Thoughtcast
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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
Planar Constructed Legal
Planechase Legal
Quest Magic Legal
Vanguard Legal
Vintage Legal

Thoughtcast

Sorcery

Affinity for artifacts (This spell costs less to cast for each artifact you control.)

Draw two cards.

shock7123 on Artifact Aggro on a $50 Budget

2 months ago

Out of curiosity, when you say hyper budget, how budget are we talking? Is there a monetary limit you're trying to stay under?

For starters, your mana ramp and card draw is incredibly limited. Especially for an aggro strategy, running out of cards in hand and mana to use is especially detrimental. You have some card selection with Akal Pakal, First Among Equals, but that can be a slow process when you're not flashing out artifacts on each turn. Some cards I might recommend:

Thought Monitor and Thoughtcast - cheat these out with affinity for easy one-time value. Prices are around $0.50 and $1.00, respectively.

Mask of Memory - equip onto a flyer or other evasive creature for consistent looting. ~$0.31

Hedron Archivefoil - 6 mana over a couple of turns to be able to draw 2 isn't bad. ~$0.12

Aether Syphon - If you have the extra mana to pay into this, 2 mana to draw an extra card per turn is decent. ~$0.08

Transplant Theorist - loot whenever you play an artifact, plus get the ability to tuck cards back into your library to theoretically be able to replay later. ~$0.06

Coveted Jewel - 6 mana draw 3, then add 3 mana back. If you get attacked and don't have the ability to block one, sure, that opponent gets control of the jewel. However, it tends to start a minigame where people will just attack the Coveted Jewel's controller rather than you. ~$0.18

kamarupa on Squirrels, Squirrels, Squirrels! (Squirrel Prison)

3 months ago

Fun stuff! I have some thoughts. I hope you find something useful, but no worries if you don't!

White is really where it's at with enchantments and the graveyard, namely Hall of Heliod's Generosity. I'd imagine if that were the only thing you needed white mana for, you could probably pretty often get by with a Birds of Paradise and maybe something like a Fertile Ground or Prismatic Omen. However, there are some other nice white spells that might prove just as helpful to you - Sacred Ground and Terra Eternal.

I don't play competitive MTG, but it's my understanding that in fast formats like Modern, you don't really need or even want repeatable/permanent solutions to threats your opponents might have. What we want are fast, efficient, and broadly applicable answers that buy us just enough time to gain enough advantage to win. So my advice - and do take this as a humble suggestion and not any sort criticism - is to forget the artifact defenses (and enchantments I mention above) and focus on having the mana available to cast your counterspells and/or add some low MV protection spells like Tamiyo's Safekeeping or Heroic Intervention and also a Fog/Holy Day or two.

I'd also say that while Drift of Phantasms is decent, I've come to prefer card advantage over tutors. It always seems like it too much to spend 3MV on a cantrip tutor that also reveals your threat. If you wait until you have enough mana to tutor a card, cast it, and have the mana to protect it for two turns, you're already looking at something like T10 without a synergized ramp in place. And that's probably just too slow for [competitive] modern. So, personally, and again, I'm not interested in competitive play, so feel free to ignore me, but I prefer spells like Harmonize for the card advantage and broader range of impact in getting me what I need, even if it is more of a gamble than a tutor. If you keep the artifact defense, you might consider Thoughtcast.

As much as I like what you're trying to do, I'd want an extra land or two, even with the Birds of Paradise. As little as I like it, I've come to believe 22+ lands is usually worth it, especially in a deck that's counting on casting multiple 3MV spells for their win-con.

I like a lot of things about Verdant Command, but I haven't found it useful enough in my little playgroup to warrant a full set in a mainboard.

My final piece of advice is to use the 'Copy Deck' feature here to make forks of this to try out things I suggested (and other ideas you might have). I find it so useful to have multiple builds of the same deck to playtest and compare what's really helping, what isn't, what's fun, what's slow, etc.

capwner on Molten Opals

3 months ago

I did a bit of mulligan testing between 64 and 61 card versions of this deck. I found the 64 card version with 4 Ghost Quarter / 4 Mishra's Bauble / 4 Thoughtcast performs slightly more consistently in terms of the likelihood of getting a functional opening hand. The results from 100 simulated game 1 openers show this:

64 card: Keep 7 x78 / Keep 6 x15 / Keep 5 x6 / Keep <5 x1

61 card: Keep 7 x69 / Keep 6 x27 / Keep 5 x4 / Keep <5 x0

This is a subtle difference but it suggests the increased number of GQ and Mishra's helps to smooth out manafixing issues in opening hands. My subjective assessment was also that the 64 card version had higher quality openers on the whole. For this reason I have updated the list to reflect this change, and I also added a 1-of Urza, Lord High Artificerfoil because he seems cool.

capwner on Molten Opals

4 months ago

Hello Xica! I very much appreciate you taking the time to look at the deck and leave your thoughts. Let me see if I can address some of your points and explain why I made the choices I did.

