Ten of the Dumbest Enchantments on the Reserved List
In times like these, with the world seemingly speeding by at a pace impossible to maintain, the Reserved List is like a roadside picnic bench.
It's a comfortable refuge, a place of solace and quiet. It'll never change. It'll never grow, and unless something really crazy happens, it'll never shrink either. But if the Reserved List is a roadside picnic, perhaps we're even today still feeling the ramifications of strange and dangerous phenomena caused by that one fateful decision, now frozen in time.
Picture a catalogue of cards as a meadow. New cards drive off the country road into the meadow, a group of young Magic cards get out carrying bottles, baskets of food, transistor radios, and cameras. They light fires, pitch tents, turn on the music. In the morning they leave. The old Magic cards, animals, birds, and insects that watched in horror through the long night, creep out from their hiding places. And what do they see? Old spark plugs and old filters strewn around... rags, burnt-out bulbs, and a monkey wrench left behind... and of course, the usual mess: apple cores, candy wrappers, charred remains of the campfire, cans, bottles, somebody's handkerchief, somebody's penknife, torn newspapers, coins, faded flowers picked in another meadow. The new cards do not stop in the meadow, only pass by. They can never live in the meadow, or r/mtgfinance will be very mad.
That's basically the Reserved List, in a nutshell.
We've already discussed Ten of the Dumbest Cards on the Reserved List. And then we discussed Ten More of the Dumbest Cards on the Reserved List. Today, we've got another batch, this time all enchantments in honor of spooky rooms, straight from the meadow and into your Cardsphere wants list. In those two previous articles, only one enchantment was mentioned: An-Zerrin Ruins. We can get much dumber than even that. Let's get to it.
Spiritual Sanctuary
Back in Legends, the interplay between each color was explored much more significantly than before. It was the first set to include multicolor cards, like my main man Ragnar, and it went very heavy on the idea that some colors were friends and others were very much not friends.
Then there was Spiritual Sanctuary. According to the very first issue of Inquest magazine, published in May of 1995, Spiritual Sanctuary was $9 and was given a "three-dot" rating out of five. Keep in mind, however, that fellow Legends cards Spirit Link and Gravity Sphere (another very dumb Reserved List enchantment) were five-out-of-five perfect cards, while combo-enabling Su-Chi was considered terrible, with only a one-dot rating.
According to EDHREC, Spiritual Sanctuary is in 52 decks. Are you one of those 52 decks? Please, I need to know.
Cycle of Life
After you get past the really cool Chippy art -- one of his first Magic pieces along with Tainted Specter and Haunting Apparition -- and get down to that text box, your brain might get a little fuzzy.
So you pay the mana cost to cast Cycle of Life. Check. Then you return it to your hand. Check. Then you cast a creature. Check. And... that creature becomes a 0/1 instead of whatever it might have written on the card. Check? But hey, you get a nifty +1/+1 counter on your next turn for your trouble.
Sure, there are corner cases where this might be useful. Creatures with zero toughness, for example, get a little more durable, especially if want to keep your Walking Ballista around after casting it for zero mana.
Cycle of Life actually ekes by Spiritual Sanctuary in terms of usage among decks logged with EDHREC, coming in at a solid 56 lists. That's four more decks than Spiritual Sanctuary. We're going places now. And if you're curious, the top commanders to make use of Cycle of Life are Atogatog and Tatsunari, Toad Rider, the latter of which enjoying the repeatable enchantment casting.
Tourach's Gate
Even though Tourach himself, with his ocular cape and goofy mask, didn't get his own card until Modern Horizons 2, we've known about him for quite some time. Specifically, since 1994's Fallen Empires.
It was there that we learned about his hymn and his chant, but also his front door. And what a confusing door it is.
There are so many hoops to jump through to achieve what is a very meager, and in some circumstances detrimental, payoff. You've gotta have Thrulls (which to be fair were a theme in Fallen Empires), you've gotta have attackers, and those attackers have to have more than one toughness, otherwise the Gate just kills them as they pass through it. That's just poorly thought-out architecture.
