Forbidden Alchemy

[Ortix]

Apologies if I missed a post on this card already, but I couldn't find one and it seems insane that it's not getting some sort of attention.

This card is Impulse for 1 more colorless mana, it even casts at instant speed and the only major drawback they tried to throw in comparatively was the fact that the cards you DON'T take end up in your graveyard rather than the bottom of your library.

Clearly that is not a problem when the entire set has a graveyard subtheme in every single color other than White and to a lesser extend Red (so far). It does great work with Snapcaster Mage as well since whatever you turn down for your hand could potentionally be coming back via the wizard.

But honestly, what better form does this card take than the best enabler outside of a basic Birthing Pod deck for Skaab Ruinator. You can even take the one card you want and discard every creature you didn't want along with the Ruinator putting you only 1 guy in the graveyard shy of casting him by turn 4, or maybe you hit the jackpot and draw Ruinator with 3 other creatures pitched to the graveyard.

I think this card will be a constructed staple for the duration of Innistrad since it would be good either way but a deck that doesn't gain some benefit or reuse of a card in the graveyard will be hard to find, especially in blue with Snapcaster out there.

Also, it works very well with Green in a somewhat odd color pairing since there are already 2 creatures printed that gain power/toughness for creatures in the GY for them and this at instant speed the turn after you play a wurm that is maybe sitting as a 1/1 or 2/2 can get it big fast.

Anyway, just saying that between Snapcaster and Alchemy blue is unquestionably the first color I will begin brewing with upon rotation.

[lRachetl]

This is a great card but the problem with it is the fact that it is three mana. By this I mean there are so many other cards that are great being three mana.

Why play this card when there is turn one Ponder, turn two shriek Spirit thing to start dumping. Don't get me wrong I love the card but using three mana can be stressful for what to use it on.

I like how it has flash back to keep dumping but it is for a multicolored deck so why not use Beast Within, timely Reinforcements, o-ring, Dismember, the new burn spell, and a plethora of creatures.

I think it is a great card but has little room in today's standard.

[agracru]

That doesn't make any sense-- none of those cards fit the role that this fits (side note: are you seriously planning on playing a 5-color deck?), so why would they be competing with each other? I also wouldn't count Dismember as a 3 CMC spell, but that aside, this digs four-deep at Instant speed for three mana-- it's going to find homes in Standard as one of the better digging spells in the format.

That's not to mention the ramifications of its discard element, either.

[hotsauce]

I agree with the OP and agracru, this will be one of the standard staples for as long as it is legal. On top of it being great in any deck doing graveyard shenanigans, it is also one of the best card drawers blue has. I know people are addicted to Ponder, but they are going to quickly realize that when you don't have a way to shuffle your deck and you aren't digging for specific combo pieces it just isn't that good. IMO it will be replaced by either this or Think Twice in many of the U/X control decks, this one obviously getting the edge if you can flash it back regularly.

[Ortix]

This is a great card but the problem with it is the fact that it is three mana. By this I mean there are so many other cards that are great being three mana.

Why play this card when there is turn one Ponder, turn two shriek Spirit thing to start dumping. Don't get me wrong I love the card but using three mana can be stressful for what to use it on.

I like how it has flash back to keep dumping but it is for a multicolored deck so why not use Beast Within, timely Reinforcements, o-ring, Dismember, the new burn spell, and a plethora of creatures.

I think it is a great card but has little room in today's standard.

Yeah, I'm sorry but this logic was as flawed as I've seen in a long time. You simply ran off a bunch of powerful 3 mana spells that do nothing even remotely similar to what this spell does.

This isn't meant to sound insulting but you should probably do some research on cards in the past that did similar things and how they were universally accepted as some of the best spells to ever grace magic.

Impulse did the same thing for 1 less mana and is considered ever since that it was overpowered.

Fact or Fiction had a very similar mechanic and cost 4 mana and even that was still considered too powerful.

