Peek

Instant

Look at target player's hand.

Draw a card.

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

Discussion (50)

9-lives on Overwhelming Kindness

1 year ago

Where's your Peek or Sorcerous Spyglass type of cards?! They would be great with this commander!

Kcin on "And Just Like That... They Were Gone"

1 year ago

I only used Peek because it was a functional replacement for Gitaxian Probe when it got the hammer.

I could use Thought Scour.

Added to maybe.

9-lives on Azorius Aggro-Control deck

1 year ago

The thing about Oppressive Rays is that I will also be casting Mana Leak and No More Lies. If they pay the mana, fine, that's good because I am tying up their mana usage. If they don't pay the mana, that's good too, because it will remove it. The fact that it works out for them later in the game isn't a probem; i'll still tie up the mana in usage if they ever want to use it.

Assemble the Players is useful because no matter what I'm going to keep it on the field for one turn. Any further turns and it's doing its job just fine. You think I'll only draw one creature card in 5 turns, even with Defiant Strike and Mishra's Bauble and Peek?

I could add like 2 more counterspells. Consider that I have enough that if I individually drew each counterspell, it would last around turn #6 for mana cost 2 spells to only cast each turn with the max mana spent, which would be around 7 or 8 spells, guesstimating. The probability of what I'm doing is 13/70, which is 19% chance of drawing one. Around 20% is just fine for my purposes.

wallisface on Azorius Aggro-Control deck

1 year ago

I'm not saying it has to be established-meta to work. But knowing what does work is helpful for making a deck function well.

As far as deck budget, very strong things can be built for cheap (but what you have at the moment isn't it) - if you have a budget for what you're wanting to spend on the deck, it's good to post that upfront, so that people can suggest cards within your price-range. I'm able to give lots of better card suggestions for whatever price range you're aiming for, but I can't do that if I don't know what your price-point is!

My criticisms of the current cards are as follows:

• You need to cast 2 creatures from the top of your deck with Assemble the Players to actually gain any benefit from the card (the first creature is just "breaking even"). With only 17 creatures in the deck this could take a lot of time - you can assume 5ish turns - which is excessively long for a magic game, particularly if you're wanting to be aggressive. But even more noteworthy, is that casting this card early means leaving your shields-down (as you're then missing mana to control the board), so it can only ever be realistically cast late-game, which makes it even more useless for any deck trying to be proactive/aggressive.

• You say Academy Ruins is useful for its ability if you need it - but under what board state are you ever needing it? Normally this card is used to ensure lock pieces stay on-board indefinitely, but you're only sudo-lock piece is Ethersworn Canonist, which is too low a density of cards to warrant running 3 copies of a legendary land (making your manabase troublesome). Added to this, most of your spells require only-coloured-pips, so the colourless mana this provides is close-to useless.

• You mention that with Ethersworn Canonist your opponent can only play a spell a turn "which you can easily counter". While this is a valid strategy, you only have 11 counterspells, so spells are going to get through - I don't think you can assume this is an automatic game-lock by any means.

• Oppressive Rays is bad because it doesn't get rid of the creature, and that creature can still pose a massive problem. Especially as it doesn't stop triggered abilities, many, many creatures will be completely happy even with this attached. And, if the opponent really wants to attack or use an activated ability of the creature, they still have the option to later in the game. This is why completely removing the creature is always the better option - and you have a massive selection of actually-good spells for doing that in white, so i'm not sure why you're using this card.

• There's a good reason nobody runs Peek.

9-lives on Azorius Aggro-Control deck

1 year ago

Well, those cards aren't exactly budget. I don't plan on spending a ton on one card. my deck is comparable to the aggro-control deck you mentioned, but yet it is somewhat different. I plan on locking my opponent in with Ethersworn Canonist with one spell they can cast per turn, which I can easily counter. Academy Ruins is useful for its ability if I need it. Assemble the Players is amazing: it allows you to basically cast a level 2 card for only 2 mana at first, and each subsequent turn I can do so. I also need it and Peek to know in advance what I'm getting so that I can plan my turns based on whatever is going on with the opponent. Oppressive Rays is really good as well. It has never failed me. This is an aggro-control deck, so I'm not running any cards that are high in mana cost and also are budget. You and some other people always recommend the most expensive and over-used cards for the archetype.

wallisface on Azorius Aggro-Control deck

1 year ago

Some thoughts:

• Last time you started a thread about a deck, it was described as you wanting to make a deck more competitive, but when those suggestions came through you decided you'd rather the deck be casual than strong. Is this the same scenario, or are you legitimately looking for advice on making a strong {W}{U} control deck.

• Azorius Conrtol already exists as a well-defined meta archetype, consistently hovering between 1-5% of the meta. There is an established deck list here

• The kind of deck your describing (being aggressive while also controlling the board state) is basically what the current Murktide Regent lists do - deck here. I think it is going to be very hard to justify playing white over red in such an archetype, because red brings most of the aggression, but it's probably still achievable with some concessions.

Some thoughts on your current list specifically:

• For the deck to work, you need to be running the minimum amount of creatures possible - between 12-15. Running more than this makes it too hard to control the board, and running less than this puts you at risk of not being able to threaten damage.

• All the creatures you run need to be able to quickly close-out the game on their own. If you check the Murktide list linked above, you'll notice all of those creatures are able to dish out extreme pressure. So far, NONE of your creatures are even remotely threatening. You want to be playing creatures that can end the game fast and can do everything they need to by-themselves. You should really be playing cards like Murktide Regent, Ledger Shredder, Tishana's Tidebinder and Solitude/Subtlety instead of these extremely weak creatures.

• Any number of Academy Ruins is excessive when you have no real reason to want to recur any of these artifacts.

• 3 mana countermagic is always bad - there's no reason to run Render Silent especially when you still have room to play another Counterspell instead.

• Assemble the Players is a terrible card and shouldn't be here.

• you need waay more wawys to powerfully interact with cards that the opponent resolves - Oppressive Rays is too weak for this. You need cards like Prismatic Ending and Leyline Binding.

• You are severely lacking in efficient draw. I would expect Preordain instead of Peek at a bare minimum.

azja on Yuriko (Optimized) Primer

1 year ago

Hey MrNoCards I actually haven't seen Spy Network before, cool suggestion!

In the "topdeck manipulation" category, I look for 3 things: 1. Does it replace itself? (ex. Ponder) 2. Is it repeatable? (ex. Sensei's Divining Top) 3. Will it guarantee I find a big/useful spell? (ex. Vampiric Tutor)

Spy Network doesn't fit any of these criteria, so I don't think it makes the cut. Gitaxian Probe gets around this because it cantrips and costs 0 mana (both of which are important, I wouldn't play Peek, for example).

Thanks again for the comment!

K34 on Library of Leng/ Magus of …

2 years ago

If I have Library of Leng and Magus of the Future in play together, am I able to just repeatedly cast non-permanent spells? If they work how I think they do, I could just cast Reach Through Mists and Peek alternating for as long as I have available blue mana. Or perhaps I'm misunderstanding discard as a function on Leng?