There are a lot of new covenants and curses that do wildly different things when played as an enhancement or as an artifact. While this creates interesting gameplay decisions as to which way you want to use them, sometimes you may want the best of both worlds. While there are ways to get them back into your hand, most of these involve the cooperation of your opponent. Perhaps there should be another way...
Returning the Ark
1/-2 Gold TC/ -2/1 Black TC Enhancement
X=# of opponents' artifacts returned and underdecked
Return all active artifacts and any number of your inactive artifacts to owner's hand. Underdeck idols instead. You may draw X.
1 Samuel 6:3a "They answered, 'If you return the ark of the god of Israel, don’t send it back to him without a gift. Be sure you send a guilt offering to their god along with it.'"
After the Israelites foolishly took the Ark into battle, the Philistines
captured the Ark. However, there were some adverse effects - the city was plagued with tumors and the
Altar of Dagon bowed to the Ark. The Philistines decided to return the Ark, along with other tributes. Samuel used this to turn Israel back away from idols.
This card is not only valuable in returning covenants/curses to hand. It also allows temporary relief from your opponent's artifacts - they may be back next turn but they won't mess with your rescue this turn. In addition, it's sort of a "soft" Thorns and Thistles - it punishes having lots of artifacts up (and it's great in multiplayer too!).
Thoughts? This was inspired by
Fall of Man,
The Rainbow, and
Isaac's observations on my Torn Veil idea the other day.
