Pointed Discussion

No flavour text makes me sad

Tricky, but playable with Barren Glory.

I'm not as impressed by oblivion ring as others I've talked to. It is a handy utility card, but I'd rather play removal than temporarily remove a card with an enchantment. If my opponent has any way of destroying oblivion rings, the whole strategy is just a waste of enchantment cards. Bant charm, maelstrom pulse, and aura shards comes to mind. Its still a better version of pacifism, if nothing else, but then how many pacifisms have you seen in any mainstream deck lately.

This is one of the greatest cards in the game without a doubt. The trick that turns it from odd exile enchantment to strategic gold is to Exile your own permanents with it.

1. Let's say you've got Mirari's Wake on the table, and you need the mana ramp to keep your deck synergy going. Your opponent has Tranquility, obviously they should play Tranquility and remove your mana ramp, but wait! You've used Oblivion Ring to exile oh I don't know, something nasty, Baneslayer Angel, Krosan Cloudscraper, or heck even another Mirari's Wake. Suddenly it doesn't become so obvious what to do; no matter what your opponent decides to do the outcome is favorable for you and that puts you in control of the game.

2. Let's you get any Lhurgoyf style creature on the board early and then exil it to keep it out of other players hands; late game, Naturalizeyour own Oblivion Ring, instant massive creature from left field.

3. Play a set of four Oblivion Rings in a White/Red End of the World deck, blow the board to kingdom come with Wrath of God, Day of Judgment, Jokulhaups*, Obliterate* leaving you with 4 permanents of your choosing safely exiled from the devastation.

Planar Cleansing is one of the best cards to use with this strategy because it leaves your lands untouched so you can play Disenchant.

By far the best "blow the board to hell" card to use with Oblivion Ring is Apocalypse. As it resolves it removes your own Oblivion Rings from the game returning your exiled permanents automatically without you having to scrounge up land to destroy the O-Rings after you've wasted the board; leaving you with 4 permanents on the field- and when everyone else has a grand total of 0 permanents out, 4 might as well be a hundred. Or even better, Apocalypse with an O-Ring in play that's holding back Barren Glory as Sir_Gwar suggested.

It's a little odd that they left out the flavor text on the Planechase printing.

PhyrexianLobbiest (10/27/2009 7:38:33);
About the first part of your comment... I get it, yet at the same time it doesn't make sense, why would you exile your own Baneslayer/ Krosan Cloudscraper when you could just clobber them with it; I mean basicly you have a choice of either having your Mirari's wake-- you use one or both to try to clobber them so...
I don't know.. Just seems to make more sense to exile their stuff unless we're talking you got two enchantments they don't like on the table are there and either single one could destroy them, THEN it would make sense to Oblivion ring one so if they play Tranquility they only get rid of one and the other comes back so they'd be in an impossible possition.
I mean since Tranquility wont effect your creatures... I don't see temperarily exiling your own creature/s to try to stop them from playing it; if you got such ugly creatures out and they could/ would end they game-- then why dely the game?? Just seems silly.


Donovan_Fabian (10/26/2009 12:31:44);
I don't think you get it... THIS can remove anything! And with cards like the enchantment 'Indestructibility' out there it's particularly nice. Instead of having to destroy the enchantment then getting rid of the card itself you can exile the obnoxious card that's been made indestructable with Oblivion ring and thus without it's target 'indestructability' goes to their grave and the card it was on is also gone-- from the game!!
Getting rid of creatures from the game isn't always such a big deal (not all decks are focused around beating you using creatures, but OTHER cards and oblivion ring is a cure for all/any card they may have in their deck! It's a good acrd to make your deck more playable against any condition/ type of playing style and tricks one's deck may hold/have) and who wants to pack disenchant and creature removal too when they can pack just creature removal and oblivion ring which can get rid of creatures/ artifacts/ enchantments or anything else for that matter that isn't a land??
Seriously, this card is AWESOME and nasty...
I think it should have atleast been an uncommon with it's potential!

Why isn't this a core set card?

There's the Red-Ring and the O-Ring; one screws you over in MW2, the other in MTG.

Why hasn't anyone come up with a ridiculous combo to bounce this back to your hand as soon as you play it? There's gotta be better ways to abuse this than something like Narrow Escape and Into the Roil; still, both of those - for a little more mana - ensure that you'll never see the O-ring's exiled card again.

