Into the Story

Instant

This spell costs {3} less to cast if an opponent has seven or more cards in their graveyard.

Draw four cards.

Legality

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

Discussion (49)

Helgrind on the cum deck

10 months ago

Preordain, Vivisurgeon's Insight, Into the Story, Witness Protection, Diplomatic Immunity, Experimental Augury, Tezzeret's Gambit, Preordain, Mesmerizing Dose

legendofa on

11 months ago

Looking at a meta Dimir Pioneer deck, https://www.mtggoldfish.com/archetype/pioneer-rogues#paper the new Faerie Mastermind has found a place, and Kaito Shizuki and Into the Story have slots. (Links not enabled, I apologize.)

https://www.mtggoldfish.com/archetype/pioneer-mono-blue-spirits#paper has Curious Obsession and Combat Research.

Expressive Iteration got banned in Pioneer for being too efficient at creating and maintaining a hand state.

You had mentioned the mulligan rule earlier. I'm not an expert on hypergeometric calculations, but that is an accepted part of play at all levels, and goes a long way to minimizing the rate of unplayable hands. How does Shota's deck perform if you assume one mulligan on a hand with 0-1 or 5-7 lands, keeping all hands with 2-4 lands?

My thoughts of Witching Well and Opt were more to demonstrate that {U} in particular has the ability to fix mana in hand at any budget. I didn't really make that clear in my post. If the tournament decks aren't running these cards, it's because they're running more efficient options.

Magic is absolutely a tough nut to crack, and I don't pretend to have all, or most, or any answers outside of quick searches of tournament lists and results and my own experience. The topic of balancing all the needs of your deck--mana, card draw, threats, responses--has had literal books written about it by high-level professionals, and then all the advice changes every few years. What works now might not work two years from now, and today's weird jank draft filler becomes tomorrow's top-tier combo piece.

One more thought, and this is my personal response to your earlier statement that "Most people would call you crazy if your "fun hobby " is fun 75% of the time." In baseball, if you succeed as a batter by getting on base 40% of the time, that's very notable. At the time of this writing, in the MLB, only fourteen people out of over 1,000 have an On-Base Percentage over .400, and exactly one person, Luis Arráez of the Miami Marlins, has an OBP of .500. So a 75% "fun" rate isn't necessarily grounds for craziness.

Again, if you decide you're not having fun and want to pack it in, I wish you the best of luck. If you want to stick around and chat without actually playing, please do. If you simply want to make a clean break, I hope you find the hobby that brings you lasting satisfaction and fulfillment.

wallisface on

1 year ago

Some thoughts:

• Counterspell will be a lot stronger than either Mana Leak or Countersquall.

• Vantress Gargoyle feels like a massive liability. I’d ditch it entirely and run the full playset of Gurmag Angler.

• Your deck is missing enough killspells to keep your opponent at bay - they’re going to be able to overrun you with creatures very quickly. I’d suggest getting Infernal Grasp and Fatal Push into the deck. Imo ditch all of Echoing Truth, Into the Story and Serum Visions for killspells.

SniperFrog on Oona

1 year ago

Alright. So there's a couple things I would change, but I don't want you to think it's better or anything, just what I would do. I'll give budget suggestions and non budget suggestions so you have a variety of choices without hurting the wallet.

I think I would go for mono blue so I can get Bruvac the Grandiloquent's effect in my command zone. It seems actually nutty to just be able to get this guy going. That being said, I like a lot of the black spells you have here, namely Mind Grind and Nightscape Familiar, so I would consider something like Phenax, God of Deception or maybe Mirko Vosk, Mind Drinker to stay in dimir. Not really sure the red is helping much at all, though. Only four red cards is a bit of a bad look, though they seem cool in theory. I've never played any of them, so I don't really know how good they actually are.

So there are a few optimizations I would consider as well. Three mana rocks are a bit slow for my tastes and there are a lot of decent options at two mana, I'd recommend Fellwar Stone, Mind Stone and Arcane Signet to name a few cheaper options. There's also Sapphire Medallion, Chrome Mox and Mana Vault, though those are strictly non budget.

More optimizations for interaction seems good here as well. Maybe drop some of your three mana counterspells for some one or two mana spells. Counterspell is a mainstay and at very good price as well. I like Swan Song, An Offer You Can't Refuse and Drown in the Loch in this slot. There are a plethora of non budget options as well, particularly free counters like Force of Will and Force of Negation or other heavy hitters like Mana Drain and Cryptic Command. Plenty of cool things to do with this, however, so you have options.

