The fact that this can manifest a card at
instant speed means that you can always produce
a 2/2 creature for 3W, even during combat. If
the top card of your library happened to be a
creature card, and you happen to have the mana
to unmorph it right then, so much the better.
I'd be a little wary about playing this in a
deck that wasn't A) almost entirely creatures,
or B) also had ways of manipulating the top of
my library, for fear of accidentally locking my
best noncreature spells under 2/2 shells where I
can't cast them. If that happens, you can always
just send them into combat, hope they die, and
then find a way to put them back into your
library-- most every format has a way to shuffle
graveyards back into libraries these days.
This is an interesting card that's almost modal
in its way. You can certainly use it in a deck
with lots of morph creatures, and the lifegain
will be hard to keep up with. But, there are
perhaps even more decks that will struggle
against a constant stream of 2/2 creatures; and
the second ability can also help get creatures
into play against cards like Standstill and
Counterbalance. And it has an advantage over
Heliod, namely that it's easier to use cards in
your library than external tokens!
Today's card of the day Mastery of the Unseen
which is a two mana White enchantment has you
gain a life for each creature you control
whenever a permanent you control is turned face
up and for four mana you can Manifest the top
card of your library. This is a life gain
mechanic for a swarm deck that is also using
Manifest or Morph to maximize the trigger and
something to capitalize on the life gain. That
is a few too many aspects to reliably work
together, so it is more likely just support for
swarm into a life gain victory condition.
It is generally more efficient to focus on swarm
or a life gain and not both, so while this card
is good it is too niche to really see much play
outside of some Casual or Commander builds that
can spare a slot for a situational card like
this.
In Limited this is more for adding some Manifest
cards into play, particularly multiple in a turn
later on, though the life gain is more of a
small bonus than a major benefit. The card
advantage of sorts makes this a plausible if not
overly impressive first pick in Booster and the
low White dedication allows it to fit into
multiple color decks. For Sealed it can be
used with White as filler with situational value
as it isn't a bad card with four mana 2/2
creatures on demand, though other rares will be
a bit more welcome.
Don't let the low cost of this fool you: it's a
later game card. The real benefit of the card is
that it can produce as many 2/2 manifests as you
want, as long as you have 4 mana. The problem is
that I don't know exactly what kind of deck to
use this in. A creature deck isn't going to want
to pay 2 mana for an enchantment that doesn't do
anything until you pay 4 more. A control deck
won't have very many creatures to gain benefit
from the first ability, and it will be unlikely
the manifested card will often be more than a
2/2.
This reminds me of Heliod, God of the Sun, which
was not one of the more popular gods from
Theros. The ability to pay 4 mana to get a
creature seemed to be too much for practical use
- and it also gave your creatures vigilance, not
to mention the potential of becoming a huge
indestructible creature!
I just don't see many cases where this is the
card you want. Keep looking.
