MTG Salvation

I think the grind is a little slow and mana intensive, and if it gets disrupted before it flips than you lose everything. If it were a true looting effect and I could use the cards in my graveyard that might mean something, but as is, I think I'd much rather have a faster payoff utility card like Treasure Map.

Looting > Scrying (talking about this vs Treasure Map here)

However, the fact that it flips due to you exiling cards of different CMC can be very bad. You might mess up your curve, card quality, and optimal play lines in order to force the flip. If it gets blown up you are fricked. The lack of graveyard synergies hurts this card too.

It is cool that you can cast Emmy for one land but Treasure Map is still a more consistent ramper/super-ramper that can draw you cards, while being an okay card advantage engine pre-flip.

Pass for now. I'll jump on bandwagon if other people have success with it.

I'm sad this is an Exile and not a loot. I get that it wouldn't work mechanically that way (or would be abusable). I am always happy for new discard outlets, and the pay-off is legit. As is, I think the front side doesn't quite stand on its own - and the card will be hard to flip, and probably would require you to (at some point) exile otherwise useful cards to satisfy the criterion. At that point in the game - i.e. at least 7 or 8 turns in - a ridiculous amount of mana may not even be useful.

Treasure Map has been pretty awesome, but pass on this one.

W-w-w-wait... Mana equal to my life total?! That's Unstable levels of nuts. Too bad it never transforms. The looting is fine, but it needs to be able to flip once in a while, and I don't see that happening. As cool as the backside is, you do actually need to have something to do with all that mana even if you do flip it, or there's not much point.

Maybe I’d try to get cute with this if you could still flip it with 2 split cards and one other card, but always requiring 5 just seems too slow.

So where are all those people that wanted to play Ixalan's lands pre-transformed? How about this one? I'm sure everything will be fine.

I am pretty sure this will flip <15% of the time, so you gotta ask yourself how much you want a 2 mana artifact that loots into exile for 1 a pop.

I'm guessing the answer for most cubes is "not much."

I’d actually be all over this if the activation didn’t cost a mana. The rate is pretty good for sifting through your cards and a 2 mana cost is cheap. My biggest issue is that my curve is generally 1-4 with a couple of 5-6 drops in most decks. Getting 5 different will be hard to do when you still need a bunch of mana

Well, I look at it as exiling one land card plus four others ... that's still a lot. Could maybe make a goofball deck with Misthollow Griffins or Eternal Scourge .. but even that's just offering a weak safety valve to an extremely risky strategy.

It would have been nice if you got the exiled cards back after transformation (even just put them on top of your library in a random order), and that would definitely give ya something to do with All. The. Mana.