Preordain

Sorcery

Scry 2, then draw a card. (To scry 2, look at the top two cards of your library, then put any number of them on the bottom of your library and the rest on top in any order.)

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
Modern Beyond Horizons	Legal
Oathbreaker	Legal
Pauper	Legal
Pauper Duel Commander	Legal
Pauper EDH	Legal
Planar Constructed	Legal
Planechase	Legal
Quest Magic	Legal
Tiny Leaders	Legal
Vanguard	Legal
Vintage	Legal

Discussion (47)

jaymc1130 on Sidar Jabari of Zhalfir

1 month ago

Seems like too many medium knight creatures and too little consistent value generation to really pop. Sidar just plain isn’t particularly good in EDH settings from a competitive standpoint, but can be much more effective in Duel Commander where it’s much less important to be able to play at instant speed with shields up at all times.

A couple generic suggestions.

1. Currency Converter, looting effects go great with converter, and with a looting effect from eminence this card is going to be a must include for any Sidar deck.

2. Call the Bloodline, Chivalric Alliance is great in a Sidar deck, why not a second copy of something similar? Both of these token generators also pair extremely well with Currency Converter as two card combos that can put in some real work. 1 mana and a card for a 1/1 and a 2/2 or 2 mana and a card for 2 2/2s are great deals in terms of mana investment.

3. Containment Construct, pitching lands and playing them from the yard? Yes please. Pitching spells and playing them from the yard? Yes please. So much value to grind out opponents with and an excellent way to generate card advantage by using the yard as a second pseudo hand. Crucible of Worlds can also help get value from looting away lands in a similar manner.

4. Virtue of Loyalty, a 2/2 for 2 mana at instant speed can be considered removal for creatures attacking you while just being generically on rate for spending 2 mana (much more applicable to Duel Commander than EDH or cEDH) and the second casting provides a powerful enchantment finisher that can get pretty out of hand if left alone for more than one turn cycle of buffing the whole squad.

5. Reanimates in general. Unearth, Animate Dead, Necromancy, Jolted Awake, Agadeem's Awakening  ^Flip, etc. Slap some more of these effects into the deck so it’s not as reliant on Sidar reanimating things to generate value from the yard.

6. More interaction. Fatal Push effects and some more counters like Drown in the Loch can help improve your chances of creating winning board states. Just playing some generic knight idiots and sitting around waiting for an opportunity to turn the team sideways is a pretty passive way to play. Generate some opportunities for yourself by adding some ways to affect the board in a favorable manner and protect the squad as you assemble it.

7. Cantrips. Ponder, Preordain, Brainstorm (if you can swing adding in the 9 fetchland package) and the like will help smooth out draws, make the deck more consistent, and give you things to do on early turns that proactively progress your game plan.

There’s a lot more I could add, but these are some basic things that could improve functionality without breaking the bank.

wallisface on Brew ideas for Scrawling Crawler

1 month ago

Nice stuff!! My own tinkering has been awkward - I keep wanting to force Birthing Ritual into the deck but it’s just a lot of effort for minimal payoff. My current brew looks very similar to existing Dimir-Frog lists (an accident I swear!), but with an Echo of Eons package and enough supporting self-discard to abuse it.

20x Lands

4x Scrawling Crawler

4x Psychic Frog

4x Orcish Bowmasters

3x Abhorrent Oculus

4x Echo of Eons

4x Counterspell

4x Fatal Push

3x Collective Brutality

3x Unearth

4x Preordain

4x Tainted Indulgence

wallisface on I need help creating a …

2 months ago

I guess do some playtesting and see how things go.

I’d heavily suggest against using ”pet cards” though, as this archetype is already trying to pursue a gameplan that is far-from optimal, and so it needs all the help it can get. Including Corrupted Resolve just because you-can, seems like you’re kneecapping your brew before its even had a chance to compete.

Inexorable Tide is in-of itself a bad card, and even running one copy feels dubious. I’d only considered one-copy “ok” because there will be some grindy top-decky situations where it can help. But even then, there will be a lot of games where drawing this, or playing it, cost you the game. Running two copies feels very dangerous.

Running better draw effects, like Opt, Consider, Preordain, Memory Deluge, will draw you naturally into more poison effects. You don’t need Infectious Inquiry to be doing that also. Especially when its life-loss worsens your matchup versus anything remotely-aggro, and its sorcery-speed makes it almost-impossible to control the boardstate.

But, i’d suggest playing some matchups with this deck and seeing how this performs in reality. I’m super-confident my points will hold-up, but its best to test and see.

wallisface on I need help creating a …

2 months ago

Some thoughts:

• Generally a deck wants either countermagic or hand-disruption, not normally both - as it creates a weird jumble of tempo and mismatched-plans. This is why you'll see basically no control decks running hand disruption. In that vein i'd suggest removing the Thoughtseize.

