Murmuring Mystic

Creature — Human Wizard

Whenever you cast an instant or sorcery spell, create a 1/1 blue Bird Illusion creature token with flying.

Tokens

• Bird Illusion 1/1 U

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
Pauper	Legal
Pauper Duel Commander	Legal
Pauper EDH	Legal
Pioneer	Legal
Planechase	Legal
Quest Magic	Legal
Vanguard	Legal
Vintage	Legal

Discussion (50)

legendofa on Is WotC Being Inconsistent in …

2 months ago

DemonDragonJ I'm not a professional designer, but if I had to guess at the reasonings for the restrictions on those cards:

Whispering Wizard is a 3/2, which carries a lot more pressure than a 1/5. It also triggers off planeswalkers, no creature artifacts, and battles, while Murmuring Mystic is instants and sorceries only.

Your desired used of Sunshot Militia is hugely above the expected complexity of a common card. It would be more powerful, but it would also be a rare card, at a glance. There's a loose but present ceiling on what a common should be able to do. And upgrading one red creature card's rarity means that either another red creature card has to get downgraded, or a rare red creature gets scrapped and a new common red creature created. And that's the minimum level of changes, assuming this was done very early in the process.

Instant-speed reanimation is unusual and expensive. When it does happen, it's 5+ mana Gravewaker, short-term Apprentice Necromancer, single-use Doomed Necromancer, or carries some other restrictions. (All my examples are activated abilities, but the same goes for spells, too). Permanently returning two creatures for four mana, at instant speed (so surprise blocker + haste), with the option of reusability, would make Slimefoot and Squee the strongest reanimator spell by far in the Modern era.

DemonDragonJ on Is WotC Being Inconsistent in …

2 months ago

wallisface, those three cards that you mentioned are perfectly fine; I am referring to cards such as Whispering Wizard, which has no reason to have that restriction, since Murmuring Mystic does not have it; Sunshot Militia, because, if it did not have that restriction, I could amass an army of tokens, use them to block, and then, during my opponent's end step, tap those tokens to deal massive amounts of damage to my opponents; and Slimefoot and Squee, because, if they did not have that restriction, I could revive them during my opponent's end step and then attack with them during my next turn.

plakjekaas on Why Are So Many Recent …

4 months ago

The difference between Whispering Wizard and Murmuring Mystic is that non-creature spells are WAY more prevalent than just instant and/or sorcery spells. Building your deck around getting rewarded for instants and sorceries is a bigger restriction than reaping rewards from not only those, but every enchantment, artifact, planeswalker and battle as well. A bigger restriction on your deck building, means a higher reward, that's why I think the once-per-turn text is there.

Spacing out your instant/flash spells to maximize your rewards for a once-per-turn effect is a different way of maximizing your gains out of your resources. It's a new puzzle to challenge players to play the game well, without the need for just more powerful cards each set. It will most reward the players that think most about what their cards do.

The resistance you experience in this thread is more about your unwillingness to be challenged this way and think deeper about the game you're playing, than it is about the actual card design choices you're highlighting. The "I don't want to think about it, every similar effect should work the same way"-attitude rubs off wrong against people who enjoy the intricate synergies and play patterns, the puzzles that are created by the difference in card designs.

keizerbuns on Sea of Attrition [Physical] [Beta]

1 year ago

This is a very cool concept, however it seems a little scattered. With lifegain, mill, tokens, tap/bounce control, stat manipulation, and creature stealing, it seems like your deck is being pulled in too many different directions without enough focus on any one thing in particular to give it a clear identity. Mill especially is kind of an all or nothing strategy that requires the entire deck to be built around it in order to work. Unless you have a really good mill/graveyard payoff to justify splashing in some mill spells, milling your opponent for just a few cards here and there won’t do anything except take up slots in your deck.

The best advice I think I could give you, and probably the same advice most other people will give you too, is to find your favourite element or two of the deck, and make that the focus. However, if you don’t want to do that, and you do want to keep the deck as a little bit of everything, I do have some suggestions that I think you might like.

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My first suggestion would be to replace Dreadwaters with a lower CMC mill spell, because spending 4 mana to make one opponent mill for what I assume averages to be around 4-6 cards isn't a great rate. For just 2 mana you could use Maddening Cacophony and make each opponent mill 8 cards, and for an extra 4 you could make them mill half of their decks. You could also replace a couple of Islands with a couple copies of Ipnu Rivulet for some added milling consistency, although activating its mill ability would cause you to lose a land.

