Painful Truths or Read the Bones
Deck Help forum
Posted on Aug. 15, 2016, 1:27 p.m. by Lame_Duck
Zapp Brannigan's Big Book of War
Heirloom
SCORE: 8 | 10 COMMENTS | 1227 VIEWS | IN 5 FOLDERS
It's a midrange
token deck and basically I'm having a hard time deciding whether Read the Bones or Painful Truths would be the better choice for card draw. Read the Bones has the advantage of seeing more cards, costing less life and having less demanding colour requirements but I'm not sure if that outweighs the fact that Painful Truths provides more raw card advantage, particulalrly since it's for a format in which Hymn to Tourach is a common sight.Anyone have any thoughts?
Why exactly, Shane.Allen? They seem way worse than either Read the Bones or Painful Truths to me.
August 15, 2016 2:51 p.m.
Shane.Allen says... #4
Commander is a format where life is meaningless. That's why you see decks running cards like Necropotence, Phyrexian Arena. Why draw two cards when you can draw 3. If you just want to draw cards for as cheap as you can get away with, put in Night's Whisper and Sign in Blood. If you want your hand always full, use a wide variance of the three.
August 15, 2016 2:56 p.m.
You've got a ton of instants. Succumb to Temptation means you'll have the most information for any line of play and you won't have to miss a turn drawing cards.
IMHO instant speed trumps the one more card/dig any day if you have a lot of instant speed removal and tokens.
If you're not convinced, then Painful Truths.
Aside from that, Night's Whisper is probably better than all of the above; it's certainly better than RtB by a wide margin.
August 15, 2016 4:27 p.m. Edited.
Shane.Allen says... #7
Lame_Duck Oh I'm sorry, I thought this was a Commander deck you were working on, I'm sorry. I have never heard of this format, I don't really do anything with budget formats.
August 15, 2016 5:54 p.m.
The problem with Succumb to Temptation is the double black in the cost; black is my lightest colour and the fixing in the format is really not that great.
August 15, 2016 6:55 p.m.
I'd say Night's Whisper is your best shot, then. Against Hymn to Tourach it has the advantage of being 2 mana, so you can likely cast it even if you get screwed by Hymn discarding lands that you need.
August 15, 2016 8:07 p.m.
I think Read the Bones is better for you, but only just.
It boils down to this; RtB will almost always give you what you need to power Myth Realized or Young Pyromancer, both of whom need reasonably specific gas cards. The only time it won't, Painful Truths would also fail. So yes, Painful Truths is more likely to give you one more card, but it's also more likely the last card will be a land you would have scryed to the bottom.
That, and it's also possible that the color demands of Painful Truths could conceivably burn your color fixing for the next spell spell.
That said, the difference is pretty minimal, and both will work well.
August 15, 2016 9:21 p.m.
I always think about it this way: how many colors of mana will you be using to cast these spells? If the answer is two, Read the Bones would be better because of the scry. Using two colors, Painful Truths is the same thing as Sign in Blood but cost one more. If you're using three colors, Painful Truths would be better because you get to draw that extra card.
August 15, 2016 10:07 p.m.
Night's Whisper could also work but it would put a lot of cards into the 2-drop slot on my mana curve.
August 16, 2016 3:20 p.m.
Shane.Allen says... #13
I would think that a lower mana curve would be better no matter what format your playing in.
August 16, 2016 3:26 p.m.
Well, no, not necessarily, otherwise all anyone would ever play would be mono-1-drop aggro decks. Paying 3 mana for a more powerful spell is better than paying 2 mana for a less powerful spell when you have 3 mana available to spend.
August 16, 2016 3:58 p.m.
Shane.Allen says... #15
If you look at all of the top tier decks in Modern, Legacy, Vintage you would see that a low mana curve and the cheaper the spell the more its played.
August 16, 2016 4:05 p.m.
I'm inclined to agree with Shane.Allen here. Testing could tell the real difference, but while a good curve out is best for a midrange-ish deck because they prioritize staying ahead among creatures on board, a deck that prioritizes spellslinging (Soulfire Grand Master and Young Pyromancer) and has to deal with Hymn to Tourach, the lower CMC comes out ahead for sure.
Just think about possible t3 scenarios with Night's Whisper over Painful Truths. Maybe you played Young Pyromancer on t2. Now, t3, you can cast Night's Whisper, get a token. If you didn't already have a 1 CMC card in your hand, now you have 2 more cards and maybe you drew into Duress, Chain Lightning, Path to Exile... giving you a second play for the turn, a second token, and a pretty good advantage.
Or you could have drawn 3 cards, one token, passed turn.
The old knowledge is that the sooner a deck can get to the point where it's doing more than one thing a turn, the better (aside from aggro decks because they're linear and don't need flexibility). Lower CMC does that better.
It's possible the best thing is a 3-1 split since Painful Truths is a slightly better lategame topdeck.
August 16, 2016 4:47 p.m. Edited.
I could definitely see a split being the correct choice. I think you're right that I'm just going to have to do the hard work of testing it extensively.
Shane.Allen says... #2
I like Ambition's Cost + Ancient Craving
August 15, 2016 1:44 p.m.