Curious Homunculus1U
Creature - Homunculus
t: Add C to your mana pool. Spend this mana only to cast an instant or sorcery spell.
At the beginning of your upkeep, if there are three or more instant and/or sorcery cards in your graveyard, transform Curious Homunculus.
illus. Filip Burburan # 54/205
1/1

Voracious Reader
Creature - Eldrazi Homunculus
Prowess
Instant and Sorcery spells you cast cost 1 less to cast.
Good books make you savor each word.
illus. Filip Burburan # 54/205
3/4

First of all, I'm not saying this is playable, only pointing that it exists. Second, it's an uncommon, so some of you can dismiss this card

It seems pretty interesting. Cheap to deploy, gives colorless mana before transforming, and then we have a 3/4 with prowess that makes instants and sorceries (only yours) cheaper. Mentor would probably not be interested, baby jace is better in most cases, and a transformed homunculus don't affect gush, preordain of those non-colorless mana spells. However there are other decks that can play this to beat thorns and thalias, while keeping creatures at bay. Or even finishing with a reasonable 3/4 prowess.

Will it be played? Probably not, but it's new and interesting, and I cannot find any strictly superior card.

It slots into delver shells with very little effort, and basically in most normal matches you are never really casting a 1/1 because it will almost always flip on your upkeep.

Lack of evasion is really the crappy part, as with any vertically growing creature, but its very much blue tarmogoyf-ish. It feels a lot like thing in the ice though, and that did not prove itself yet.

I think the most interesting aspect of this card is that it is an "anti-sphere"; it completely trumps Thalia both with its ability and its body.

I agree that its value in current blue shells is dubious outside the shops and Eldrazi matchups, though, and it's quite unlikely to see play.

@xouman said:

First of all, I'm not saying this is playable, only pointing that it exists.

Hehe.

I like the fact that this card exists because I don't think it will be too-too expensive, and it's a good solid uncommon for casual decks and EDH. I also don't think it's quite good enough for Vintage, but who knows?

It flips into a larger, prowessy Goblin Electromancer. That's cool, but for the same mana cost and slightly more work we get a 7/7 Horror with an Evacuation attached, and that has only seen marginal play. He has to spend a turn being wimpy before he grows up, so he can't do much the turn he drops.

All of that could be forgiven, except that we're in the World Where Vertical Growth Sucks Balls and have been for some time. Managorger Hydra would have made people stuck playing Quiron Dryad wet themselves, and now it's just a marginal card. Thing in the Ice only merits discussion because of its removal aspect. This guy is in the same boat... totally radical, but he grows the wrong way.

I will say that undoing tax effects is very interesting given the metagame. Being a creature, and boosting instants and sorceries is perfect against Thalia and Thorn, which has a lot of metagame value right now.

I'm generally not a fan of these threads, but I'll bite:

This guy could give the Thirst For Knowledge / Gifts Ungiven decks another way accelerate into those spells, and then, perhaps help with a combo kill of some sort when on the flip side.

@Topical_Island said:

I will say that undoing tax effects is very interesting given the metagame. Being a creature, and boosting instants and sorceries is perfect against Thalia and Thorn, which has a lot of metagame value right now.

Yea but if your opponent lands a Thalia or thorn early you are going to be hard pressed to actually get the spells in the yard unless you are playing self mill cards. I sorta see this guy as a decent 1-2 copy sorta card to help add more threat density to a delver shell. I think 4 delver, 4 Pyromancer, and 2 of this guy is a lot of creatures already in a deck that has to play land and moxen as well, and he obviously conflicts with flashback and snapcaster. With this list you would want to max out on cantrips for sure, in which case his cost reduction is not as prominent (really only for the big restricted delve spells, which also conflict with him)

@Protoaddct If Thalia is already in play, this creature still taps for much-needed mana, allowing you to play one spell per turn as if Thalia wasn't there.

So, this particular card might not be quite good enough, but stapling one-sided Helm of Awakening effects to good creatures could turn out to be very good thing.

What about a horizontally-growing version of this? Like, say it started out the same, but flipped into a Young Pyromancer with the same cost-reducing ability. We'd be all over that, right?

@MaximumCDawg I'd say horizontal growing would be a better card? I think that's true, but this thing kills TKS outright after just 1 non-creature spell. This actually might be a decent SB against Eldrazi?... 2 git probes and we are blocking and killing a Smasher? I'm going to upgrade this card to, worth testing... (But I love to test bad cards too.)

@Topical_Island said:

@MaximumCDawg 2 git probes and we are blocking and killing a Smasher?

Nope, Gitaxian Probe is a Sorcery.

I'm assuming this card won't make big waves, but I have a few ideas I'm definitely going to try (on stream, likely) that I haven't seen in this thread yet. Stuff that would be more familiar to people playing vintage in 2003ish

There's a lot of broken things you can do with Helm effects when you set up ways to cast multiple spells in the same turn. Ways to do this include tutors, regrowth effects, and flashback. With a Voracious Reader in play, Intuition can get 3x Deep Analysis, which can draw 8 total cards for 2UUUUU (which doesn't sound super impressive, but it can be split up over any number of turns). Intuition for Accumulated Knowledge gives you three cards for 1UU, but significantly more if you have another AK in hand or graveyard.

With a Voracious Reader and 0 other cards in hand or graveyard, an Intuition can win the game for 8 total mana (including the mana cost of Intuition itself). Reader+Gifts Ungiven does the same for 7, but less mana if you have any one of dozens of other cards in your hand or graveyard. Note that the cheapest Gifts kill without any support costs 10 mana. (though there are cards make a Gifts kill cheaper than this does). I would not be at all surprised to find if there was a way to kill with Gifts and 6 total mana, but I haven't figured it out yet.

Also don't forget that you can tap this for mana on your upkeep the same turn that it transforms, essentially reducing the cost of these big-mana plays by an extra 1 mana.

I doubt that these strategies are more effective than Eldrazi or Gush+Mentor, but they can definitely be a lot of fun for the right sort of player (like myself)

@Aaron-Patten ah, pardon. Yeah, that is a bit worse. I failed to appreciate the impermanence of the plus 1... Ok, downgraded to, I'm willing to test this bad card for about 2 hours.

@Aaron-Patten what does the fact it is a sorcery matter? its effects apply to both instants and sorceries, is there something i missed?

Edit: sorry i misread your post, and the one before that, my mistake

@letseeker You can't Git probe and pump him as a defender. I mis-calced and he caught it.

@Topical_Island i misread the context it was put in, i apoligize

@letseeker Oh no sweat man. I decided to forget what Prowess does, and somehow had it in my head that this dude was getting permanent 1/1 counters for the duration. (Which would make this guy great against Eldrazi... as it is, I think he's maybe just ok. I'm not sure that this guy is actually better in the meta than Baleful Strix.)

@Topical_Island You don't have to fetch a non-basic to play this. That's the upside I see for now. Also, if he flips right after you play him, you don't need to pay 1 more for FoW or whatever because of Thalia.

People are thinking about this card all wrong. It is not just a Thalia band-aid. If it is being used as such you are not being abusive enough with it. The two shells that jump out at me that could really abuse an effect like this are DPS Storm (making Petition cost less seems insane) and possibly some new Thirst/Gifts control shell. The only issue I see with the latter approach is getting to 3 instants/sorceries in the GY early enough.

-Storm

@Stormanimagus if you playing thirst/gifts, you have to dicard some card so if you go thirst and get rid of two useless cards that happen to be instants and/or sorceries then you get it off of the one spell, same with gifts.