Cloven Casting makes Breath of Malfegor hit everybody for 10 damage at instant speed.
Djinn Illuminatus makes Lightning Bolt go on the stack for as many red mana as you can spend. Let's see... pay 6 mana to do 10 to everyone, or pay 6 mana to do 18 to a single player. It's a conundrum. Of course, Illuminatus isn't even in standard, and Cloven Casting is. Paying 8 mana for a double Cruel Ultimatum is also a lovely way to hit and hit hard, but it's not the same as the total direct damage you could do in a duel with DJ and LB, or the damage you could rack up with a cloven Breath in a multiplayer game.
Posted By:
DacenOctavio
(6/19/2010 12:17:21 AM)
Is the value of X in an X cost spell's replication the same value or can you not replicate a spell with an X cost with this?
Posted By:
schacher
(1/6/2010 4:58:34 PM)
Cast through time seems like a far better choice (even though I think both are too expensive to be worth it). You get the copy one turn later, but you do not have to play red, or play a multicolored spell, or pay 1 extra.
Of course if you are feeling particulary evil and have a shitload of mana, you could alway play both, allowing you to play each spell you cast 4 times.
Posted By:
ratrase
(1/2/2011 8:18:47 AM)
Don't build your deck around it. Put one (1) in a deck built around something else (and has many multicolored instants and sorceries and is able to reach 7 mana reasonably).
If you say a card is great, then treat it with respect. If you're planning on pinning down your opponent until you can play this Cloven Casting, then this card is not an important card in your deck (compared to the cards you used to survive to the point of playing this card) and you condescend upon Cloven Casting. The majority of you deck would be shutting down your opponent and/or surviving. All that's left is to do is to kill your opponent/win the game. At that point, Cloven Casting is just as good as Air Elemental.
It is when you have a deck that (coincidentally) runs the appropriate cards that can benefit from Cloven Casting (or any expensive, over-the-top late game card for that matter) that, perhaps, you see it fitting to make room for a copy or two. ... (see all)
Posted By:
Enchantment_Removal
(6/25/2010 2:10:15 PM)
The biggest problem I see is the Multi-coloured aspect.
I did some research, and there are "only" 253 multi-coloured instant's and sorcery's out of 3,020 total.
Out of that, 197 have at least one 
or 
symbol in their cost.
In different terms, you can somewhat easily use 6.5% of instant's and sorcery's in the game. For a costly Enchantment. That requires two colours.
What I am saying is Mirari is almost always the better choice here.
Posted By:
Ferlord
(11/1/2012 8:12:03 PM)
Seven mana - what a great card to build a deck around... >.>
Interesting ability, but even the least Spikey Johnny players will still have hard times using this card effectively. As Vinifera7 already said, Djinn Illuminatus is a lot more effective than this one.
Such cards that don't do anything by themselves and highly rely on others, or rather find use from casting other spells only should at most cost 5 mana unless you get a really great effect in my opinion...
Posted By:
Mode
(9/11/2009 4:28:24 AM)
Must. Cloven Cast. Ultimatum.
Posted By:
smalrebelion
(12/16/2009 1:33:31 AM)
mirari is way better than this thing.
Posted By:
capitalR
(12/25/2009 10:50:04 AM)
@Arachibutyrophobia:
The triggered ability that fires whenever you cast a multicolored instant or sorcery spell gives you a one-time chance to either pay 
and copy the spell or do nothing. So for each spell you cast, you can only copy it zero or one times with Cloven Casting.
For seven mana, I'd rather get a Djinn Illuminatus and just win next turn by replicating a Lightning Bolt.
Posted By:
Vinifera7
(8/11/2009 11:53:28 PM)
personally i think this is an extremely fun card to play, especially in a well designed grixis deck. trust me, this, then next turn cruel ultimatum... whole lot of fun. and especially good for making extra use out of smaller spells like terminate. sure its expensive, but its well worth the cost.
Hint: for a really FUN game, get this onto the field with eye of the storm.
Posted By:
Willyum
(6/26/2009 4:19:59 AM)