Minn, Wily Illusionist
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Legality

Format Legality
1v1 Commander Legal
Alchemy Legal
Archenemy Legal
Arena 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
Oathbreaker Legal
Planechase Legal
Quest Magic Legal
Tiny Leaders Legal
Vanguard Legal
Vintage Legal

Minn, Wily Illusionist

Legendary Creature — Gnome Wizard

Whenever you draw your second card each turn, create a 1/1 blue Illusion creature token with "This creature gets +1/+0 for each other Illusion you control."

Whenever an Illusion you control dies (is put into the graveyard from the battlefield, tokens are put into the graveyard before they cease to exist), you may put a permanent card with converted mana cost/mana value less than or equal to that creature's power from your hand onto the battlefield.

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Tsukimi on Communism Was a Red Herring

1 month ago

Switched up the land base a touch to make room for Hall of Heliod's Generosity and Volatile Fault. Took out a few cards to make room for more/better ramp so now we have Thought Vessel, Gala Greeters, and Wood Elves. Found room for Esper Sentinel as we need more recurring card draw to enable effects like Minn, Wily Illusionist and Ethereal Investigator. We probably still want more ramp, but I'll see how it runs as is while I still look for a spot for Bronzebeak Foragers.

Tsukimi on (Feedback appreciated!) Tsukimi, Root's Mirror

1 month ago

First playtest was a lot of fun! Tricky to gage because one friend was playing a group hug Kynaios and Tiro of Meletis deck with oath of the druids out turn 2 and then two dockside extortionists came out and it got crazier from there. I also managed to get rhystic study out turn 3 and keep it out and it was a 6 player game (usually we are 4) so things got out of hand fast and Tsukimi won pretty handily. Notably smothering tithe gained me at least a clue a turn so I think they need a "first time each turn" clause on the clue production. It was like my ideal setup and should not have been possible if not for being able to make copies of dockside (not even with Tsukimi) with rhystic study out. It was in many ways a perfect game. Especially because another friend was playing a board wipe deck and I managed to draw Minn, Wily Illusionist and Bennie Bracks, Zoologist So by the time he wiped I had 10 10/10 illusions.

Other than needing to add the first time per turn clause I think it's fairly balanced as of now and a beacon for removal so we'll see how less crazy games play out.

CopperheadCA on When I Was Done Dying

11 months ago

Tried playtesting this against my Minn, Wily Illusionist EDH deck. On turn 6 or 7, I gained control of Karona, False God, attacked, then played Ixidron, effectively trapping your commander on my board. Another card in my deck would effectively do the same thing: In Too Deep. It was a bit of a slow drawn out process from there, but you may need something to destroy your commander if it gets trapped like this. Also saw after that this is meant to be a political deck, but.. just some notes.

Something like Shiny Impetus, Psychic Impetus, or Parasitic Impetus may help in situations like this, where it gets turned face down.

CopperheadCA on Jhoira, Weatherlight Legends

11 months ago

Playtested 3 games against my deck. Glad to see you included my commander Minn, Wily Illusionist. Found everything very expensive. I would suggest adding some lower cost legendaries. All these 4/5/6 drops you have could be switched over for 2 drops, can play twice as many in one turn to activate your commanders effect more often.

Some quick suggestions from a quick MTG search:

Additionally, I'd suggest some cards that react more to all the card draw (even if they aren't legendaries):

Immortalys on Card Draw Tag

11 months ago

So I just made a Jhoira, Weatherlight Legends deck, focussing on Legends (of course) with a card draw theme.

With a Card Draw theme I mean cards like Jori En, Ruin Diver, Kraum, Ludevic's Opus and Honden of Seeing Winds for straight up card draw.

Cards like Alandra, Sky Dreamer and Minn, Wily Illusionist for second card drawn each turn (I know this is a tag already).

Cards that pay of drawing lots of cards like Niv-Mizzet, Parun, Niv-Mizzet, the Firemind, The Locust God and Teferi, Temporal Pilgrim.

Cards that pay you off for having lots of cards in hand like Alrund, God of the Cosmos  Flip, Hisoka, Minamo Sensei and Meishin, the Mind Cage.

And other cards with card draw synergies like Teferi's Ageless Insight and Jace, Wielder of Mysteries.

Also cards that grant an unlimited hand size like Nezahal, Primal Tide, Thought Vessel, Decanter of Endless Water, Wizard Class and the good old Reliquary Tower.

So how come there is no Card Draw tag yet?