Digging for cards is historically one of the most fundamental assets of powerful blue decks and when a card like this comes along it is always used by people playing blue no matter what their deck is doing. This just happens to have an upside of filling the graveyard in a set that will certainly want that in many of its tier 1 and 2 decks.

And like an above poster said, Ponder is and will still be good, but not nearly as good as Preordain and what made it close to the power or possibly better was the existence of fetch lands for easy shuffling in standard which we will no longer have anymore.

I think anyone with a sense of the history of magic could agree that there is a near guarantee that the first blue decks in standard winning tournaments after Innistrad's release will run a playset of both Forbidden Alchemy and Snapcaster Mage.

[lRachetl]

Sure history affects how cards look but in formats like legacy why play this card when there is Impulse?

And which top rated decks play mono-blue when it is a much more suitable splash color?

In today's standard a three drop puts the game at a turn in the simple cast of a creature.

For more reference lets say: turn 3 you cast this spell and get 1 card of value, on my turn 3 I cast a Mirran Crusader, a sword, or even a Dungrove Elder. I have just put you on the clock and got board presence. Now you are playing catch-up to find an answer while I can twittle my thumbs with whatever new threat I can play.

Sure there's the argument turn 4 you kill my creature but you lost a turn again using mana to kill my creature. My turn 4 I play another threat putting you in another position to take care of that threat.

This card will be used but nowhere near a play set.

And also since when was filling the grave a good thing? Everyone says it will be but what card so far gives a huge advantage for a stocked graveyard. Only color to do so is green and two blue cards. Your saying every tier 1 and 2 deck will be G/U highly unlikely.

The cards mentioned were great in their standard doesn't mean it will be great now, another reference find multiple decks using those two cards mentioned, to my knowledge neither are being used in tournament play because other cards perform better.

[Ortix]

Sure history affects how cards look but in formats like legacy why play this card when there is Impulse?

And which top rated decks play mono-blue when it is a much more suitable splash color?

In today's standard a three drop puts the game at a turn in the simple cast of a creature.

For more reference lets say: turn 3 you cast this spell and get 1 card of value, on my turn 3 I cast a Mirran Crusader, a sword, or even a Dungrove Elder. I have just put you on the clock and got board presence. Now you are playing catch-up to find an answer while I can twittle my thumbs with whatever new threat I can play.

Sure there's the argument turn 4 you kill my creature but you lost a turn again using mana to kill my creature. My turn 4 I play another threat putting you in another position to take care of that threat.

This card will be used but nowhere near a play set.

And also since when was filling the grave a good thing? Everyone says it will be but what card so far gives a huge advantage for a stocked graveyard. Only color to do so is green and two blue cards. Your saying every tier 1 and 2 deck will be G/U highly unlikely.

The cards mentioned were great in their standard doesn't mean it will be great now, another reference find multiple decks using those two cards mentioned, to my knowledge neither are being used in tournament play because other cards perform better.

Man you are pretty dense at this point, no one said mono blue at all, but black will certainly have some benefit of cards in the graveyard, as will blue and seemingly green will love it. This card costs 1 blue so it will be easily played in any multicolored deck with blue.

And you speaking of what you're going to cast on turn 3 while I cast this is ridiculous, seeing as part of its benefit is that it's instant and evidentally you can't figure out how that fits into a blue deck that will have somewhere between 4 and 8 counters. If you want to cast something I keep mana to counter it, if you don't I cast this end of turn grabbing a valuable card and filling my graveyard for my deck.

As for your argument that these cards don't do the things you want them to do in their respective formats, it's because their formats have other things going on with MANY more available cards. Legacy has Brainstorm and 8 different fetch lands to choose from to shuffle after the effect.

Modern may not have Brainstorm but seeing as its a format with less answers to current turn 2,3, or 4 combos that kill instantly.

Don't get me wrong, I hear what you're saying but you continue to relate cards that do everything different from what this card does, it's like saying why run Preordain right now when you could run red and cast Goblin Guide that they have to answer in the next 2 turns or keep getting pounded.

