[Back] [Home] [Up] [Next]

9 Snow-Covered Plains
7 Snow-Covered Island
4 Boreal Shelf
3 Scrying Sheets

Blink of Disaster.

Description of deck by it's author (quoted):
There's nothing I like more than having someone change my opinion about a card. I like having my eyes opened, my mind expanded, my creative juices, uh, shaken, stirred, and garnished with a little pink umbrella of unexpected enlightenment.

Robby Bullis, otherwise known as Redland Jack, called my attention to Pull from Eternity. To me, this card seemed extraordinarily narrow. Sure, it helped out a lot against one of Time Spiral's main mechanics (suspend), but when has a narrow hoser ever been fun to build decks around? I don't recall the Johnnies of the world drooling over Stabilizer, or Ishi-Ishi, Akki Crackshot, for example. Luckily, Pull from Eternity is not quite as focussed as either of those cards, as Robby demonstrated. I'm not going to talk about the combo he sent me (not this week, anyway), but that's where the inspiration for the next deck came from. Here are just a few things you can do with Pull from Eternity:

Reuse flashback spells. When you play a spell with flashback from your graveyard, you have to remove it from the game once it has resolved. Pull from Eternity allows you to bring back, say, Call of the Herd for one last hurrah.

Turn Flickers into Mortifies. While by no means efficient, if you can remove a creature from play temporarily with a spell or effect (Liberate, Astral Slide, Parallax Wave, Voyager Staff), you can then use Pull from Eternity to put that creature into its owner's graveyard. Spending two cards to “kill” a creature isn't that exciting, really, even if it is in a very unusual way. However, what if you recouped all of those spent cards in the process? What if you removed the creature with… Vanish into Memory! When you play the latest You Make the Card winner, you get to draw cards equal to the power of the creature you removed from the game. If one of those cards happens to be Pull from Eternity, you can play it on the removed creature and put it into its owner's graveyard. Normally, you would have to discard cards equal to the creature's toughness at the beginning of your next upkeep. The neat thing is that this is only the case if you return the creature to play, which you will obviously not be able to do.

I feel sorry for creatures that can “Flicker” themselves, like Hikari, Twilight Guardian and the Ghost Dad himself, Ghost Council of Orzhova, since they get owned by a one-mana white spell that they will never see coming.

Pull from Eternity as Entomb. This is the big one, the idea that got me really excited. Imagine you had a way to remove cards in your hand from the game. Something like Shining Shoal, or better yet, Sunscour. Now, play your spell, pitching Akroma, Angel of Wrath or Chronosavant or both. Then, play Pull from Eternity to put that creature into your graveyard. If it's Chronosavant, it can reanimate itself. If it's Akroma, you can resurrect her with, say, Resurrection. Note that this reanimation strategy can be fuelled by Vanish into Memory.

Meanwhile, if you read the coverage for Pro Tour – Kobe, you'd know that the breakout card of the tournament was Momentary Blink. The card is incredibly versatile despite having such a seemingly inconsequential effect. All it does is remove a creature you control from the game and return it to play immediately. What does that mean? What does it do? Here's a brief list of things you can do with a Momentary Blink:

Untap a creature. When you play Chronosavant from your graveyard, it comes into play tapped. You also skip your next turn. These two things are not complementary. Instead of being completely wide open for attacks during your skipped turn, why not ambush your opponent's creatures by Blinking out your tapped Chronosavant and Blinking in an untapped one?

Reuse comes-into-play or leaves play abilities. Take a 187 creature like Cloudchaser Kestrel. Blink it out Momentarily. Destroy two enchantments. Imagine getting double (or triple!) use out of Belfry Spirit, Vedalken Dismisser, or Angel of Despair! Just don't Blink out your Court Hussars or Azorius Heralds – you will have to sacrifice them.

Dodge creature removal. You can Blink out your creatures in response to targeted removal like Putrefy or Dark Banishing. When it comes back into play, it won't be the same creature that the spell was aimed at and, as a result, the spell will “fizzle.”

Shake off Auras. Say someone plays a Faith's Fetters on your Akroma. Blink out the creature and the Aura falls right off!

Restock lost counters. Triskelion and Triskelavus, the Spikes, and all of the Graft creatures come into play with +1/+1 counters that you can use for a variety of different purposes. Right before these counters run out, you can Blink the creature and it will come back into play with its counters replenished.

Remove unwanted counters. Other counters are less friendly. Wall of Roots shrinks with the addition of -0/-1 counters, but you can reverse the shrinkage with some, er, Blinkage. (Many apologies for that). Besides that, we all know that the best way to combat a Giant Oyster wielding Serrated Arrows is to Blink out the affected creature. Bye-bye -1/-1 counters!

One thing you can't do is Blink out a creature and then use Pull from Eternity to put that creature in the graveyard. There is no window to play spells in between the time the creature is removed from play and then returned to play. The only real interaction between the two cards is due to Pull from Eternity's ability to get one extra use out of a flashback spell.

After putting all of these things together, here's the deck I ended up making...

Have a casual deck you want to submit to MDV?  Go here.  Do you see an error on this page?  Email it to this address.   

by Chris Millar  @ www.wizards.com

S.C.S.: Pull from Eternity