Mindbreak Trap

Instant — Trap

If an opponent cast three or more spells this turn, you may pay {{0}} rather than pay Mindbreak Trap's mana cost.

Exile any number of target spells.

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
Oathbreaker	Legal
Planechase	Legal
Quest Magic	Legal
Vanguard	Legal
Vintage	Legal

Discussion (48)

hootsnag on Hootsnag Azorius Control

1 month ago

I 100% approve of this deck! I just have one request. Please add Mindbreak Trap. Thank you for the homage :)

Icbrgr on Bauchgefühl: How much would Sheoldred …

2 months ago

I dont think Sheoldred, the Apocalypse will dramatically fall in price anytime soon.

Take Liliana of the Veil and Mindbreak Trap for examples.

The reality is cards are not hard to reprint. Something isn't hard to reprint just because it's got a weird mechanic/theme/name to it. We're not limited to just standard release product where if you reprint something you have to reprint a bunch of cards to go with it for the sake of draft.

WOTC is aware of how long a card hasn't been printed, and aware of how pricey it can get. They can release a reprint of it in any number of products, and will use it as a premium to lure people in whenever they feel like reprinting it.

Liliana of the Veil is a card that reached pre-modern horizon fetch land prices for years.... but when she did get the reprint boy oh boy did she get reprinted... even before re-entering Standard/Pioneer she was a bait/chase card... original printing Liliana of the Veil is still standing at a $20 card as of now. but still like fetch lands held a high price for a long time and will probably climb again as time ticks on.

no i dont think Sheoldred, the Apocalypse has the same kind of demand as lily or fetch lands but is without a doubt a desirable card... and thats where i bring the connection to Mindbreak Trap... its an old niche mythic... reprints are inevitable but depending how spikey CEDH get the lure will remain to be included in the 99.

this is totally from the hip "what my gut says"... im a terrible person to take MTG financial advice from... i bought my Scalding Tarn and Snapcaster Mage playsets at ther peaks lol

plakjekaas on Questioning the Iona Banning

1 year ago

When you mentioned Mindbreak Trap I was that person, and I had only said at that point that white needs more fun ways to win and not more powerful ways to slow down the game. I was arguing for more fun, you responded with "bringing back unfun helps, but not in a fun way. Counterspells aren't fun, so ban unfun". That's a bit of a non-sequitur, to both my and your own words.

The point of my examples was: I dealt with the problem permanents that prevented my most effective strategy, in a way that my deck wasn't designed to do, but forced through without access to the specific tools to remove the problem permanents. I didn't let it ruin my day, I didn't give up on my deck. I improvised, and found a way. It doesn't matter I ignored options, my focus strategy was hosed by a single permanent and it didn't prevent me from having fun. Contrary to every story you told about your mono red artifacts. You don't seem to believe it's possible, yet I did it. That was the point. How'd you miss that?

"If i sound hypocritical, it's specifically because I'm turning your and the RC's hypocritical arguments against themselves."

No, if you sound hypocritical, it's because you state something and then defy your own words in the same argument. That has nothing to do with me or the RC. Like this:

"I specifically said that mono-red has no enchantment removal"

"I Chaos Warp the Leyline? use the one card in red capable of dealing with an indestructible non-creature permanent to deal with 1 "destructible" enchantment?"

How is it relevant that the enchantment is not indestructible if you don't have any other answers for it anyway? Warp removes the enchantment, everytime you said red has no enchantment removal, you were wrong, and wilfully so, because you have examples at the ready of how you used it before! When you need to make your case, however, red has no enchantment removal, and when you're called out, your removal is suddenly too important to use on the card that you say single-handedly disables your entire deck. Of course it can backfire, it literally has chaos in its name. Say, 8/85 chance of hitting something worse, vs. 100% chance of not playing the game when you don't. You even mentioned Mycosynth Lattice as a way to deal with Iona, that also makes the Leyline Abradeable. Liquimetal Torque does the same. That, plus all the colorless removal spells you listed in the original post, is an awful lot of ways to do something you say you absolutely can't. Most of which you've already shown you're familiar with. That's hypocrisy.

Now how relates all of that to Iona? "The one difference between Iona and all other problematic cards you named, is that Iona can be your commander, making sure you still have access to it after Oblivion Stone. That's where it differs from Leyline of the Void which, yes, can be in play from turn 0, but there's going to be a lot of games where it won't, and it probably won't return after the O-stone."

