A long time ago, Magic R&D printed what is, arguably, the first bad rare: Flying Carpet. Then they decided to print a full cycle of bad rares: the Laces (Purelace, Thoughtlace, Deathlace, Chaoslace, and Lifelace).

R&D decided they liked printing bad rares. Bad rares help fill out holes in sets. Each set, you can find a ridiculously overcosted green creature, a “neat” black discard spell, an incredibly narrow blue spell, two or more red global enchantments, and white cards as bad rares.

But what happens when R&D prints a bad rare that is so bad that calling it a “bad rare” is actually a compliment?

That particular bad rare is Aven Shrine.

Aven Shrine is not your typical bad rare. Aven Shrine is an order of magnitude worse than a typical bad rare. Let me explain with the short but memorable deckbuilding foray I had with Aven Shrine.

Shrines v1.0

Eggine (18)
4 Sungrass Egg
4 Skycloud Egg
4 Mossfire Egg
4 Chromatic Sphere
2 Helm of Awakening

Draw (8)
4 Deep Analysis
4 Careful Study

Recursion (4)
4 Revive

Kill (12)
4 Nantuko Shrine
4 Aven Shrine
1 Test of Endurance
1 Epic Struggle
1 Brain Freeze
1 Folk Medicine

Land (18)
7 Island
6 Forest
2 Plains
2 Riftstone Portal
1 Treva's Ruins

Yes, you read that decklist correctly. Yes, there are some horrible cards in it. And yes, Aven Shrine is the worst one by a large margin.

What’s that I hear? Are you scoffing at my Aven Shrine deck because it, in fact, is a Nantuko Shrine deck? Well then allow me to retort; I ask you to take this simple quiz:

How many Aven Shrines do you own?
How many Aven Shrines have you traded for?
How many Aven Shrines do you currently have in decks you own?

Unless you answered four or more to each of these questions, sit down. Be quiet. Pay attention. You have no right to tell anyone how to build an Aven Shrine deck.

My answer, by the way, is four to all of them. And to tell you the truth, trading for four Nantuko Shrines and four Aven Shrines at the Torment Prerelease was by far the fastest and easiest trading I’ve ever done in my life. These bad rares come flying out of binders when you ask for them.

Back to the deck. Shrines plays off the Egg engine from Odyssey to cycle through cards while building up a large graveyard. You can’t “cycle” cards like Renewed Faith because you actually have to play your spells to trigger Aven Shrine.

The problems I ran into were:

No acceleration
Doing nothing with Revive
Brain Freeze not helping very much
Folk Medicine is a terrible and unnecessary card, even in a deck that it seemingly fits in

When you “go off” with Eggs, total mana remains constant or slowly decreases. You can’t get any acceleration without making another land drop or playing a dedicated mana acceleration card (like Dark Ritual or Turnabout) that doesn’t cantrip.

The only time Revive is more than just a 1G buyback spell is when it snags a Nantuko Shrine from your graveyard — perhaps after a Careful Study or your opponent’s Seal of Cleansing. Still, I’m not making very good use of Revive in a graveyard-oriented deck.

When you Brain Freeze yourself, all your Shrines end up in the graveyard. While you can Revive a Nantuko Shrine, you need another Revive to keep going. I also Brain Froze one of my opponents during a particularly long Egg and Deep Analysis chain.

It is really hard to win with Aven Shrine.

Revisions

I added Harrow after remembering the power of Harrow + Sunscape Familiar. Harrow fixes my colors, gets rid of Riftstone Portal if it’s in play, thins the deck, accelerates under Helm of Awakening, and I can Revive it to increase the Revive count in my graveyard.

So I revamped the deck to this final form, where it remains in perpetual stasis unsleeved in a deck box until I feel the need to make my opponent read my cards once a year.

