Hidden Strings

Sorcery

You may tap or untap target permanent, then you may tap or untap another target permanent.

Cipher (Then you may exile this spell card encoded on a creature you control. Whenever that creature deals combat damage to a player, its controller may cast a copy of the encoded card without paying its mana cost.)

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
Historic Brawl	Legal
Legacy	Legal
Leviathan	Legal
Limited	Legal
Modern	Legal
Modern Beyond Horizons	Legal
Oathbreaker	Legal
Pauper	Legal
Pauper Duel Commander	Legal
Pauper EDH	Legal
Pioneer	Legal
Planar Constructed	Legal
Planechase	Legal
Quest Magic	Legal
Tiny Leaders	Legal
Vanguard	Legal
Vintage	Legal

Discussion (46)

NV_1980 on Tapped Out

1 month ago

This looks like fun :)

Some ideas (based on my Hylda deck) that could prove useful:

1. Bond of Discipline: taps all your opponents' stuff (thereby making Rhoda significantly stronger/tougher immediately, depending a bit on how much is on your opponents' sides of the battlefield) AND grants all your attackers lifelink.
2. Borrowing 100,000 Arrows: if we're tapping this much stuff, why not benefit from that in other ways?
3. Cone of Cold: another very powerful tapping spell; potentially lethal when timed right.
4. Cryptic Command *list*: again, taps all your opponents' stuff and allows for some other benefits as well.
5. Hands of Binding/Hidden Strings: imprint one of these on Rhoda and watch him grow.

Have fun with the deck!

NV_1980 on Ice Ice Baby!

3 months ago

Some considerations:

• Cone of Cold: very powerful and depending on your dice-throw result, even crazier.
• Dismiss into Dream is pretty awesome in that it outright kills stuff you're tapping.
• Downpour: cheap tapping spell.
• Hidden Strings: great for its cyphering ability, that allows you to cast it for free upon successfully damaging an opponent.

legendofa on Why is Untapping Lands a …

7 months ago

In blue, the Urza's Block hugely skew land untapping, and that block is widely considered to be an overpowered mistake, especially for blue. Urza's Saga and Urza's Legacy alone have ten cards that allow land-specific untapping, more than half of all the blue cards that allow untapping lands without untapping all permanents. They'll be included for the sake of completion, but I wouldn't take them as any sort of precedent. Pioneer legality is just five cards, with one of them being Standard-legal. Blue is the undisputed king of untapping permanents in general, but doesn't have any special focus on lands.

{U} Ye Olde Bordere, "untap" + "land": Twiddle, Reset, Infuse, Jolt, Twitch, Mind Over Matter, Great Whale, Peregrine Drake, Rewind, Time Spiral, Turnabout, Cloud of Faeries, Frantic Search, Palinchron, Snap, Treachery, Trickster Mage. total 16

{U} Modern Border, "untap" + "land": Oboro Breezecaller. total 1

{U} 2015 Border, "untap" + "land": Pore Over the Pages, Unwind, Finale of Revelation, Kelpie Guide. total 3

{U} Ye Olde Bordere, "untap" + "permanent": Telekinetic Bonds. total 1

{U} Modern Border, "untap" + "permanent": Dream's Grip, Psychic Puppetry, Toils of Night and Day, Tidewater Minion, Rimewind Taskmage, Coral Trickster, Merrow Reejerey, Pestermite, Fatestitcher, Merfolk Skyscout, Reality Spasm, Deceiver Exarch, Captain of the Mists, Ghostly Touch, Hidden Strings, Curse of Inertia, Tidal Force. total 17

{U} 2015 Border, "untap" + "permanent": Teferi, Temporal Archmage, Vizier of Tumbling Sands, Clever Conjurer, Nimbleclaw Adept, Ioreth of the Healing House, Forensic Researcher. total 6

{U} Ye Olde Bordere, "untap" + "Island": none.

{U} Modern Border, "untap" + "Island": none.

{U} 2015 Border, "untap" + "Island": none.

There's 44 mono-blue cards that can untap lands in some capacity, with 20 of them being more specific than untapping permanents in general. If Urza's Block is taken out, then there are 34 blue cards that untap lands, with just nine of them having any sort of restriction.

So in final summary, I see green land untapping increasing in recent years, and blue permanent untapping actually falling off slightly. There were 18 blue untap cards in the 12 years of the modern border, and nine cards so far in the nine years of the 2015 border. Discounting Urza's Block, there are slightly more green cards that can untap lands than blue cards, and many more green cards that untap lands than blue cards printed in the last ten years.

If I missed anything in this breakdown, please let me know. But I think the cards are there to support my initial position. Both green and blue are primary in untapping lands, if lands are counted as permanents, and blue is secondary in untapping lands specifically. Mark Rosewater's answer is is at best incomplete and missing nuance, and at worst totally wrong.

---

Keeping the above because it took me a long time write and I don't want to undo the effort.

In response to wallisface, percentage of cards with a given effect doesn't matter to primacy of color.

• Primary – This is the color (or colors) the ability is seen in most. That means it shows up in the highest volume and usually at the lowest rarity that the type of effects get used at. The primary color will almost always get this effect in a set if it's an ability we do every set. It also tends to be the color that most often pushes the power level, if it's an effect we push the power level on. There's a wide range on what primary means, because different types of effects exist at different levels. A card secondary in flying can show up way more than a card primary in taking extra turns, for instance, because we have so many more flying cards than extra-turn cards.

• I want to stress one more time that primary, secondary, and tertiary are relative to how often an effect is used. Things that are secondary in a color, for example, may be far more prevalent in that color than things that are primary if the items in question occur at a higher frequency.

