Pointed Discussion

The 'five' cost and has to be opponent hoops are a lot but like Gargoyle Castle I'm sure someone will be glad to have it at some point not me though, 2.5/5

This is a really nice way to shut down an attacker when you have nothing else to do with your mana. Baneslayer Angels are a lot less threatening when you can "only" block with them. 4/5

Beautiful art, but the cost is rather steep. I can think of better things to do with 5 lands.

Now Horizon Drake feels a little less useless, lol. As for this card, it isn't so bad. A steep cost for a temporary solution, but at the same time, it can take out huge beaters when you don't have any other solutions. Too bad it doesn't prevent Eldrazi annihilation. I'd see it being useful in sideboards, at the very least.

An interesting homage to one of my most hated cards in Magic, Maze of Ith. This card is actually fair though, and could really hurt you if their creatures have "comes into play" effects.

Can you shut up my Gaea's Revenge? ahh nope...>_<

The excellent thing of this is that it neutralizes attacking Baneslayers, and makes it so they don't even game life from the lifelink.

No, the excellent thing of it is that it has the potential to utterly destroy Mythic Con***ion should said deck not hit the ground running, so to speak.

Still, it is no Maze of Ith, nor is it Kor Haven.

I hate this card. Everyone else seemed to pull it on me in the prerelease, so where's mine?
Plus, I don't dare attack with my Protean Hydra... this will kill it.

hate this f'ing card

A fantastic card. It may be a little on the expensive side, but it nullifies virtually any attacker without shroud (or a debilitating comes-into-play effect) - that's pretty awesome. I mean, you could just get a Scepter of Dominance or Blinding Mage, but the difference is that Mystifying Maze can be used by decks of any colour (not to mention that it can be used to produce mana, whereas Scepter and Mage are one trick ponies). It's a control card though, make no mistake - think of it this way. Depending on the situation with a control deck, you could either swing for 4 with a Colonnade or remove an attacker with that 5 mana. Options are nice. It just fights for land spots with Tec Edge in standard (though Spreading Seas eases that pain).

I can imagine a hilarious situation though: Bob has a Walking Atlas and 4+ untapped lands. Fred has a Phage out, and swings with her. Bob puts out a Mystifying Maze with Walking Atlas and exiles Phage. Come the end step, Bob wins. It'd be pretty demoralizing to be beaten by a Walking Atlas.

Another nice combo is creatures with triggered blocking abilities that might otherwise die. There aren't too many that prove to be ineffective, but there are a few, such as Goldenglow Moth or Luminous Wake.

Nice looking card, probably not main board material but still fun to play with. I frequently play against allies and bouncing their many counters off can be pretty useful most of the time (turning a 6/7 hada freeblade into a 0/1 is worth it 90% of the time), and like someone mentioned the Protean Hydra is a nice target or possibly even a Joraga Warcaller. Also can be used to get rid of enchantments on attacking creatures (like totem armor), as well as "block" things that are unblockable or have protection against your creatures. A few, more far-fetched, uses would be to combo this with Stifle or something similar for some permanent exiling or using it on creatures like Avatar of Discord where it re-entering the battlefield would actually hurt your opponent. Also, the fact that it is a land means that a lot of removal cards can't target it, so you don't have to worry about it going anywhere too often.

Like a lot of people said, this card is expensive and probably won't see as much Standard play as the other lands out there, but it has its uses and is fun to play with in my opinion.

Anti Mythic Con***ion gets a thumbs up from me.

Say you have 5 mana open (4 plus this) on your opponent's turn. Opponent plops Sovereigns and attacks with Lotus Cobra. 12/11 trampler ain't the friendliest of all creatures to be facing (annihilate doesn't trigger because the aura was attached after it has attacked.) Exile it with Mystifying Maze, and it comes back on his next turn without that aura.

Oh and question- if one were to exile Gideon Jura with this, does it, upon returning, go to the graveyard for having 0 loyalty counters?