All things considered the best spot removal ever printed in my opinion, right up there with vindicate.
In a multiplayer game awhile ago I did it like this -

Turn 2 - I cast energy field.
Turn 3 - I cast Oblivion Ring exiling my energy field.

Then late game, an opponent saw I was mostly tapped out and attacked me with everything he had.
I responded by tapping my Vedalken Mastermind and one Island, returning my Oblivion ring to my hand, returning my Energy Field to the battlefield, rendering me impervious to damage.

Even without any cards to synergize with it, O-ring hits any nonland permanent. So as long as your opponents play artifacts, creatures, enchantments, planeswalkers, or token-creating cards, this will always be a welcome draw.

The O-Ring is nice because it can exile any permanent. Plainswalkers, artifacts, creatures, enchantments, or tokens. Sure they may get it back eventually, but this card can definetly buy you some time. Always in my sideboard.

Saw this with Kor Skyfisher combo. White Weenie with a Twist, was its name and ended up in the top four, San Diego, this year. I forgot the player's name. He used O-ring on a token and then bounced it back to play it on a Baneslayer the next turn. Was brilliant.

I found that 3 O Rings and a Sigil of The Empty Throne works very Well, First play Sigil, then play your first O-ring, targeting whatever on the field. Next turn, play the second O-ring in the first, removing it from the game, and returning whatever was exiled. Finally play the Third O-ring on the which would bring back the first O-ring, which you use to target the second and so one and so forth. Unlimited Angels until you change one of the O-Rings Targets to something else.

can o-ring target emrakul?, alot of people here in my country says that o-ring will be cast first as an enchantment, then after it resolves its color will be disregarded and thus can target emrakul which has protection from colored spells.. i really dont get this, can anyone shed some light here?

@farming When Oblivion Ring enters the battlefield, it's no longer a spell and neither is it's ability, so Emrakul's protection doesn't matter. It IS still white though.

@ergonomicQ Your 'combo' with Sigil of The Empty Throne doesn't work. When the O-Rings return to the battlefield, you aren't casting them, so you don't get Angel tokens.

It looks like this card will be rotating out of standard (unless they reprint it in Scars) along with the fact that they didn't reprint Pithing Needle or will make Dealing with plainswalkers a lot harder in T2, I guess I might need to run a few hexmages in my deck/sb now. I don't understand why this can't just be a core set card though.

@Orim-s_Thunder Look at the protection video from Wizards of the Coast at this link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RomAvGIDExY

You can clearly see that oblivion ring is specifically cited (at 6:52) as NOT being able to target Black Knight (who has protection from white). Emrakul has protection from colored spells which, the last time I checked, includes white, which includes oblivion ring.

@pjboylan: Emrakul has protection from colored SPELLS, but O-ring's effect is an ABILITY. Therefore it can target Emrakul. So can, say Visara the Dreadful

"can o-ring target emrakul?, alot of people here in my country says that o-ring will be cast first as an enchantment, then after it resolves its color will be disregarded and thus can target emrakul which has protection from colored spells.. i really dont get this, can anyone shed some light here?"

@farming

Nah they're just messing with you. An enchantment is a spell and this one is white, therefore it cannot target Emrakul. See you choose a target when Oblivion Ring enters the battlefield not after. You can argue this to them as well as the key word here on Ring is TARGET, and i'm pretty sure the ruling for protection reads that this individual may not be TARGETED by stated colour/colours/whatever. Anyway how can the colour be disregarded? Colour is like the underlying theme of the whole game, their argument seems stupid to me.

Thanks for listening.

A bit too versatile I guess...

Great to see this finally made it into a core set. Pulled one out of my first 2012 booster. Can't have enough of these.

Using this to target other Oblivion Rings or Journey to Nowhere, you can trigger "enters the battlefield" abilities multiple times. This is especially easy to do in with bounce-any-permanent spells like Capsize which can be reused with its buyback.

Put three in play with no other targets: Crash MTGO.

Great card because of its versatility. Deserves better art imho.

Look at all those reprints! This card is so ridiculously good.

i know the comments are old but for further notice O-ring is a spell while on the stack not while on the field so the effect can target E-kool cause it says when not as