  1. Field of Ruin and Demolition Field I agree with you these are great denial cards that can fit in many decks, and are especially good when you can combine with Leonin Arbiter and additional cleansing effects like White Orchid Phantom or Geomancer's Gambit. This is generally how I've seen LD built in modern the past couple years and, frankly, I've found this build to underperform. There are a couple reasons that Fields do not fit in this shell, the main one is they are slow colorfixing (2 cost) vs. Ghost Quarter which, combined with any darksteel land, provides immediate colorfixing. This is really important for the deck as a big part of our plan is sticking the turn 2 tempo play of Boom or Cleansing Wildfire (on myself). Opening Darksteel Citadel + Demo Field is just not what we want to see. These are also SOFT land destruction which use up an entire turn of play in the early game, and don't even tempo the opponent. That plus a tight manabase with limited slots for basics is why I don't run these.

  2. Experimental Synthesizer This is a solid engine card and you often see it paired with Gleeful Demolition and similar effects. I've built with this card and Ichor Wellspring in previous versions of the deck. The main reason I avoid these here is simple, Thoughtcast is better card advantage and I don't need artifact fodder because the darksteel lands reliably turn on Gleeful already. The fact that you can only play the exiled card on the current turn when we run so many high-cost bombs we may need ALL of our mana to cast, is sub-optimal.

  3. Rise and Shine Alright, so I never said I didn't like this card. I've actually been really close to trying to fit it in here, as a 1-of probably. I just think Kappa Cannoneer is better in the slot. As a 2 mana play, it doesn't fit well in my curve where I want to cast boom on turn 2, drop an opal, then do mycospawn/charmaw/saga turns 3-4-5. The reason this deck works is because it chains that early tempo into this creature-based hard land destruction or saga beatdown almost immediately, keeping the opponent on the back foot for the entire game. 4/4 indest body for 2 is very good, but it just doesn't work with my gameplan as well as the other cards I have chosen because it has no tempo value. Our first priority is to disable the opponent, after which we have much more time to worry about the beatdown plan.

I hope that gives you bit better understanding of the deck! Like I said in the description, I've spent quite a bit of time and effort to develop this and I'm pretty confident I'm running about the best cards I can. Mostly I just want to try and fit a 4th Ghost Quarter, Mishra's Bauble, or Thoughtcast, if I were to change anything at this point. I think I'm probably doing something right here because my testing record is currently an absolutely insane 33 match wins to 8 losses.

Thanks again for your feedback, I'd be happy to check out your list and share my thoughts a bit later when I have some more time!

wallisface on Should I Put Additional Artifact …

7 months ago

As an example, this list costs well-under half of the money of your current list, but will significantly outperform it by prettymuch every metric:

jethstriker on Should I Put Additional Artifact …

7 months ago

I agree, get rid of the tapped lands. I also recommend playing Thoughtcast in this deck. With the amount of artifacts you have, you can almost always reliably cast it for one mana.

DatShepTho on Elf & Monkey Money Laundering - R&R Treasures

10 months ago

Some of my favorite card draw spells in these colours are:

Fact or Fiction Most reliable

Seize the Spotlight Also gives treasures. The other choice isn't bad either

Expressive Iteration Gives more card selection. Best played before land-drop

Reverse Engineer. If you have treasures spare to tap.

Thoughtcast Efficient if you typically have => 3 artifacts in play

Tidings Straight card draw mid-late game. Mana efficient.

Wrenn's Resolve and Reckless Impulse Efficient impulse draw, the cards can be used next turn. Also gets around "card draw hate". Most efficient in low avg CMC decks.

nuperokaso on Affinity and what to cut

10 months ago

You will need to remove 18 card to get to 60: - 2 Mystic Forge and 4 Deadly Dispute - Affinity is an aggro deck; it wants to put additional creatures on board, not just draw cards. You may leave Thoughtcast and Thought Monitor. That will also rid you of black color entirely. - 4 Mistvault Bridge - 22 lands is too much for a 60 card deck that mostly plays free spells. You also don't want to draw multiple tapped lands. - 2 Shrapnel Blast - You don't want multiples in your opening hand, because then you won't have enough artifacts to cast your spells. You are also playing another sacrifice outlet (Arcbound Ravager) and too many sacrifice effect have diminishing returns. - 2 Myr Enforcer - You were playing 12 7 mana spells, that's simply too much. You can't keep opening hand with 4 of them. - 4 Lotus Petal - The only card in your deck that was not Modern legal. Also it's useless in longer game.

After these cuts, your deck has 60 card. However, 10 of them are non-artifacts, which may be more than you would like.

I will also give you a few other tips: - If you are too low on 0 mana cost cards, try Memnite or Welding Jar. Jar does something even in longer game, unlike your original Lotus Petal. - Nettlecyst - Acts similarly to the Cranial Plating, but comes with a body and has a good toughness. If you would play it, I suggest that you replace them for Arcbound Ravager, as they are doing opposite things.

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