[New Card Discussion] Halimar Depths (blue land)

[jtwilkins]

Land     Common
Halimar Depths enters the battlefield tapped.
: Add to your mana pool.
When Halimar Depths enters the battlefield, look at top three cards of your library and put them back in any order.

[M.Solymossy]

This card won't impact the format. 

  it takes up a land drop, and comes into play tapped
  it is nonbasic, making it an easy wasteland target
  it doesn't actually draw cards. 


I probably could go up to ten, but I really didn't feel the need.   This card is a gets ** out of 10 stars, because it's not as bad as One with Nothing, but it's about as playable.

[meadbert]

I think Soly is right about it not being playable, but it might be closer than he makes it sound.  In fact it might be much closer.

Compare turn 1 Halimar Depths with turn 1 Ponder:
After playing Ponder you have looked just as deep (3 cards) and you still have a tapped land in play and the same number of cards in hand.

All of the drawbacks that Soly mentioned exist, but are mitigated.

1)  It comes into play tapped, but gives you a free effect at the same time.  Effectively you are paying  to re order the top 3 cards of your library which we do in type 1 all the time with Diving Top, so this is clearly worthy of type 1.
2)  This is a non basic land that can be wasteland, but you still got your Top activation and if this is played instead of Top rather than instead of a land your mana base is actually more stable.
3)  This does not draw a card (which is significant as I will get to later), but it also does not go to your yard after you use it.  Instead it stays in play as an on color mana source, thus the number of cards in hand is not effected.

As a turn 1 play, this is comparable to Ponder and Top.  By using this instead of other cantrips you can potentially improve your mana base and mulliganing ratios.  Where this card is bad is as a top deck.  If you top deck Ponder or Top with a lot of mana out you usually find a bomb in your top 3 cards and play it that turn.  With this card you stuck waiting till next turn which is not good enough.

In a deck with Compulsive Researches or some other card that can filter out lands in the late game this might be playable, but I do agree with Soly's general claim that this is not type 1 material.

[M.Solymossy]

Compare turn 1 Halimar Depths with turn 1 Ponder:
After playing Ponder you have looked just as deep (3 cards) and you still have a tapped land in play and the same number of cards in hand. 

The difference is Ponder can put a Force of will into your hand, or a Reb, or a mana source [usually a mox] to cast said reb.

I use Ponder as a cheaper Impulse after turn 2, so it's always good for me.  I love the card.

[Killane]

Top is also resuable and has a ton of tricks associated with it. It's not a one-shot that takes up your land drop. Top also gets you what you need, now if you realyl need one of those 3 cards.

This land is only good as a turn 1 play, and therefore, is not playable, since it's an aweful top-deck down the line and you'd have to run 4 to make it even reasonable.

[FlyFlySideOfFry]

This isn't terrible as a potential sideboard answer against mana denial decks if you have extra crap maindeck. When this card is legal I wouldn't be surprised to see 13 sphere decks with X sculpting steels and any free filtering that adds mana down the line can't be all that terrible. Definitely not maindeck material in itself because it is absolute garbage against Tezz/Combo/Oath but I wouldn't mind having a playset of these lying around especially since they're common and mana denial is about to spike in popularity.

I also don't understand why this is being compared to Ponder. It is nothing at all like Ponder. Ponder doesn't tap for mana and Ponder cantrips because it would be -1CA if it didn't where as this already breaks even. This card is pretty unique at what it does and only time will tell if the niche it fits in to will become relevant or not. I would certainly not immediately dismiss it though I don't think it is going to do anything amazing for the format.

[meadbert]

Preliminary testing suggests this is good against Stax as FlyFly already pointed out.

First of all it is a land and thus a mana source itself, second it does not have cost of any sort thus it dodges Resistor effects and Chalice@1.   Third, it helps find your next land.  This makes wiggling out from under Trinisphere much easier since if you drop this turn 2 you can usually dig to find a land for turn 3.

Killane pointed out that top is reusable.  So is Halimar Depths.  While top can continually look at the top 3 cards of your library it cannot tap for blue mana in future turns.

Anyway preliminary testing suggests this is decent against combo since it helps you find a Drain by turn 2 and very strong against Stax, but weak against Control because it is such a terrible top deck in the late game.

[Ten-Ten]

...I like this card just a little bit. I think its because it won't get hit by Duress or Thoughtsieze.
Unless people start playing Mire's Toll, then I start to dislike it alot.
 This card will surely be tried by sum only to later be dissaponted by the results.
I will try it as a one of in my Control Slaver build I am currently working on 

[Wagner]

Anyway preliminary testing suggests this is decent against combo since it helps you find a Drain by turn 2 and very strong against Stax, but weak against Control because it is such a terrible top deck in the late game.

Strong against stax? Don't you usually want mana easily against stax, sure it helps set the 3 next turns, but it does nothing right away, which is when you should be trying to do something.

Against control decks, is it really that bad late game? I mean, it's nothing great, but I though it would be better than a regular mana source when you have sufficient mana.

