Pointed Discussion

Oooh, good stuff. I hate how any land with an effect has to come into play tapped, though.

Oh look, it's a 0-cost Ponder that trades its cost for the draw.

A fantastic tradeoff if you ask me.

Despite being a stretch, its synergy with Quest for Ula's Temple is also remarkable.

This is a good card.

Not much to elaborate on. Free Ponder 5/5. I'm definitely going to be running the 1cc Amulet in my decks too, so hopefully this comes in untapped!

it ok, it will see play, and i don't think just in standard. but i still am not a huge fan of it personally.

Like New Benalia! But better.

With this, Jace, and Ponder running around Treasure Hunt is a powerful draw spell for two/three most of the time.

I'd rather have this one card in my hand than a Ponder and an Island.

WOW! It is fantastic. Absolutely good with treasure hunt.
Just put the lands on top and then cast treasure hunt to draw them puls one non-land card. Great :-)
That is the best card advantage blue has seen in a long time.

A free ponder less the draw but its a land with land fall can you say hedron crab, bc what mill deck dose not have draw support? it get a 5/5 from me.

if you think about it, this card is more similar to ponder than just the effect. on a given turn when you play a ponder (say, turn one for example) you will be dropping a land, most likely an island.

Island, tap, ponder will yield the same net effect as halimar depths, with a few subtle differences.

to play ponder, you play an island, tap that island and cast the spell. after resolution, the net effect is -island -ponder from hand, +1 card. -1 card from hand in total, a tapped land that will provide blue mana for the rest of the game, and the ponder effect. With halimar depths, the net is -1 card from hand and ponder effect.

The differences are few, but can be important. with ponder, you end up with 1 less card in your library, but one more in your graveyard, if either of those conditions is important for your deck. ponder can be repeated if you have graveyard recursion.

with halimar depths, you can reuse the effect with bounce and replay, which I would argue is easier to do than graveyard recursion for ponder. Also, it does not have the island subtype, if that matters for your deck (dies to nonbasic land destruction, etc.)

However, halimar depths is more restrictive in that you MUST do the ponder effect, and your land WILL etb tapped, where with ponder, you have the option of simply playing the island and using the mana for another spell.

Both very interesting cards, I plan on using both of them. Halimar depths 4.5/5

did I heard someone say Living Tsunami? free arranging your top card every turn? that is pretty good. Now all those card like Living Tsunami or Vapor snare make sense^^

Has anyone thought of using Ruin Ghost in UW or UWR control with this?

One white mana a turn + this is a like a lesser Sensei's Divining Top. Control my draw every turn? Sounds good to me. Becomes even better in extended with Counterbalance (and the top being banned).

Combine that with Jace, the Mind Sculptor and you have a huge amount of control over your library, and Treasure Hunt becomes easy card advantage.

What I like most about it is it's capability to help you avoid a mulligan. Opening hand missing a 2nd land? What's the odds the first 10 cards don't have one?

Someone must have liked New Benalia but thought it should Scry for more then 1. Shifting it into the library-manipulation color is the easiest way to justify increasing the Scry number (by itself enough to make it Scry: 2). Changing the effect from Scry to reordering the top of the library allowed this to reorder 1 more card then if this had a Scry effect.

this works great with a landfall deck:
use it to put a land on top of your deck.
Baloth woodcrasher equipped with explorer's scope and a couple adventuring gears.

Exactly the same outcome as island, ponder, go.

I like it.

I'm thinking... isn't this virtually EXACTLY Ponder?

The only difference is that it's a land and you don't get to draw a card.

You ARE paying U mana because this enters the battlefield tapped. BUT you you don't get to draw a card. Then again, you get a land into play. sort of like getting that "draw a card" because you get the "island" into play rather than Ponder into your graveyard.

I would say that this card is virtually EXACTLY the same as ponder... with the only difference as card type.