• A lot of cards in your deck are just not good. Specifically, instead of running Anoint with Affliction, Corrupted Resolve, Serum Snare, Reject Imperfection, or Fuel for the Cause, you're better off just running good-cards like Counterspell, Fatal Push, and Drown in the Loch.

• Similarly, Infectious Inquiry being sorcery speed makes it really terrible and unplayable. Same goes for Vivisurgeon's Insight and Phyrexian Arena. These cards are all just too clumsy, don't do enough, and give your opponent the opportunity to do things.

• I think your creatures validate your opponents interaction too much and also mess with your own plan to control the game.

• The sideboard choices confuse me.

If I were trying to build a deck like this, I'd be using the following as a base:

• 23x Lands
• 3x Virulent Wound
• 4x Prologue to Phyresis
• 4x Vraska's Fall
• 4x Drown in Ichor
• 1x Inexorable Tide
• 2x Damnation
• 2x Cling to Dust
• 3x Fatal Push
• 4x Counterspell
• 4x Drown in the Loch
• 2x Sheoldred's Edict
• 4x Preordain

Icbrgr on Using Disrupting Shoal

3 months ago

The thing about Shoal in Mono-Blue is it openings up an opportunity to be proactive without having to win the game on the spot. like if you are on the draw in the early game and you wanna tap out to play Ancestral Vision/Preordain you can do so without too much fear. And as the game goes on if you have shoal in hand you can conceivably just pay {X}

I think Shoal was a bad card but in a meta where Spell Snare is in demand to cost about $8.00 USD each to hit this ever-growing bloated list of both creature and noncreature spells that if they resolve you lose or virtually lose I think shoal is worth considering at some ratio.

wallisface on Pauper Storm Update Help

3 months ago

Some thoughts. Keep in mind i’m a Modern player so my knowledge of pauper is weak.

• 16 lands seems super, super low when you need at least two to do anything. Yes you have drum, but to make use of that will require a creature, which also is going to very-likely cost you 2 mana.

• Faithless Looting has historically only been really strong because players using it will also be making use of those cards that end up in the grave. Without having any way to make use of the graveyard, this spell is just reducing your hand size. Imo if you’re desperate for card selection something like Preordain will be a lot more useful.

• My initial assessment of what’s going on here is that it would be better run as an 8-whack style deck. In that vein, I think blue is holding you back and creating inconsistency, and you might be better-off being mono-red. Something closer to this but obviously keeping the cards that make your deck unique

wallisface on Jace, the Fox Cutie Mill

4 months ago

Some thoughts:

• the only creatures ever worth running in a mill deck are Hedron Crab and Ruin Crab. The current selection of creatures you’re running are all extremely slow, durdly, and low-impact - i’d suggest ditching them.

• a bunch of your mill spells are extremely weak and/or resource inefficient. Specifically Mind Grind, Tome Scour and Traumatize shouldn’t really be played. I’d suggest more powerful options such as Fractured Sanity, Tasha's Hideous Laughter, and Archive Trap.

• Similarly, a lot of your other cards are just really suboptimal. I’ll list these and potential replacements below.

• Brainsurge is just worse than Visions of Beyond or Preordain. 3 mana for this kind of effect is just too slow/weak.

• Psychic Strike is just a worse Counterspell or Drown in the Loch. Milling a lowly 2 cards will never be worth spending an extra mana.

• Sleep is just a worse Ensnaring Bridge or Crypt Incursion. Its effect being only one turn makes it too limiting to be useful.

• I know you built the deck around Jace, the Mind Sculptor, but he doesn’t do anything useful for mill. You’d be much-better off running Jace, the Perfected Mind

• Hurkyl's Recall is a sideboard card at-best.

• Part the Waterveil is just too mana expensive to ever actually get cast. There’s zero reason to run this.

• I have no idea why you have Talent of the Telepath, in the deck.

• Mill is supposed to be fast and efficient, so there is no room for Chromatic Lantern, or Manalith in the deck. You need to lower your mana curve drastically, instead of trying to accomodate all these high-mana cards.

If you’re looking for an example competitive mill deck, this one here is a good baseline to build from.

Paya on Dimir Frogtide

5 months ago

Hi. Since you have 3x Murktide Regent maybe could be more useful to play Consider instead of Preordain. To get some more utility you can try +1 Archmage's Charm and -1 The One Ring in main and 1 The One Ring can go to sideboard.

In sideboard can be useful to have some anti grave spells like Surgical Extraction or Nihil Spellbomb. Some more Consign to Memory will be good.