Shrines v2.0

Eggine (16)
4 Chromatic Sphere
4 Sungrass Egg
4 Skycloud Egg
4 Helm of Awakening

Search (16)
4 Harrow
4 Revive
4 Deep Analysis
4 Careful Study

Combo (10)
4 Nantuko Shrine
4 Aven Shrine
1 Epic Struggle
1 Test of Endurance

Land (18)
7 Island
6 Forest
2 Plains
2 Riftstone Portal
1 Treva’s Ruins

I’m going to leave the decklist at that. I recently playtested a modified build preparing for this article and screwed the deck all to hell by adding Hunting Pack. Let me tell you right now: Hunting Pack kills people in this deck. Generating a lethal number of Beasts is disgustingly broken compared to what the deck is normally supposed to do. You can even Revive Hunting Pack in case your opponent miraculously survives the first one.

Conclusion
Was it fun to win with Aven Shrine? Not really. I won because my opponent did nothing for more than ten turns, allowing me to assemble all four Aven Shrines and a Helm of Awakening in play, three Revives and a Riftstone Portal in my graveyard, the fourth Revive in my hand, and a bunch of land in play. That means I was gaining eighty-plus life a turn with Revive for Revive by the time he was swinging at me with huge guys into my chump-blocking Squirrels.

So…if your opponent is horribly manascrewed, manaflooded, or somehow both at the same time, you can win with Aven Shrine.

Out of all the times I have played my Shrine deck, I have but one tick mark on my Test of Endurance and one tick mark on my Epic Struggle. So, that technically means I’ve won with Aven Shrine just one time — as a means to win with Test of Endurance. One measly tick mark. But I wear it with pride; I earned that tick mark.

What if we could “fix” Aven Shrine? How can we tweak it to power it up to typical bad rare status, like Nantuko Shrine or Epic Struggle? Let’s just go nuts and do all three of these changes at the same time and then not playtest it (a.k.a. “The Skullclamp Fix”):

Drop the mana cost as low as possible.
Remove the symmetry.
Double the effect.

That gives us the new and improved:

Aven Shrine
W
Enchantment (Odyssey – Rare)
Whenever you play a spell, you gain X life, where X is twice the number of cards in all graveyards with the same name as that spell.

Believe it or not, that’s about the power level I thought the card was at when I starting trading for them and building a deck around it. During my first actual game, Aven Shrine’s abysmal power level showed through, and I lost over and over again. But is this new version any better than such hits as Angel’s Feather, Contemplation, or even the tournament-viable Sunbeam Spellbomb? Would you side this in for the White Weenie mirror match? Heavens no. No one would touch this card longer than it would take to store it with its bad rare brethren. It’s still a horrible card, a horribly underpowered crappy bad rare. Now, remember that I’m not playing with this “powered up” version.

We tried. Oh, how we tried.

Aven Shrine is by far the worst card I’ve ever built a deck around. Magic cards should not exist at this low a power level. Fugitive Wizard, Squire, and Chimney Imp put Aven Shrine to shame. These cards can actually do something while they are on the table.

Aven Shrine is only good at doing the one thing all bad rares are good at: It laughs at you from its perch in the coveted rare slot as you crack your booster pack. Aven Shrine does not defeat opponents; it defeats you.

Kenneth Nagle
NorrYtt
NorrYtt@gmail.com
Proud Member of the Casual Players’ Alliance

Further Reading:

“An example of a recent ‘boo-boo’ by R&D would be the cycle of Shrines (Aven Shrine, Cephalid Shrine, Cabal Shrine, Dwarven Shrine, Nantuko Shrine). R&D thought the cards would see play in multiplayer decks as the cards grow in power the more graveyards they have to reference. Obviously, we were wrong.”

-Mark Rosewater
“When Cards Go Bad”

“Judgment is going to complete the cycle [of alternate win conditions], introducing (drumroll please) Test of Endurance and Epic Struggle! Like Battle of Wits, both of these cards are quite playable, if you are willing to build your deck around one of them.

-Alex Shvartsman
“Completing the Winning Cycle”