It's better than it looks. It's one of those cards that you have to play with in order to understand its value.

I'm sorry I would have responded sooner.... But I got lost in the maze...

BTW! I love this card! I would love to have a play set of this along with training ground!

quick question: - is the next end step yours or at the end of your opponent's next turn?

This card is not so much important for creature removal as it is for enchantment/counter/equipment removal. Last night I was playing against this and I had a Child of Night with a Holy Strength and Armored Ascension attached to it making it a 6/6 lifelink, along with a Protean Hydra that had 5 counters. Both of my creatures were reduced to blockers because attacking with the Child of Night meant it would lose its enchantments and attacking with the Hydra meant it would lose its counters and be destroyed. I only won the round when I was finally able to get enough creatures on the board to overwhelm the single Mystifying Maze I was playing against. 5/5.

Gomorrah: an exiled Gideon, as with any exiled planeswalker, will return with his base number of counters, in this case, 6. All those neat little number boxes on 'walker cards actually take the place of a LOT of text. The loyalty box really says something along the lines of "~ enters the battlefield with X loyalty counters."

Yes, this also applies to Oblivion Ring questions.

Player 1: I attack with my 9001/9001 Psychatog.

Player 2: Tap 4 and my Mystifying Maze, exile him and nothing happens.

Player 1: *Long string of expletives*

Player 2: *Trollface*

Awesome fact!!
Exile an unearth creature and then at the next end step it comes back... for good.
Ask some official before you flame me or look it up on mtg salvation.
IT WORKS

Problem is you can't exile your own creatures.
Check last rule of Sedraxis Specter

Kills unearth decks.

You can use this with the Silent Arbiter....

Just saying...

"Ferris wheels and bumper cars are fun, But those rides just aren't for everyone, Bought my ticket I'ma have a run, In the maze.
If I don't come back or right away, Give me time at least a half a day, Don't just leave me lost and blown away, In the maze"

I can't help but think that every time I see this card

The art looks like Nimbus Maze.

Completely ends exalted decks.

this is pretty useful. monocolored decks can deal with a couple colorless mana cards. the key is that it does not come into play tapped.

Map Quest. PROBLEM SOLVED

This and Archive Trap are a damn good counter to Stoneforge decks in my mono blue mill deck.
"Rawr! I slam Stoneforge and search for a Sword!"
Me: *yawn* "Archive Trap."
A few turns later...
"Rawr! I swing with my sworded Stoneforge!"
Me: *Yawn* "Mystifying Maze."
"Hahaha! I get to search for another sword!"
Me: *slams Archive Trap* From what Library?
D':

Hehehehe. I'm only a bit of a troll. I swear.

Great control deck card. More often than not, your opponent won't have many creatures out at a time, so you can use this if you miss the counter for a big threat. Then when you can, you can get rid of it later.
4/5

Very useful in EDH, less so in Standard where you can't afford the mana cost.

Hilarious when used against an attacking Chimeric Mass

Fun with Meekstone or Portcullis.

I love the maze, though, and they nailed the appropriate mechanic pretty well. (Sure, is steep, but it's uncounterable.) If they were going to use art this creepy, they should've waited until Innistrad to print this... but I'm happy to have my copy earlier than that.

Late Game in my control Deck this nasty little Maze really pulls through. Most of my control deck maxes it's mana usage at 4, so I'd play this cards effect for late game. The stall really angers my opponent and helps me come in for the win.
Is it weird that my most expensive card in my control deck is a land? Either way it pulls through and man does it help.

In some ways, Mystifying Maze is much better than Maze of Ith.

Mystifying Maze will send any enchantments on the creature being exiled to the graveyard.
Mystifying Maze puts the creature back on the battlefield tapped.
Mystifying Maze can be used for mana.

