Pointed Discussion

This COULD be quite bothersome.

eww. maybe this will be good someday, or maybe it is now and i haven't seen the right card yet. but for now eww.

Mill decks come to mind. Depends on how bad it is on your own spells I guess.

might stop Relentless Rats decks... if you get them into the graveyard.... no no, thats just bad... This cards to situational. Id rather run counterbalance. Much easier to use.

Looking at the art, is anyone else reminded of Cthulhu?

All the shrines were awful. I started playing with about ten rares, and even I didn't run my aven shrine.

These have to be some of the worst rares in existence. Not the worst cards (the egotist or any card from homelands have that honor) but pretty awful.

Makes Lightning Bolt cost 4 R! :D

That is not dead which can eternal lie
And with strange aeons even death may die

I just pulled this card out of a pack in a retro double pack from Wal-mart. It's Foil but I still pretty much think it is useless unless they are running a deck of Relentless Rats or something.

i actally really like this card. everything in most formats runs 4-ofs these days. can really screw up tempo. i guess i see something in this card as a control player that others don't? 3/5.

It's tempting to use it in a mill deck, but honestly, you'd be better off waiting a bit and using Bazaar of Wonders. It's not like the casting cost makes a huge difference here, since it's unlikely that this card will do anything early on anyway.

A Commander staple.

That effect is just ridiculously narrow. Admittedly, it might slow your opponent down in mill decks,
but even in that particular situation still not reliably enough. And it affects you as well.

This card could have been a relevant sideboard card if they had dropped the whole X-condition entirely and just made the card hardcounter any card that has a copy of it in the graveyard.
So basically, a cheaper Bazaar of Wonders that just triggers for cards in the graveyard.

The reason this card is that bad might be the fact that it's part of a(n already weak) cycle of enchantments that all get stronger effects when a player casts a card for each copy of it in the graveyard:
Aven Shrine (gain X life)
Cephalid Shrine (counter unless X mana is paid)
Cabal Shrine (discard X cards)
Dwarven Shrine (be dealt X damage)
Nantuko Shrine (get X 1/1 green squirrels)

There are cards you can have any amount of in your deck (Ravenous Rats and Shadowborn Apostle) that might work with the Aven and Nantuko one, but even under these extreme conditions they barely get off hand.
(As opposed to Thrumming Stone for example)

But even with those in mind (and considering they didn't exist back then), I feel like all of these could have been one-drops without being broken. Alternatively, all of their effects could have been doubled and only affected you or your opponent, and I bet still nobody would complain about them being too powerful.

If you're running a fun singleton format vs a 4x every card, and have mill or more counters it might be pretty fun. That being said I'd leave it to casual play.

I do think that this blue one, the black one and the red one are the most useful in this regard as well.

Cephalid Shrine + Aquamoeba + Cunning Wish + Own atleast 1 of every single instant card in existence.

Laugh manically as you opponent rests his face on his fist while you search through 1752 cards.

Use it if your opponents are casting a bunch of Accumulated Knowledge.

Or just run a good card that will actually win you the game. Your choice.