That said:
I'll TAKE 4 PLEASE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

cracking synergy with treasure hunt, massaging your next 3 draws is completely worth it on its own anyway. I've forgotten the number of times the cards have been in order land, X, land, I've put them back in order land, land, X, and then used treasure hunt to grab all three at once.

I totally agree with all the love here.

I couldn't believe it when I saw it, & promptly removed/replaced a few of my varied Ponder & Sage of Epityr slots where applicable.

One of my favorite lands ever.

5/5

I like it better than Ponder. It's easier to recur and it produces mana afterward. Still...Ponder has that not so subtle added bonus of being able to shuffle your library if your top 3 aren't relevant.

New favorite land the manipulation is great works well with so many cards

Since it comes into play tapped, it's best to play it when you can't use it! A great land to bounce, combined with landfall.

Almost as good as Ponder very nice addition for Blue. Without the card draw though, it lacks the punch that some other Scry/manipulation cards bring to the table. Still a reliable setup card though.

Great for setting up "top deck" effects like Djinn of Wishes.

4/5

Are people just forgetting the fact that Ponder can Shuffle your library? It's one of the best things about the card, very far from the EXACT same thing, just very similar. I do like the synergy with Treasure hunt though.

T1: this, see land, land, Tresure Hunt, put TH on top,
T2: Land, Treasure hunt for At least 3 cards.

This and Deprive work beautifully together in any control/counter deck.

The lack of a shuffle option sometimes leads to a painful glimpse of your next few draws. Still rocks pretty hard though, and better than sage of epityr in my book.

Somehow or another my next three cards always turn out to be stuff I don't need, and it's often hard not to just concede right then and there knowing I'm destined for crappy draws through the bulk of the game. Well, my own hang-ups aside, a perfectly decent land.

I run 4 of those, and they're perfect target to be bounced by my Deprive... scry is so perfect, especially for a blue

works wonders with Treasure Hunt (as it's been said), and with cards like Djinn of Wishes, or Oracle of Mul Daya (for ultimative milling while Hedron Crab is out :P)

One time in an EDH I stole artifacts from an opponent's deck, the result combo was: Zuran Orb, Crucible of Worlds, and Halimar Depth. No complaints :)

Four of these, four Ponders, four Preordains, four Foresees, four See Beyonds in my Pyromancer Ascension deck.

It gets a little ridiculous.

I always struggle with this card in non-standard decks. While in most mono-blue this is an easy choice, those that rely on ramping their blue mana - which for mono-blue without Tolarian Academy or Black Lotus means High Tide - may easily end up 2+ turns behind on their mana. Not only is the card coming into play tapped, but your High Tide doesn't affect Halimar Depths. And if it keeps you from geting your Vedalken Shackles off against Emrakul (OK, you'd need 15 islands for that, but the same applies to any creature) because of this card, you'll be kicking yourself all day.

Usually, the semi-scry-3 easily makes up for coming in tapped by keeping you from getting mana screwed for the next few turns, but if you desperately need to accelerate out that Mind Over Matter so you can discard 3 to put down an Arcanis the Omnipotent on turn 4 for your infinite draw combo (for example), you'll never forgive yourself if 2 of your 4 lands in play are Halimar. Of course if you're not playing Vedalken Shackles, High Tide, etc., it's not really a problem.

Still, one of my favorite common nonbasics in the last few blocks, and probably my favorite of the cycle. And with colorless mana ramp being so easy and Myr coming back into rotation, it's easy enough to use cards other than High Tide even for blue ramp. Plus, it just screams blue and is one of the few CIP Tapped lands that can actually improve your mana curve vastly. 4.5/5.

This land reminds me of Mirri's Guile.

Overrated IMO. I thought this was good at first until I realized I was 1 mana behind and that card I pushed until later got drawn anyway. Strictly worse than a ponder plus an island: Same number of cards left in your hand (ponder replaces itself with another card), same amount of mana, same number of lands on the field, but you have the option to shuffle if you get garbage and it thins your deck a little bit.

