Numerology (formerly Arithmancy)

[Ephraim]

arithmancy -- \Ar"ith*man`cy\, n. [Gr. ? number + -mancy.] Divination by means of numbers.

Arithmancy
{W}
Sorcery

Choose a number. Reveal that many cards from the top of your library. Put each card with converted mana cost equal to the chosen number into your hand and the rest on the bottom of your library in any order.

***

Here's another one of those subtly terrible cards that I'm sure that every Johnny in the world would love to break. Good luck. If you want to dig deep, you have to be looking for something awfully expensive. I can see this as a pseudo-tutor in a deck like Tooth and Nail, but seriously -- how many decks have a win condition that costs seven mana? This could easily have been blue, but I felt it was equally fitting in white, which needs interesting cards more than blue does.

***

Current Wording:

Numerology

Sorcery

Reveal cards from the top of your library equal to the number of cards in your graveyard. Put all cards revealed this way with converted mana cost equal to the number of cards in your hand into your hand and the rest on the bottom of your library in any order.

[Matt]

Wow, this is horrible.

[Ephraim]

Wow, this is horrible.

Is it also interesting? Horrible but interesting is just fine by me. Horrible but horrible is not. I'd love to see a card like this printed, just to see people clamoring to figure out what it's good for.

[Anusien]

I like it.  I think most decks will pick 3, or 4 depending on their curve and try to cantrip with it -- that seems to be the best use.  Why is this White, by the way?

[Liam-K]

It's not a white card at all, it seems like it should be RU (divination is both learning and intuition/random based).  It's also truley, viciously terrible.  I mean, what're you going to name?  3 seems like the only reasonable number, making it the worst impulse ever.

[Matt]

Here's just how bad this is:

X=0: Useless.
X=1,2,3: okay you have like a 50/50 shot at this being a cantrip, in a deck designed to use this card.
X=4,5: This is like Impulse, but you'll often miss, and trying not to miss makes you clog your deck with lots of 4cc cards. And I mean LOTS - to get even one 4cc card in the top four with 50% accuracy you have to run like 16 cards at that CMC.
X=6+: This is a MUCH worse [card]Desperate Research[/card], and that card was itself unplayably bad.

Take even the case MOST LIKELY to grab you what you want: you're running 4 Draco, and you name X=16. You STILL have like a 21% chance of missing!

It's in the same ballpark as Wood Elemental and Adeventurer's Guildhouse - the kind of card you have to work so hard to even use, and after all that it's still a weak effect. It would be overcosted at .

This card is one of the weakest we've ever had in this forum. The only weaker one off the top of my head is Condensate (, instant, add to your mana pool. You can thank Bram for that one).

I think I'm going to have to go with "horrible horrible," because even when you get it to work, the payoff is tiny.

-----------------------------------

I'm not sure how to fix this. What about if you picked a number X, then looked at the top X cards and got everything with CMC X or greater?

[Liam-K]

You forgot to mention it's also a sorcery :S

[Jacob Orlove]

I love this card, but it's hilariously weak. X or greater isn't much of a fix, though.

[Matt]

Well X or greater could make it usable at X=4 in decks with ACC spells like FoW and MisD, or Affinity. Imagine picking up Frogmite, Somber Hoverguard, and Myr Enforcer! It would also be hilarious in T4.

[Jacob Orlove]

I'd still probably want to see it as a one mana instant, even so.

[Ephraim]

At present, while maintaining the original bent of the card, it seems that the most likely fix is:

Arithmancy

Instant

Chose a number. Reveal that many cards from the top of your library. Put each card revealed this way with converted mana cost greater than or equal to the chosen number into your hand and the rest on the bottom of your library in any order.

This fix guarantees that unless you have a land or another 0-cc card on top that this cantrips. I suppose that I could just tack on a "Draw a card" to this to make sure that it's never useless.

In any case, I am going to change the name of this card to "Numerology" because I've come up with another card that fits the "Arithmancy" name better.

[Matt]

I think at instant it should be {W}, because otherwise this will get played just to cantrip. Sorcery at would also keep most of those moochers away, letting the focus of this card be wth the people wanting to break it. 1cc sorceries don't really mess with curves anyway, and there is that one card we made that tutors for 1cc sorceries.

[asmoranomardicodais]

This makes the card a lot more complex, but could you make it cost 8W, and have an alternate way to cast it (like discarding a white card?)? That way, you could name nine, have a good chance to search out your darksteel collususes and draco, and be able to pick another one of these up it the process. That way, the card becomes a really bizarre combo enabler, not just a weak  cantrip. 

[Ephraim]

That's an interesting take on this -- make it cost more so that you at least get the benefit of picking up another one of them. One way of managing that would be to give it the new Convoke ability that belongs to the green/white cards of the Selesnya Guild. Of course, I did rather like the idea of this being a janky, 1-cc sorcery -- thus fetchable by Prestidigitation.

[Matt]

If you have to give up other resources to cast this (ditching a white card) then it's not going to be worth it. We could make it {W} and give it the infinitely weird text "Numerology costs less to cast."

