MTG Salvation

Séance

Y/N?

Originally when I saw this card I dismissed it because it exiled your stuff, tokens not getting haste and costed a ton of mana. After seeing SaffronOlive play seance it made me think "man seance looks awesome". Do you think seance is playable in edh? How does it compare to other options? What kind of deck is best for seance if any?

Seance is a super fringe card. It seems breakable, but compared to cheaper Mimic Vat or more reliable Debtors' Knell and Sheoldred, Whispering One it is hard to justify. It takes some real work to break, but you have some options:

1) Haste! Play it in R/W/x, alongside a haste generator such as Fervor, Hammer of Purphoros, or Urabrask, the Hidden. Akroma's Memorial can work in monowhite but is expensive, and of course Lightning Greaves or Swiftfoot Boots is also an option. R/W and Monowhite are so desperate for lategame value that this may legitimately be a strong play, especially in slower decks.

2) Populate! If you are using Trostani, Selesnya's Voice or Rhys the Redeemed as your commander the card has very little downside although definitely still some downside with the exiling. Still, since you get to keep the copy and you're clearly wanting to use this on powerful EtB/LtB creatures, it can be a fun inclusion.

3) Sundial of the Infinite! You can keep your copies by using Sundial. If you are playing a deck that wants Sundial by its nature (probably Geist of Saint Traft), Seance may be intriguing although, again, it exiles the target which can be a bummer.

Seance is cool in grave based decks that thankfully, typically have white in them anyway. I have a hard time not laughing during discussion of the card though - just memories of all those people getting together and burning them trying to get rich

But yeah typically you'll get your four mana's worth if you have the infrastructure for it, follow Hawk's tips and check EDHREC for B/W/X generals that you might like.

This is an interesting card for the fact the a single person was trying to see if they could change the pricing of it. https://www.reddit.com/r/magicTCG/comments/3w2iko/the_guy_who_paid_people_to_destroy_séances_is_now/

Maybe Wizards of the Coast reprinted it just to prove a point that nobody should try and speculate and influence card pricing as they will just reprint it under your nose.

It looks like a card that could be really good, but I think without the "haste" like so many of the return to play and exile at end of turn cards, this one is much harder to pull off. It has to have one hell of a ETB trigger!

Quote from illakunsaa »

Séance

Y/N?

Originally when I saw this card I dismissed it because it exiled your stuff, tokens not getting haste and costed a ton of mana. After seeing SaffronOlive play seance it made me think "man seance looks awesome". Do you think seance is playable in edh? How does it compare to other options? What kind of deck is best for seance if any?

I freaking love that card. I bought 4-copies back when it was released lol. I think the card is good and its a lot of fun but you have to build with it in mind. One of the biggest advantages is that you don't pay any man to activate its ability and it triggers on EVERY upkeep, including opponents. It basically guarantees you can trigger Ephara, God of the Polis, for example, as long as you have creatures in the 'yard. I looked it up on EDHREC to see what other people were playing with it and discovered that its popular in decks that run a lot of ways to copy creatures or tokens so basically Bant colors (for things like Populate and Rite of Replication). I think that's as good an idea as any. Red has plenty of ways to give things haste if that was a real draw back but honestly, having haste only matters some of the time because haste on your opponent's turn doesn't do you any good.

I think it is best in decks that still want value from creatures that have died but aren't necessarily running a ton of ways to get them back. In EDH, if you want Seance you might also want Back from the Brink. You're probably going to want to grab some kind of super high impact etb creature like Luminate Primordial, Cataclysmic Gearhulk, Duplicant/Phyrexian Ingestor, etc. but are also good blockers and then just sequence your plays in such a way that you can use it to protect yourself on your opponent's turns.

In short, yes. I love it but its best in ETB effect decks that don't usually have a lot of ways to get creatures back from the Graveyard (like in UW).

Ugh, now I'm going to have to build an Ephara deck. The bug got planted and now I need to scratch that itch!

If you can find a deck with white that can fill the deck with ETB effects you can get 4 creaturs back in one turn rotation in a 4 player game. That is powerfull. One creature can just be a good attacker if you have greaves in play.

That is a powerfull effect, 4 times each turn for 4 mana.

But the shell, I have no idea. Perhaps have Trostani the populator as your commander?

I think Séance was designed with populate in mind, and it has a synergy with haste and ETB triggers (though, of course, Feldon of the Third Path does it better). It's very fringe, but it's not that Innistrad's Wood Elemental by any means. That would seem to be Graveyard Shovel. While talking about bad Innistrad cards, Innistrad's Razor Boomerang is Maw of the Mire.

