Articles

False Memories (Rare)
Cost: 1U
Instant
Put the top seven cards of your library into your graveyard. At end of turn, remove seven cards in your graveyard from the game.

"My enemies will forget everything but their anguish."
-Ambassador Laquatus

Expansion: Torment

Danesh Jogia
Email: daneshj@optushome.com.au
Forums Nic: omegaideal

Firstly, to see why we're even reviewing False Memories you have to know the End of Turn phases fairly well. Things that say "at end of turn do such and such" mean when the next End Step comes around you put these effects on the stack, then they resolve and THEN you get another chance to play more effects. So to use False Memories you wait until all these triggers have resolved during your opponents end step, and then you play it so you get the effect of it for your entire turn.

So now its actually useable, how to use it? Well you need some once off spells that need threshold or graveyard interactions.

Here are the ones that seem logical to me:

Far Wanderings
You can get up to 7 mana on turn 3, all land based. It's quite strong, but its also a combo...

Cabal Ritual
This can also be pretty good for the above reasons

Dawn of the Dead
Err. Well, when you False Memories you end up getting to choose one of those seven flipped cards to KEEP in your graveyard, assuming you don't want the memories to stick around. So if you can mise an Ichorid then you have infinite 3/1's for 1 life a turn. Er, once you get to 5 mana, 3 of them black so you can cast the dawn that is.

Lots of flashback men
You can also use False Memories just to get lots of flashback guys into the grave. This is assuming, obviously, that you've filled up your graveyard with heaps of stuff to remove that you don't want. So counter and cantrip away, then just put some token makers into your graveyard.

Of all these, the flashback men is the least tenuous, since flashback men are fine on their own. Whereas far wanderings is kinda bad without threshold :/ Really this card is still waiting to be broken by a better designer than I. I hope it does get broken. I like to see the more involved attempts by R&D actually pay dividends sometimes.

Right now, $4 or $5, but where do we go from here...

Danesh

Adrian Rimmer
Email: atgr@ozemail.com.au
Forums Nic: Adrian Rimmer

Limited: False Memories in limited seems to me to be a waste of a card, with no permanent effect it seems quite irrelevant unless your deck is U/G with multiple Werebears and other threshold creatures, in other words its a card a deck really needs to be absolutely ideal to be played or else its just an utter waste.

Constructed: Had Compulsion not been printed I think False memories would have easily had a place in Psychatog decks, but with Compulsion around there are a lot of other, better cards that can be used, maybe with a madness engine.

OBC False Psychatog:
4 False Memories
4 Compulsion
4 Obsessive Search
4 Circular Logic
4 Chainers Edict
4 Psychatog
4 Shadowmage Infiltrator
4 Syncopate
4 Aether Burst
16 Island
8 Swamp

False Memories should probably end up costing about $6.

Adrian

Dan Turner
Email: daimyodan@yahoo.co.uk
Forums Nic: RECOIL

Limited: If you are going to play an instant in limited you want it to be a good one and this is pretty bad. The only marginal use I could see is for a deck which uses a lot of threshold creatures but even then you should probably play something else.

Constructed: I guess this could see play in a Psychatog deck for a temporary +3/+3 boost but I would much rather play with a more stable card like Compulsion. In extended this card gains a lot more power, especially in re-animator style decks where it can combo with Exhume or Zombify to bring out Spirit of the Night or a Dragon Legend. This may see play in extended but we will have to wait.

Market Value: False Memories - $4 (so buy them up quickly!)