Source: https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/making-magic/mechanical-color-pie-2021

For example, MaRoo has repeatedly stated that red is primary in extra combat cards, with white as a contender for secondary.

https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/making-magic/mechanical-color-pie-2021

https://markrosewater.tumblr.com/post/760377485190938624/can-any-color-aside-from-red-get-extra-combat

There are only 36 cards that grant an additional comabt. If primacy was considered as a proportion of cards that grant additional combats was considered only as a proportion of total cards of that color, I don't think any color would be considered primary.

So while there might be fewer cards that untap lands in green as a proportion of total green cards in recent years, that's not a relevant measure to color primacy. The relevant measure is how often cards that untap lands show up in green compared to other colors, which I think is demonstrated by the above lists that green has more land untap effects than any other color, with blue being nearly equivalent. That, according to MaRo's definition, means that land untapping is primary in green.

Breakaway on Ultra Budget Mono-Blue Spirits

9 months ago

Hi nuperokaso,

Thank you for the recommendations!

I like Hidden Strings as it super-charges everything that your cards want to do: it "ramps" by untapping lands, gives "vigilance" by allowing you to both attack and stay on defense. This creates additional creature synergies as you it untaps creatures for Shacklegeist or lands to draw with Spectral Sailor. It also lets you cast more spells while untapping lands so that you can counter things on your opponent's turn.

I sometimes use You See a Guard Approach to tap down a big attacker and save myself from a beating or to get a problematic blocker out of the way so that Combat Research or Hidden Strings can do their thing. I agree that Shore Up is better, but I like the flexibility of You See a Guard Approach.

nuperokaso on Ultra Budget Mono-Blue Spirits

10 months ago

• Remove Hidden Strings. It offers nothing for you except the possibility to tap 2 creatures as a sorcery. Cipher is irrelevant after that. Play Nebelgast Herald or Dreamshackle Geist instead. Both offer possibility to get rid of unwanted creatures while adding pressure on the table. With 16 lords, you want to add creatures.
• Shore Up is better than You See a Guard Approach. You already play Rattlechains. As such, you want something more than yet another hexproof. Shore Up adds a little stats and untaps the creature, giving you a chance to kill a creature in combat.
• I would maybe add 1 Island.
• 1 random Counterspell or Spell Pierce could make a way into the deck. In low numbers, it's hard to play around them.

DreadKhan on The Friendmaker | Talrand, Sky Summoner [PRIMER]

11 months ago

I did some fiddling around with my Talrand and Proteus Staff, I found that I preferred it to Polymorph because I could throw a Sphinx of the Second Sun in, and if Proteus Staff hits Sphinx first it's amazing because I get to untap and draw an extra card before I hit my end step, meaning I can likely Staff again to get Jin just in time (and still have mana up for interaction). I guess it boiled down to me trying to raise the ceiling on Jin, and that was the best I could come up with! The other nice thing about an artifact plan is Blue has tons of relevant tutors, and if you clear all of the creatures out of your deck and Proteus Staff away another Drake you get to put your library in whatever order you want... meaning Jin can then draw you the actual 7 cards you want most. It's very, very degenerate when it works, but I was aiming for a budget cEDH list rather than something suitable for casual play.

I'm not sure if you need blockers, but Metallurgic Summonings can generate a bunch of them for you, and Shark Typhoon can generate attackers (or flying blockers if you're desperate), they're handy if your playgroup likes to 'deal with' Talrand, these Enchantments tend to be very sticky, people neglect Enchantment removal in my experience.

If you're aiming for a more casual Talrand, I might have a few ideas for you that are budget to boot! Hands of Binding and Hidden Strings offer two very low to the ground repeatable spells that can generate Drakes if you can Cipher them onto something evasive and get in, Hidden Strings can untap your stuff fwiw, and Hands of Binding can lock down the most problematic thing if you want. Last Thoughts isn't as good IMHO, but repeated card draw tends to be very good if you don't need to input more resources. Stolen Identity can be a solid win con, if what you take has evasion you can keep getting in and getting copies, it can get pretty out of hand, even as a 6 MV spell.

If you like politics and/or combat tricks I might have a few that are worth looking into, Mass Diminish is a true budget gem, the effect lasts long enough to be truly crippling late game, and it has Flashback for no discernable reason, very good at making one opponent dead, and then another opponent dead because their board is tiny. Polymorphist's Jest is much more of a surprise since it's an instant, but the effect can turn an opportunistic attack into a bloodbath (in either direction).

In any deck that's not in the ideal colours for removal I often end up looking hard at Transmogrifying Wand, this can deal with 3 creatures if it sticks around, 2/4s are basically trash vs your 2/2s in the air. Even if all you do is force someone with a low MV Commander to keep recasting to raise the tax it's very little resources to do it.

It's not a nice thing to do to someone, but I've always thought of Talrand as a real man of culture, perhaps you'd want to send some Drakes on a Cultural Exchange?

Best of luck, hope some of these ideas are relevant

9-lives on Tetsuko Umezawa and Prosthetic Injector

11 months ago

Does Ghostly Touch and Hidden Strings let me tap/untap my opponent's lands? It would be occurring during the combat phase, so I'm wondering if it would be useful to tap my opponent's lands? If not, I could always tap creatures and untap my own lands.

9-lives on

11 months ago

Does Ghostly Touch and Hidden Strings let me tap/untap my opponent's lands? It would be occurring during the combat phase, so I'm wondering if it would be useful to tap my opponent's lands? If not, I could always tap creatures and untap my own lands.