Talrand's Invocation also suffers from the same issue as Dreadwaters of just being too mana intensive for such a small effect. Paying 4 mana just to get 2 2/2 flyers is a little slow. I think Murmuring Mystic would suit you better as a long term token generator.

Ichthyomorphosis and Time of Ice both kind of get in the way of your plan to steal your opponent's creatures. Ichthyomorphosis turns your opponent's creatures into something not worth stealing and Time of Ice could potentially cause a creature you just stole from your opponent to be sent back to their hand. Instead of using Time of Ice to tap your opponents creatures, you could use an instant or a sorcery such as Downpour, Impede Momentum, Choking Tethers, or Sleep to achieve the same result. And instead of Ichthyomorphosis to permanently turn your opponents creatures into something small, you could use Turn to Frog which you can use to catch your opponents by surprise during the combat stage. Swapping both Ichthyomorphosis and Time of Ice for instants and sorceries would also synergize great with Murmuring Mystic to spam tokens.

You could replace Staff of the Mind Magus with Diamond Mare, which is admittedly a weaker life gain spell since it can't gain life off of your lands entering the battlefield, plus it's more susceptible to removal. However it is a cheaper CMC card and another creature to beat your opponents down with.

I think Niblis of Frost is better than Dragon Turtle at keeping your opponent's creatures tapped if you go with the previously mentioned replacements for Ichthyomorphosis and Time of Ice, plus with the Prowess ability, it can get pretty big with all of the instants and sorceries. And Sower of Temptation is a lower CMC version of Mind Flayer.

I also realized as I was looking back through my suggestions, that if you do end up going with all of them, then that would mean your deck would meet the deck requirements to add Gyruda, Doom of Depths as a companion, which would serve as a pretty good payoff for your mill cards!

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Hopefully this was helpful!

TawfulEvil on Venture Deeper

1 year ago

Thanks for commenting on my deck! This is my first time posting one.

The spells may be a little inefficient, but I chose them mostly for how they work together. I use the Oculus, Unsummon, and Thought Collapse to hold back whatever I can, while I use the Kraken's Eye to try to keep my life total high enough that I don't promptly die if something has trample. (My little brother favors green creatures)

The Sage's Row Denizen and the Murmuring Mystic both have abilities to help the Merfolk Secretkeeper, netting me chump tokens and a bit more mill when it enters.

Fractured Sanity is an excellent idea! I don't believe I've seen that card. Maybe I'd replace it for the Startled Awake  ^Flip cards?

The creatures conundrum is interesting to me though. I don't play super competetively, but I use the creatures for the mill, both when they enter and when they die. I actually do have Ruin Crab, but the Merfolk Secretkeeper is critical to the deck in my opinion, with it's adventures and re-entering the field.

Profane Memento... I Love It!!! Why have I never seen this beautiful evil creation!!! I may need 20 of them. Well not twenty, but definitely replacing the Kraken's Eye.

It does not have much removal, which I have encountered as a problem before. I would like to keep it mono-blue though if possible. I've mostly just handled threats through Unsummon-ing massive attacking threats, and through Thought Collapse-ing any main combo starters I see. I would love suggestions though, especially blue ones.

You're probably correct with the mana curve though... I'm just unlucky about having lands when I need them, so in frustration, I probably put in to many... Cutting back some lands is a wise suggestion, thanks.

The three costs I actually haven't had a problem with. (Probably because of the extra lands) I could maybe pack a couple of Mind Sculpts if I had to, but for my two cost department I simply wait for a Murmuring Mystic before I cast Winged Words. Unless I feel I have to of course!

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.

KBK7101 on Thoughts on a Subira/Teferi rule …

1 year ago

Thanks for the input! Doing a bit more research. Would probably fill the deck with stuff like Young Pyromancer and Murmuring Mystic like effects.

Oh, and Chasm Skulker seems like a total powerhouse. Oh man!

TheOfficialCreator on Counting Storms

1 year ago

Elvish Spirit Guide and Simian Spirit Guide are pretty budget mana acceleration cards. Lotus Petal also isn't a Mox, so it's decent. Murmuring Mystic as well is pretty good, and Ral, Storm Conduit is really strong with Repeated Reverberation.