Let's keep Gray Ogre.

Gray Ogre? I think you'll find that's just an OP Scornful Egotist, and needs to go.

Of course, with the Great Island Banning of 2021, Magic became a much friendlier game

Got my first experience running the Citadel this week, and boy oh boy is it Paradox Engine-level busted, especially with Insidious Dreams. I put it in my Edgar Markov deck. I cast Insidious Dreams on opponent's T3 end step, putting Citadel on top of my library with Viscera Seer directly under it. T4 I Culling The Weak into Citadel, then with Viscera Seer to scry my lands away I proceed to vomit my whole deck onto the battlefield and wipe the table with Purphoros. Do I think it should be banned? No. Does it warrant careful monitoring? I think so.

In the interests of fair reporting, can you recall a time where you've drawn it (I realise this may well be the only time so far!) and it hasn't been as good?

So you tutored for it and a combo piece, and found it was busted? You don't say?

I'm curious though, can you describe the "vomiting out your board" part more? Because I'm missing the part where you play around the life loss.

Because lifegain in black is trivial.

Yes, but "oh man this card is busted when I did X" isn't very informative if you leave out the Y and Z that made X possible in the first place. I'm not trying to discretion the experience, simply get a complete picture since the goal as I see it is to gauge just how broken Citadel is when you aren't building around it or in a nut draw.

Then isnt Aetherflux Reservoir the real issue ?

Uh.....

I honestly have no idea how you came to that conclusion.

Black has enough cards that are <do a thing, gain some life> that you can overcome the life cost for casting them, so you can cast more spells with the Citadel.

Aetherflux Reservoir may or may not go in Bolas Citadel decks because you may be casting a lot of spells, but you'll also be paying a lot of life. I imagine it's a pretty good fit, since the more spells you cast the more life you can which means you can cast more spells, etc. But I don't see how Aetherflux Reservoir is the real issue.

I saw my citadel tonight.

I played a land off of it, then a Barter in Blood, then it was put onto the bottom of my deck (courtesy of brutalizer exarch.) Next card after was another land, and I was stopped for the turn anyways.

This is just in a Bolas themed deck -- nothing to specifically use/abuse it. And I only have a few ways within the deck to gain life anyways.

From that experience, I can say it's strong and has potential to be stronger -- but all depends on how people use it. If you have cards in your deck to combo with it, sure it'll combo off well (and probably suck for others). If you just use it for some converting of life to cards for a bit -- Necro is stronger IMO.

Thank you

I lost to it this week because a funny individual at our table was playing "Build an omnisicience Planeswalker Tribal", I was playing a Kefnet deck, we had a player with a Nissa Tribal deck, and a pretty cool Yahenni, Undying Partisan deck. I decide to play Kefnet on turn 3 instead of Astral Cornucopia; and Nissa player drops a Sylvan Primordial (we talked about it being banned, but noone was sour about it) to destroy alot of do-nothings my opponents had, and one of my Islands. Anywho, eventually the game slogged on long enough through the Yahenni player's unwillingness to destroy this dude's planeswalkers with his army of the damned, out of fear of Elf stuff coming down on him. So, Planeswalker tribal guy doesn't want to get his cannon countered, so he plays Omnscience- I Spell Swindle he attempts to play his Life-Cannon- I look at the Arcane Denial in my hand and say "not worth it". He plays the Citadel, and I'm just feeling interested. He nets enough life to kill one player and tries to hold that over the table for a round. I start recurring Windfall and Dig Through Time looking for Patron of the Moon or a way to recur my Sphinx Bone Wand.

Was fun- Citadel didn't actually do anything but draw a guy 2 cards over 2 turns.. Yahenni player dropped a Grave Pact- and refused to pressure down planeswalkers. Nissa player ran out of cards fairly quickly. I spent most of my effort to fix land drops. Just regular EDH stuff.

Edgar Markov being Mardu allows me to run mass life gain spells like Oketra's Last Mercy, Congregate, Beacon Of Immortality, Revival//Revenge, and Harsh Sustenance. I also run Reservoir. Keeps the engine running.

In general, I agree with Viperion that a deck *can* be built to abuse the Citadel, but it would be a one-trick pony. I can see someone building a blue/black deck with cantrips and tutors to grab Mana Severance and storm cards FTW; but at least in my play group, they'd get it off once and then abused forever after if they tried to do it again.

I think what specter404 said about it becoming ubiquitous has more merit, as it is just too good not to use in base black decks...but then, so are *many* cards used in current mono-black decks.

It is something to be watched for sure, but let's see how things develop with it first. My take anyway.

I got to see this thing in two games over the weekend. In one, I hit two lands and bricked three turns in a row, and in the other, I had a tutor for Top and used it to dig for Ral + Chain of Smog. In both cases, it didn't stick out to me as something to be alarmed about.

A poor attempt at humor. I am saying I think the Citadel is very good, but not broken in half as others may have suggested.

AR would be a direct kill on the table if life were irrelevant.