Pointed Discussion

The red ability can only target players, BrimandVormay.

The real downside to this card is that you can only use one ability per turn. If it let you untap it for 2 colorless, it would be a lot more impressive. It should also only cost 5, both to be more usable and for flavor purposes - 1 colorless for each color it represents.

This card is amazing. I recently created a domain deck with this card being the main win condition. It really shines when you get two in play (Sculpting Steel rocks!). Also works great with the Seedborn Muse, makes it very difficult for your opponent to win when you have that much control. I agree that the blue power is pretty weak, but after playing a Shard Convergence you get plenty of lands to discard for useful stuff (Like another Obelisk of Alara).

it's really the fear factor that makes this card good. When this card's out, you can be sure your opponent will be nervous

Well the blue effect is weak, but only without help... There are tons of blue cards that untap permanents as well as artifacts, so the blue ability becomes more useful the more clever ur deck is, plus blue has the potential to make the obelisk cheaper altogether with the etherium sculpter... Esper prob get the advantage with this card playing exotic orchard and Sen Triplets as well, the possibilites are endless...

I have two of these and it's a real fun thing to gain ten life per turn.

The blue effect is good, I don't know what you guys are talking about. This card stalls the board so ridiculously that it's almost impossible to punch through. You use the white ability to keep you alive and the blue ability to dig through your deck for threats/answers. The black ability can kill any random weenies that sneak through, and the red and green abilities are great, uncounterable finishers.

Altogether, this is a fun and powerful card. It's very good in a control deck.

look, i think you are overlooking it's other HUGE effects. even though the blue effect is weak, the white effect is one of the most amazing around, giving you 25% of your original life for just 2, and the green effect alone is worth 6, giving a monster +4/+4 each turn. the black effect is weak, but usefull, powering down bigger monsters so that they can be killed and the red effect, you can use that to slowly wear your opponent down if they throw up a block to your monsters.

Edit: right after i posted this i realized that the red effect couldn't target monsters... but SO what, most red cards are envious of doing 3 damage for 2 every turn. and for all you controll deck players who use this card as a win condition, consider looking into filigree sages as your back-up. Filigree has a nice effect of being able to untap cards for mana... and with the etherium sculptor on the feild it makes for a nice little boost in being able to use it. consider being able to use any of its effects twice in one turn without having two on the feild, that's a number of possibilities: gaining 10 life in a turn (if you have good blockers you can really jack your lifepoints up with this, and if not, then go for 5 and then use the green to make a good blocker later), drawing and discarding two cards (ultimately the LAST thing you're going to want to do, but if you're looking for a single finishing card it will really accelerate your progress), giving a monster your opponent controlls -4/-4 (trust me, this effect is not one to play around with, it can actually kill a red deck by itself... and if there's no real good ones to use it on you can use it to power down some of the stronger monsters and force your opponent not to use them), dealing 6 damage to an opponent(when playing red, this effect is amazing... especially when playing with that forge of rath((spelling is not accurate, but it's from the 10th core so you can look it up)) to boost the damage up to 12 a turn, and if you can pull this off you don't even need strong attackers), and you can use the green to give a monster +8/+8 (then use that card that gives it a +1/+1 counter for each point of attack... use it all on mycloth and you've become pretty much unstoppable, or just wait and use it on your opponents turn to make them think twice about attacking you... i mean you could turn a little 1/1 myr retreiver into a 9/9 powerhouse, but i think that you're not going to get very far

I love this card. It gives you so many options it's just incredible. Well worth the 6 mana! It's hard to lose the game if this stays on your side. It really makes that dramatic comeback way more possible. :)

One of the things I like the most about this card is the synergy it has with Exotic Orchard . I'm planning on trying it out in a white/black deck based around Sanguine Bond. Getting the extra choice from my opponent's mana types makes for a fun time.

I don't see what you are all raving about, it costs 6 mana, and remember it has to TAP to use any of those abilities, meaning once a turn. There are cards that can do any of those things once a turn already and don't cost 6 mana to do it. What this card does do is save space in a deck if you want to fit two of the affects in and don't have enough room for 2 cards.

This card is really interesting.....I have to say it would be fun to use in an all mana deck.

This card is absolutely amazing. Run in a 5 color deck with mana-accel, you have 5 amazing abilities at your disposal each turn. It's probably my favorite card of all time just for how much fun it is to use.

the blue ability is unfortunately quite underpowered compared to the others. drawing and discarding two cards should have been ok at this cost i guess.
the mana cost of the card itself is unfortunately quite huge as well...

edit:
Of course BrimandVormay has a point here, overall this card is quite versatile and might find some use in control decks. I also didn't directly say it's weak, it possibly sounded like this, but the main thing of my comment was ranting about the blue ability which bugged me for consistency reasons.
Sure, it can find use nontheless. But as opposed to Merfolk Looter or Thought Carrier, you won't find a two-drop that just requires tapping to make one of the other things the Obelisk does: 5 life, -2/-2 ueot, 3 damage to target player or +4/+4 ueot.

There are just too many other, cheaper, ways to activate the blue effect. If only blue had a better ability. Overall, it has a great number of cool tricks though. I'm just disjointed by it.

It's meant to show off all of Alara and yet it has no fun flavor text, no cool picture, and its blue power is sub par.

Overall:

Base rating: ***

great powers: +**
Subpar blue: -*

This is a strong planeswalker. Too bad his abilities cost mana, but fortunately he doesn't die to burn or a weenie filled board. Good thing the legend rule doesn't apply.

It's a card you'll need to build your deck around, since you want at least a couple of its effects. And you'll want to ramp your mana for this thing. Once you have this on the field, the other player is going to lose rather quickly. All but its blue ability is absolutely backbreaking.

