For me, that card was Morality Shift.

So let’s talk about Morality Shift. I built a tremendous reputation on the back of Morality Shift during my Five Color heyday. Back when Abe’s Deck of Happiness and Joy was a svelte 500ish cards, I ran Morality Shift to brutal precision. When I played Morality Shift, it was basically game over, goodnight sweet prince.

But why?

Well, let’s unpack Morality Shift, shall we?

For 7 mana you swap your graveyard and library. By the way, this spell won’t work if you have no cards in your graveyard or library. Just so you know. Now I would play this with a handful of cards in my library, it didn’t ,matter. Because I would be winning shortly later. I didn’t need a 20 card graveyard all stocked and ready to switch for the Shift.

But how did I win?

This was the era when the Five Color format dominated many casual tables. Five color was 250 cards, 20 of each color, Vintage legal sets, and its own B&R list. My friends and I all often played multiplayer highlander variants of Five Color, although not exclusively. I had a Madness 250 with four-of each of the various key cards, and one of my friends had a Five Color take on Rift/Slide with four of all of the key cycling cards like Astral Slide and Lightning Rift and Fluctuator.

Given this dominance of Five Color decks, my own deck played into that a bit. Again, let’s see how:

1. Incarnations. I ran all of the Incarnations save for Valor — who needs first strike? So, I had flying from Wonder, trample from Brawn, haste from Anger and swampwalk from Filth. Now swampwalk often gave my team unblockable because my foes were likely running Swamps in their Five Color deck. If not I could activate Glory once or twice to make my team unblockable on whatever they had out in play. Plus I ran Genesis as well. This gave my creatures a huge injection of awesome.
2. Flashback. Flashback was a mechanic that worked so well with this basic concept, and there were a few ways.

• Recursion. And specifically Recoup. If Recoup got put in my graveyard, I could flash it back. Now I can cast one sorcery card in my graveyard again. Yay! There were several options, although one I loved more than anything else which we’ll see in a moment at #3 below. But Recoup was a strong card. Today you could run Past in Flames as well. Boom! (See also – Creeping Renaissance, Unburial Rites, and Dread Return).

• Utility. Given the obvious value of flashback here, you can see how use everything from tutoring to removal to life gain to card drawing. People often forget just how many good flashback cards are out there, especially over the three blocks that printed them. Consider cards like Mystical Teachings, Deep Analysis, Ancestral Tribute or Gnaw to the Bone, Divine Reckoning, Sever the Bloodline, Faithless Looting, Forbidden Alchemy, Chainer's Edict, Ray of Revelation, Ancient Grudge, and Firebolt. You could run those cards as well as many more and be fine and dandy. But there were a trio of cheap utility spells I ran to stop junk from taking me out: Moment's Peace, Flaring Pain and . . . Cabal Therapy. One stopped people from junky damage prevention effects. Another from someone attacking and killing you outright if you are slowed a bit in winning for a turn or two. The last can be harnessed with no mana to sacrifice a key creature (Die Incarnation!) while protecting a major spell from resolving. If you find the Moment's Peace being really helpful, then Prismatic Strands may be up your alley as well.
• Army Up. If someone stops the key spells from resolving, I can use Grizzly Fate, Crush of Wurms, Army of the Damned, Spider Spawning, and more to just win with a bunch of big smasheroos. Tokens for the win!


3. Living Death. This was my key win card. Recoup Living Death. My graveyard is so much more stocked than anyone else’s. I kill the junk in play, and then I have an epic ton of triggers from guys like Nekrataal and Avalanche Riders and Ghitu Slinger. I can kill any creatures brought back, and kill my own Incarnations as well. Then I swing with haste, swampwalk, trample, and flying with my entire team. Smashing fun commences.
4. Other Graveyard Fun Stuff. And I also have other cards like Bloodghast, Shard Phoenix, Hammer of Bogardan, Gurzigost or Mortivore. Run Lord of Extinction. Buried Alive? Entomb? Magus of the Will? You have the 6-card super cycle of Avatars as well – like Soul of New Phyrexia or Soul of Ravnica that can use their abilities in the graveyard once. Special Mention to Narcomoeba! But there are some other mechanics that play into Morality Shift quite nicely!