"The rationale for banning Iona is that it leads to a play experience the rules committee wants to discourage, which is locking people out of playing the game. That's paraphrased from the ban article. Not locking out from winning, which is what you're talking about. Also, discourage, not prevent. You can still do it, but a flagship commander for that strategy that, no matter how you build her, it's gonna cause that bad time, that gets banned. Braids, Cabal Minion is banned for the same reason."

But you cleverly ignored the commander part in every response, only replying to what you thought I said was wrong. Y'know, refuting an argument, whereas the real subject of the argument was not addressed or refuted, but instead replaced with a false one. That's the textbook definition of that strawman, that you tried to ban a commenter for. With a little ad hominem on top. It's ok for you to do, but when someone else does it to you, it's suddenly a bannable offense? I like that projection, in relation to the original topic. Hypocrisy.

"I'm not saying that others shouldn't be able to lock me while i can lock others. I'm saying that if i can't lock others in a way that is very difficult for them to respond to, they shouldn't be able to lock me in a way that is very difficult for me to respond to." Exactly. You're arguing an either/or situation and you swing against whichever one you're challenged on. You don't have an opinion, you're fine with anything that's not the way things are now. You want to argue, you don't want to understand. Like a toddler whose toy was taken away and vindictively wants their friend's toy taken away too if they're not getting theirs back.

Wuzibo on Questioning the Iona Banning

1 year ago

plakjekaas

I'm not saying that others shouldn't be able to lock me while i can lock others. Seems like other people picked up on that, but you didn't for some reason.

I'm saying that if i can't lock others in a way that is very difficult for them to respond to, they shouldn't be able to lock me in a way that is very difficult for me to respond to. Iona was my way to lock others. Leyline was the way i was locked. If one goes, both should go. If one stays, both should stay. How'd you miss that?

When i mentioned Leyline of the Void and Rest in Peace as locking a deck out, I specifically said that mono-red has no enchantment removal and I was playing mono-red graveyard artifacts. I said so multiple times. Why wasn't that clear to you?

When i mentioned Mindbreak Trap, it was because that person said trying to play into iona as a mono-colored deck when youre the named color "isn't fun". So i brought up how Minbreak trap countering "uncounterable" stuff is unfun. I guess I should have just said "Having your spells countered is unfun" to keep it simple.

In your "heliod" example, white has no shortage of cards able to exile enchantments. If you chose not to run them, that's on you. You can't say the same about mono-red because red does not have an enchantment removal spell. In your "Juri" example, your commander isn't something which is designed to bring stuff back from the graveyard. Daretti is. And Rakdos has ways to deal with enchantments. Mono red does not. So neither are a fair comparison. Try again

You're suggesting I Chaos Warp the Leyline? use the one card in red capable of dealing with an indestructible non-creature permanent to deal with 1 "destructible" enchantment? Not only that, but Chaos Warp can backfire. I've used it specifically for that reason on turn 2 against a leyline that started out. The guy topdecked ulamog, blew up the one open plains as he came in to prevent a path or stp. It was turn 2. He went after me in turn order, so Ulamog didn't need haste, he could just start attacking. He attacks the guy with white mana to prevent a path, making him sac all his lands. He won, because of chaos warp. And another time, due to an unlucky shuffle, the card i chaos warped came right back out.

I started this thread by saying "if Iona is banned for this reason, leyline of the void should also be banned for the same reason, or, if Leyline isn't worthy of a ban, iona should be unbanned." So you're wrong about how I started this thread. I wasn't arguing for "leyline and RIP to be banned and Iona to be unbanned". I was arguing "ban them all or ban none". I wonder what caused that confusion.

I just want some consistency from the RC. If they're going to ban Iona for shutting down decks in a way that some can't really interact with, LoV and RiP need to be too because they shut down graveyard artifacts in a way some graveyard artifacts decks can't really interact with. You tried to justify LoV and RiP not being banned. I then used your justification for that as justification that iona shouldn't be banned as well. You then tried to justify Iona being banned. I used that justification as justification to ban Leyline and RIP. If i sound hypocritical, it's specifically because I'm turning your and the RC's hypocritical arguments against themselves. It's not that hard to follow.

plakjekaas on Questioning the Iona Banning

1 year ago

You didn't specify which deck you were playing when you bashed Mindbreak Trap. You were arguing that Iona would help the situation in the same paragraph, I assumed you were playing white. Rule of Law wouldn't prevent the Trap from being cast, it would prevent your plays being "countered for free, because, you know, blue" because 4 spells in a turn under Rule of Law is kinda hard to realize. Red Elemental Blast breaks the Mindbreak Trap in mono red.

