Reverse the Sands

Tilon13 2008-12-10

★☆☆☆☆ (1.3/5.0) (9 votes)

Elder Dragon Highlander all the way. "I'll be at 125, and you'll all be at 1. Now fight amongst yourselves over last place."

thaviel 2009-04-15

★★★★☆ (4.4/5.0) (9 votes)

2/1/2004 You can't split up a life total when you redistribute it. For example, suppose that in a two-player game your life total is 5 and your opponent's life total is 15 when Reverse the Sands starts to resolve. You can choose to (a) leave the life totals as they are or (b) make your life total 15 and your opponent's 5. You can't choose to make your life total 20 and your opponent's 0.

so i'm sorry tilon13 you can't do that

also use platinum angeland go below 0 before you switch for extra kicks

Forgeling 2009-08-22

★★★☆☆ (3.9/5.0) (5 votes)

Combo with Wall of Shards.

Faidite 2009-09-21

★★☆☆☆ (2.8/5.0) (3 votes)

This is fun, but I think it's too expensive to use regularly.

Champion_Kitsune 2009-10-25

★★★☆☆ (3.2/5.0) (4 votes)

Man, I used to think this could make your life total 37 and your opponent's 1 or 0.

AXER 2009-12-16

★☆☆☆☆ (1.8/5.0) (2 votes)

So you can't make someone's life 1? Why does it say "redistribute" instead of "swap" or "switch"?

Ragnarokio 2010-01-08

★★★★☆ (4.3/5.0) (5 votes)

yes, a life total is a single number, its how much life the person has. when you redistribute life totals your moving life totals from player to player, not changing life totals. thats my understanding of it anyway. its worded that way so that it works in multiplayer.

KarmasPayment 2010-07-01

★★★★☆ (4.4/5.0) (8 votes)

Sigh, this card is one of the banes of EDH, as is just about everything else I mention in this post, excluding clone. Yet, for some reason, the people I play with love to use them all.

"Sorin, You're at ten."

"Reverse the sands, You're at ten."

"Repay in kind, We're all at ten!"

also, Magister Sphinx likes to be cloned. xD

tcollins 2011-01-17

★★★★☆ (4.2/5.0) (4 votes)

The reminder text seems to have caused an awful lot of confusion, if you cast this in a chaos game with this scenario:
Player 1 Life Total: 26
Player 2 Life Total: 32
Player 3 Life Total: 3
You : 10

You redistribute the life totals, meaning one player receives a life total of 32, one receives a life total of 26, one receives a life total of 3 and one receives a life total of 10.

Might be fun to use in a {W}{B} deck that allows you to pay for card draw / advantage (Necropotence or something like Phyrexian Arena) Also would work wonders with Plunge into Darkness since you can drop your own life total down to 1, then swap with your opponent! (Hopefully getting your win condition in hand in the process!)

CatpainLysdexia 2011-02-04

★★★★☆ (4.2/5.0) (4 votes)

The key is that it says redistribute life totals, not redistribute life points.

Falos 2011-05-20

★★★★☆ (4.2/5.0) (4 votes)

Maybe it should've read "reassign"...

Superfrasse 2011-06-19

☆☆☆☆☆ (0.0/5.0)

As I have ubderstood it, you exchange the life totals of all players, for example in a 4 player game:
1st player has 43 life
2nd player has 36 life
3rd player has 33 life
and you have 28 life
(somehow)
You want the 1st one to have 28 life total,
2nd to have 33,
3rd to have 46 life and
yourself to have 43 life.

Is that how it works?

TheManakinTransfer 2011-07-22

★★★☆☆ (3.0/5.0) (1 vote)

Crazy fun card in EDH. Especially after an Exsanguinate

Superllama12 2011-08-02

☆☆☆☆☆ (0.0/5.0)

Kamigawa had so many cool and creative cards like this and Hidetsugu's Second Rite, but it supposedly had a low power level, so people disliked it...I think that it was because no one could pronounce the names...I mean, Arashi, the Sky Asunder? It's a pretty good card, but who can actually remember its name?

DarthParallax 2011-09-15

★★★☆☆ (3.0/5.0) (2 votes)

Wait, there's a wacky card that does a completely unique, inherently confusing, AND multiplayer abusive ability?

Yes, sign me up please. Hive Mind and you will get along very very nicely I think. Just let me go check with Knowledge Pool first xD

Henrietta 2011-12-06

☆☆☆☆☆ (0.5/5.0) (2 votes)

This card is seriously not that hard to understand. If you get confused by it you're retarded.

Wizard-of-the-Toast 2011-12-29

☆☆☆☆☆ (0.0/5.0)

EDH is where this card belongs, especially in a deck which is slow to start with against aggro decks. I also like the idea of using this as a bargaining tool in multiplayer to reward your allies and punish your enemies.

Salient 2012-02-19

★★★★☆ (4.8/5.0) (2 votes)

MTG trivia: this is the only card in the game to use the word "redistribute" as an instruction, which means there's a rule specifically for this one card. That puts it in a category with Trinisphere and possibly just a few other cards.

Continue 2013-01-07

☆☆☆☆☆ (0.5/5.0) (1 vote)

My friend used to love this card in multiplayer games, mostly because he misunderstood the card. He would give himself almost all the life and leave everyone else at 1 — after all, the card said that each player got one life total back. When I (with my two weeks of experience) pointed out that the card said to redistribute life totals and not points, he promptly took out his copy of the card, read it, and realized that he was wrong. This card isn't nearly as good as people think it is, even with its real ruling.

Goatllama 2013-01-08

☆☆☆☆☆ (0.0/5.0)

This would most definitely be mythic nowadays, and that's exactly where this sort of effect should sit. So cool, but not something that should be seen often.

Aquillion 2013-06-11

☆☆☆☆☆ (0.0/5.0)

I love the fact that this needed an Oracle ruling just to say that you can't instantly reduce someone's life total to 0 the moment you cast it. Are there actually people who read this card and tried to argue that it meant they could redistribute everyone else's life to them and win the game instantly for 8 mana with one card? Why would WotC ever publish any other cards at that CMC if it could do that?

Comments (21)