Now, could this card be only "decent" while Innistrad is out, yes it could be but I find it unlikely. Once there are 2 sets from the block out though with another 150 cards in standard and any number of them using the graveyard as benefitial this card will be invaluable.

[agracru]

Sure history affects how cards look but in formats like legacy why play this card when there is Impulse?

You're talking about Legacy. If we're going head-to-head with cards that this shares a family resemblance to, this isn't quite as good, unless you want to put cards in your graveyard-- but in Legacy there are faster, more abusable ways to do that.

That said, it's Legacy. Again. If it doesn't make the grade in Legacy, it still can have applications elsewhere.

In today's standard a three drop puts the game at a turn in the simple cast of a creature.

Do you know what the format will look like post-rotation?

I agree that the format has a ton of great 3 CMC spells, but none of them do what Forbidden Alchemy does. If Forbidden Alchemy mirrored Beast Within or Oblivion Ring, I might understand comparing it to similar spells, but this does something that no other spell in the format does. That alone makes it in a league of its own and very much worth considering in engine decks or control decks.

For more reference lets say: turn 3 you cast this spell and get 1 card of value, on my turn 3 I cast a Mirran Crusader, a sword, or even a Dungrove Elder. I have just put you on the clock and got board presence. Now you are playing catch-up to find an answer while I can twittle my thumbs with whatever new threat I can play.

Except I just cast Forbidden Alchemy, and now it's my turn to Unearth a Ruinator or cast the DoJ I just drew off of the Alchemy. This is a faulty scenario.

Sure there's the argument turn 4 you kill my creature but you lost a turn again using mana to kill my creature. My turn 4 I play another threat putting you in another position to take care of that threat.

I don't really understand what point you think you're making here. That's just Magic. That's how the game works. One player produces threats, the other player either kills them, produces bigger threats, or dies. None of this really speaks to how playable Forbidden Alchemy is, though, and frankly you're kind of arguing that draw spells are bad because they lose you a turn, which is nonsense. (Besides, I'm casting Alchemy at the end of your turn anyways.)

And also since when was filling the grave a good thing? Everyone says it will be but what card so far gives a huge advantage for a stocked graveyard. Only color to do so is green and two blue cards. Your saying every tier 1 and 2 deck will be G/U highly unlikely.

Filling the grave is clearly going to be a good thing, as the entire block is going to be defined by players putting stuff in the graveyard. Between Skaab Ruinator, Flashback, cards like Cemetery Reaper, and Bonehoard/Boneyard Wurm/Splinterfright, there's plenty of good reason to put cards in your graveyard, and that's barely scratching the surface. The only concession I'll make here is that many of the Flashback spells are very pricey, but I can't imagine that they'll all be printed that high on the curve.

The cards mentioned were great in their standard doesn't mean it will be great now, another reference find multiple decks using those two cards mentioned, to my knowledge neither are being used in tournament play because other cards perform better.

Again, this really only makes sense if you find something that does what Forbidden Alchemy does. FA fills a niche that's open in Standard; it joins the ranks of cards like Thirst for Knowledge in Modern, but it might be worth considering even in that format.

[GoblinToken]

The closest recent comparisons I can come up with are Foresee, and Lead the Stampede.

You only play this card in a deck that likes stuff in it's graveyard, but even the most dedicated deck like that only really wants about half of the cards it runs to go there. So with that logic this card is the equivalent of drawing your two best cards of the top 4 of your deck. Another way to look at it is that it might whiff like a Lead the Stampede can sometimes whiff - If you reveal a land, a Ponder, a Liliana, and new shrieking bird, for example, you're only getting 1.1 cards out of the deal. But when it works, it works great - it can effectively draw you 4 cards if you get lucky.

Both those cards I compared it to just now see play now and then (okay, corner cases), but I didn't even mention the instant-speed or flashback potential of this one. I'll be playing 4.