Pointed Discussion

Haha, there goes your Letter Bombs! Not actually useful, though.

Might be useful with Mirror of Fate.

Mirror of Fate indeed.

Generally it's for weeding out excess lands once you have enough in play. However, if you presideboard for a match, you can take out any unneeded hosers. And if you've got nothing better to remove, just pull out your other Manipulate Fates.

I like it. A backwards Wish. Rip out three lands to draw your nonlands quicker.

Try this with polymorph for maximum cash for gold.

My first thought was almost the same as Kirbster's. There are many combo decks that would be much better if 40 card decks were allowed in constructed. So make that 40 card deck, drop four of these, few extra lands and metagame relevant hosers in. Presto you have 60 card deck which you can thin when you want.

Many players used Urza's Bauble for selfthinning card in certain decks.

Useful for removing the other 3 copies of itself from your deck, haha.

Not too bad, you can weed out dead draws and keep your game tight. Plus, a cantrip! Can't argue with that.

Misthollow Griffin is a viable choice for this card. Grab three of them and you don't have to worry about hitting a creature.

Nonblue Mage: I play Booby Trap
Blue mage: I scoff at your pathetic attempt, for I can manipulate my own fate.

There is the concept of "Virtual Card Advantage" in which you compare not the cards or field position, but rather what cards can get them out of a situation that are left in their hand/deck. If you are against a deck that many cards will not help against, this helps you be card neutral while gaining virtual card advantage (by increasing the viability of your later draws. I'm misphrasing slightly given that i'm comparing "future virtual card advantage.")

Between this and filtering cards one can imagine a deck that has all of the answers and merely gets rid of the wrong answers as it goes.

Say you have a control deck that relies a bit on bouncing but you all the sudden run into a janky Hexproof/Shroud deck. You can filter three of those now useless draws out of the deck, get a new card, and hopefully be in a better position for the rest of the game. Similar can be said for conditional removal, kill spells against combo, anti-combo against aggro, etc.. and as mentioned, getting rid of lands when you know you'll have enough is quite handy.

The Misthollow Griffin thing basically turns this into Tidings for a quarter of the cost. Well, provided you want some griffins :V

If your not trying to combo... use it to toss out 3 lands. Good deck thinning + cantrip is got to be worth something.

The modern version of Foresight.

I like seeing cards like this; ones where you can see the experience level of a player based on the understanding of a card's uses.