I ran Akroma, Angel of Wrath in a brick-voltron style deck that had a plethora of ways to recur her from the graveyard. Resurrection, Defy Death, Breath of Life, Marshal's Anthem, Karmic Guide, Artisan of Kozilek, Angelic Renewal, and Seance were all used as 1-shot reanimate effects to pop Akroma back to play.

If she didn't have haste naturally, then that reanimation gimmick wouldn't have worked very well at all, and seance would have been ignored.

I can see it being played in a more casual etb/blink deck like Roon. It's nice to re-buy various etb triggers each upkeep. But there are strictly better cards for this effect. Wake the Dead would be 1000% better, since it is easy to recur the spell with eternal witness effects, and it allows for multiple etb triggers to go off at once.

Quote from herenorthere »

Ugh, now I'm going to have to build an Ephara deck. The bug got planted and now I need to scratch that itch!

This sounds like it has a place in an Ephara deck. I used to play one a few years ago, but I also feel motivated to revisit the deck archetype to see what innovations there have been in recent(ish) sets.

Quote from darrenhabib »

Quote from herenorthere »

Ugh, now I'm going to have to build an Ephara deck. The bug got planted and now I need to scratch that itch!

This sounds like it has a place in an Ephara deck. I used to play one a few years ago, but I also feel motivated to revisit the deck archetype to see what innovations there have been in recent(ish) sets.

The main reason I never played one in the past was because it always seemed like it was too hard to pull off on a budget. Things like Seance and some more recent cards out of our return to Innistrad seem to make it more worth looking at.

I'm looking for multi-card recursion in a u/w deck of mine and I considered Séance. However, I think I might get better results with Back from the Brink or even Recall since my CMCs are low. Séance wants to take advantage of EtB effects, preferably big ones since there's no mana cost restriction associated with what you recur.

I just wish the card worked more like the unearth ability so you could abuse it with blink. That's my main hangup with the card, it doesn't really help your board state much. I really just want a colorshifted Dawn of the Dead.

I had missed that this triggers on EVERY upkeep, which definitely is a little spicier with Ephara, God of the Polis. I still am of the mind that there's better recursion, but for Geist or Ephara or Trostani the card is at least worth considering. Also worth considering in some R/W decks. I think anything with Black is better off looking elsewhere.

I think that If you really built around it that it is very easy to abuse but I would argue that 9/10 there are better options or methods available. Even in a yard based deck you dont want to be exiling your creatures.

I guess Misthollow Griffin and Eternal Scourge are a thing. Those are crappy reasons to run Seance though. I think cards like Mulldrifter and Cloudblazer are more like what Seance wants. I like incrementa effects the best, ones that you just want the ETB trigger but don't care about the body as much. I feel like Seance is best used when you are trying to get accidental value off of it, like when you aren't really building around it.

If you are building a deck that has white but not much interest in recurring dead creatures but valuable ETB abilities (like Mulldrifter, Cloudblazer, Wall of Omens) then Seance starts to look better because normally those creatures would just rot in the 'yard. With Seance you start to milk additional value out of them. You pay 4 mana and get to draw a few extra cards, gain a little extra life, get a few extra tokens, block/trade with a few more creatures. I keep picturing some kind of Azorius, Boros, Jeskai control deck that uses ETB creatures but doesn't really care about the creatures either.

That's why I keep coming back to Ephara. She wants you to play creatures but mostly to draw cards. She's really just a control commander with fatty finishers and the ETB effects of the creatures are kind of good but you care less about the body or heavily abusing the blink like for a commander like Brago. I think Seance is good here because its a single 4cmc investment and when things die to your wraths you can get further incremental value off of those creatures that you wouldn't otherwise have had. That might be removal from Luminate Primordial, card draw from Mulldrifter, land grab from Solemn Simulacrum/Pilgrim's Eye. Most of those creatures aren't particularly impressive but they do something Ephara wants which is card advantage/control but on a body instead. For 4 mana a Mulldrifter can net you 3 more cards than it otherwise would have. That's decent for 4 mana. Anything else you get off of that is pure gravy and even a vanilla creature is going to give you another card off of Ephara. I think the investment is totally worth the mana. I don't see a card like Defy Death putting in that kind of work. Conjurer's Closet is fine but doesn't work once the creature is dead and it only triggers during your turn. In thise case I would argue that Seance might actually be better than Closet in an Ephara deck.

tl;dr- I think Ephara really wants Seance. I think Seance is great in Ephara. I can't think of a single other deck that wants Seance except some weird kind of Tokenless Trostani token deck that uses Seance to make tokens of creatures that are otherwise not tokens.

It is the one card that enables a grandeur deck. So yes. Séance + Oriss, Samite Guardian + Command Beacon.

