Thoughtseize

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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
Tiny Leaders Legal
Vanguard Legal
Vintage Legal

Thoughtseize

Sorcery

Target player reveals their hand. You choose a nonland card from it. That player discards that card. You lose 2 life.

Niko9 on Has Anyone Tried a Multi …

4 days ago

jethstriker That is very cool with the shadow and reanimator swap : ) I guess I meant more of trying games in modern or something where both players have 2 decks and they can start with either one or switch between games, but both players know the decklists of their opponent, and maybe with a stipulation that the two decks you are playing can have no nonland cards in common.

I'm just thinking of it as a way to both spice up games by adding a, which deck did the players start with, and how do they switch to counter each other.

It may not be the best solution either, just kinda throwing out ideas, but a problem I see sometimes is that side decking devolves to, make a good proactive deck and side in specific answers, then you win if you draw them or don't if you don't.

The big problem I'm thinking about is how rough it is to actually watch competitive play right now. Between Thoughtseize and Grief and The One Ring being a worse Time Walk plus a slow Ancestral Recall is that interaction feels like it's at an all time low because of hand knowledge, ring loops, and cascade or tron being able to break their playstyles by having tons of ways to stall until they explode.

So, my thought was, what if players had two decks they could switch in, but they also had the limitation of nonland cards can only be in one of the two. Could it create more interaction in games? I really have no idea : ) I'm sure someone has tried it.

legendofa on The Baron's Coterie

2 weeks ago

Buried Alive is 3 mana, Demonic Tutor is 2 mana, and Bloodghast is 2 mana. If you cast Buried to dump a Bloodghast, it's still going to take another land play to get the same value as playing Bloodghast directly. I would cut Buried and just add another Bloodghast.

There aren't many repeatable sac outlets that draw cards, but Village Rites and Corrupted Conviction are solid, along with Deadly Dispute. I think these will help you more than long-term draw, but for the sake of completion Phyrexian Arena and Black Market Connections are the standard and top end, respectively.

Next thought is, you have a lot of potential finishers. The Exquisite Bond combo is the most generally useful, in my opinion, and you can get some redundancy with Vito, Thorn of the Dusk Rose. I would cut Mind Twist and two Exsanguinates for a couple Vitos and a couple more Thoughtseizes for more early advantage. Discard that you choose > random discard > discard that they choose.

Falkenrath Forebear can also work as Vampire-centric sacrifice fodder, especially alongside Voldaren Bloodcaster  Flip if you go hard in this direction, but it's a little less reliable. Maybe just break away from vampires and use another recursive creature.

How much does Surgical Extraction help you? If you're against graveyard decks or combo decks regularly, keep it in main deck. Otherwise, it's sideboard material. As I write that, I realize there's no sideboard listed--do you use sideboards?

Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth is very good with Cabal Coffers, so keep those together. But how do you use the fetchlands? If it's only to find another basic Swamp, there's no reason not to just use more basic Swamps.

Sneakatron on Mono-Black Vampires

3 weeks ago

Great concept! Looking to build a casual vampire tribal deck myself. I found 20 lands to be on the low side for this deck when play testing, but I suppose that depends on how loose your mulligan rules are within your playgroup. Vampire Nighthawk has long been a favorite of mine, but you might look into Nighthawk Scavenger instead. You might consider Thoughtseize in lieu of a few removal spells to help protect against board wipes. Food for thought for other possible inclusions: Indulgent Aristocrat pairs nicely with Bloodghast. Blood Artist is always a favorite in vamp decks. Hope this helps!

wallisface on Heartless Legendaries

1 month ago

Some thoughts (a bunch of these boil down to you needing a plan B for when you’re missing Heartless Summoning):

  • Without Heartless Summoning you can’t really play the game. That’s a problem as you’ll be mulling down to 4 cards 22% of the time trying to find it (and even on that 22% mull to 4, you may not have found it - you’ll be continuing to mull down to 3 13% of the time, and down to 2 8%).

  • You can’t rely on Profane Tutor to act as additional copies of Heartless Summoning… trying to use Tutor to that effect means you’re not doing anything that impacts the board until turn 5 (aside from a single relevant turn-3 play) - and the game’ll most-certainly be over by then.