We're up to 79 decks now on EDHREC with Tourach's Gate, and you can probably guess which commander likes it the most. That's right, Tevesh Szat, Doom of Fools.
Call to Arms
Often people point to Dead Ringers as the most confusingly worded card in Magic. Even Mark Rosewater referred to Dead Ringers as the biggest templating mistake in the first decade of the game's existence.
Maybe it's just me, but Call to Arms is just as confusing as Dead Ringers, and unlike Dead Ringers, which is actually a solid card once you're able to parse it out, Call to Arms is just bad any way you slice it. At least the more modernized Oracle text helps clear things up a bit:
As Call to Arms enters, choose a color and an opponent.
White creatures get +1/+1 as long as the chosen color is the most common color among nontoken permanents the chosen player controls but isn't tied for most common.
When the chosen color isn't the most common color among nontoken permanents the chosen player controls or is tied for most common, sacrifice Call to Arms.
Emphasis on "a bit." And no matter how well you interpret it, Call to Arms can only ever either give your white creatures a meager buff, or kill itself. Definitely worth a place on the Reserved List.
We've finally broken through to triple digit EDHREC usage, as Call to Arms is used in 100 decks logged by the site. It seems that there are a few interesting people out there who have slotted Call to Arms into their Mondrak, Glory Dominus decks, and to that I say, good for you.
Psychic Allergy
The Dark's Psychic Allergy is a card I used to point to when asked what my favorite art was. It was not my favorite art. I was being shitty. But to be fair, the year was 1996, and I was 10 years old.
Looking at it now, Psychic Allergy is one of those arts that you can hear, and what you hear is "ehhhhhhhhh." The reason many people have never seen/heard this card, however, is two-fold. One, because it's on the Reserved List, as all these cards are. And two, it's not very good.
However, "not very good" is actually a bit of a compliment considering some of the verified stinkers we've discussed so far. There's a world in which Psychic Allergy is a usable card in Commander, and that world is one in which your playgroup lets you pretend that last line of text doesn't exist.
There are 113 decks on EDHREC that include this card, with the "majority" adding it to Treva, the Renewer. Interestingly, the card's been "figured out," so to speak, as almost everyone who uses Psychic Allergy pairs it with its BFF Shifting Sky. If only we could figure out the whole "sacrifice two Islands per turn" thing.
Aysen Highway
We don't get a lot of cards that relate to infrastructure. There are 25 or so cards that reference streets, like Foundry Street Denizen, and roughly the same number referencing roads, like Knight of the Pilgrim's Road. There are two that mention byways, with the second one only recently added in Byway Barterer.
There are actually three cards, however, that mention highways. But Aysen Highway was the first. It wasn't until later that we met Highway Robber and his occupation, Highway Robbery.
Unlike all those cards I just mentioned that actually do things, Aysen Highway is much more true to its infrastructure inspiration in that it just sits there and makes certain things faster. In this case, white creatures. You'd think that it would be a part of a cycle in Homelands, with each iteration granting creatures of the same color landwalk of that color's basic land, but no. There's only the highway. In fact, there's even Mystic Decree (also on the RL), that does almost the exact opposite for blue.
We have to get out of Homelands to actually further that cycle, even if only by one card. In addition to Aysen Highway, we've also got Hidden Path, which is neatly shut down by Deadfall. And no highway ever built can seem to circumvent the Great Wall.
But forget about all that. Why would you want to spend six mana to give white creatures plainswalk? Sounds like a recipe for trouble, if you ask me. And EDHREC agrees, as Aysen Highway is only in 118 decks, out of the more than 2 million that include white.
Worms of the Earth
This is one of those cards where I find myself wishing they didn't waste such a bad-ass card name and concept 30 years ago. Think of how cool a card called "Worms of the Earth" could have been if it was made today.
And in its defence, Worms of the Earth does start strong. The modernized Oracle text of "Players can't play lands" and "Lands can't enter the battlefield" are some real spicy lines to have on a Magic card. But at the end of the day, you're essentially paying five mana to do five damage to an opponent, which isn't the worst, but in Commander it's not exactly worm-jigglingly earth-shattering.