Of course the blue player could play many artifacts to get out under Iona. If it's right to play Wurmcoil Engine in your deck, 40% of your deck will likely be colorless cards and you will shrug about Iona the way Ardenn, Intrepid Archaeologist shrugs about Null Rod. Just because you're not effected doesn't mean the card is not breaking something.

I once had a Heliod, Sun-Crowned mono white +1/+1 counter deck that really relied heavily on the Commander's ability to generate those counters. Then the Mogis, God of Slaughter player ramped out an Erebos, God of the Dead on turn 3, and got mana screwed after, never gathering enough devotion for my Swords to Plowshares to solve this Indestructible enchantment that was blocking out the very tactic I built my deck around. Now I know there's a few cards in white that could exile enchantments, but I'm not playing Forsake the Worldly when Shinewend has a similar function with a lot more synergy with my deck. My opponents wouldn't touch the player with Erebos, because it seemed to be completely immobilizing me. Yet I got by with a Mother of Runes, a True Conviction and my commander for player removal and went on to win that game after the Mogis player died.

My Juri, Master of the Revue deck got Leyline of the Voided, rendering all my Nether Traitor clones and Blood Artist variants useless for what they were supposed to do. Yet Ophiomancer, Goblin Bombardment and Impact Tremors made for a fast enough clock to make the leyline player regretting making themselves a target.

So yes, I think you're a bit of a drama queen for complaining this much about single card counterplays for your main strategy and how they shouldn't exist because you want to be able to do unimpeded what your deck is supposed to do.

Especially because at the same time, you started this topic to argue bringing back a card that does exactly that to others in a different deck you play.

You've said in this topic that Rest in Peace shouldn't exist in the format because specifically your archetype can't deal with it. At the same time you said Iona, Shield of Emeria being unbanned would "help the situation". You're both salty about being locked and advocating you should be able to lock others. And yet you don't see what's wrong with that, despite your superior reading comprehension.

plakjekaas on Questioning the Iona Banning

1 year ago

Wuzibo Buy some Chaos Warps

I'm getting a lot of "I get locked out playing my favorite deck so I wanna lock out players too"-vibes. The one difference between Iona and all other problematic cards you named, is that Iona can be your commander, making sure you still have access to it after Oblivion Stone etc. That's where it differs from Leyline of the Void which, yes, can be in play from turn 0, but there's going to be a lot of games where it won't, and it probably won't return after the O-stone.

Iona's also a creature, making sure cards like Ephemerate will customize the color chosen to whatever you need whenever you need it, protecting it from removal in the process.

If you want to lock people out of casting spells, there's still plenty of ways to do it, but it's by combining cards together, not 1 card that does the entire thing for you. With Palinchron you need a mana doubler, with Heartless Hidetsugu you need a damage doubler and a way not to die, with Lavinia, Azorius Renegade you need Knowledge Pool, with Decree of Silence you need Solemnity.

With Iona, Shield of Emeria you need nothing. With Paradox Engine you basically need anything, it's not restrictive enough in its synergies to not be overpowered, while leading to 20 minute turns where one player gets to play all the magic while the others get to watch.

If you're scared of Mindbreak Trap, just play Rule of Law. If your deck doesn't function because of a single card in play, it's badly built. You could still go Sol Ring into Thran Dynamo for Wurmcoil Engine t3 and kill the leyline player. That also stops it from being a problem. Those are all cards that would be amazing in a Daretti deck and doesn't need to break the color pie to get you out of a sticky situation. If you can only do Junk Diver Scrap Trawler loops, that's way more of a restriction on your deck and way easier to devise a backup strategy for than "playing a monocolor".

The rationale for banning Iona is that it leads to a play experience the rules committee wants to discourage, which is locking people out of playing the game. That's paraphrased from the ban article. Not locking out from winning, which is what you're talking about. Also, discourage, not prevent. You can still do it, but a flagship commander for that strategy that, no matter how you build her, it's gonna cause that bad time, that gets banned. Braids, Cabal Minion is banned for the same reason.

Your rationale of "they can now ban cards because they lead to unfun gameplay? They should ban every card that ever blocked my fun then" sounds very entitled, and hard to agree with. It makes you sound as much of a salty bad player as you blame the RC to be.

