Gather Specimens
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Legality

Format Legality
1v1 Commander Legal
Archenemy Legal
Block Constructed Legal
Canadian Highlander Legal
Casual Legal
Commander / EDH Legal
Commander: Rule 0 Legal
Custom Legal
Duel Commander Legal
Highlander Legal
Legacy Legal
Leviathan Legal
Limited Legal
Modern Legal
Oathbreaker Legal
Planechase Legal
Quest Magic Legal
Vanguard Legal
Vintage Legal

Gather Specimens

Instant

If a creature would come into play under an opponent's control this turn, it enters the battlefield under your control instead.

wallisface on Esper Priest

2 months ago

Some thoughts:

  • Gather Specimens costs far too much mana to be viable, the game’s not lasting long enough to cast it.

  • Similarly, Panharmonicon is far too late-game to be helpful. It’ll either serve as a “win more” card (unhelpful), or lose you the game (by having to take a turn-off to cast it).

  • Sygg, River Cutthroat feels too cute to be good here - you want to be focusing all your attention on enacting your gameplan and this card feels like its not helping with that. I’d put Authority of the Consuls and Soul Warden in the same bucket.

  • a lot if decks i’ve seen trying this strategy use both Hunted Phantasm and Illness in the Ranks to great effect.

  • as mentioned above, Eldrazi Displacer will serve you better than your current flicker effects. Also, while it’d only target your own stuff, Ephemerate would be strong here.

Bi9_Do9 on Responding to Braids Conjurer Adept

1 year ago

At the beginning of my opponents upkeep and they have a Braids, Conjurer Adept in play. They decided to put a Grizzly Bears into play using Braids ability. I have a Gather Specimens card in hand, can I play the Gather Specimens after they choose a creature or would I have to play it before they made their choice known?

Yesterday on Worldgorger Combo + ETBs?

1 year ago

I'm afraid there are many issues here even if you control something like Leyline of Anticipation.

You can't reanimate a creature under an opponent's control with Animate Dead.

If your opponent cast Gather Specimens that turn, the Worldgorger Dragon reanimated with your Animate Dead would enter under their control and they'd be obliged to exile their other permanents, but they don't control Animate Dead so it wouldn't be exiled.

So unless your opponent both owns and controls the Animate Dead, the combo doesn't work. But also, as long as your opponent owns and controls the Animate Dead, they always get the choice of which card in a graveyard that it enters the battlefield enchanting. As long as there's at least one other creature card in a graveyard, they'll have the option to not loop Worldgorger.

Worldgorger returns the exiled permanents to the battlefield under their owner's control. As long as you own Bronze Bombshell, it'll return to the battlefield under you control and not trigger again. Unless that opponent cast Gather Specimens again.

The controller of a permanent is the controller of its triggered abilities on the stack. As long as your opponent controls all triggers being put onto the stack simultaneously, they get to choose the order they enter the stack, and so could sacrifice Bronze Bombshell before exiling it to Worldgorger trigger. (I'd actually like somebody else to confirm whether this part is true; do state-based triggers of permanents you control that enter the battlefield at the same time as another permanent with an ETB trigger both trigger at the same time? I think so but am not 100%.)

Finally, Bronze Bombshell will only deal damage to its controller if it is sacrificed. If it's exiled and returned to the battlefield in response to its trigger, it'll trigger again and eventually sacrifice when you stop exiling it, but all the other Bombshell triggers will resolve to do nothing since its controller can't sacrifice the source of that ability.

Yesterday on Lavinia vs Kaalia EDH

2 years ago

There's also Containment Priest , Hallowed Moonlight , Gather Specimens . But by far I've found the best way to deal with Kaalia decks is to consistently remove Kalia.

epajula on Even Flow - Gyruda EDH

3 years ago

Should you be putting more stuff in graveyards? Gather Specimens seems pretty neat.

iNinjy on Thefty Muldrotha

3 years ago

Mudlark This deck isn’t meant to be slippery or Elesh-Norn style. I said in the tags and description it’s a mill deck and lets me play my opponents cards. I’d consider the only “slippery” cards to be Spelljack, Kheru Spellsnatcher, and Gather Specimens which to be honest are often used more as anti-combo spells with the benefit of me gaining control of part or the entire combo.

omega1563 on Azami's Wizard Gang

4 years ago

Planned Changes:

Tzefick on Pattern Recognition #136 - Counters

4 years ago

I think counter magic is perfectly fine as a concept. It's a way to deal with issues, before they actually become an issue and it examplifies one of blue's main weaknesses: Difficulty in dealing with the board. I used to hate counterspells when I got into Magic again (during Lorwyn, damn Faeries), as they simply seem like a disability to play the game; "I want to play something." - "You may not". I have since accepted their place in the game and their importance.

The reason I still do dislike counter magic is because it exists to provide a strength to cover a weakness. A weakness that since then has been partially filled out by strong answers to the board over the course of Magic's history. One of the main offenders is Cyclonic Rift , especially present in Commander and other multiplayer formats that are significantly slower than Duel Magic (1 on 1). Other offenders are cards that really should be enchantments, but opted for a more nefarious although simpler route: Curse of the Swine and Reality Shift , and their predecessors; Pongify and Rapid Hybridization .

