Opt

Instant

Scry 1. (Look at the top card of your library. You may put that card on the bottom of your library.)

Draw a card.

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
Premodern	Legal
Quest Magic	Legal
Tiny Leaders	Legal
Vanguard	Legal
Vintage	Legal

Discussion (50)

wallisface on Cloaked Whispers

3 days ago

I’m not sure where the first iteration of this deck ended as it got deleted before I could read any closing comments. So apologies in advance if i’m stating something that’s already been discussed.

Your description has the opening statement of “I know the deck is slow, don't really care about that. These are the type of decks I like to build. So don't comment if you're not interested in helping try and help with the deck” - this commentary is at-odds with itself… in that the absolute-best way to make this deck more playable is to speed it up. It’s going to be very hard to offer suggestions that aren’t just “make the deck faster”, because that’s the primary thing this deck soo sorely needs.

Specifically, your deck needs to be doing something in all-of turns 1, 2, and 3 to progress the game… otherwise you just get left in the dust. Your options for that includes:

• potentially having a ramp engine. Green has loads of 1-mana options for generating mana which could easily accelerate your win condition by a few turns. Ramp also helps mitigate some of the woes you’ll face with this extremely greedy mana curve.

• potentially having control elements. If you’re wanting the game to go long enough to do your thing, you need to make sure the opponent isn’t just winning. Counterspell, Fatal Push, Thoughtseize etc all play a part in dragging the game out and allowing you time to assemble your pieces.

• potentially dig through your deck to assemble all the cards you need. Your combo requires a lot of working pieces, and as said before, those Transmute cards are super clumsy. Cards like Preordain, Serum Visions, Opt, and Consider could all help you dig through your deck to try and get your card pieces asap - to try and make a turn 5 win as reliable as possible.

^ each of those three above options could be viable - the important thing is that your deck needs to be working towards achieving its goal from turn 1, not turn 3-4. At the moment your shell is both super slow and super fragile, which is just going to lead it to not-working.

wallisface on Azorius Aggro-Control deck

1 month ago

9-lives Cool, i'll keep all my card suggestions to $3-or-less per card.

Being one card-down is not worth it for only really knowing what your topdeck is. If you are using Assemble the Players you are wasting resources for almost no gain. Added to this a point which hasn't been mentioned yet - drawing a second copy of this card is absolutely disastrous, as you can't do anything useful with it.

Lawmage's Binding is worse that Oppressive Rays because 3 mana for a card that's still not removing a creature is just really bad value. Far better spells to remove the opponents creatures are Skyclave Apparition, Stasis Snare, Oblivion Ring, Fateful Absence, Declaration in Stone, Prismatic Ending, and Path to Exile

Opt, Preordain, Serum Visions, and Consider are all cheap and are overwhelmingly better than Defiant Strike.

If you're trying to be aggressive with control, your current creatures are really lacking. The current creatures you're running would fit better in a tax-like build, where the aim is to mess with your opponents tempo but ultimately just slowly chip-through damage. If you're trying to play an aggressive-control deck (like the Murktide Regent list) in {W}{U}, then your best bet for creatures on a budget would probably be Tolarian Terror, Delver of Secrets  ^Flip, Spell Queller, Haughty Djinn, and maybe Lion Sash

wallisface on Azorius Aggro-Control deck

1 month ago

9-lives

For Defiant Strike you yourself even admit that Opt and Preordain are better - and that's the exact reason why this card is bad.

I have no idea what you mean by "And, no, I don't have to cast two creatures for it to be worthwhile, as whenever i cast it I would lose nothing if I didn't keep it for over 2 turns.". Assemble the Players does effectively nothing on its own. You play it, and now you have 1-less resource in-hand, for no inherent board-state advantage. Once you play the first creature from the top of your deck with it, now you've at-least "broken even" - that is, the cards you've invested into it have equaled the gain in boardstate you have acquired (albeit, costing 2 additional mana and having to wait an undetermined number of turns, so still being more hassle-than-value). Only once you've cast your second creature from the topdeck, has the card made any kind of net-advantage. The problem is that the sheer amount of time it would take to achieve that is ridiculous.

You are saying "Oppressive Rays is far underrated" but this is just your unfounded opinion. There's good reason why it sees no play at all, even in budget decks or in Pauper (where you can only play commons... if it's not even seeing play there then alarm bells should be ringing!).

Spell Pierce is infinitely better than Miscast, simply because it hits a much, much wider berth of spells. The difference between an opponent paying {2} or {3} is far less-wide of a gap than the one between only being able to target instants and sorceries, versus being able to target instants, sorceries, planeswalkers, enchantments, artifacts, and battles.

Mishra's Bauble doesn't let you look at the opponents hand at all, just their topdeck (which may get shuffled away before they draw anyway). Urza's Saga can only specifically search for artifacts costing exactly {0} or {1}, which none of your artifact creatures are, so you cannot grab them with this card.

I am looking at the whole deck. Some of the cards I have said are bad here can conceivably work in different shells. Just not remotely this one.