Talking about the blue effect, I'm glad it's rather weak compared to the other colors. If this would say...draw a card instead of looting a card, it would literally do everything. And it's already a swiss army knife.


an overlooked card to play with this is a simple card that can untap it...like unbender tine, just to name one. Though unbender tine wants you to play at least some other cards with strong tap effects. Even if it are just mana abilities, like with the Khalni gem.

I run this as a single in my UWr Control. I also run some Crumbling Necropolises as a RU Dual Land. However, this gives me access to black mana. I find this thing is ALWAYS a welcome sight later in the game, as it gains me a ton of life, lets me eat through my deck, or can even kill invincible Elspeth tokens. I have KILLED opponents with this card. When the board is locked down, the obelisk can punch through, or make an opening, or counter all that burn they've been throwing at me. This is an absurdly versatile card, and any deck that has the range and prerogative to make use of these effects is nutso not to run a single.

I have two of these in my scarecrow deck. It works wonders for me. What it may lack in strength compared to other individual cards, it makes up for in versatility. I mean look what it's made of:

Soothing Balm = stall
Card Drawing = card advantage
Weakening = either destroy the tiny-folk, or keep big creatures at bay
Flame Jet = speeding up opponents demise
Monstrous Growth = creature advantage, (or Horobi, Death's Wail's best friend... :D )

Fatestitchers + this thing means you can use this four times a turn with 8 mana, and the Fatestitchers are also useful on their own as they can tap anything else you might want to tap.

6 mana is a bargain for such a versatile card. I need to add four of these to my rainbow decks immediately...

Voltaic Key and Filigree Sages could make this very fun indeed.

Don't knock on the blue ability. Scepter of Insight looks bad enough without this card completely obscuring it in the same set. I can tell Wizards likes to keep power among rares equal in the same sets.

None of those abilities are worth the mana, but the shear flexibility of this card makes it a lot better than it looks like on paper. The only problem is you need to be playing a lot of colors to make it worth it, and at one mana more than something like Maelstrom Archangel, it's usually not worth it.

It has White Sun's Passage, Merfolk Looter, Disfigure, Volcanic Hammer, and Might of Old Krosa on a stick.

As usual, blue gets the short end of the stick (pardon the pun) and green gets overpowered. This thing sums up M10.

Overall a great card. 6 to play is a little steep, but with the right cards (IE Everflowing Challice), that can be overlooked and overcome quite easily.
True, all the abilities require the card to be tapped, but with a card like Voltaic Key (or Galvanic Key), it could easily be reused an extra time (or more) each turn.
Add in a Mycosynth Lattice and any mana can be used for any of the effects.

may be good in EDH!

Basic summary of Magic: The Gathering in one card

by the time this kicks in you will be overrun by any good deck...

Honestly, who could hate this card? It works in any deck! And if you run it in a WUBRG deck, you wield a force to be reckoned with.

I see a lot of people are complaining about only being able to use this once per turn you take...but what about once during each player's turn, aka Unwinding Clock? Throw in a few Myrs or Artifact lands and you got yourself a nifty little weapon.

This can be a bear. I run it with Birds of Paradise and Darksteel Ingot, but most of the rest of the deck is Naya.
ALL of the abilities are powerful. The blue looting ability is NOT weak. It creates card quality advantage better than "scry 1" does. And combined with graveyard shenanigans, it creates actual card advantage. In fact, it is the ability most likely to be used because it makes it hard for people to attack you, and it works well at the end of an opponent's turn. You pay to get a flexible and repeatable effect.

I love The utility of this card, but I don't like the 6 cmc.

Run this bad-boy in my Promader deck (WUBRG EDH) for flavor, not usefulness. Thing is, it actually works, who doesn't love options? It's like Isochron Sceptering five different instants with one card. Plus, in terms of flavor, it harkens back to Richard Garfield's Boon Cycle (healing salve, dark ritual, giant growth, lightning bolt, and ancestral recall) with appropriate tweaks (or massive overhauls) in power for each one. This card is Alara in a nut shell.

Repeatable 5 life is no joke, especially at instant speed and that low cost.
Cycling every turn is a handy ability to have, doubles you chances if you topdeck another land.
Who doesn't like assassinating those pesky bears?
3 damage a turn is an excellent win condition, can finish a player off in no time.
Just having this thing untapped will make your opponent really think hard about blocking, having repeatable titanic growth's at your finger tips.

Shimmering Grotto and this are both 5 cent cards, you could run these in a mono deck.. That is budget magic at its finest.

Draw and discard 1, -2/-2, 3 damage to a player, +4/+4, gain 5 life. Cute. They're even in that order if you start from the blue one, it's kind of a shame they didn't re-order it just for this card.

(Also shows off nicely how life loss and -X/-X are more powerful than life gain and +X/+X)

I wish it costed . I'd love to see this come out 3rd turn, with a first turn mana dork and 2nd turn Cultivate/Kodama's Reach. That would also give you the colors you need more to activate it.

Let me get this straight, we get off this:
Soothing Balm at price
Searing Spear at price
Monstrous Growth at price
Expensive Disfigure
Worse Think Twice

Obelisk of Alpha
{0}
Mono Artifact
{W}: Gain 3 life, or prevent up to 3 damage from being dealt to a single target.
{U}: Draw 3 cards or force opponent to draw 3 cards.
{B}: Add 3 black mana to your mana pool.
{R}: Obelisk of Alpha does 3 damage to one target.
{G}: Target creature gains +3/+3 until end of turn.

"perfectly balanced" :P

@WindMasterArceus: You say that like this can only ever have one of those modes. Being able to do any of the five as you choose is what makes this card.