Your lands look rough. I personally will always go with untapped lands with so many options, but that can get really pricy, really fast. Of course, if you didn't have to worry about a red splash, your landbase gets A LOT better.

If you're having trouble with hitting enough lands, consider lowering the curve a bit or even adding a couple more to try to smooth things out. I generally try to have around forty-two to forty-five mana sources, though my curves are usually around 2-2.5, so you might want a little more than that, maybe. I don't know. That's something you can figure out with playtesting.

Now comes the fun part. As it stands, including the above mentioned cards, I would try to find room for these:

Into the Story for some card draw.

Leyline of the Void or something similar like Planar Void along with Helm of Obedience mills infinitely. Also pretty good to beat the eldrazi triggers if you see these things regularly.

Rhystic Study and its baby brother Mystic Remora are both excellent card draw spells with humongous upside, though they are both getting a little on the expensive side now, with Rhystic pushing forty or fifty bucks.

I like Bitter Ordeal, but I think this is kind of a pet card that I want to make work, so I might be projecting here. lol

Reanimate effects seem VERY strong here. I like the ones that target opponent's graveyards the most, so I would stick with Animate Dead and Dance with the Dead along with the aforementioned reanimate. Didn't think about this at first. Could be really sweet.

Mesmeric Orb is money in these decks. Gives mad inevitability.

Altar of the Brood and Altar of Dementia are both combo pieces, but I feel like they're more build arounds than good on their own.

Folio of Fancies. I've never seen this card before, but I love it. Seems like it would fit nicely.

Tome Scour and Brain Freeze are insane with Underworld Breach but this is another build around that pulls you more into storm than mill, I think. Still maybe worth thinking about.

Sands of Delirium seems sweet.

A few draw X spells could be just what you need. Stroke of Genius, Pull from Tomorrow, Fascination and Prosperity come to mind. Skyscribing also seems sweet, but I'm not sure how good it is.

Some cards I would just outright cut:

Gravepurge, not positive what this is doing for you, beside gumming up your draws. I guess it can get something back but not sure it's relevant. Hard to say without playing the deck.

All three mana rocks. Darksteel Ingot, Dimir Cluestone, Ur-Golem's Eye, Hedron Archive are a few. There are actually a few more than I thought, so maybe cutting all of them isn't the right thing to do unless you are cutting like for like for cheaper rocks.

Grisly Spectacle, I feel like you can get a better removal spell. I see the appeal, but I feel like it will get at most six cards milled maybe. Something like Feed the Swarm is probably just better or Drown in the Loch which hits two birds with one stone.

Countermand. Four mana counterspell seems like a really hard ask. I know it's on theme, but something cheaper is probably just better. See above for suggestions on cheap counters.

I would maybe cut some other, stuff, but I feel like I've already given you a lot to think about. Love the list. I'm excited to see it once you've had a chance to keep tuning it. Follow for sure. :)

wallisface on

1 year ago

I’m going to add here a description of what a control decks purpose is about, as hopefully this helps with your deckbuilding decisions.

The primary goal of a control is to win by having more resources in-hand than the opponent, while ensuring the opponent can’t do anything too dangerous on-board. In this vein:

• you need ways to increase your hand size, to get ahead of your opponent in cards - so you need ways to draw 2-or-more cards (or, a card that draws as-well-as disrupts, in one package) Current control decks typically do this vua 4x Archmage's Charm and 2x Memory Deluge. But other options include Into the Story, Think Twice, Expressive Iteration, Cryptic Command, etc. Without a way to get more cards than an opponent, a control deck will run out of resources, and then lose to top-decks.

• you need a way to finish the game that also provides incremental value. Control decks want creatures that 2-for-1, so that they maintain their resource advantage - so their creatures are things like Snapcaster Mage, Solitude, a cycled Shark Typhoon, or failing that manlands like Celestial Colonnade. If the creatures you use don’t provide you resource advantage, then they’re more likely to hurt your plans than help you.

• lands are super important. You need to be able to cast resources from your hand to gain & maintain your advantage. A control deck that can’t play a land everyturn for the first 4-5 turns of the game, will very-often lose. Because a Control deck often has a near-full hand, there’s often no-such-thing as drawing “too many” lands, while drawing too-few is disastrous.

