[m13] Gem of Becoming

[xouman]

Gem of Becoming   3
Artifact    Common
3, , Sacrifice Gem of Becoming: Search your library for an Island card, a Swamp card, and a Mountain card. Reveal those cards and put them into your hand. Then shuffle your library.


A common card from a base set. But look: it draws 3 cards for 3+3 mana! Ok, only fetches for lands, but it's great CA. If you already have 3 mana to pay for it, 3 more lands are not great, but those lands could be returned with jace and may be important against mud. And it works under a magus of the moon to seek for basic swamp/island!

I like it a lot, from the base it's a common card.

[serracollector]

this gets you a sea, a volcanic, and tropical island.  This is interesting.  Fuels Gush, while filtering, and fuels Lotus Cobra.  Can be welded to filter out all lands in a short amount of turns.  Get lands of the 3 best colors, and can honestly get all 5 if needed.  Not bad at all.

[xouman]

some people state that  + is too much and  + would make it much more playable. While it's true, 3 cards for  reminds me of squadron hawk, but 3 lands is probably better than 3 hawks (in some decks) and  is not as easy to cast as  .

Maybe 5 colors stax would play one copy?

[median]

Slow UBR welder decks would like this. Whether they have something better to do is altogether another matter.

[A.-1.]

5c Stax, which isn't all that playable right now to begin with, would rather have Expedition Map. 5c normally runs CoB or Gemstone Mine over dual lands because of Sundering Titan. Actually, wouldn't all the other decks discussed rather have Map as well? I'm not seeing how this 6 mana spell is playable.

[serracollector]

Its not 6 mana.  Its 3.  I could see this used in those Strix/Welder decks.  Swicthing this and Strix can be 4 cards a turn major filtering.

[A.-1.]

Sorry, I meant 6 mana investment not a CMC of 6.

Actually think this through first. On average, the earliest you'll be able to play this card is on turn 3 with 2 lands and a mox. That means tapping out and having to wait until turn 4 to activate. Against what deck is that a good play? It's not that strong of a play versus Shops, and good luck casting it through Sphere effects and Wire. How good is it in reality late game versus other blue decks? At that point, you probably don't have that many searchable lands left in the deck. You'll get 1 activation, 2 at the most, unless you're not running fetchlands. Replacing fetchlands for more Islands/Swamps/Mountains just to improve this card seems awful. If you really want to thin your deck of lands, just run Mana Severance.

[vaughnbros]

Yeh im pretty sure Crucible with a fetch land achieves pretty much everything that this cards does and more.

[Saya]

decks which can translate its advantage into substantial advantage welcome the card.(Example:Seismic Assault,Trade Routes)

[mikekilljoy]

Yeh im pretty sure Crucible with a fetch land achieves pretty much everything that this cards does and more.

Agreed. This card is nuts in commander for any deck that runs at least two of the colors here. But in Vintage, it is too slow.

[gkraigher]

Agreed. This card is nuts in commander for any deck that runs at least two of the colors here. But in Vintage, it is too slow.

everything about this statement is right.

even if you only play 2 colors in commander, can't you add a dual land that is off color?  it will only produce your commanders color, but you could still search for a 3rd land from this.  I don't know if that is against the rules or not. 

[Wagner]

yes, it is against the rules, you can't have any card with a mana symbol that isn't of your general.

[Daenyth]

Armillary sphere exists, speaking of EDH, so this isn't actually any good for 2 color decks.