The Stone Brain: A solid choice against combo decks, allowing you to exile key pieces like Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle
The only issue is that you then have to sacrifice Plate Spinning if one of the balanced cards falls off of your fingertip or touches another card
If you manage to pull both halves of a Meld combo and slot it into you deck, your opponents will have a truly difficult time coming back from this titanic play
2015: Fruit of the First Tree by Ryan Yee, Fate Reforged The first of back-to-back MTG Chesley award wins for Ryan Yee, Fruit of the First Tree is the quintessential example of amazing artwork on a card you might have never seen
If a creature with persist that has +1/+1 counters on it receives enough -1/-1 counters to cause it to be destroyed by lethal damage or put into its owner's graveyard for having 0 or less toughness, persist won't trigger and the card won't return to the battlefield
Before you get too excited, Wizards has acknowledged this issue, and noted that it doesnt mean the card will drop at a higher rate in Japanese boosters