---

I have asked you twice now already what your budget is for this deck, so that people giving you card suggestions can cater this for what you are wanting to spend. If you want people to be able to help you, you need to include this information!

The biggest problem holding your decks back at the moment, as far as I can see, is that their constructor is too stubborn and not-open enough to feedback. By getting super-combative with every suggestion/response people give you, these decks are not going to be able to improve, and instead cycle around in a rut indefinitely. The best thing you can do to help strengthen your deckbuilding is learning to be more open to healthy non-combative discussion, and being more open to listening to others ideas. Coming to a pre-determined decision that everything you've done is correct from the start only serves to leave you exactly where you began.

9-lives on Azorius Aggro-Control deck

1 month ago

What is so bad about Defiant Strike if it's simply a addition to having the ability to draw a card? It's no Opt or even Preordain, but it's good for my purposes.

And, no, I don't have to cast two creatures for it to be worthwhile, as whenever i cast it I would lose nothing if I didn't keep it for over 2 turns.

Oppressive Rays is far underrated for its power.

I have 13 counterspells out of around 70 cards. Miscast is not better nor worse than Spell Pierce. Spell Pierce is targeting other things, and also has a different mana cost to the opponent.

Urza's Saga and Mishra's Bauble are great. The latter lets me look at the opponent's hand. The former is good for artifacts, and can search for artifact creatures as well as Mishra's Bauble.

Azoth2099 on So basically dimir Talrand

3 months ago

Yeah, I suppose that was a rude way to say that, I apologize.

Once this deck is streamlined, you'll have more than enough token generation to slot Diabolic Intent, especially considering that one of your main combos is Dramatic Reversal + Isochron Scepter. Sacrificing a token so that you can make infinite tokens is worth it.

Also, the utility offered by Black Market Connections here is insane. If you don't want to throw a bunch of life into it once it's served it's purpose you can just pay 1 for a treasure, which is fantastic. The tokens it generates are Changelings as well, which matters a lot if we're talking about quickly getting to the 9. Never be afraid to use your life as a resource, especially in color combos including {B}. You're kicking yourself by doing so! The more powerful and dialed in your decklist is, the more powerful your life will be as a resource, I cannot overstate this.

If you don't want to police the table for fun's sake...that's awesome lol, you're probably super fun to play with! In that case, I'd add more cantrip effects for yourself like Ponder, Brainstorm, Serum Visions, Opt...There's a ton. Windfall, Tolarian Winds, Sign in Blood & Night's Whisper would do great in this new hypothetical card draw pack, too.

As far as what I'd cut to make room for more core strength, here it goes:

Teferi's Veil, Levitation, Cover of Darkness, Glamdring, Maskwood Nexus, Uncovered Clues, Pieces of the Puzzle, Worn Powerstone, Metallurgic Summonings, Quantum Misalignment, Decoy Gambit & Soul Shatter.

None of these are bad cards per se, I definitely understand why you slotted most of them, but if you replace them with some of the cards I mentioned your deck engine will run a lot smoother a lot more often.

Dana_in_Love845 on Mono Blue* Prowess

4 months ago

Wow, an actually cool mono-blue deck. Prowess never really rang to me, but this deck is quite cool. and the little bit of unblockable helps too. I think Aqueous Form would be perfect! One thing that's bugging me is that I've never seen Preordain before, and it's just a better Opt, what on Saturn?

wallisface on Don't

4 months ago

goblin4god the changes/reductions you’ve made so far have all looked great, so I definitely think you’re on the right track!

For specifically getting down to 60 cards, i’d suggest ditching the following 7:

• remove the 2 Talrand, Sky Summoner. You have waay stronger threats already in your deck and this card sits in a weird position of neither posing a massive threat, nor ramping/controlling the boardstate.

• remove the 1 Eldrazi Conscription. It’s overkill when all your big threats easily end the game by themselves.

• remove the 4 Tyvar's Stand. You have enough redundancy you can easily afford to lose a creature or two. And you should have enough control over the lategame to keep your big threat alive without needing this.

After that, here’s some other options worth considering for card swaps - i’ve tried to keep budget in mind.

• Mana Leak is better than Negate - opponents will almost never have the mana to pay the cost, and it hits a much wider breadth of cards.

• Wash Away is clumsy, and expensive to play the cleave cost. I’d be running Witness Protection instead so you can ruin any of your opponents threats that get into play.

• Dispel is very situational, i’d probably swap it for 2 copies of Spell Pierce and 2 copies of Spell Snare - both cards which have a bit more universal use.

• Shark Typhoon is super strong for both offering you early game card draw, and late game free-win-condition. If you have the $$$ i’d be running 3 total (swapping out 2 of your other big-threat cards).

• if you want stronger card draw, Preordain will probably offer more overall value than Opt.

Good luck with the brew! :)

unbendingsea on Help with veyran

5 months ago

How does Veyran, Voice of Duality work with cards like Seething Song?

Does it make twice the mana?

Also what about sorcery and instant cards that make you draw a card like Opt?