­ for a flicker? Seems costly. I guess the basic Unsummon half is good for some decks.

A cantrip flicker :P Yeah, still costly. But each half's cost is about right: Ebb is comparable to Call to Heel given it's sorcery speed; Flow is a little more expensive than Dramatic Entrance but can work on any nonland card at all, including Omniscience and Enter the Infinite.

It's just that splitting up "flicker" into "bounce a permanent" and "cast a permanent without paying its mana cost" is somewhat inefficient, in the same way that it'd be inefficient to split "travel from London to Edinburgh" into "travel from London to New York, then from New York to Edinburgh".

Ebb could be a mini-Gush, too. Could be fun with Tolarian Academy or High Tide.

Made it instant.

Well, from a flavor standpoint, I wanted the card text to reflect the feel of 'ebb and flow'. Ebb being a permanent withdrawn from play into your hand, and Flow being freely playing anything from your hand.

I suppose it is just a really expense flicker, hadn't realized that at the time. :\

Rather than "an expensive flicker", perhaps a better way to think of it is "your opponent casts a Metamorphose", or "an activation of Master Transmuter without the restriction to artifacts". Using it to flicker some big stompy thing like Woodfall Primus is one option, but more likely it'll bounce a Spellstutter Sprite and drop a Inkwell Leviathan onto the battlefield.

Well.. yeah - you can get stuff out cheaper. But it costs 7, so it doesn't make very much stuff cheaper. (Alternately, it makes stuff not much cheaper where, Elvish Piper for example, makes stuff almost free.)

I guess "I flash an Eldrazi in to block" is a use case; with the extra blue option giving you a chance to draw one if you didn't have it in hand yet.

Actually, another comparison is Tooth and Nail. At least this doesn't dig the creature out of the library.

What can flow accomplish? Well, it's a one-shot Omniscience so 5-7 CMC seems a good ballpark for a non-fused version (maybe even a bit higher since it's instant). It will let you cast big permanents, but also big sorceries at instant speed: Time Stretch, Primal Surge or Storm Herd, possibly on your turn, for 7mana? Neat.

I agree it's not very efficient overall, but I think it has Johnny (and even Spike) potential, even though it will require a few huge spells to be of use in non-eternal formats. I'm in the clan that thinks there needs to be occasional One with Nothings.

One more quick aside: Technically, it casts the spell, which is sometimes better than flicker. So, for example, on round 7, I can Flow a Myojin of Cleansing Fire. On round 8, I can remove the counter, wipe the board, then Ebb and Flow the Myojin, putting him back on the board with a divinity counter so he can do his trick again.

It ain't much, but it does come up with the bigger creatures (which, technically, might mean this card is busted with end of turn Emrakul, the Aeons Torn. I heard two attacks with a 15/15 Anihilator 6 is pretty good.)

But if anything's broken in a combo of Emrakul + Any Card, the problem is Emrakul, not the Any Card. (Well, maybe in the case of Show And Tell.)

Normally, I'd agree. But I get the impression that circumnavigating "This must be cast from your hand to get the ability" restriction is dangerous. As it is, this card is close to broken with all three cast trigger Eldrazi, and is pretty damn phenomenal with all the Myojin. Is that fair? Maybe, yes? Should we go mucking around with that space? Maybe, no? I mean, it's kind of like designing a Murder that chooses a creature, instead of targeting. Cards target for a reason. Not targeting isn't innovation, it's a regression.

Mmm... but it's potentially a sensible one. It's a space I played with in my "Mess with the rules" set. As a cost 7 thing, I can see it being maybe ok to play with releasing the restrictions on crazy cards. I mean, really, would you prevent a sorcery that added, say, 10 coloured mana to your pool, at cost 7?

I guess what I'm saying is that I don't really care what the casting cost is, it tampers with the rules of the game in a way that tells designers it's okay to circumvent a release valve of the game, since the mechanic got grandfathered in. See also: The entire white exiling for no specific reason argument that runs parallel to this. White exiling with no hoops to jump through might seem fair at an egregious cost... but that encourages designers to make exilers at less egregious costs 2 years later.

I'm pretty sure it's balanced, for what it's worth. Assuming, of course, that we don't print a heck of a lot more 11+cc creatures. Cards like this do, however, prevent us from having lots of gigantic splashy things.

Huh, I see "cheat it into play" as being a way to enable huge splashy things actually getting into play. As long as it's not TOO easy, at least. Still, you're right - 'cast' is a subtle release valve. Having it be "Put into play" fixes that, without really harming this cards raison-d'etre.

(Outside of green, which yeah, can flatcast huge stuff.)

jmg: You're right, I did reconsider somewhat after posting. "Cast without paying mana cost" is always going to be a risky proposition. Mana costs are a fundamental part of the game and bypassing them is dangerous.