  • Even if you cast Heartless Summoning, it’s very trivially for an opponent to remove with Prismatic Ending, Haywire Mite, Leyline Binding, countermagic etc… and then you’re back to doing nothing.

  • Even with Heartless Summoning in play, your mana curve reads too high. Modern decks typically can’t justify more than 3-4 cards costing 4 mana, and play nothing above this cost - factoring in the cost reduction of Heartless Summoning, you’ve still got 8 cards in this range, which is far too many. Having soo many cards costing 5 (so, 3 with a Heartless Summoning in play) is also going to make your turns really slow/clumsy.

  • Even if you can play Heartless Summoning, you’ve done nothing to impact the board for 2 turns - and letting your opponent effectively have 2 free turns before you start doing anything impactive is a really, really dangerous place to be (normally even giving your opponent one free turn is a really bad idea). Imo you need more early-game interaction, stuff like Fatal Push and Thoughtseize.

  • I have no idea why Sword of Light and Shadow is here - it does nothing for you.

Jimmithee on no

1 month ago

Collection of suggestions from the thread, plus a few of mine:

Max out Griselbrand, and remove cityscape leveler and two Iona's. I'd recommend taking out persist and replacing it with Life / Death, for the sole reason that most of your reanimation targets are legendary. You should also add a playset of Putrid Imps to have a discard outlet on the ready, which could replace buried alive. Definitely replace the Sol Rings with Lotus Petal to make the deck Legacy legal, and replace The Stone Brains with something like Thoughtseize or Collective Brutality.

Probrably not the best reanimator target, but my personal favorite one is Akroma, Angel of Wrath :)

jethstriker on turn 1 Iona, sheild of …

1 month ago

Some of my thoughts:

  • Griselbrand is a much better all purpose target than Iona. I recommend maxing Griselbrand count first before maxing Iona.

  • Collective Brutality is a swiss army knife for Reanimator. Its an uncounterable discard outlet, pre-emptively answers opposing countermagic and removal, kills problematic small creatures, finishes off weakened opponent, and at the very least gives back some life lost from Reanimate and Griselbrand activations.

  • Buried Alive is slow for Reanimator. If you really want this, maybe just run 1, but not the full 4.

  • Why is The Stone Brain in the deck? If you're worried of opposing card, I think you're far better off with discard like Unmask and Thoughtseize. They also doubles as a discard outlet if you really need to.

  • Also why casual? The deck is 1 card away from being legacy legal. Just replace Sol Ring with maybe Lotus Petal and you have a legitimate constructed deck.

wallisface on Infested

2 months ago

You’ve done well for your first brew! - here’s some of my thoughts:

  • your mana curve is very high. Modern decks typically won’t have more than 3-4 cards costing 4 mana, and run nothing above that value. Your current curve is going to lead to some very slow/clumsy turns.

  • Added to this, your land count is very low. Most midrange decks want to be running around 23-24 lands.

  • you’re running a lot of cards as 1-ofs/2-ofs instead of as playsets (4-ofs). This will lead to consistency issues and make the deck more unreliable/chaotic.

  • you don’t really have anything in the way of interaction at the moment, which is dangerous as it means basically letting the opponent do what they want. Imo you want around 2-4 playsets of interaction - cards like Fatal Push, Abrupt Decay, Assassin's Trophy, Sheoldred's Edict, Infernal Grasp, Thoughtseize, Inquisition of Kozilek.

What I would suggest for new deckbuilders is to pick 9 cards, and run playsets (4-ofs) of each of those (making 36 cards) alongside 24 lands (for a 60 card deck). For those 9 cards you want a reasonable mana curve - something like 1,1,1,2,2,2,3,3,4 would be ideal. Make sure at least 2-4 of those 9 cards are interaction pieces.

Icbrgr on How is the New Ghalta …

2 months ago

Loses to Torpor Orb/Hushbringer and Thoughtseize/Despise and Counterspell/Essence Scatter.... lol jk jk jk

Certainly powerful.... but you need to not only consistently ramp into it but also have threats in hand to capitalize on its effect.... personally i think the new cascade/discover cards are just more problematic than this but that's a separate debate.

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