[Liam-K]

costs 8 less if you control a something maybe?  Like, an enchantment?

That puts it back at square terrible, but if you say plains, it seems retarded.  Then again you WANT it to cost W to play so plains is better.  And a card explicitly for the purpose of cantriping into itself or putting DSC in your hand is already just not very smart to use.

[Ephraim]

If I really wanted to pursue that avenue of costing (and I don't) I could simply include the text on the card, "Numerology has a converted mana cost of 9" (or 5, or 16, or equal to the number of cards in your hand.) It's arbitrary and I really dislike the idea of doing anything that way.

[Jacob Orlove]

Why not just make it work the way you want it to?

Choose a number. Reveal that many cards from the top of your library. Put each card revealed this way with converted mana cost greater than or equal to the chosen number and each copy of Numerology into your hand and the rest on the bottom of your library in any order.

[Ephraim]

I don't particularly want it to work that way either. I would dearly love to allow players to select two numbers, one of which would be the number of cards they reveal and one of which would be the targetted converted mana cost. This is no trivial task. Somehow, the two numbers have to be constrained to keep somebody from looking through their entire deck for every 2-cc card. Obviously, the initial design of this card constrained the numbers by forcing them to be the same. I don't really want to use mana as a constraint. Looking through the top X cards for cards with the chosen converted mana cost functions, but I don't find it interesting in the slightest. Schemes such as requiring the numbers to sum to a particular number still have the side effect of letting somebody look for N lands or N-1 1-cc spells (not a bad option for any appreciable value of N.)

[Jacob Orlove]

What about looking at # of cards in the graveyard for cards with CC < # of cards in hand?

[Ephraim]

What about looking at # of cards in the graveyard for cards with CC < # of cards in hand?

J||<3, that is sadistic and brilliant. I think that card is almost unprintable, just because of the number of different regions it looks at, but I'm going to go with that anyhow because it is, in the most scientific terms I can muster, "frickin' awesome!"

[Anusien]

That's hilariously bad, in a good way.  So if you want to tutor out a Swords to Plowshares, you have to cut down to 1 card in hand?

[Ephraim]

That's hilariously bad, in a good way.  So if you want to tutor out a Swords to Plowshares, you have to cut down to 1 card in hand?

And if you have a good discard outlet -- Wild Mongrel or something -- you can fill up your graveyard at the same time, so that you can dig deeper for that 1-cc spell.

[Jacob Orlove]

I like how that subtly encourages you to play with the same effect at multiple CCs, but at the same time makes you want maximum redundancy of any card you're searching for. Alternatively, you could load up on one CC, and try to grab a bunch of cards--but that has its own problems.

[FoshM]

The new wording makes the card REALLY bad.  However i read through the post, and am I the only one that caught the white vamp tutor?  Choose 60+ this card says, Reveal your library, Then stack your deck to your liking.  Stacking your deck for W seems pretty good to me  ... IDK maybe I'm wrong.

[Jacob Orlove]

Well, now you can only stack your deck if your graveyard is > your library, which seems fair.

[Ephraim]

24 Hour Clock

[JAG]

arithmancy -- \Ar"ith*man`cy\, n. [Gr. ? number + -mancy.] Divination by means of numbers.

Arithmancy
{W}
Sorcery

Choose a number. Reveal that many cards from the top of your library. Put each card with converted mana cost equal to the chosen number into your hand and the rest on the bottom of your library in any order.

***

Here's another one of those subtly terrible cards that I'm sure that every Johnny in the world would love to break. Good luck. If you want to dig deep, you have to be looking for something awfully expensive. I can see this as a pseudo-tutor in a deck like Tooth and Nail, but seriously -- how many decks have a win condition that costs seven mana? This could easily have been blue, but I felt it was equally fitting in white, which needs interesting cards more than blue does.

***

Current Wording:

Numerology

Sorcery

Reveal cards from the top of your library equal to the number of cards in your graveyard. Put each card revealed this way with converted mana cost equal to the number of cards in your hand into your hand and the rest on the bottom of your library in any order.

You may want to clarify it just a bit by wording the last part something like:

"Remove each of those cards with CMC equal to the number of cards in your hand from the game.  Put the removed cards into your hand and the rest on the bottom of your library in any order."

As it is, I know what it means, and we all know what it's supposed to mean, but I'm quite sure you'd give some poor L1 an aneurysm when they come across a player putting a 3 CMC card into his 3 card hand, then a 4 CMC, then...

-JM

[Ephraim]

As it is, I know what it means, and we all know what it's supposed to mean, but I'm quite sure you'd give some poor L1 an aneurysm when they come across a player putting a 3 CMC card into his 3 card hand, then a 4 CMC, then...

I can see where this might be an issue, I suppose. I'd like confirmation from one or more judges who think that the present wording might cause this situation to occur.

[Jacob Orlove]

Just say "all cards" rather than "each card" and you should be fine.