And just think: in today's Magic, we could have a whole lore entry about "the great Worms' mucous residues."
There are still 141 decks on EDHREC carrying the vermicular torch for Worms of the Earth, sharing the 99 with other "give opponents a choice"-type cards, like Prisoner's Dilemma, Browbeat, and Lethal Vapors. And though it's not listed, I can see a world in which Ghen, Arcanum Weaver can really unlock the potential of Worms of the Earth.
Preferred Selection
Green loves its top-deck manipulation, which is weird since top-deck manipulation doesn't seem like it should be a thing that green loves. But green loves everything, as we have all come to learn whether we like it or not.
Green's got Mirri's Guile, Abundance, Call of the Wild, Aid from the Cowl, Game Preserve, Lurking Predators and so many more. We even got a new one in Birthing Ritual just this year. It's just a thing that green does.
Then there's Preferred Selection, the one we don't like to talk about. Ignore the words that are actually printed onto the card, and read the Oracle text instead:
At the beginning of your upkeep, look at the top two cards of your library. You may sacrifice Preferred Selection and pay . If you do, put one of those cards into your hand. If you don't, put one of those cards on the bottom of your library.
It's not terrible, necessarily, as you're always choosing your turn's first draw out of two cards instead of just taking the first one off the top, but you're paying four mana to do so, then another four for a one-time extra draw. Keep in mind this is a world in which Sylvan Library exists.
Even still, there are 142 decks on EDHREC that include Preferred Selection, with an added bonus of being suggested as part of newly constructed Wildsear, Scouring Maw decks. Sure!
Purgatory
I'm including Purgatory on this list not because I think it's dumb but because I feel dumb for loving it so much. Sure, all the cool kids these days have Debtors' Knell, but back in my day, if you wanted to keep your dead creatures on ice for later use with a white/black enchantment, you had Purgatory.
Here's the Oracle text, which clears up some of the dated language for you:
Whenever a nontoken creature is put into your graveyard from the battlefield, exile that card.
At the beginning of your upkeep, you may pay and 2 life. If you do, return a card exiled with Purgatory to the battlefield.
You're basically just storing creatures in a place that can't be Bojuka Bogged, which seems good to me. I will die on the Purgatory hill (which come to think of it, "Purgatory Hill" sounds like a great title for a horror western novel), so its inclusion here in this article is my own act of defiance. Against myself. Since I'm writing this. You know, don't ask, it's been a long day.
At least there are 206 people who agree with me, as there are that many decks on EDHREC that include Purgatory. Liesa, Shroud of Dusk is the most common commander for it, if you're wondering.
Wellspring
If "I'ma just borrow that real quick" was a card, Wellspring from Mirage asks you to invest quite a bit of effort into making any land into Rainbow Vale. But I can see the appeal of hanging out with friendly zebras.
On its surface, Wellspring is one of those Reserved List cards that make you giggle for a moment due to its extremely specific and pointless nature, then you move on. But if you really think about it, there are actually some interesting use cases in Commander. Have a problem with your opponent's Maze of Ith? Just borrow that real quick.
And maybe that use case isn't so esoteric, as Wellspring is logged in 321 decks on EDHREC. My favorite bit of secret tech revealed by EDHREC is Wellspring's use in Yenna, Redtooth Regent decks, a card that can just sit there and make copies of Wellspring until everyone has to give you all their lands on your turn. And that's the exact kind of scenario that makes Commander the best format in Magic.
"Magic overused can freeze the mind. Creativity is more important than power."
And there we have it, ten of the absolute dumbest Reserved List enchantments. Thank you for joining me in the Reserved List slums. Or, to dovetail into the analogy from the intro, don't be a S.T.A.L.K.E.R. like I am, it brings you to some lonely and confusing places. I know more about Homelands than anyone should in the Year of Our Lord 2024.
What should we look at next time? Artifacts? Sorceries? More enchantments?
Let me know!