As said by Berry in the article; Blue has the ability to change something from one thing to another. We have also seen various types of such polymorphing done in enchantment form; Darksteel Mutation , Lignify , Frogify . All of this makes perfect sense in what blue is capable of doing.

However doing a change irreversibly like the Curse of the Swine or Reality Shift, is giving hard answers to a color whose weakness is hard answers - at least on the board. Yeah, you replace them with a creature, but a much weaker creature and if a token, one you can permanently remove by having it change zone.

Another issue with counter magic is the tempo shift. The opponent casts a 5 mana spell, you cast a 2-3 mana counter spell. Suddenly there's a disparity of 2-3 mana in the counterspeller's favor. It is mainly equalized because the blue player must have ready mana, resulting in that player not developing their own board state. However that can again be offset by utilizing instant speed spells or abilities that either advance board state or card draw for the blue player.

If the blue player didn't have these chances to apply disparity in mana spent and benefit, the color would struggle to have meaningful strengths, I know that. However the issue is in finding the fine line between how much mana disparity is acceptable. The cat is out of the bag on this one, as there have already been printed numerous versions of unconditional counterspells that have set a precedent for what blue counterspells are allowed to do and how cheaply.

If you compare a counterspell to a destroy spell, the main difference is obviously zone of application and also timing of application. One proactive, one reactive (well actually both are reactive, but you probably know why I have to make a distinction). Reactive spells provide a lot more flexibility in when you're required to use them. Their main problem is that sometimes reactive spells are too late to cause the same mana disparity that a counterspell does. As soon as that permanent hits the battlefield, an ability may come into effect, be it triggered, static or active. A reactive spell cannot avoid that.

Also take into account that blue can deal with any spell in existence, with the possible exception of spells with Split Second, specifically designed to be uninteractive - and still they can be interacted with . If there's a spell that is uncounterable, you can get creative with Venser, Shaper Savant , Time Stop , Mindbreak Trap , Ashiok's Erasure , there's load of ways to get around "uncounterable". Blue is also the color that will straight up see a threat on the board and simply take it for themselves, with Control Magic , Gather Specimens , Blatant Thievery , Expropriate . Effectively a removal, card draw and threat all in one.

No other color can boast the same catch all mechanic. White comes close for something in the same ballpark, but it is still just a bleak imitation - as countermagic goes. And evidently look at that price tag.

In the earlier days of Magic, blue was not the only user of countermagic. I feel like you could provide other colors with more conditional types of countermagic, to better even it out. And not just anti countermagic like Guttural Response . Blue would still be the best, but not the sole user. - White is a color that protects itself, so something like Hindering Light is the most likely avenue to take White Countermagic, anything that touches my stuff - go away. Think Equinox in terms of templating but not necessarily that specific. Giving their spells on the stack protection from a color or supertype or plain "old" Hexproof. - Green already has an affinity to provide hexproof to their stuff, Heroic Intervention and Veil of Summer , so expanding on that seems reasonable. - Red could go the Fork / Shunt route but is unlikely to get countermagic that straight up nullifies other types of spells than spells with targets. - Black is kinda difficult. The usual is just to tack an alternative payment of life, cards or permanents on an otherwise Blue card. Black already have an indirect proactive answer through selective discard, like Duress . The issue is these are all sorcery speed, so if an opponent suddenly starts drawing a lot of cards, it can be difficult for black to be proactive in time. So perhaps just providing Duress at instant speed through a condition would be acceptable. Something like "Instant Duress may be cast as an instant if an opponent has drawn two or more cards this turn." / "Instant Duress may be cast as an instant if the target opponent has 5 or more cards in hand". Any kind of variation on that.

Of course some would talk about color pie bleeding/breaking, but ain't that already happening by giving blue hard removal (by proxy) and large scale soft board removal? I know some of these issues are mainly aimed at multiplayer formats, but we cannot ignore that Magic has grown to be something else than only Duel Magic (1 on 1). Blue's counter magic is here to stay, but is it too much to ask that the other colors can get even slightly in on the action if not directly, then indirectly by interacting more with the stack?

Green has one of the best palettes available to them for a slightly slower format; mana ramp, card draw, large threats, ability to scale well, protective measures, explosive finishers and a hell lot of combo potential and pieces.

I think Green is only beaten slightly by Black in terms of Commander due to tutors in a singleton format. And because Black can cheat mana costs or pays differently, has access to card draw and good finishers, along many more combo pieces.

Blue is one of the only colors that reliably can stop combo or finishers dead in their tracks. Reversibly, they are the color best suited to keep those combos or finishers uninterrupted. They have the best access to card advantage and resource manipulation. And extra turns.

There's a reason that many cEDH decks are mainly some variation of Sultai colors (Green, black and blue) with maybe one added color or full WUBRG. I think this picture would be more diverse, if more colors became able to interact better. The ability to interact is one of the core foundations and strengths of Magic. Counter magic is a pillar of this interaction, more colors should find a way to do it or something similar.

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