Also works well with effects that care about tokens like Doubling Season, Parallel Lives, Primal Vigor, Growing Ranks, Wayfaring Temple, Parallel Evolution, or Second Harvest. I probably missed some, too.

My Saffi Eriksdotter blink deck runs it. Almost every creature is either ETB or ramp.

• Knight of the White Orchid
  
• Qasali Pridemage
  
• Reclamation Sage
  
• Kitchen Finks
  
• Yavimaya Elder
  
• Eternal Witness
  
• Wood Elves
  
• Rishkar, Peema Renegade
  
• Solemn Simulacrum
  
• Restoration Angel
  
• Karmic Guide
  
• Reveillark
  
• Acidic Slime
  
• Thragtusk
  
• Captain of the Watch
  
• Greenwarden of Murasa
  
• Duplicant
  
• Sun Titan
  
• Resolute Archangel
  
• Avenger of Zendikar
  
• Hornet Queen
  
• Craterhoof Behemoth

Then there's the stuff that helps me abuse the ETBs:

• Parallel Lives
  
• Panharmonicon
  
• Doubling Season
  
• Séance
  
• Cloudstone Curio
  
• Trostani, Selesnya's Voice
  

Then the toolbox enablers:

• Fauna Shaman
  
• Birthing Pod
  
• Natural Order
  
• Wild Pair
  
• Chord of Calling

Of all my decks, I think I've kept it together longest because it's so fun to play and the Seance gets me pretty absurd value once I get an engine online and isn't bad even if I just get one or two triggers out of it.

So the easiest way to break Séance is this guy

Mirror-Mad Phantasm (can also be done with anything to make a token copy of him or any clone).

Seance exiles this guy creating a token, activate his ability which shuffles nothing into the deck and then puts your entire deck into the GY because it is a highlander format. Then either Lab-Man or some GY bull*****.

Quote from Taleran »

So the easiest way to break Séance is this guy

Mirror-Mad Phantasm (can also be done with anything to make a token copy of him or any clone).

Seance exiles this guy creating a token, activate his ability which shuffles nothing into the deck and then puts your entire deck into the GY because it is a highlander format. Then either Lab-Man or some GY bull*****.

I did this in standard! To date one of my most fun standard decks. It also played as a sun titan good stuff deck, because Sun Titan getting back many Phantasmal Images and a Fervor was hilarious too!

For EDH I would be looking at Vitu-Ghazi Guildmage which I also did in Standard.

Séance falls into the realm of Johnny cards. I mean, there are possible options like Misthollow Griffin and Squee, the Immortal, but most people are just playing those with Food Chain.

It has uses, as people here have mentioned. I mean, it's not like Wood Elemental or Carnival of Souls (a card which will literally kill you before it does anything relevant) or Mudhole or Rotting Fensnake. It's more like Scornful Egotist or Life from the Loam: It has its uses, but you're not going to just slam it in any deck.

Quote from hyalapterouslemur »

Séance falls into the realm of Johnny cards. I mean, there are possible options like Misthollow Griffin and Squee, the Immortal, but most people are just playing those with Food Chain.

It has uses, as people here have mentioned. I mean, it's not like Wood Elemental or Carnival of Souls (a card which will literally kill you before it does anything relevant) or Mudhole or Rotting Fensnake. It's more like Scornful Egotist or Life from the Loam: It has its uses, but you're not going to just slam it in any deck.

I shouldn't respond to a necro thread, but you dare blaspheme against my Life from the Loam?

I get the point though; generally speaking you need to include specific cards for both cards to be good - the difference being with Egoist and this, you frequently have better alternatives, wheras Life is the only game in town for what it enables.

Quote from hyalapterouslemur »

I mean, it's not like Wood Elemental or Carnival of Souls (a card which will literally kill you before it does anything relevant)

Carnival of Souls is a good card though. If its gotten you killed before it does anything relevant, you are misusing the card.

Combo Example 1: Enduring Renewal + Carnival of Souls + Death Cultist
Combo Example 2: Thopter Foundry + Sword of the Meek + Carnival of Souls

Quote from Tokata0 »

Quote from hyalapterouslemur »

Life from the Loam: It has its uses, but you're not going to just slam it in any deck.

Wait, you do not throw life from the loam in every deck containing green and fetchlands?^^

There are more efficient ways to recur lands, many of which also work with a lot more green strategies, and more general recursion cards. What makes LFTL shine is dredge 3, which, unique to LFTL, can be used with cycling lands to loop.

That's what I was getting at.

(An aside: This opens a whole other discussion on overused cards.)

Old thread. Please feel free to create a new one if you'd like to continue discussion of the topic.