MTG Salvation

Since there's no card after Grand Museum to be commented upon, I guess I'll throw in my two cents on Grand Museum. I feel like it could work as written, but since some feel it could be too powerful to if it could cast the revealed card then another option could be to make it similar to Chrome Mox and have it exile a card from the player's hand when it comes into play and have that imprinted card permanently mark the colors the land can produce. The downside to this is that it's a land that essentially forces the player playing it to discard a card.

Lightning Rod 2
Artifact
You may untap Lightning Rod at the beginning of each player's upkeep.
t: Prevent the next three damage that a spell would deal to target permanent or player.

I've always felt that perhaps one of the better ways to "fix" dredge would be to change the dredge trigger from 'whenever you would draw a card' to 'During your draw step you may dredge X and put this card into your hand instead of drawing a card.'

I'm sure I'm getting the rules wording wrong on dredge's replacement effect, but the above gets my point across. Making it a once per turn thing rather than something you can do every time you draw.

I feel Delibrate growth is really under-costed. Even though it can only search for forests, I don't feel that's a big enough downside. You might get away with it if it put the land into the player's hand or didn't untap the land because as it is now it can search for any shockland that has forest as one of its types and get around the two damage of playing that land untapped. To keep it as it's written I'd move the cost to 2G or even 1GG because it's that powerful. As for the explore mechanic, I feel it could work well but the power level of a mechanic is hard for me to judge until I play it. You could extend the reminder text a little more, as it is I'm not sure if a land can be explored more than once.


This next card is one that mind bend inspired, but since my idea is number based I decided to limit the choices to prevent shenanigans and make it easier to remember the change.

Distort U
Instant
Choose a number from 0 to 20. Target permanent's converted mana cost becomes that number.

I like the direction your deck is going, Humstuck. My only suggestion is perhaps trying out a few Summary Dismissals or Disallows in the sideboard to deal with the on cast abilities of Eldrazi.

As I've undestood it, it has always been required that Pro players retire if they join WOTC's development team. They can no longer play in any tournaments that offer winnings, but I think they still may be able to play in promotional events and other stuff that really falls more under advertising for WOTC. I'm not sure where I learned this, perhaps it was from one of the Drive to Work podcasts.

I'm unsure about running 20 cycling lands, mainly because when you finally reach a point where you're one mana away from casting New Perspectives you don't want to then have to wait another turn because the majority of lands you have in your deck come into play tapped.

I also think Curator of Mysteries may be worth trying out for the sheer digging potential of scrying every time you cycle a card.

Also one final thought I've had is that since cycling can be done at instant speed at the very end of your opponent's turn, perhaps this deck would work best if it leaned in the direction of a draw-go control deck.

For all those that are complaining about the slowness of WOTC's reaction to the format, I have to say that at least they did react.

I've recently been contemplating a similar deck to this. Two cards that I thought could be really useful that I didn't see you mention are Greenwarden of Murasa and Honored Hydra. Both have the downside of needing a discard outlet, but the greenwarden has a big enough body to be a threat and can grab you any two cards from your graveyard, one on ETB and one when it dies. The Hydra in all probability is an excellent sideboard card to use against blue based control, since they'll need to counter it twice if you try to hard cast it, and the second time they'll have to have a Summary Dismissal or Disallow in their hands to deal with its embalm ability.

Collective Defiance and Collective Brutality could also be really good in this kind of deck, both are removal spells and both give you discard outlets of a sort. Brutally in particular might be a better spell to use against control than Transgress the Mind since it has greater flexibility and most of the time all you'll really be taking from their hands are instant and sorcery spells anyway.

-Edit

After looking at the standard card pool further, I think Grixis may be even a better way to go than Jund. Curator of Mysteries could be a very important piece to this deck as it comes down relatively early and allows you to use your cycling and discard to really dig for answers. Also I'd consider trying Thing in the Ice as well as Baral, Chief of Compliance to give the deck more of an early game board presence. I don't see why you wouldn't be able to reliably transform Thing in the Ice with the amount of instants and sorceries in the deck and Baral could also be a big help. He lets you dig a little faster with multiple cathartic reunions and can let you cast Ever After a turn sooner, heck you could even test out a few copies of censor in the sideboard to punish aggro decks that like to tap out. It can trigger a draw and discard off of Baral when it successfully counters a spell and both the demon and the Sphinx reward you for cycling it away when it ceases to be useful.

With all the zombie support in this set I wonder if we'll finally see a proven standard deck that puts Relentless Dead to good use.

The colorless mana it adds is interesting, especially considering that they originally designed this and the BFZ block in the 18 month standard cycle. That means that they didn't really intend players to use this to play something like Matter Reshaper. This makes me wonder if we'll be seeing colorless costs again in a upcoming set.

Quote from Ryperior74 »

OMG!!!

You can abuse that with a always watching like permanent with that on the field

It also works well with Arlinn Kord's +1 though it comes out a turn later if you don't have any two drop mana dorks.

It curves out well with skyship plunderer, too bad it doesn't already come into play with a counter on it. The only other way I can think to abuse it in standard is with Animation Module, but again the soonest you're going to get two counters on it is by your 4th turn.

I'm not sure how flash lands would work, or even if you could give a land flash within the rules since you never technically cast it. It simply might require you to forgo flash and write out "You may play this land on an opponent's turn. If you do, sacrifice it at the beginning of your next upkeep." That or give it a new keyworded ability, which may be the cleaner way to go since then you can also put in reminder text that reiterates that even on your opponent's turns you may only play one land. As for the balance of this land, I feel it would really create a question in modern about the power level of deprive


Inhume BB
Instant
Put target creature in its owner's graveyard.
"Even an immortal can have a grave."

This card just occured to me as an alternative way to deal with indestructible rather than exile. I was going to use the name Buried Alive but since it's taken I decided to use a play on words and make this the opposite of "exhume".

I get the feeling that WOTC will once again show us how good white Gods are at killing white Planeswalkers.

Quote from Duke Daemon »

Embalm is very much like seance, you lose the ability to recur the creature but you do get a token out of it. Expect a functional reprint of Seance that will cost more to cast/use.

Exerted is going to cause lots of problems, trust me when its 11pm and your all tired your going to forgot not to keep them tapped. Heck even kids will forget the next turn and untap them.

I too can see this becoming a problem. I think the way I'll deal with keeping track is by "double tapping" an exerted creature and basically turn it upside down. Then when I untap my next turn I just give the exerted card the same quarter turn I give all my tapped cards and that will put it into a tapped position.