MTG Salvation

Thinking about this card it actually seems pretty awesome, especially in decks with a bunch of mana dorks. Anyone ever tried it before?

Hah! Yeah, I messed around with it. It's fantastic in decks with a lot of dorks. The first time people see it, it leads to a lot of "Oh, what is this old crap?" followed by a lot of inconvenience if they don't run artifact destruction.

Also, you need a sac outlet to go with it. Badly.

I love this card. But I am a real sucker for Bloodghasty stax decks in cubes.

It was pretty good in my classic cube for a while, but it just got outclassed by the suite of colorless cards available now.

Interesting card. Never thought about it for cube. It does seem a bit risky though, unless you sacrifice a creature that would die anyway.

Sacrificing my worst creature to get my opponents best creature sounds like a good deal, and it's even repeatable. The problem I see is that this kind of effect at this price is more something for controling decks, but those decks usually lack cheap creatures to sac (besides something like Bitterblossom or other token generators). The aggressive decks usually don't want such an effect at that price, although they would have the sac fodder, they prefer something to close the game like vortex or geddon.

I'm thinking it's more for the green decks with a bunch of mana dorks, or the more midrange decks. It seems very good with tokens and persist, and creature battles.

I've been testing this card for a few months now, and I have to say it's been fantastic in my (slightly slower, slightly budget, mostly-drafted-with-two) cube. It's been run successfully in a wide range of decks, and won games that were otherwise unwinnable. It can create really impossible board states for your opponent without too much trouble. I've stuck it into aggro/midrange decks because I needed a 23rd card, and been pleasantly surprised--you lose your 2/2 for their stabilizing blocker to push the last damage through. Control decks with only a few finishers hate this card, of course, and it can tip the balance in midrange matchups. This is BCS-thinking, yes, but it has proven useful more than I expected.

Being able to sac your own creatures is useful in a surprising range of circumstances, too.

Of course, if you have a very fast meta, this card doesn't do enough to warrant inclusion. But compared to, say, Icy Manipulator or Trading Post or similar cards I've run, the Helm has had far greater impact.