This would be great in a Planar Chaos "leaves play, enters play" deck. You know, the ones with Stingscourger and Dust Elemental. It would also be good for Haunt / Orzhov decks. In other decks, its only other real use would be to recycle comes into play effects.
The way this edition is worded, you don't seem to have a choice whether to sacrifice it or not. Which would be terrible and useless, and it still wouldn't be the worst card in The Dark.
Aaron_Forsythe
★★★★☆ (4.3/5.0)(19 votes)
Aaron’s Random Card Comment of the Day #70, 4/1/11
I love the flavor of The Dark. The set suffered from having too few cards that were compelling mechanically (Check out this quote from the sell text: “Many cards have tempting abilities, coupled with damaging penalties.” Fun!), but the flavor was very distinct and reasonably well executed. In many ways it reminds me of the upcoming New Phyrexia set in that it stretched the color pie in flavorful way to show how darkness has crept into all the colors.
Safe Haven has great flavor and mechanics that are unique and costed well enough to be a lot of fun. I made a slew of Safe Haven decks as a younger man and had fond enough memories of it to include it as a “time shifted” card in Time Spiral.
You can tuck creatures that are about to die into Safe Haven (although the M10 rules make that play less devastating), put your creatures in there before you cast a sweeper, or just jam a bunch of guys with cool ETB triggers in there for reuse. The slightly more versatile version of this card is Synod Sanctum from Mirrodin, but the flavor of hiding inside a one-mana artifact as opposed to a land feels like a downgrade to me.
If we were to make a land that did something like Safe Have today, it would have to tap for mana, as that’s a rule we’re pretty strict about not breaking (fetchlands don’t count). I do see the appeal of designing lands that don’t tap for mana, however--some lands are for mana, and some are for hiding in… makes total sense--but the game plays a lot cleaner the more closely we can tie the number of lands you have to the amount of mana you can produce.
A “fixed” Safe Haven sounds like a great card for a Core Set some day. Note taken!
... which in turns inspires effects like Oblivion Ring and Journey to Nowhere. In a sense, Safe Haven is the great-grandfather of all these cards.
Cheza
★☆☆☆☆ (1.6/5.0)(4 votes)
@ Aaron:
Synod Sanctum does not only have the problem of being a cheap artifact, it also states: "under your control". This is essential, once you use temporary "gain control" abilities.
I really like the fact that this land doesn't produce mana. Similar to a Maze of Ith, this combined a powerful effect with the disadvantage of a missed land drop and therefore a lower mana count. If the land produces mana AND creates an powerful effect, this sometimes feels more like a trick to bypass being a spell. Manlands for example don't really feel like an animated land, but more like some way to avoid counterspells and Wrath of God effects.
So if you really add abilities to lands that produce mana, make sure that you either use one-time effects or really focus on the land itself, not the magic you produce.
Worked well saving creatures from Wrath of God but it rated low because to get the full effect, you'd need to take another turn immediately after this one with something like Time Walk then sacrifice this during that upkeep and follow up with an Armageddon. Sure... this combo is fun to pull off but you'd have to have all the right cards at one time to do it. Not worth building a deck around.
mr8658
☆☆☆☆☆ (0.0/5.0)
reprint this as a land enchantment :) for one mana
Comments (12)
I love the flavor of The Dark. The set suffered from having too few cards that were compelling mechanically (Check out this quote from the sell text: “Many cards have tempting abilities, coupled with damaging penalties.” Fun!), but the flavor was very distinct and reasonably well executed. In many ways it reminds me of the upcoming New Phyrexia set in that it stretched the color pie in flavorful way to show how darkness has crept into all the colors.
Safe Haven has great flavor and mechanics that are unique and costed well enough to be a lot of fun. I made a slew of Safe Haven decks as a younger man and had fond enough memories of it to include it as a “time shifted” card in Time Spiral.
You can tuck creatures that are about to die into Safe Haven (although the M10 rules make that play less devastating), put your creatures in there before you cast a sweeper, or just jam a bunch of guys with cool ETB triggers in there for reuse. The slightly more versatile version of this card is Synod Sanctum from Mirrodin, but the flavor of hiding inside a one-mana artifact as opposed to a land feels like a downgrade to me.
If we were to make a land that did something like Safe Have today, it would have to tap for mana, as that’s a rule we’re pretty strict about not breaking (fetchlands don’t count). I do see the appeal of designing lands that don’t tap for mana, however--some lands are for mana, and some are for hiding in… makes total sense--but the game plays a lot cleaner the more closely we can tie the number of lands you have to the amount of mana you can produce.
A “fixed” Safe Haven sounds like a great card for a Core Set some day. Note taken!
... which in turns inspires effects like Oblivion Ring and Journey to Nowhere. In a sense, Safe Haven is the great-grandfather of all these cards.
Synod Sanctum does not only have the problem of being a cheap artifact, it also states: "under your control". This is essential, once you use temporary "gain control" abilities.
I really like the fact that this land doesn't produce mana. Similar to a Maze of Ith, this combined a powerful effect with the disadvantage of a missed land drop and therefore a lower mana count. If the land produces mana AND creates an powerful effect, this sometimes feels more like a trick to bypass being a spell. Manlands for example don't really feel like an animated land, but more like some way to avoid counterspells and Wrath of God effects.
So if you really add abilities to lands that produce mana, make sure that you either use one-time effects or really focus on the land itself, not the magic you produce.
....yeah. :D