Pointed Discussion

servers mana

Weird combo card that only got played in two kind of decks, self-milling decks with Hermit Druid, and lock decks which used Abundance to reorder their deck at will, usually followed by Sylvan Library and Gaea's Blessing to constantly recycle Time Walk.

3.5/5 from me. Could see it being useful once you ramp up your mana in multiplayer and dont want to topdeck any more land.

I do have a question about this card though. If I were to Hive Mind it would my opponent have to exile the same number of lands? If so, I could see some awesome use in a low mana cost blue deck, hivemind this beast early, and then beat your opponent with the 6 mana you have, to their 5 (you would want to go first in this hypothetical deck). Would make a very nice Merfolk Permission deck, less spells per turn on their side of the field to worry about.

If you play this with Hive Mind, your opponent does not have to exile the same number of lands as you do. In fact, since his copy resolves first, he will choose how many to exile before you. He doesn't even need to exile any land card, so it's useless for that purpose.

Just make sure you don't get zapped by Mind Funeral the next turn.

No, Rainyday2012, actually COPYING an spell creates AN EXACT COPY of what you just played. When copying a spell any given choice (for example number of exiled land cards on this, options on commands or charms and spells with 'does X thing') is kept the way the original players did. The owner of the copy does exactly what the original spell did, including targets unless the cards tell you so.

You can check the Oracle's information on Twincast and Hive Mind.

BelloAbril, you seem to be mistaken about how copying this spell works. Rainyday2012 has it right. When this spell is copied for an opponent, he gets the exact same spell which says "Search your library for any number of land cards and exile them. Then shuffle your library." As he resolves his copy, he is simply resolving that line of text, with nothing else going on. He can simply search for zero land cards.

Much of what you said about copying spells is accurate, but you are wrong to think that any of it would create the effect you seem to desire. Modal spells, X-spells, Arcane spells that have been spliced onto, and spells with additional costs all have things that change the spell as they are cast and these changes carry over to copies. Mana Severence, however, is not any of those cards. The choice of how much land to exile is made on resolution of the spell.

You are correct to say that the copied spell does exactly what the original spell does, but in this case all that is is to search your library for any number of land cards. Not only can the player choose to search for zero cards, due to the rules for searching, the player could search for 100 and find and exile zero. Also, the idea of the copy doing exactly what the original spell did is flawed as, with a copy on the stack, the original spell has yet to have the chance to do anything.

Finally, there's almost no situation where the controller of a copied spell will have to have the same target as the original spell. Hive Mind, Twincast, and nearly every other spell that creates a copy allows the controller of the copy to choose new targets for their copy.

Dream Halls. That is all.

This card was obviously made to be set up with Goblin Charbelcher so that you won't have to worry about revealing a land or leaving 1 land for that extra damage it does.

Crucible of worlds anybody? whoops, my bad. Yeah, dream halls works.

What about Planar Birth ... 3rd turn infinite mana

@Aquajock:

Note that Mana severance exiles those lands, thus planar birth will accomplish nothing, i sincerely doubt they'll ever create a low-costed card that self-mills in that way. because it would basically become the new Entomb.

A little bit of an extreme example... but it would be a little foolish to think Wizards would goof up like that. Especially considering Entomb is rated near the top as one of the best turn one one mana cards ever.

Although, if it only milled land, the repercussions might only be severe in Vintage (crucible of worlds/fastbond).

Then again, planar birth would almost replace that combo since it would pretty much ensure a turn 2 kill... you know... assuming the opponent is lacking Force of Will

turn two with 20 lands out usually means you'll be able to do something ridiculous..

My Naya deck was suffering from such a dead-draw problem that I adjusted my mana base to make room for this.
Then I realized Countryside Crusher has a similar effect in my colors. Oh, well...

hmm so you're guaranteeing yourself spell draw, but what about when i do this Realm Razer

"This card was obviously made to be set up with Goblin Charbelcher so that you won't have to worry about revealing a land or leaving 1 land for that extra damage it does."