So I'd run ponder (plus more land) before including this, and even after that I'd run preordain before running this, and even then I'd have to decide between serum visions and this.

Love and hate this card. It's great to set up your next three draws but when the game is close and you play this only to find your next three draws are all basic lands... Since you're playing blue, you usually have a way to fix that but if not, at least you know to concede now rather than draw it out.

Erik's Random card 6/20/2011
There was an extra cycle of "spell lands" in Zendikar. At some point we decided the set had too much land, so we cut five. However they already had illustrations, so we moved the cards to Worldwake. They make a lot of sense there, so why not finish the work, and use the fine art?

This one was:

CARDNAME enters the battlefield tapped.
When CARDNAME enters the battlefield, target player puts the top 3 cards of his or her library into his or her graveyard.
T: Add U to your mana pool.

The problem is that this block also gave blue Archive Trap, Halimar Excavator, and Hedron Crab. That is a lot of milling. After playing against one of Steve Warner's milling decks, I decided this was actually starting to be a bit much. I told Mike this. Mike used one of my favorite tactics for getting good cards in his set: he told me he liked the milling version, but would replace it if I could come up with one he liked as much or better.

I looked at lots of blue commons, and tried to find one with a nice effect for a land. When I was looking, I also kept in mind that Blue was playing rather weak in limited, and I wanted an effect that would be useful to more blue decks in the fast Zendikar limited environment. Unless you were playing a dedicated "mill deck", the milling land wasn't even a starting card. After looking at a bunch of recent commons, I decided Sage Owl would be great. Mike thought that was pretty cool, and introduced it to the set. If it didn't play well, it was out of the set.

Some people had their doubts. My pet name for "Sage Owl" is "Scoop Owl". People look at the top 4 cards, try to arrange them, sigh, and soon enough they scoop because they needed land and didn't find any; knowing they won't draw land for four turns is too frustrating for some. Sure this is a stronger card, but wouldn't that terrible scenario happen just as much here?

The card has the same effect, but it actually is a land, which changes the odds a lot. One way of looking at this is to estimate how many lands you have on average in a limited deck when you have either Sage Owl or Halimar Depths in your opening hand. Lets say you play 17 lands and 23 spells, and one of those spells is the Sage Owl. That is in your opening hand, as are 6 of the other 39 cards. That is drawing 6 random cards from a 39 card deck with 17 lands; on average you will get about 2.615 lands. How about the Halimar Depths? You have 1 land (the Depths), then draw 6 random cards from a 39 card deck with 16 lands; on average you will get about 3.462 lands. You can also break this down by probabilities of having 2 lands (or any other constant) in your opening hand, but the basic "hidden fact" is that you are significantly less likely to be desperate for lands in the Halimar Depths case.

I am glad Mike liked the card. I also like his trick of motivating people to make better cards with the fair offer :)

I think this is the best "Sorcery Land" in the Zendikar block. (Valakut and friends serve more as "Enchantment Lands") The access can be crucial when running Conundrum Sphinx, and bouncing this with Deprive is smart too. However, it is painful late game and you reveal three lands (this does happen), but other than that great card. 4.5*

Use the Ravnica bounce-lands with this in order to get another use out of it. simple and applicable in any multicolor deck, yet quite effective.

Fixes your hand and your mana. FOR FREE.

I love this card coupled with a bounce land...Azorius Chancery...

Absolutely elegant design, and well-balanced, even.

Sure, you don't get the U right away- it's being used to Scry 3, after all.

Cool for just about any blue deck that can't find enough space for all the other topping spells. You can't remove 4 Islands for 4 Ponders like you can for Halimar Depths.

Honestly, I ran x4 in every deck during zendikar standard. Even non-blue decks. Kinda felt like cheating.

I've never really been put off by ETB-tapped. Perfect mana ramping in your hand is rare for non-green decks, so I'm usually never afraid to put myself a small step behind. Instant 4-of in any deck with blue.

Needs to be in a Commander precon.

Works very well with Izzet Boilerworks and other similar bouncelands.