Crow_Umbra on [Retired] Sacrificial Symposium

11 months ago

Thank you Hyrkh, I appreciate it. I'll take a look at your list later today, & see what feedback I can offer. I usually take my lunch around 12pm PST.

In play-testing the deck feels consistent-ish. I omitted certain token creators (for now) like Minn, Wily Illusionist & Alandra, Sky Dreamer, mostly because I wanted go see how consistently the deck could draw a 2nd card to warrant that pacing of token production.

As with any other deck I play that cares to some degree about token production, I want to make sure it's a fairly consistent feature. I'm still getting a feel for the push & pull of token production & combo enabling.

LandoLRodriguez on Talrand No-kens

1 year ago

thefiresoflurve First of all, thank you so much for taking the time to look over my list and put some real thought into these last cuts. I truly appreciate it. I understand all of what you had to say, and was having some of the same thoughts myself. As I said before, all these cards made it through several rounds of cuts so I have my reasons for them still being here. That said:

Minn, Wily Illusionist is still here because I like playing the quirky legendary creatures in my colors. There's not much else here that pumps the team the way she does and she would interact nicely with Murmuring Mystic. All this still probably isn't good enough reason to keep her though. Unless I'm drawing 2+ cards on each opponents' turn (which I'm probably not), her token output comes up short. Whispering Wizard is on the block for the same per-turn production limitation. Plus, I don't have much as far as scary permanents to cheat out with her second ability (nor a reliable way to kill my illusions to do so). It'll hurt to cut one of my token producers, but yeah, she's on the block for sure.

Wizard Class because I loathe having to discard for hand size, and I plan on drawing a lot of cards. Taking this one out means I'm left with only Reliquary Tower, Sea Gate Restoration  Flip, and possibly Venser's Journal. I suppose that the amount of draw I hope to produce means I'll come across one of those other options, but it still worries me. Probably still not a good enough reason to keep it in though.

I like Capsize because I love having repeatable options in commander decks, and because it can target any permanent. It's great to have options to bounce a troublesome land if the need arises. Paying 6 total mana to do so (and keep Capsize) is probably not worth it though. I included Field of Ruin and Strip Mine to deal with problem lands, and I have Boomerang and Cryptic Command to bounce any permanent still.

I really like Guile because it does a lot of things for me I think. Besides its mega-menace, I like that it exiles my opponents' spells should I choose not to cast them. I'm guessing that opponents may steer away from casting big splashy spells while Guile is out though for fear of having them turned against them or losing access to them in exile. It also provides just a little bit of mill insurance with its last ability. I hate mill as a strategy and while I'm running a few recursion spells, I'm not going to have much graveyard interaction. I suppose Nexus of Fate does the same thing much better though, since ideally I could cast it every turn if I wound up being milled down to 1 and it would wind up back in the library. Anyway, I was excited about running Guile as I was putting this together but you may be right, might be more than I need.

Ominous Seas I figure will drop its token every other turn on average if the game is going at all the way I want it to. While I should be pumping out an army of small tokens, I figured it would be nice to have some big chonky bodies out there as well. Without trample existing in the deck though, an 8/8 without flying is no different than a 1/1 tentacle as long as you've got a plant to block it. You're right, probably win-more. I do want to win more though...

I certainly understand that Aetherflux Reservoir really shines in storm decks (which no, this one most certainly is not). While I wouldn't be working it as well as storming does, I do plan to cast a lot of cheap spells, sometimes several in a turn in a good game. Something mono-blue is not good at is gaining life, so I really want to include at least one or two pieces that can do that for me for matchups that are pinging down the whole table. So the reservoir serves both as a way to gain life, and as a possible alternative win-con in a pinch. Between reservoir and Venser's Journal though, I probably lean towards the journal to retain as an emergency life gain option. I run it in my Pheldagriff deck and it has proven itself a workhorse.

Finally, I see Psychosis Crawler as another possible win-con. At my LGS where I play at least, I run into a lot of decks that efficiently pump out tokens. This means that if beating face with tokens is going to be my only strategy to win games, there's gonna be some games where that just won't get me there. I can see crawler coming out late-game when life totals have dwindled, and being able to finish everyone off with a big Gadwick, the Wizened or Blue Sun's Zenith cast. I was honestly seeing crawler as a mortal lock to make the final cut, but you've given me something to think about for sure.

Thanks again for your input, I really do appreciate and you've definitely helped by reinforcing some stuff I was already thinking and giving me reasons to think about cutting some stuff I was not.

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