• Threshold. Your threshold is pretty reliable, so stuff like Werebear, Mystic Enforcer, Stitch Together and Centaur Chieftain were all pretty good options. Battlefield Scrounger can restock three cards back to your library each turn and is one of my key ways to not deck myself. Don’t sleep on a simple utility card like Far Wanderings or a beater such as Fledgling Dragon.
• Delirium. On a similar note, Delirium is pretty reliable as well. However, Delirium is intentionally designed as giving a great a minor boost in power, rather than the huge upgrades you would often get with threshold, so it plays more like a limited mechanic. But there are still highlights to consider for today such as Traverse the Ulvenwald, which is solid early to get that key land or later for a key creature instead. Ishkanah, Grafwidow? Grim Flayer?

• Retrace. Retrace is great because it will sit there ready for you to discard a land to play it for its mana cost. Unlike flashback, you can play a retrace card many times, so long as you have a land in your hand to discard. However, the mechanic was not widely printed. Retrace cards like Worm Harvest and Waves of Aggression are pretty cool. You could run the cheap Raven's Crime, the powerful Spitting Image, or something like Oona's Grace.
• Delve. D is for Delve! For my mind, most of the good delve options are spells to play. You don’t need to drop Gurmag Angler or Tombstalker. I think Temporal Trespass is the coolest, because you can play it for 3 mana guaranteed on a mana sensitive turn when you already dropped a 7 mana Morality Shift. Tasigur's Cruelty can open up the game by stripping out all of the unsightly cards that might have otherwise come for you. Dig Through Time? Empty the Pits? There are some strong cards here to recommend.
• Unearth. Any of those creatures that you just flipped into your graveyard can come back for a nice one-time smashing. As a Shard-only ability that was limited to Grixis, we only have about 20ish unearth creatures, but there are some in there that are huge in power. Don’t sleep on Anathemancer or Extractor Demon. Scourge Devil is nice in the right build. But the class here is clearly Corpse Connoisseur, right? Right!

• Dredge. I know, how boring. But still, cards like Stinkweed Imp, Golgari Thug, and Grave-Shell Scarab are clear value. But two cards deserve serious mention — Life from the Loam and Golgari Grave-Troll. The Troll gets very big so you can see its value. And when you are shunting a bunch of cards into your graveyard, don’t forget that you are throwing a bunch of lands there too! Which brings me to . . . 
• Lands. Crucible of Worlds? Splendid Reclamation? (With Amulet of Vigor if you want to push it). Crypt of Agadeem? Planar Birth? Don’t forget Life from the Loam, mentioned above. Even a simple Cartographer is cool here.
• Recover and Scavenge. I have not run these to test them, but perhaps recover cards like Grim Harvest, Controvert or Krovikan Rot or Icefall would be useful here. I also haven’t really played around with scavenge here either. But there could be something there. Perhaps try out Deadbridge Goliath first to see if it works as a scavenge as well? If so, then perhaps other’s would work.

There is a lot of synergy to unpack with Morality Shift in Magic-dom!

I used graveyard abuse so frequently that milling strategies became a thing of the past. When a new player came to our table, expecting to get a slow mill with your typical deck with Glimpse the Unthinkable or Traumatize, they were severely mistaken, as I’d blow them out shortly later. Milling became a thing of the past at my table, save for self-milling stuff I’d run like Deep Spawn and Tolarian Serpent.

So that’s where I was.

Where could Morality Shift go today? What decks would best run it?

I think Commander is a good home for it. It’s has enough of a deck to make it work, and the only-one-card aspect gives you a lot of options for fleshing out a quality Morality Shift.

Here are a few deck ideas:

1. Balthor the Defiled — For you can bring back all of your Shifted creatures for a big, sweeping heap of problems. The obvious synergy is here, but despite the “Red creatures” clause in Balthor, he is a Mono-Black Commander, and thus would only also in-color synergies. But a Balthor reanimation with Gray Merchant of Asphodel hitting the battlefield may be all you need to win right there.

2. Bladewing the Risen — Swap your deck over, and drop Bladewing to reanimate the best-est Dragon you have, and get Bladewing's Thrall as well. This color combo gives you powerful Red cards like Countryside Crusher and the Recoup/Past in Flames combo is pretty lethal here. See also — Grenzo, Dungeon Warden. When you Shift, you choose the order of the graveyard, so you can stack for a cool Grenzo activation.

