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Moxonomy

Forbidden Crypt

Enchantment3 generic manaBlack manaBlack mana

Drawing a card is the most reliable motion in Magic: every turn, your hand refills without question or cost. This enchantment intercepts that motion and aims it at the bin instead, converting the draw step into a recursion engine that hands back whatever is already in the graveyard. The catch lives in the second clause, which functions as a sealed valve: once the enchantment resolves, nothing ever reaches your graveyard again, because everything bound for the yard is exiled first. The fuel you stocked beforehand is all the fuel you will ever have, and any self-mill afterward only feeds the exile zone. That makes the failure condition lethal in the literal sense the rules text spells out: an empty graveyard on your draw step ends the game, so the deck has to seed the yard deliberately before this lands and then ration its returns against a floor it is always approaching. The card asks you to treat your graveyard as a depleting reserve on a clock rather than a renewable one, which is precisely why the redirect-the-draw idea has stayed narrow: few decks want to flirt with deck-out via a fixed reserve, however absurd the rate looks. The result is an engine with a self-destruct clause welded on, kept honest not by its mana cost but by the discipline required to survive your own enchantment.

Forbidden Crypt (6ed)
6ED · #132rare
Pricing
Normal: $1.03
Foil:
Oracle Text

Rules text

If you would draw a card, return a card from your graveyard to your hand instead. If you can't, you lose the game. If a card would be put into your graveyard from anywhere, exile that card instead.
Legalities

Format Status

Standard
N/A
Pioneer
N/A
Modern
N/A
Legacy
Legal
Vintage
Legal
Commander
Legal
Pauper
N/A
Brawl
N/A
Historic
N/A
Alchemy
N/A
Timeless
N/A
Standard Brawl
N/A
More formats
Old School
N/A
Premodern
Legal
PreDH
Legal
Pauper Commander
N/A
Oathbreaker
Legal
Gladiator
N/A
Penny Dreadful
N/A
Duel Commander
Legal
Future Standard
N/A
COMPETITIVEBRAWL
N/A
TLR
N/A
Printings elsewhere

Other printings

1 set
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