MTG Salvation

Seems underpowered to me, even for limited. A +1/+1 counter isn't worth a card, and the prevent 1 damage isn't relevant that often. I'd have it prevent all damage to the target creature, that would make it a playable combat trick in most limited formats.

Summoner's Altar4
Legendary Artifact (M)
Sacrifice a creature: Add 1 to your mana pool.
12, sacrifice ~:Name a creature type. Search your library for any number of creatures of that type and put them on the battlefield. Then shuffle your library.

A more expensive Phyrexian Altar that can win the game if you have a tribal deck. Mainly for kitchen table, EDH, and tribal cubes, but it might see play in a constructed format if there are strong tribal synergies and good token generators.

Sacrificing creatures seems too narrow to me, it's not a mechanic that is seeing much emphasis in Theros block, so this card probably won't have much effect when it comes down. I think it's a bit underpowered, maybe have the sacrifice effect happen at EoT so you can get an attacker or chump blocker for your 4 mana?

Playa
Land (R)
T: Add 1 to your mana pool.
T, Sacrifice ~: Counter target activated ability. (Mana abilities can't be targeted.)

Primarily for Modern/Legacy as a way to hose fetchlands, although it has a ton of other applications.

I like it mechanically, but the word "pray" doesn't work in this context. Prayer is typically directed to a being rather than a concept, I'd use "invoke" instead.

Ice Drake2UU
Creature - Drake (U)
Flying
When ~ enters the battlefield, tap all creatures you control.
4/4

I think this is both interesting and skill testing in most limited formats. A 4/4 flyer for 4 is very powerful, but the drawback ranges from irrelevant to suicidal depending on the board state.

Seems like a decent card that probably wouldn't see much Constructed play. I think you'd have to rewrite the rules for it though, since technically you have to pay for a spell before it is considered "cast", so it wouldn't get Convoke until it's too late. (Disclaimer:Not a judge.)

Pull from the Depths4B
Sorcery (R)
Exile the bottom card of your library. You may cast it without paying it's mana cost.

A reanimator type card designed to work with Scry. It would open up a new angle for Standard, and casual FNM players can try to combo with Enter the Infinite.

Quote from SuqAta8

Slaughterhorn is effectively worse than giant growth

No, it isn't. It's immune to Spellskite and is uncounterable, both of which are huge advantages. If you see any Spellskites at all in your meta, I'd absolutely run 4 maindeck.

The issue is that infect typically runs 12 infect creatures + 4 Inkmoths. If you cut infect creatures for Artisan of Forms, then that reduces the number of keepable hands, since you'll have to ship a hand with an Artisan and no other infect creatures. Also, copying an Inkmoth Nexus is extremely mana intensive, since you have to animate the original Inkmoth, cast a spell to activate the heroic trigger, and animate the copy after the trigger resolves.

It's a LOT of mana, and requires creatures to be on the board for it to be of any use. In every format out there, there are much better things you can be doing with that mana than adding counters to creatures or searching up Auras. I don't think this will see any play, it's just too expensive. It could see play at XGWW.

Researcher's Foresight XU
Instant (R)
Scry X.
Draw a card.

I've been playing small mono-red since rotation, but there have been more and more Mono-U devotion decks coming into my local metagame, and I need to make a shift to a deck that has a decent matchup. In general, I prefer to play aggro decks, so I'm wondering what types of aggro have a strong track record against Mono-U?

Interesting, the creature version is too powerful though, it would be used by midrange/ramp decks to utterly destroy aggro decks. The enchantment version has the same issue, although the fact that it does nothing on it's own might be enough to make it balanced. If you resolve a strong 4 or 5 drop after this, it is basically game if they rely on removal spells rather than big creatures of their own.

Saint Elmo's Fire R
Creature - Elemental (C)
Pay 3 Life: Deal 3 damage to target player. That player gains control of ~.
0/1

I've been thinking of running Relic of Progenitus or Nihil Spellbomb in the sideboard for FissurePost. If they can't get their Flicker/Wall loop going then they will have a real tough time winning, and it seems like it would be worth it given how common that deck is on MTGO. Spellbomb seems better than Relic, since I'd rather not have to leave mana open, has anyone tested either of these cards?

I agree, B/G control is a bad matchup. I don't think Legion's Initiative helps much, since the extra 1 toughness is unlikely to be revenant and you have to leave 2 mana open all the time. I've been considering Gideon, even though a 4-drop may be too high on the curve for this deck. He's one of the only things that doesn't care about a Mutilate and can punch through pretty much anything, although you do need something to protect him. I feel comfortable replacing my 2 Rest In Peace since I haven't seen Reanimator in weeks, so I may end up trying it out.

Edit: Did some two fisted testing with Gideon, it didn't work out, mainly due to Lifebane Zombie being unblockable. This might be a matchup that you have to concede, there really aren't any options I can think of.

That's an interesting card, but it's a bit overcosted. 5 mana for a spell without an immediate impact on the boardstate is a lot, and there's a big drawback if you get mutiple lands or things like countermagic. I think it would be fine at 2RR.

Moment of Silence U
Instant (U)
When ~ is on the stack, opponents can't cast spells or activate abilities that aren't mana abilities.
Scry 1

Quote from Meritocracy

Busabo Mongrel 1GG
Creature - Hound (U)
Whenever ~ attacks, you may put target nonbasic land card defending player controls on top of its owner's library. If you do, ~ must be blocked this combat if able.
2/1

Too powerful in my opinion. I'd replace "attacks" with "deals combat damage to a player". Suiciding this guy is worth the mana cost, and if you get multiple attacks with it your opponent won't be able to recover. It's way too easy to prevent blockers from killing it in many different ways, from giving it protection to unsummoning it to using removal spells on the blocker to pumping it.

New Horizons
Land - (R)
T, Sacrifice ~: Choose a land card you own from outside the game and put it onto the battlefield. If that land is nonbasic, you lose 3 life.

In Dragon's Maze Standard, people are running greedier manabases with few or no basics. The first SCG Live Top 8 had two decks running zero basics, a third with only one, and the other five running only one color of basic land. Decks have to run this sort of manabase if they want to do things like run both Garruk, Primal Hunter and Olivia Voldaren. It seems like now would be a great time to jam Ghost Quarter into every deck that can handle having the colorless mana. In general, are you seeing people run these sorts of greedy mana bases in the broader meta, and do you think this trend is likely to continue?

I've been thinking about buying an automatic card shuffler to speed up playtesting, and possibly use in tournaments. Are there any of them out there that are verified to work with sleeved cards? Would there be any rules issue with using them in a tournament? I would of course notify the judge beforehand, but I was wondering if there was some sort of general rule. It seems to be a good way to speed things up and prevent deck stacking.