3. Jarad, Golgari Lich Lord — Black and Green are the sexiest combination we have for graveyard infused loving. Jarad is pumped by creatures in the graveyard. Merely playing Morality Shift when he is out, and swinging should be enough to win with Commander damage alone. Check out The Gitrog Monster if you want to draw like a bajillion cards when you Morality Shift instead.

4. Sidisi, Brood Tyrant OR Tasigur, the Golden Fang — This gives you 3 powerful graveyard infused colors that have the strongest game. You can get the self-milling love of these leaders and Sultai generally, as well as three very graveyard conscious colors. The addition of Blue adds a lot to the plate, with card drawing, graveyard tricks, and more that Golgari alone can’t match.
5. Karador, Ghost Chieftain — Swap Blue for White, and get the White graveyard stuff like Sun Titan or Karmic Guide. You still keep the Golgiari duet, and have the single most powerful graveyard abusive leader with a quick way to dump an entire deck into the graveyard.

6. Daxos the Returned — Run it with cards like Starfield of Nyx, Replenish, Academy Rector, and more. Build up a big fat graveyard of enchantments, and then break stuff with them.

7. Silas Renn, Seeker Adept — How about a Dimir graveyard deck that runs artifacts as its main feast, rather than creatures? In here Morality Shift can set up a powerful Silas Renn hit. Check out Salvage Slasher, Skeleton Shard or Scarecrone or, well, you get it I’m sure.

8. Sharuum the Hegemon — Did you like that artifact idea with Dimir? Then why not go the full Esper and use also do this graveyard artifact theme with Sharuum the Hegemon as your leader? You could add in White stuff from Auriok Salvagers to Sanctum Gargoyle.

9. Garza Zol, Plague Queen — Grixis Spells — This deck wants to pump the library into the graveyard and vice versa as a way to get a bunch of flashback, retrace and such in order to gain massive card advantage. Maybe it just wants control? Or perhaps it’s a combo deck about to go off post-Shift. A spell-based version might use something like Runechanter's Pike for the win. Cards that trigger off spells, like Guttersnipe, Metallurgic Summonings, and Young Pyromancer suggest cool interactions to me. (You could run Dimir spells with Dralnu, Lich Lord instead).

10. Sedris, the Traitor King — Grixis Unearth — When every creature in your graveyard can unearth for just 3 mana, that is a very powerful combination with Morality Shift. You could recur some powerfully intoxicating options. The reanimation flashback cards feel best used in a Sedris deck that has a bunch of big, fat creatures you were planning to unearth. Consider this — unearth three nasty beaters and swing for a bunch of damage, then sacrifice them to Dread Return to flash it back for no mana and bring back another big beater for no mana permanently. Drop that mic!

11. Yidris, Maelstrom Wielder — Forget that White crap! Run this with the graveyard abuse of Golgari, Blue, and Red, and run stuff like Past in Flames, Deep Analysis, Increasing Vengeance, and the land fueled fun of Green.

Don’t forget the value of a packed graveyard with cards like Tombstone Stairwell, Mortal Combat, or Bridge from Below or Burning Vengeance. You could also run the Dragon Auras, which would be in the graveyard to enchant a Commander with enough man — like Dragon Shadow or Dragon Breath. Oversold Cemetery? Snapcaster Mage?

Want a fun combo? Haakon, Stromgald Scourge and either a few Knights, Changelings, or Ashes of the Fallen set for Knights. If you can manage to ultimate Tamiyo, the Moon Sage? Then oh crap! Morality Shift reads: “Put your library in your hand, your graveyard in your library, and you don’t discard either by the way.”

Need to restock your deck? I love Krosan Reclamation and Memory's Journey in this role. You could use Bow of Nylea as well.

I was thinking about a fun 60 card build while talking about this deck. Check out Locket of Yesterdays! You could Morality Shift to set up a powerful combo that wins with the Locket. There’s so much here!

I hope you enjoyed this little tour of all things Morality Shift! Hopefully you’ll be inspired by one or more cards mentioned here!

What has dominated your table and forced folks to change their strategy? What is your iconic card?

What are your Morality Shifts?