Sure, you're paying to do this and you lose the ability to get from Mystifying Maze... but if Maze of Ith is the comparison and you're using Mystifying Maze the same way you would use Maze of Ith, then you're really only paying because Maze of Ith doesn't provide any mana. That can be factored out of the equation.

is still a lot more than but, hey, the result packs a lot more punch than Maze of Ith. would have made this card about the same price as Maze of Ith.

This is not to say that Maze of Ith isn't good. Maze of Ith is terrific. There's no reason not to have both Maze of Ith and Mystifying Maze in a deck.

Interesting - great card to stop someone from stealing your creatures and attacking you (or anyone else) with it, since it comes back into play under its OWNER'S control.

Is in the background of vampire nighthawk's art.

I am SO glad I got 2 boxes of From the Vault: Realms and now own Maze of Iths. :D It feels almost as good as owning 1x Strip Mine from From the Vault: Exiled. Some lands are just awesome and will never wear out in your binders. I don't know if I'm going to be able to get into Vintage or Legacy someday, but it's a LOT more likely owning these lands than not having them, and in the meantime they're both Legal in Commander and help a huge ton there.

Mystifying Maze will send any enchantments on the creature being exiled to the graveyard.
Mystifying Maze puts the creature back on the battlefield tapped.
Mystifying Maze can be used for mana.

All true points. All are reasons why the *effect* of one Maze is possibly better than the effect of the other. But the Power of the cards is entirely different. One does stuff for {0}, the other does stuff for {4}.

You can argue whether or not you'd have liked a card to do what this card does for less mana, but you can't argue the actual statement "Mystifying Maze is better (you're implying more powerful or more useable) than Maze of Ith. That statement is false. Maze of Ith is much better because MAGIC is a resource management game- the effects that cost less turns, less cards, and less mana- the three primary resources- are better than the effects that cost more, because you can stack more of them together more quickly, and have more space left for playing around your opponents' cards in your decklist.

What you CAN debate is which card is more like a "Maze", and I'm going to have to give it to Mystifying Maze pretty much hands down. The card is exiled, and comes back tapped, instead of essentially chump-blocked, and that is much closer to Lost in the Woods-like flavor, actually getting stuck in a Maze, maybe even a magical Maze that truly takes you to another world before returning you to this one, than Maze of Ith. Maze of Ith can't just be renamed, because it's not going to be reprinted in a normal set because it's too powerful. Commemorating Maze of Ith with a renamed card to 'flavor-correct' it doesn't make as much sense as Commemorating it with an actual same-name reprint by a long shot, which is why the Judge and Vault Foils are named "Maze" of Ith, not "Stone Wall" of Ith.

But if I had the power to go back in Time, I'd suggest to the Designers of Maze of Ith "you know, what you're really doing is making an awesome Stone Wall or Siege Fort, because you can sit back behind this thing and no Dragons will ever break through that. Look here at this card I made- (show them Mystifying Maze)- that's what getting lost in a Maze looks like."

I also think that if I had power like that, I'd ask that Mystifying Maze allow you to draw a card. For 4 mana, I wanna to do more than just stop an attack- I want it to feel like it's really a very different card than Maze of Ith. I'd also probably slap an activation cost of {1} on Maze of Ith, which doesn't weaken it TOO much, it just brings it into enough balance with Modern Design that you could see it getting reprinted as a Mythic Rare in a real set. That's what I think about Mazes and Magic.

Maze of Ith does not produce mana, so you dont count it with your lands when deckbuilding.
This produces mana and hoses auras & +1/+1 counters.

Last ditch response to most problem creatures.

Also...
Tainted Æther
Overburden

Poor mans Maze of Ith but that's not a bad thing cause I'm broke.

In reference to comparisons made to Maze of Ith, especially as it concerns EDH, As I always say, when in doubt, run both.

Seriously though, some great points were made as to the uses for the particular iteration of the "maze" concept. (Though any possible connection these two lands have to Maze's End or Nimbus maze escapes me)

Twists and turns are my master plan, then find the Elements back where you began.