine with it, but in White, I'd rather it be a continuous effect. This still lets you easily flash it in before the spell gets cast anyway, since the casting (a far as I understand Premonition's wording) is a triggered effect that casts the card on resolution.

Quote from Circeus »

Quote from DashPrague515 »

Lucidity Guardian - Nice card... But I don't think it should appear in same set as Premonition, in my opinion it's not very good idea to have so efficient hate against one of your main themes or mechanics in your set... It's obviously good thing to have something like this in Standard, but it can lead to some very bad moments in limited.

This, and personally I don't like that this actually counters the spell. If it were blue I'd be fine with it, but in White, I'd rather it be a continuous effect. This still lets you easily flash it in before the spell gets cast anyway, since the casting (a far as I understand Premonition's wording) is a triggered effect that casts the card on resolution.

Lucidity Guardian was actually designed as a hoser for Memoir, that it ended up hosing premonition, graveyard effect, flashback, storm etc was just a bonus.

For reference:
Memoir X (When this card is put into your graveyard from anywhere, including after you cast it, You may cast a copy by paying its memoir cost.)

Quote from DashPrague515 »

Lucidity Guardian - Nice card... But I don't think it should appear in same set as Premonition, in my opinion it's not very good idea to have so efficient hate against one of your main themes or mechanics in your set... It's obviously good thing to have something like this in Standard, but it can lead to some very bad moments in limited.

But it is very fragile, it dies to pretty much anything. Counter cards like this are a good thing, we see them all the time in sets. They are valuable developmentally in both limited and constructed as a way of keeping certain themes from being oppressive. As long as this is mostly a one-off it's good that it does. It is also a rare so it couldn't be any safer without being inefficient at do it's job in set.

Quote from Astrolabe »

Just for my own edification, how does Premonition work with milling? If I have a premonition card face up under the top card of my library and I get Tome Scoured, do I put the top card of my library into my graveyard, cast the premonition card, and then mill the next four cards?

Unlike card draw, milling nearly always happens as a single event rather than one card at a time. Thus in your example the face-up card would get put into your graveyard as normal with Tome Scour. However a card like Treasure Cruise thats draws cards actually does it one at a time and thus you would draw the top card, cast the premonition card for free then draw the other two cards.
Not obvious but it is how the magic rules already work while also creating the best gameplay (as your opponent can mill you, but you can Divination without downside.)

I'm gonna repost another version of Astrovus. As I'm not happy with it currently, and I'm increasing the prophet's threshold to 15 after a short playtest.

You can't have it both ways. You can't argue that a rare won't keep something from being oppressive yet argue that it will ruin limited. Because it is a rare, it will only come up occasionally and when it does it can be dealt with. Removal isn't common but I wouldn't say it is 'very rare', there's no way that you can't have at least SOME removal to play against this card if it's problematic, main or in the board.
Every single set has hate against it's main theme. Not necessarily in a blatant and stand-out way like with the examples you listed, but purely through things like artifact, enchantment and land destruction. More often than not, set themes can be fought using commons (e.g. Fade into Antiquity), a single rare is hardly much of a risk unless a theme is very fragile. Instead it will simply provide a safety mechanism against themes that can be become very dominant and allow for some interesting meta about how valuable such hate it is. Sure, it is good to be careful not too put something like this at common, likely at uncommon as well, and not in any sizeable amount, but it seems like an overreaction to think it will do much harm as opposed to the good.

Quote from Doombringer »

Quote from Astrolabe »

Just for my own edification, how does Premonition work with milling? If I have a premonition card face up under the top card of my library and I get Tome Scoured, do I put the top card of my library into my graveyard, cast the premonition card, and then mill the next four cards?

Unlike card draw, milling nearly always happens as a single event rather than one card at a time. Thus in your example the face-up card would get put into your graveyard as normal with Tome Scour. However a card like Treasure Cruise thats draws cards actually does it one at a time and thus you would draw the top card, cast the premonition card for free then draw the other two cards.
Not obvious but it is how the magic rules already work while also creating the best gameplay (as your opponent can mill you, but you can Divination without downside.)

In that case, have you considered adding "up to" to your self-mill cards in this set? (For example- Put up to three cards from the top of your library into your graveyard.) I feel like that would help prevent players from accidentally milling away their premonition cards and from having to waste game time repeatedly counting the number of cards on top their premonition cards/making sure they don't mill them away by mistake.

Quote from Astrolabe »

Quote from Doombringer »

Quote from Astrolabe »

Just for my own edification, how does Premonition work with milling? If I have a premonition card face up under the top card of my library and I get Tome Scoured, do I put the top card of my library into my graveyard, cast the premonition card, and then mill the next four cards?

Unlike card draw, milling nearly always happens as a single event rather than one card at a time. Thus in your example the face-up card would get put into your graveyard as normal with Tome Scour. However a card like Treasure Cruise thats draws cards actually does it one at a time and thus you would draw the top card, cast the premonition card for free then draw the other two cards.
Not obvious but it is how the magic rules already work while also creating the best gameplay (as your opponent can mill you, but you can Divination without downside.)

In that case, have you considered adding "up to" to your self-mill cards in this set? (For example- Put up to three cards from the top of your library into your graveyard.) I feel like that would help prevent players from accidentally milling away their premonition cards and from having to waste game time repeatedly counting the number of cards on top their premonition cards/making sure they don't mill them away by mistake.

A lot of the mill cards in my set already use the up to wording However Aleen needs to use the fixed mill to keep her extra turn ability fair and the flavor that I want to work.