Pointed Discussion

This is not my favorite Raise Dead variant.

This is really an excellent black spell. My friend's mono black deck runs two of these and they're a beast. It works really well when you have a lot of mana and 4 Cabal Coffers in your deck.

There are a lot better "Quick Fix" spells that bring creatures back, but this is the best long term spell. If you're good at stalling out the game and have a lot of mana, this is the card to invest in.

pauper. nowhere else is it an all-star

seems like it would be decent in EDH as a reusable raise dead. any repetition is valuable there.

I tend to agree with DBERRY02 on this one. If your running a quick constructed duel deck, this probably isn't your first choice. But it's still only 1 cmc over Raise Dead. For the ability to cast itself for the rest of the game (sans counterspell or graveyard hate) I would easily use this. You can abuse it too with creatures like Fleshbag Marauder, Spore Frog, Shriekmaw (or anything with evoke). Another thing to note is that this card is common, alot of card advantage if you're playing pauper, which can tend to take longer anyways.

Anyways, more options are always better than fewer options.

I always feel like, somebody's watching meeeeeee.

Probably better ways to do it, but this is still solid card advantage when bought back. Possible to never lose a creature, lol.

It's either going to be more expensive than Raise Dead or way more expensive than Raise Dead in order for you to do it multiple times.

Probably good in EDH, probably a waste of space anywhere else.

Memory Crystal obviously pushes this card's quality up quite a bit :)

Thing is, Memory Crystal itself isn't the best thing to be doing, so the first thing you HAVE to find before proceeding is buyback cards that you'd be happy with, without Memory Crystal. To that end, Capsize seems like a good place to start :P :)

Wurmcalling isn't halfbad either, but that's getting a little color-greedy, and also if you're playing with big tokens, it's hard to justify a Raise Dead-effect...

It seems like Red would be good for Stormish Ideas .. Black Buyback doesn't suggest a theme to me; some good cards, some lower power cards, but all so generic that they're hard to consider building around.

Honestly the most helpful thing is to just provide this link to all Buyback Cards, which shows Memory Crystal at the top, and ask yourself: do I want to play with a bunch of Gravediggers and Buyback cards? What am I Gravediggng for?

http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Search/Default.aspx?sort=color-&text=%20


Sadly, there is no interaction with Buyback and Card Type-Creature. Creatures don't have Buyback; Creatures don't have Flashback. That's what we have Unearth for. BUT! Creatures have CYCLING, and if you wanted to make a kooky deck, you can say

"I want to build a deck with Fluctuator and Memory Crystal just to prove it can be done. :P

At that point you should strongly consider splashing for Flashback so you can say it's your Blast from the Past Tribal Deck :)