Wuzibo on Questioning the Iona Banning

1 year ago

shadow63

Someone starts the game with Leyline of the Void out. What does my mono-red artifact deck do against that to actually enable my recur combos? Goblin Welder and Goblin Engineer are now useless. Myr Retriever is now useless. Daretti, Scrap Savant is now basically useless, only good for a free "faithless looting" each turn. Feldon of the Third Path is useless. Crucible of Worlds is now useless. Scrap Trawler is now useless. Trash for Treasure does nothing. Ichor Wellspring loses half its value. Buried Ruin is just a wasteland at that point. Codex Shredder Grindstone and Millstone now have to be used to mill other people or are useless. They got put into my deck to help me mill myself for a good Scrap Mastery, which is now also pointless.

So yeah, I guess i can still play them, but why would I? They no longer do what they're supposed to do. I wouldn't even bring this up if there was red enchantment removal, but there isn't, so for a mono red graveyard player, Leyline of the Void is as opressive and unanswerable as Iona Vs any monocolored deck

TypicalTimmy Fair enough. I had it played against me too. Before i ran kaalia and had daretti, someone dropped it and named red because i got my hand revealed a turn ago, or maybe the top card of my library was revealed or something. everyone saw i had obliterate or jokalhaups or something in my hand and i had dsteel forge on the board, so i was gonna wipe everyone else and win in the meantime. Somehow lattice hit the board so i obliterated anyway. Even in a 1v1 though, i technically could have still handled it just by using colorless stuff. Maybe that's just an advantage of artifacts - not being gimped by iona.

plakjekaas it sure would help the situation. Maybe not in a 'fun' way, but it would help. It's not "fun" when my carefully constructed combo that i made "uncounterable" is still just countered anyway, for free, because, you know, blue. So ban Mindbreak Trap too.

Wuzibo on Weakest Mono Color

1 year ago

I saw something the other day. It was a new video on youtube that was covering a budget Elesh Norn deck. When the video started, the man making the video played a voice recording from a fan that inspired him to make the video, or gave him impetus to.

In that short recording, the fan said "Given that mono white is generally regarded as the weakest mono color, i was wondering if you could showcase a budget mono white deck that is competetive." Or something to that effect.

I couldn't believe what i heard. Mono white is the weakest? I don't know by what metric. I played a few different edh decks in my day, but never mono white. I did, however, do mono green and mono red, and in my first big playgroup we all played together for a few years and at one point or another there was a mono colored deck of every color in our group. Someone else in our group played Elesh Norn for a bit. Someone Did purphoros, and i did too. I did daretti, heartless hidetsugu and yisan. Someone did sheoldred and Sidisi. Idk which mono blue someone did, but the theme of the deck was making everyone else draw their deck in like, 10-15 turns. I stuck with my daretti deck most of the time compared to the others who would switch it up more, because my yisan deck was more for messing around and i didn't have a good landbase for multicolored stuff. Eventually I was forced to build Zurgo Helmsmasher voltron deck that i turned into a Kaalia deck because voltron stuff is expensive as shit, even compared to the good angels, demons and dragons because my playgroup made Daretti unplayable, even though it was a decent deck. This playgroup was incredibly competetive and we actively tried to make the most overpowered stuff we could. This playgroup was active from 2014 to 2017. I stopped playing from 2018 to about a couple months ago. I wanted to give that as a background.

From my perspective, playing mono red anything was very weak for the simple reason that red didn't (and i checked, it still doesn't) have good spot removal or answers compared to the rest of the other colors, and it also has fewer things which are incredibly threatening on their own. I'm specifically thinking about enchantment removal. Red currently has access to 2 cards that, on their own, can deal with enchantments without wiping the board. One is Scour from Existence, and the other is Chaos Warp. Those are also 2 of the 3 cards red has that can deal with indestructible permanents/creatures on their own, that 3rd one being Burn from Within. I say on their own because technically i could play Mycosynth Lattice, make everything an artifact, and then Vandalblast or do something else that blows up a specific artifact, but i first have to make it an artifact with mycosynth, and mycosynth has to resolve and also not be destroyed or exiled or bounced in response to me casting vandalblast. I can also use mycosynth to make everything an artifact and then use Goblin Welder to force people to sac their stuff, but thats a lot of hoops to jump through.

Blue can just counter something threatening, or return it to your hand and then counter it when you try to cast it again. Blue can even counter stuff that explicitly says "this spell can not be countered" on it. Mindbreak Trap. They can counter when they're tapped out Pact of Negation. And even if your spells do resolve, they probably won't hit what you wanted to take out, because blue can phase its stuff out, blink it, or return it to their own hand. You have a big creature, like, say, a Hydra with X in the casting cost that is technically a 0/0 that enters with x counters on it, blue blink spells become removal, because then the counters fall off and it re-enters as a 0/0 and instantly dies. Blue also has the single best board wipe in the game Cyclonic Rift.