[meadbert]

Strong against stax? Don't you usually want mana easily against stax, sure it helps set the 3 next turns, but it does nothing right away, which is when you should be trying to do something.

Against control decks, is it really that bad late game? I mean, it's nothing great, but I though it would be better than a regular mana source when you have sufficient mana.

Basically I was playing a Tez list I had lying around with 2 tops and considering whether I wished they were Halimar Depths instead.
For that reason I was comparing Halimar Depths to Sensei's Diving Top.  I should have mentioned this originally.  Anyway, it means I could not effectively compare it to an extra Fetch Land.

What is so great is that Halimar Depths does do something right away against Stax.  If they open with Thorn or Resistor then Top is not a turn 1 play unless you have Mana Crypt or Lotus.  Instead you must wait till turn 2.  Halimar Depths is sort of a Ponder that can be played for free either turn 1 or turn 2 to help find the next land drop.  Against Stax I almost always wanted Top to be Halimar Depths.

Against Combo Top is better if you have a Mox, which you usually do,  since you can dig three Deep and then draw Force on turn 1.  Without a Mox Depths is better since it helps set up Drain for turn 2.

Against Control it was close to a toss up in the early game, but late Game Top was much better.

[meadbert]

I have been testing more, and I underestimated this card.  It is easily type 1 playable.  Basically it digs 3 cards deep without loss of card advantage for 1 mana.  Which other cards do that in Magic?  I think the answer is Ancestral Recall, Brainstorm, Ponder, Demonic Consultation and Spoils of the Vault.  All are restricted, but spoils which has the obvious drawback.  Depths is worse than all four restricted spells for sure, but it is easily good enough to see play in type 1 and is way better than Bojuka Bog which is terrible since it does nothing against Dredge and type 1 sideboards have no use for graveyard hate that is useless against Dredge.  Crop Rotation is the only hope Bog might have, but that is currently not played and I doubt Bog pushes it over the line since Croppering for Wasteland is probably better against Dredge anyway.

[scifiantihero]

Is 'dig' really the right word?  This card seems to just dump the dirt back in the hole after it's done.

So what has further testing shown this to be good in, meadbert?  It seems like it would be pretty good with a fetch land, which would  let you drop it on the first turn, then take the best card and shuffle away the rest on the next.  it seems like it would fit best in something like the deck, or landstill, but those are decks that have a hard time adding things to their mana bases.  I can't see replacing Top in Tezz, but that's probably because I really like the lists that have a couple repeals.

I like the card!

[zeus-online]

My first thought about this card was "This is incredible" but that was in relation to Standard.

I think it could be decent in T1, although there are clear limiting factors with this card...Playing it turn 1 should be decent. But later then that, specificly turn 2, would really suck.

This card will see heavy play in block and standard. I'm not sure about the other formats.

[CorwinB]

My first thought about this card was "This is incredible" but that was in relation to Standard.

This card will see heavy play in block and standard. I'm not sure about the other formats.

I had basically the same feeling : this could be very good in Standard. It looks mostly great for control shells, though, and so far I'm not sure WWK gave enough tools to Standard Control decks (my personal theory is that Standard is really warped by the broken Cascade mechanism).

[meadbert]

So what has further testing shown this to be good in, meadbert?  It seems like it would be pretty good with a fetch land, which would  let you drop it on the first turn, then take the best card and shuffle away the rest on the next. 

You answered your own question. Picking which of the top 3 card you want to draw next is really good, especially when you only need to pay 1 for it instead of 2 for Diving Top.  Basically having two in your opening hand is something to avoid.  If you have one you can avoid drawing the second.  The second effect is how good this is at just stabling out your manabase (remember I am running it in place of tops)  Any sort of mana denial strategy becomes much weaker against you.

I think the right answer is to run maybe 2 of these and increase the land count by 1, but I am not sure yet.  I am not sure what the best home is for this card.  My first impression is it likes Drains and Forces, but Tez is not perfect, because Tez has some high CC bombs (such as Tez itself) and for that reason can really hate this card in the late game since it neither gets out Tez nor finds anything this turn.  Oath might be a better home, since there are dead cards that you really do not want to draw and your bombs (Oath and Orchard) are 4 ofs that you are likely to see in the top 3.  A weakness is that Depths does not play well with Spell Pierce and Spell Pierce is strong in Oath.  Anyway, I am not sure what the appropriate home is yet, but I am pretty sure this is playable somewhere.

I thought of another 1cc card that digs at least 3 cards deep without card disadvantage and that is Sage of Epityr.  Sage gets a * since in order for it to not count as card disadvantage you must place value in an Orchard token, but technically it fits and it has been used in type 1 where uses could be found for the Orchard tokens (Ninjitsu, Perilous Research, Repeal, Clamp etc.)

[Doomsday]

This looks like a crappy Portent that doesn't pitch to Force of Will.

[meadbert]

This looks like a crappy Portent that doesn't pitch to Force of Will.

Agreed.  So I probably overestimated Halimar Depths, or perhaps Portent is underestimated.
More crucially than Pitching to Force, Portent can put Force in your hand on turn 1.