• So, in summary, every-single-card in your deck that isn’t a land, either needs to provide some form of resource-advantage, or trade 1-for-1 with an opponents card (i.e Counterspell, Prismatic Ending etc).

Taking the above points and comparing them to your current build:

• Deflecting Palm, Boros Reckoner, Hover Barrier, Ugin's Conjurant and Basri Ket are all bad choices as they offer you no form of resource advantage (and some of these, like the Conjurant, are just terrible in general).

• Your selection of counterspells leave a lot to be desired. Too many if them have very specific targets on what they can counter, which isn’t ideal as it means your “resources” may sometimes be useless. A lot of these also cost a LOT more mana than what they should, considering their average effects.

• you don’t have enough ways to gain resource-advantage.

• your land count is waaay too low.

• you have no “finisher” card that actually wants to be in this deck.

Kazierts on Trigger Blue

2 years ago

I'm not very well versed in Pioneer and haven't played mill in a while, so take what I say with a grain of salt.

First things first, going over 60 cards is almost never a good thing.

About the cards themselves, here's a few things:

• I would suggest Fabled Passage but I'm not entirely sure that would be within you budget. The more fetchlands the better. Ruin Crab is a house.

• I really, really don't like Riddleform. It's very conditional and you kinda don't want to even consider winning with combat damage when playing mill. However, as I did in your other deck, I'll try to suggest things that work with your playstyle, even if I disagree. In this case, I have to say Riptide Chimera is better in every aspect. It's always a creature, has a bigger body and synergizes better with the constellation theme, since you can bounce things to redraw and remill every turn.

• I'm not a huge fan of the cards you added for card draw. I see them as a bit too slow and innefective. From a quick search on Scryfall I have a few cards I believe you should consider. Wizard Class does basically the same as Font of Fortunes, but has better late game potential, especially considering you like having an alternative wincondition. Another thing I'd consider is Hard Cover. I know this seems very suspect, but hear me out. You want cheap enchantments to trigger constelation, which this is. You want card draw to see more cards in your deck, which this does. Additionaly, it increases the toughness of your creatures, enabling better blocks against more aggressive decks. Maybe The Modern Age  ^Flip would be good, as it draws you cards and blinks itself, triggering constellation again. There are also enchantments that mill your opponents as you draw cards, such as Psychic Corrosion, Sphinx's Tutelage and Teferi's Tutelage, though I don't think that's the route you want to take with this deck. I know this paragraph is huge enough already, but I just have one more suggestion that's not already in the deck, which is Inventive Iteration  ^Flip. It's interactions against the opponent and, when it flips, can prevent your opponent from casting certain spells.

• I honestly think you should just max out on Mirrormade given you can use it to copy Drowned Secrets and Fraying Sanity.

• Lastly, because I'm aware I write things almost the size of an article, Into the Story could be something to have in your mind, but not necessarily run.

To reiterate, I don't have a lot of knowledge when it comes to Pioneer, so a lot of the things I've said can be wrong. This is just my opinion based on a little bit of mill I've played on some quick searches on Scryfall. Hope this proves useful to you.

Guerric on [Primer] Crouching One-Drop, Hidden Ninja

2 years ago

kookoo Thanks for commenting! There's definitely no need to apologize for commenting twice in a row! There definitely is an argument for Maskwood Nexus, and I may change it back eventually- for the moment enchantments are more resilient and its lower cmc, but Nexus does have added upside for sure. Sakashima of a Thousand Faces would definitely be good as yet another way to copy Yuriko, and I am running his original incarnation. Right now he's a bit pricey in real world $ to want to pick up, but if he gets reprinted or drops in price it will definitely be a consideration. I had fully intended to grab him before he went up, but I missed out on that one! As for Mutavault I had no idea that it suddenly became affordable. It seemed like it was $30 to $50 for the longest time, but clearly not any more! I might add it. I'm not sure Amoeboid Changeling adds enough utility to justify a 2cmc enabler. 1cmc is just the magic number there for me. Into the Story is a decent card and does belong in other decks, and it fits the high cmc with a discount option for actually casting it bit. The last thing Yuriko usually needs is the extra card draw, however, so I'd rather keep the slot for an extra turns spell or a creature! Thanks again for all of the suggestions!

heckproof on Burn but the opponent's life stays at 20

2 years ago

Oh yeah--in the event of graveyard hate, Into the Story is also great because it still draws you four cards. And with all the Endurance running around in Modern, it's sometimes nice to have something that still does what it's supposed to.