White has an absurd amount of really good removal spells like Path to Exile and other 1cmc white stuff that exiles - not destroys - creatures which is just strictly better than destruction. It also has Disenchant. What can red do vs one of the Nyx gods? nothing. How is it dealing with Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre. It's either found a way to pump out at least 4 1/1s every turn or it isn't, and when ulamog hit the field it probably blew up the 1 thing that could pump out those 1/1s. It also has inertion spells like Pacifism

Green has a bunch of that stuff as well, but it just tends to be tied to a creature with an etb effect. Reclamation Sage for instance. It also has Krosan Grip, which actually can't be countered or dealt with by blinking, or even mindbreak trapped. It does struggle with indestructible stuff a little bit, but at least it can make very large blockers that also have reach..

Black has ways to make you sacrifice all your stuff and no shortage of destroy effects, and ways to put a bunch of -1/-1 counters on it, so it even has a way to deal with indestructible stuff.

So i want to give you the situation that forced me to stop playing mono-red. The other players in my group generally didn't play monocolors as much. the only other one was the one with the sheoldred and sidisi decks. the elesh norn guy made his elesh norn deck out of his regular Marath deck. One guy played Karametra to start off with but then built slivers. And one guy played Rafiq while we got used to the game and then went back to Oloro- which included test of endurance and felidar sovereign. The sheoldred, oloro, and slivers player started running Leyline of the Void. I played daretti. When youre playing a mono-red deck that has to use its graveyard to do well, and the game starts with that out, that's awful, but it's made worse by the fact that i literally had no answers to it. It made my commander more a liability than an asset. His ult literally becomes abrogated when that hits the field. Same with containment field, but at least the game didn't start with that out, and the sheoldred player would at least get rid of that for mutual interest. What am i supposed to do as a mono red player about any leyline card, for that matter? So I did the only thing i could do, which is obliterate, O stone, nevinyrals disk, winter orb, blood moon, or hope i draw chaos warp or scour. The problem with chaos warp is that it can backfire. I chaos warped the ashnods altar the marath guy had one time to stop him from going infinite. He topdecked ulamog and won the game. So i basically have to blow my one good spot removal spell on an enchantment that isn't even really a threat, it just stops me from playing my deck with my commander. My only other option was a cheese 2 spell combo that just wins the game if uncountered - Dualcaster Mage and Twinflame. Because my options were limited to oppressive stall and boardwipes, and i have the potential to cast 2 cards for 5 mana and just win the game, the rest of the table comes to hate or fear me. They come to know that my strats involve stall and stax so they always take me out first. There was nothing i could really do. So i went to Hidetsugu. I never once got to tap him in a game. I went to krenko. Same issue. I went to purphoros, and did ok, but still, the lack of enchantment removal and ways to deal with indestructible stuff always felt bad, especially because my opponents had that stuff and had it for cheap. In mono-red, what do i do when someone puts Darksteel Mutation on my purphuros? How many sac outlets or -1/-1 counters are there(that i can put on my own creatures) in red? I got upset about it, especially because in the middle of our play time, the rule about chaos warp changed so i couldn't make them shuffle their commander away anymore. So they got to keep their ways to stop me from getting to do anything with my commander, but i didn't get my way to stop them from using theirs anymore. I understand it was because i was playing the aggro color and because i was a threat, but game after game of not getting to play the game started to drag. So i made a kaalia deck so mean they stopped playing with me. They didn't let me have fun playing pillowfort stax stuff, so i made a deck that was so aggro I usually won before they did anything with their commander, and then they didn't have fun, except for the sliver player who shared a lot of the ideas i had about the state of balance in magic and our local meta. Slivers are aggro and become scary really fast but it's hard to be aggro in a 5 color deck, and he understood how our playgroup evolved to just be more and more punishing to a monored yard deck and was happy to see me having fun playing commander for the first time in a long time. The sliver player and I are the only one who are still friends.

The point of this all is that, in my playgroup, the deciding factor was not usually your ability to make threats or create problems for your opponents. It was your ability to respond to threats and problems. In that department, red is sorely lacking primarily because it doesn't have enchantment removal or a good way to deal with indestructible stuff, or even big creatures for that matter

Is there something I'm just not getting? What are other people's thoughts?