That's not a typo. This card has no mana cost. The point is to cycle early, then cast it later from the graveyard. Name away!

Huh. this card is a lot of reminder text! Especially given you'd probably want to reminder-text the "No mana cost means cannot cast, not cast for free". But the overall effect is... 6 mana for a cantrip tourach's. Which is probably fair :) Oh wait, not at random? Their choice? This just became a lot less desirable.

So maybe lean in on the Tourach connection? Better see if there's anything more recent that's the iconic "Discard two cards" first... huh. Davriel's Shadowfugue is a thing that exists. And that more or less blows this out of the water. And Deception is the simplest iteration of it. Though Mind Rot is the current go-to. But most of the effects of this type do seem to like being chants, hymms, even a waltz.

Or we can look from the other direction. Unburden is very nearly this; but this card is "And" where that is "Or". So mixing these together?

Unburdening Hymm

Which word is both usable as a verb, and nicely suggests the feel that you have to get rid of it yourself, before it makes your opponent get rid of things.

Yeah, originally this cost . But if you cast that straight, it's on par with Fugue/Three Tragedies, and looks rather odd next to Unburden. The truth is that being able to separate costs is very valuable. Plus, you don't need to cycle this card to get it in your graveyard. Free Mind Rot due to incidental self-mill/discard is pretty good.

Most everyone made fun of Think Twice when it came out. Then it became a staple of Standard blue decks. I'm pretty sure this card is balanced as is. It's more a matter of players changing their expectations as to when they would plan to cast their discard spell, and which decks it would be most useful against.

Well, it's not free. It's a price premium - instead of the rot's . But the added cantripness of it is probably worth that. And as you say, it's a subtle madness-like effect too. So as I said, 6 mana is probably fair. Just sticker-shock inducing on a first glance.

Grave Beckoning

I'm not sure it's flashback though, it fits the mechanic, but it doesn't fit the idea, since you don't get to cast it twice. Maybe it'd work if there was a group of cards like this. Or as a one-off ability "3B, exile from graveyard: mind rot." Or another one that should be an enchantment. But I submitted a name for the original version :)

Agree on that; the most likely fix would be to give it a high casting cost (say... 6?) so that you can use it twice if you really need to. But usually you'll cycle it. But, well, that's not what the initial comment on the card says. And sure, I can imagine a set trying out a cycle or two of uncastable cards.

Hm. Giving it a high casting cost the first time makes sense to avoid the "why is it like that" problems. But it creates its own problems, that people feel more cheated by an expensive cost than by an infinite cost. But I guess people get used to expensive spells that turn out to be worth it. Unburden does make it hard to price this in a way that's not too good, but gives a reason to play it other than that.

Not using Flashback, but using its wording seems like a reasonable alternative to me. Two odd notes: ­

The spell would need to include the words "Activate this ability only when you could cast a sorcery." presuming you didn't want the activation to jump to , minimum.

> Though it's probably too wonky to be allowed, and rule 108.4 at the very least would need updating: "A card doesn’t have a controller unless that card represents a permanent or spell..." (I presume this is written this way so that things like Schemes and Planes don't have controllers.)

What's wrong with that rule? A card represents a permanent or spell only if it's on the stack or battlefield. Remember that cards in hand, graveyard, library etc. also don't have controllers.

I always thought that permanent and spell was tied to type. But admittedly, most of that thought process is tied to the existence of Nature's Spiral, a card that asks to return a 'permanent card'. But maybe permanents aren't the same as permanent cards? I guess they aren't.

> But maybe permanents aren't the same as permanent cards?

That is correct. A Oko, Thief of Crowns in your graveyard is a permanent card, but not a permanent, so Nature's Spiral can return it to your hand, but Boomerang cannot.

Conversely there are permanents that aren't represente by permanent cards or cards at all, namely tokens.

Good point about timing, I always forget that.

At one point when I was trying to design splashy mythics, I made a cycle of really strong cards which were permanents with no other type, but it didn't really make sense.

Hi my computer is broken and i suck at typing on the phone.

Im just going to leave my suggestion which is what comes to me first since i dont have the expertise to navigate multiple tabs like i usually do ( this and the thesaurus mostly )

Rejected Cruelty

Flavor txt : "After what the wizard had suffered, he no longer believed that this spell was too dark for his enemies"

I like Grave Beckoning. Jack wins this round, but Froggychum picks up some bonus flavor text, with a little editing from me.

See you guys in (((Name That Card #015)))!