Pointed Discussion

im waiting to see something cool happen with these guys, but i think their casting cost is too high. maybe in my casual multiplayer group.

They're not bad if you've got quick mana going, their ability is awesome for bouncing combos.

I did had fun with this Creature bringing "Sage Owl" back and forth into my hand only to use its ability to reorder the top four cards of my library as I saw fit. My question though is can you use this creatures ability on any of your creatures in the graveyard?

I ask because I remember a card my Ex had called "Elven Cache" that brought cards from the grave yard and figured it could yank them from anywhere up to and including the graveyard.

Anything that stays in play and is in play = a permanent.
Anything not in play = card.

This can only affect things in play.

Sigh...this card is seriously missing the optionalility of its trigger. It would actually be interesting if it was:
"At the beginning of your upkeep, you may return a permanent you control to its owner's hand."
The may-clause makes the crucial difference between an advantage and a drawback in general.
Since one should not have to pay more mana to get a drawback, this creature should cost instead, in my opinion.
Then they would be somewhat comparable to Stampeding Wildebeests. Although these are 5/4 tramplers, Cache Raiders could compensate by the fact that their drawback isn't restricted to creatures of their color only, therefore they could also return lands or any profitable permanents with a decent cip/etb effect, such as Sarcomancy for instance.
Or imagine them for ...*drool* - This would have made a card which had allowed fairly competitive (self)bounce decks.

I love this card I have one in my ally deck and one in my mill-folk deck, gets counters on guys continuously in ally, and bounces my Merrow Harbinger in my mill-folk.

Obviously a combo card, merfolk sniper and such ;)

This plus Reality Acid = Lols for you.

Ten words: This card would be pretty decent in an Ally deck.

would be nice with reality acid but its too expensive

Some more fun stuff you can do with this:

- Reality Acid for repeated removal.
- Fists of Ironwood for repeated saprolings.
- Flight of Fancy for repeated card drawing.
- Coiling Oracle for repeated cards and land.
- Eternal Witness for repeated graveyard recursion.
- Sage of Epityr for repeated deck stacking.
- Bouncing lands for Landfall.
- Bouncing planeswalkers low on loyalty.

There are so, so many more. The fact that you can return any permanent means this will only get better as there are more and more cards to play with. It's fairly expensive for a creature with no evasion, but it begs to be used as an engine for something.

A lot of what these are getting compared to is cards that bounce *creatures*.

Being able to bounce permanents not only opens up a ton of more combos, but ensures that you're unlikely to be forced to bounce this guy back to your hand if you're out of other creatures, which is a huge difference between this and Roaring Primadox or Species Gorger for example, both of which get rated much higher even though they can easily be forced to bounce themselves for major tempo loss (and are both unable to pull off the combos this guy can).

Enter/exit the battlefield creatures will love this guy; but so will landfall-based permanents, permanents that use up charge counters, enchantments that lock down enemy creatures (eg Claustrophobia), and so much more.

4/4 is a respectable body as well, and merfolk and rogue are both supported creature types. Good casual combo card.