Why is this uncommon? It is a hugely complex ability (but not that powerful in most cases outside this set I guess). If anything should justify it for being rare or mythic...
Great or good effects but requires donating the creature (or that your oppeont controls the card): Eradicate Dichotomancy (donate the creature tapped ^^) Mimeofacture Reflector Mage (perhaps this is only good) Splinter and similar, but they require special creatures - for splinter, an artifact creature. Declaration in Stone (with some donate effect)
Also, there are all the meld (non-legendary) cards like Graf Rats, Hanweir Battlements but they are bad in the sense that they will just exile both cards.
It would be wierd if this card has targets. You do not know when you play it how many targets it should have and which players stuff you should target (voting happens on resolution). Also, note that it always gives at least 1 trn, since there is no point in stealing one of your own cards.
No, 4 horsemen has a problem different from this. Its problem is that it might not advance the state of the game, within any constant number of moves. Here we advance guarenteed. For instance, after 80000 moves you will draw your deck if you start with 3 lands and 100 cards in deck (more lands will speed it up). 4 horsemen cannot say the same, since they want to mill 3 specific cards before hitting a reshuffle. I.e. there is a probaility that they will do it in any loop, bjt no matter how many loops they do it will never be certain that they will have gotten it at some point.
I was wrong about the short cuts though since you cannot let the action depend on what happend.
Edit: simple proof that algorithm gives you atleast 1 more draw trigger (or a drawn non-land) every 2 reshuffles with 3 (or more) lands. Thus at most 2 times the number of cards reshuffles are needed.
Initial there are 3 lands in deck and kozi. There are 2 cases, either there are some lands before kozi or not.
If lands before kozi, you get at least 1 draw trigger from them (in case kozi is the last card and there is an odd total of cards you get at least 2 triggers and thus still have 1 after drawing him). Thus atleast 1 draw trigger before reshuffling.
If all lands after, then you resolve at least 1 draw trigger. If you draw a non-land you are good. Otherwise, if you draw a land, you can reshuffle and discard it to get a draw trigger and then get another reshuffle (in the worst case), since you got at least 2 lands left in deck (note that for every card drawn you dredged a land last reshuffle, which then get shuffled in).
Kalkris, the point of the thread is that formally speaking the shortcut rules (basically the ones for supporting combos) requires that you can express a sequence of steps and how the end state will look like (like, I tap my ctreatures for mana, I use the mana to make a token off some other creature, this triggers intruder alarm, untapping everything and I repeat this 1000 times, ending with 1000 tokens). You therefore cannot use things like "almost always", because you then cannot be sure if this is the one time it fails.
Concretly, the reason we need to respond to the shuffle trigger is that we could be unlucky and all the lands are after Kozi every time (it happens every time with probability 0% but that is still not good enough for the rules of shortcuts in Magic, where you must provide a guarantee on the number of steps). The idea is that you discard salvage, get a draw from the frog and dredge Salvage back off that draw and perhaps trigger another draw. You never leave Salvage in the graveyard. By doing it the right way, you can be sure that you will eventually, after a number of steps depending on the number of lands (at least 3 though) and non-lands in your deck, be able to draw all the cards. If you did not have enough lands, you cannot formally use the shortcut rules.
If you want something to do with the abillity to draw all cards, then you can play dark ritual any number of times and finish with a drain life or something.
So um cast Raise the Alarm then flash it back with Snapcaster Mage on turn 4 then you get all the creatures you need for the ritual? Man I love this card.
Which does not make it good. 12 mana and 3 cards (counting that this needs to tap), even divided over a few turns, seems expensive for that.
The point of these land tokens makers is that you use them when you do not have anything better to do (which typically means nothing else to do). The card however is fairly costed. Compared it to vitu-ghazi, the city-tree, a land that saw play in its day. 1 more mana, no color restriction and a life for the token maker ability, which seems reasonably close, and a second ability that in some sense can improve the tokens.
I want to build this on mtgo, but I was wondering if it's possible to put your general in the graveyerd. Is there some way to do that?
You click on your commander similar to how you would if you were activating an abillity of him. This opens a menu. One of the lines in the menu will say something like: put your commander in the command zone not in the graveyard. Click on that. It will close down the menu and you are done. You can verify that you did it correctly by clicking on him again and the line should say something like: put your commander in the graveyard not the command zone
Protection from unusual things is in blue's color pie. Wizards gave this to blue back when they rebalanced the color pie and have continually mentioned the ability to print cards with text such as "Protection from instants" in blue. Horizon Drake is the only time they've exercised this part of the color pie, but Wizards has kept saying that they could print similar cards at any time.
