Whee. Might need Body Double's CMC for potential reanimator-style bypassing of mana costs (in a way that most Clones don't). But this is very interesting, anyway.

I thought about it. But I figured that exiling specific things was harder enough (and being multicolored helps, although this may still be the best color combination to make such a deck to make this work like that, so it maybe isn't that much of a drawback).

I guess this could fluctuate between CMC 3-5 depending on the cards around it (and the impact they want it to have) if it were to be printed for real.

­Extract ftw.

I get that it's supposed to be breaking some new ground, but I would prefer if it only copied permanents, just because turning permanents into non-permanent spells is strange to me.

Or just Demonic Consultation or Spoils of the Vault. If your deck is stuffed with crazy fatties, you don't much care which one you get on turn 4.

(See bringer.dec; you really do care ;)

On one hand, this might be easier to use than it appears, which isn't that cool. But on the other hand, the cards mentioned are old and scarce enough that people would have to know in what format and with what cards to break this.

UncleIstvan: is it that weird that it can become spells? Maybe if the card isn't a creature normally and just a sorcery it would feel more natural?

­Serum Powder would go well with this, too.
Shiny_Umbreon, no card is too old or too scarce to appear on the gatherer.
It's bizarre that this can "become" a spell. If I was attempting to write the rules text, I would write "You may cast ~ as a copy of any face-up exiled nonland card, except its mana cost is still ."

I'm not sure why I didn't go with that templating, but I think I had a reason. Although I hadn't though about the awkward mana cost exception.

I meant that many cards can only be played in Legacy and Vintage, in which case you probably have better things to do than exile-reanimating. Then you could narrow it down to Modern, but limit your options much more. If you try this in any given Standard, you probably have only one or two enablers, probably bad. What I tried to say was that it would be fun for people to see where to exploit this, not that it would be difficult to find the cards assuming a Vintage card pool.

I'd be interesting to know what the reason was, if you think if it. It seems like it would have a lot less issues.

Okay, I think I just thought it didn't make sense to "cast" something as a copy of something else. Normally, "cast" means going through the whole process, including choosing modes and targets and paying the cost. After all, cast triggers only work after all that is done. So what you'd want would be something like "You may put ~ on the stack as a copy...". At that point, my template seems much more clear.

That said, when thinking about the reason, I realized my version does the replacement after all the casting is done (including paying ), so choosing targets needs to be explicitly mentioned and not be reminder text. Plus, paying this card's original mana cost could be made more clear.

I really don't think this wording works as well as mine, but I'm not a rules guru. I could be wrong.

Uh, eww?

1. This is outright reclaiming something an arbitrary thing from exile. Which seems bad.
2. And it's pretty much "Give a flashback thing anohter pair of uses", at that.
3. And it's upcosting that thing by 4!

So it's both too good, and too expensive. I'm not a fan.

Not upcosting - it's setting that thing's cost to 4. So if you're exiled Pelakka Wurm or Myojin of Life's Web to cast a Vine Dryad on turn 1, then you can cast this as J. Exiled Big Thing on turn 4.

This copies "When you cast" effects? So this be a way to cheat out Emrakul, the Aeons Torn and gain an extra turn?

Not everyone is against bringing back things from exile.

This can copy an exiled card with flashback (or any spell, really), but you can't cast this from your graveyard normally.

And, yes, this sets it to 4. Even Emrakul, and you get the turn. Whether this is broken is debatable.

The only people concerned about bringing back things from exile consistently are those who are worried about the long-term health of the game.
I don't see this as quite the same, though. The subtle difference makes it okay for me.
With the current wording, I don't think it triggers "When you cast" triggers. I think it gains that ability too "late," doesn't it?

? "As you cast" definitely happens before "When you cast", for the same reason that "As ~ ETBs" on Clones allows "When ~ ETBs" effects on the thing being cloned to trigger.

What Alex said. This is replacing

put onto stack -> choose modes and targets -> pay cost -> done (later triggering 'when you cast' triggers)

with

put onto stack -> choose modes and targets -> pay cost -> you may have it clone something -> choose targets -> done

. Which, by the way, makes me think the wording causes all sort of problems with modes, split cards, fuse and entwine.

And that's another reason I think outright being able to cast it as a copy of something would work better.
Although, I don't think your ordering of events here is quite right.

I know the regular casting is in the right order (I may have missed steps). The second order is what I think would happen because casting is from putting onto the stack until paying the costs, and then you apply what my effect does before you are done.

That said, yes. This didn't work out as well as I expected. I thought choosing targets after copying was anything you'd need, but I didn't think about the things that make a spell different from a card (having one or more modes chosen, and one or more sides of the split card).

I'm not totally convinced "You may cast this as a copy" is the best way to word something that involves many steps already, but the functionally is way better than mine. Even correctly catching that the mana cost is the only exception. I'll leave it like that, because I don't think I will be thinking much about this template to change it.

(I'm not sure if you can fuse this. You should be able to, but then, what, does this effect replace both mana costs to ? So you have to pay to fuse? Maybe. I don't know, really.)