This card was made six years before Charbelcher. Yes, it works well with the cannon, but that combo wasn't the intended purpose (unless the design for Charbelcher was lurking in a filing cabinet long before it saw print). It was more likely make to combo with Dream Halls, or just used to prevent mana flood in the late game. There was a guy at the store I used to frequent that had an infatuation with the card simply for the latter use mentioned -- he would splash blue in decks just for the card! (he also did a lot of drugs, but I don't know if the two behaviours were related)

So, I armageddon now? :)
Oh, no no no, that was a great play! Don't feel bad!
(I realize this card has uses, I just love the look on someones face when it backfires.)

@Haze01, you are absolutely correct, and I thank you; I was really expecting to have to say exactly what you did when I read the post about copying. Much like Proliferate, choices are made upon resolution, and thusly cannot be copies.

And, scumbling1, you clearly aren't informed of how R&D work in Magic, they ARE years ahead of the cards we see hit play. Maybe not quite THAT far ahead, but still.

There is one crazy combo with this card, but it's practically unplayable due to high mana cost and the number of involved cards.
- Play Vedalken Orrery, Hive Mind and Mindslaver;
- activate Mindslaver to control opponent's next turn;
- pass the turn;
- during opponent's turn cast Selective Memory and Mana Severance (you can, thanks to Vedalken Orrery); opponent gets a copy of each one on the stack;
- since you control opponent during his/her turn you can exile every land and nonland card from his/her library and no cards from yours (you have also your Selective Memory and Mana Severance on the stack);
- pass the turn;
- it's your turn, pass the turn;
- opponent loses during draw step.

Combos with Treasure Hunt, and... nothing else, now that Hermit Druid is banned. Honestly, a Goblin Charbelcher deck would be crazy to run this -- it's hard to get the to spend, and way too unreliable. (Most of the Charbelcher decks only rarely cast Charbelcher; finishing with Empty the Warrens is much more common, since red mana acceleration is plentiful. You run three Warrens plus four Burning Wish and leave a fourth Warrens in your sideboard to wish for -- basically, that's seven copies of Warrens. Mana Severance doesn't make Warrens any better!)

It's probably obvious, but whatever, here's the hunt combo: Mana Severance --> Treasure Hunt --> (put entire library into hand) --> Lotus Petal, Lotus Petal, Lotus Petal, Lotus Petal, Chrome Mox, Chrome Mox, Chrome Mox, Chrome Mox, Mox Opal --> your combo-finisher of choice, usually Tendrils of Agony or Hive Mind + Pact of the Titan or Pact (causes opponent to lose on their upkeep).

Does not combo with Battle of Wits. :)

I was considering trying this in a Sanity Grinding Deck... but it got cut last second. If only it cost I probably would have run it.

Back when I was new, I pulled this and really didn't see the point of the card. It wasn't indicated as a rare either so I've just put it with my other blue commons for a very long time (less than 10 years already...time flies)
With the Magic2012 agressive blue illusions, I find myself putting this card on that type of deck. Since every agressive/weenie-like deck doesn't want lands beyond a certain point and just wants pure beatdown/removal.
For all the years it has spent on the box, not being used like the thousands of commons. I finally found a use for this.
Sorry for being emotional. The nostalgia of being a new player is just so strong sometimes :)

This, Selective Memory, and Laboratory Maniac.

Great in any deck with blue. If you have the desired lands out, exile your land base and make sure your deck only draws useable spells. This is deck thinning folks.

Goblin Charbelcher and this so you can flip your deck upside-down and say "I win", or perhaps to watch it get stifled.

@aquajock: unfortunately no, because this effect is an exile.

Also, lots of lands is still not "infinite mana".

I used this in my old High Tide deck. It often combo'd off around T3 and to be more reliable I exiled my lands. It works well with Sanity Grinding as well.

The main issue I had with it is that I needed it to win, but multiples of it (or running into it later) was troublesome. It's probably worth it because you're increasing your non-land draws by such a degree that continuing to draw this is preferable.

I think people are missing an obvious application for this. Wait till you have however many lands your deck needs - be it 4 or 8 and then use this to exile every land card left in your deck. Now you never have a dead draw.

So when people say to use Dream Halls ... is that because with Dream Halls you don't necessarily want to be drawing lands since you need colored cards to discard?

Well, this is one way to ensure you only draw good spells to cast with that pretty Omniscience of yours.