Pointed Discussion

this card is real pretty, i like artifacts that use all five colors. also, i imagine the card works well too.

4 mana to balance your base, thin your deck, and fill your hand? My instinct is to call this junk, but it just feels really good!

Four mana is kind of steep for what this card does, but I wonder if Esper can possibly break this card through recursion. My instincts say no. Deck thinning is a great tactic when it can be done at 0 mana cost (through the various Baubles), but it rarely is worth much more than that. Compare this to Knight of the Reliquary, for example, as a means to thin your deck and you'll see that the Armillary Sphere is vastly inferior. Armillary Sphere is a decent mana-fixer, and might be useful in multi-colored decks that don't use green. But if I had to choose between Armillary Sphere and one of the shard Obelisks (i.e. Obelisk of Grixis), I think I'd go with the Obelisk.

Having used this card in a draf, this card is immensly helpful. Yes, it takes time and mana, but in limited? Greatness. Particuarly great if you're playing 5-color.

2 mana then 2 mana is not EXACLTY the same as 4 mana... but lets see what this card does...

first, it's an artifact... esper goodness.
2 and blow it up, search your deck for 2 basic lands and add them to your hands. This is mana fixing AND filtering. After you filter your deck your less likely to draw land when you dont need it, so it does give you a card advantage, and becuase you just added 2 lands to your hand, you won't miss a drop for a couple turns...
Then its an artifact in your grave, there are a few cards in esper that like this..

All in all.. meh. Its actually a Little better than the obelisks in the long run, as it does filter and you won't miss drops, but esper will get the most use out of it (they can reduce it's cost by 1, this also applies to the obelisk, but the sphere STILL beats it thanks to the filter).
It's priced EXACTLY right, meaning its not a cool as it could be..

It'll get higher marks in 5 color builds but even in 3 color it's not bad.

Good to increment Domain effect.

This card is very underrated. 2 mana and then 2 mana is not at all equal to 4 mana (probably closer to 3).
The Sphere is designed for longer games: hitting your land drops each turn is important for control decks, but also for any deck with expensive bombs. And deck thinning is more powerful the longer the game lasts.

If you're not in green (for better mana building) and don't have awesome card drawing, a couple of these can go a long way!

Wayfarer's Bauble

I've got one and it is a good backup in case I don't draw into a swamp or Savage Land for my red/green/black deck since I run twice as much red and green land as swamps.

Fixes and filters. Not bad.
3.5

Only gonna get better as "Landfall" gets used in Zendikar

Landfall goodness may have this card see play.

But it DOES give actual CA to decks which normally don't have access to it, which is never a bad thing.

Naya...

Nice artwork. Fairly useful card. If you get in your first hand, you can play it at your leisure to keep that one land per turn going. I usually substitute this for one land in my deck and it seems to work out well.

A double Wanderer's Twig. Nice.

First of all, amazing art. Secondly, the fact that this feeds hand count, fixes mana, assists in domain and landfall, filters your draws, allows you to hit land drops, sacrifices for its effect for graveyard counts and recursion strategies, and is also colorless makes it worth a thought.

Love the flavor text.

Great for a monored deck that wants to play dragons and trigger Valakut, the molten pinnacle without the help of green.

This seems pretty powerful - probably competes with Darksteel Ingot (and even Gilded Lotus) among artifacts that support multi-colored efforts - which can be more helpful or simply better in many decks than Green's abilities to provide similar assistance (because, for one thing, not all multi-colored decks are able or wanting to include Green).

However, in decks that do contain Green - and even in mono-Green decks - the Sphere has great synergy with the solid and playable Explore.

2 and then 2 again is a bit constraining, but it's a neat way to put mana fixing in every color.

Of course, there are almost always better fixers, but this has its place around the kitchen table.

thank god for Eratosthenes..