The main selling point on it for me (aside from the excellent grave hate) is the fact that the drain hits each opponent. I wouldn't rely on it as your primary grave hate since it cannot deal with artifacts, but it definitely deserves a place next to Scavenging Ooze and Withered Wretch.
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Except for those write down a card name cards in the set and the cards mentioned above, this works with:
Strong effects:
Sever the Bloodline
Detention Sphere
Maelstrom Pulse
Bifurcate
Cornered Market
Doubling Chant
Evil Twin
Mask of the Mimic
Mitotic Manipulation
Pack Hunt
Remembrance
Retraced Image
Verdant Succession
Now I Know My ABC's (uncard)
Wordmail (uncard)
Great or good effects but requires donating the creature (or that your oppeont controls the card):
Eradicate
Dichotomancy (donate the creature tapped ^^)
Mimeofacture
Reflector Mage (perhaps this is only good)
Splinter and similar, but they require special creatures - for splinter, an artifact creature.
Declaration in Stone (with some donate effect)
Ok effects:
Biovisionary
Twinning GlassS.N.O.T.
Faerie Miscreant
Pious KitsuneBubbling Cauldron
Cylian Sunsinger
Echoing Courage (it also pumps your oppeonts creatures though)
Echoing Decay
Echoing Truth
Eye of Singularity (wrath, but your equiment got alot worse, atleast without instant equip)
Festering Newt
Izzet Staticaster
Bad effects:
Kyscu Drake
Jungle Patrol
Ivory Guardians
Cleric of the Forward Order
Kookus
Liu Bei, Lord of ShuMarauding Maulhorn
Rite of the Raging StormRohgahh of Kher Keep
Shadowborn Apostle
Also, there are all the meld (non-legendary) cards like Graf Rats, Hanweir Battlements but they are bad in the sense that they will just exile both cards.
Besides that it works badly with Escaped Shapeshifter and Wirefly Hive.
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I was wrong about the short cuts though since you cannot let the action depend on what happend.
Edit: simple proof that algorithm gives you atleast 1 more draw trigger (or a drawn non-land) every 2 reshuffles with 3 (or more) lands. Thus at most 2 times the number of cards reshuffles are needed.
Initial there are 3 lands in deck and kozi. There are 2 cases, either there are some lands before kozi or not.
If lands before kozi, you get at least 1 draw trigger from them (in case kozi is the last card and there is an odd total of cards you get at least 2 triggers and thus still have 1 after drawing him). Thus atleast 1 draw trigger before reshuffling.
If all lands after, then you resolve at least 1 draw trigger. If you draw a non-land you are good. Otherwise, if you draw a land, you can reshuffle and discard it to get a draw trigger and then get another reshuffle (in the worst case), since you got at least 2 lands left in deck (note that for every card drawn you dredged a land last reshuffle, which then get shuffled in).
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Concretly, the reason we need to respond to the shuffle trigger is that we could be unlucky and all the lands are after Kozi every time (it happens every time with probability 0% but that is still not good enough for the rules of shortcuts in Magic, where you must provide a guarantee on the number of steps). The idea is that you discard salvage, get a draw from the frog and dredge Salvage back off that draw and perhaps trigger another draw. You never leave Salvage in the graveyard. By doing it the right way, you can be sure that you will eventually, after a number of steps depending on the number of lands (at least 3 though) and non-lands in your deck, be able to draw all the cards. If you did not have enough lands, you cannot formally use the shortcut rules.
If you want something to do with the abillity to draw all cards, then you can play dark ritual any number of times and finish with a drain life or something.
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The point of these land tokens makers is that you use them when you do not have anything better to do (which typically means nothing else to do). The card however is fairly costed. Compared it to vitu-ghazi, the city-tree, a land that saw play in its day. 1 more mana, no color restriction and a life for the token maker ability, which seems reasonably close, and a second ability that in some sense can improve the tokens.
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You click on your commander similar to how you would if you were activating an abillity of him. This opens a menu. One of the lines in the menu will say something like: put your commander in the command zone not in the graveyard. Click on that. It will close down the menu and you are done. You can verify that you did it correctly by clicking on him again and the line should say something like: put your commander in the graveyard not the command zone
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