Thoughtseize

Sorcery

Target player reveals their hand. You choose a nonland card from it. That player discards that card. You lose 2 life.

Discussion (48)

loricatuslupus on The Demise of Aggro in …

2 weeks ago

What with everything going on in the world I, like many others, have been playing an increasing amount of Arena over the past year or so. Standard is as Standard does and I won't complain about that - I tend to avoid it apart from when a new set releases anyway - and that didn't used to matter because Historic was so excellent, with a diverse range of decks and strategies. For fun best-of-one I predominantly play an Orzhov vampire deck (The Drain Train) or sometimes a more silly Mardu troll one (They See Me Trollin', They Hatin'), and win or lose enjoyed the back and forth of playing a match. Even playing against Control, while sometimes frustrating, at least feels like a game where my opponent reacts to my plays and I can try to bait out counters or force sub-optimal board wipes etc. Now over half of games feature Ugin, the Spirit Dragon, and that's just not a card I can compete with. I should clarify that at 8CMC I think he is perfectly reasonably costed and SHOULD be a game ender, but I can't beat him being consistently cast or cheated in on turn five - especially when the Uro that helped get him there undid the first two turns of damage with his incidental lifegain and I now have only three or four to kill my opponent before they exile my entire board with enough loyalty to do the same thing the following turn. What, if any, are the options for aggro players? If you go all in and dump your hand on the field to attack for as much as possible ASAP (traditional way to beat combo or midrange decks is to race, right?) and can't kill them you lose literally everything. If you hold cards back you run the risk of not having enough of a clock, and also have to spend a turn removing Ugin before you can rebuild anyway. In the meantime your opponent just completely ignores you and does their own thing - even running hand disruption such as Thoughtseize is of minimal benefit when their ramp cards are also cantrips and cards in the graveyard help them escape Uro. I no longer feel like I am having fun, and honestly can't understand how playing out the same game every time can be enjoyable for the ramp players. Is there an answer, or do I just have to accept that best-of-one Historic is just no longer a place I can play the decks I enjoy? Traditional is fine as I run Simic Merfolk with mainboard counters and can bring in lots of hate but sometimes I just want a quick game, and with Historic being ranked play only it feels bad conceding when I see I'm against another UGX deck...

Red_X on Eldrazi Exile

2 weeks ago

Your only way to cast Thought-Knot Seer and Reality Smasher is Blight Herder right now, which means you're casting 4 and 5 drops on turn 7 at the earliest. I'd add in some lands that create colorless mana. The first ones that stand out looking at it are Corrupted Crossroads and Unclaimed Territory, but you'll need to look through other options.
Your curve also doesn't really start till 3, so I'd add in more 1 and 2 mana spells. Probably removal and discard, look at things like Heartless Act and Thoughtseize. You might also consider Hedron Crawler, which both ramps and provides the colorless mana, but its a weak card in general and might not be good enough.
I'm confused by the Unsummon, Necromentia, Unmoored Ego, and the Ashiok. Your deck generally wants to play a creature on each turn from 3 to 6 so you can kill creatures and then win the game. If you're spending mana casting cards to tear apart your opponent's deck, you're not winning the game. If you want more ways to exile cards, try something like Soul-Guide Lantern or Cling to Dust to help fill out your curve and give you some more utility. You can run the big exile cards in the sideboard for combo matchups. I like the deck.

rjife on Jund

3 weeks ago

I love jund, and this deck is no exception, though there are a couple things that I think could be improved on:

Grim Flayer is much better than ambitious aetherborn, and considering you're running kroxa, running a few Satyr Wayfinder is definitely plausible.

I have been very unimpressed with eat to extinction, as Abrupt Decay and Assassin's Trophy deal with anything for less mana.

In the 4-drop slot, I have found that many jund decks tend to run Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet, and many others run no 4-drops at all.

Here are some other jund staples you may want to consider running: -Kolaghan's Command -Chandra, Torch of Defiance -Liliana, Waker of the Dead -Thoughtseize

Have fun junding them out

Caerwyn on I need some help getting …

1 month ago

Throwing in a single copy of a card is not going to help you too much - you want to build for consistency, which means running 4 copies of most cards (sometimes 2 or 3 copies of the card of it had a high mana cost or you otherwise only want to cast it later in the game, so you don’t need to draw it early). The other exception is some cards in Vintage where you can only run one copy, but they’re powerful enough that the chance of drawing your single copy could swing entire games in your favour.

I don’t think your deck is powerful enough for Vintage, since you made a comment about that format, but discard decks can be quite effective at kitchen table.

You should look into “8-Rack” lists, one of the top discard strategies. 8-Rack runs 4 copies of The Rack and 4 of Shrieking Affliction to deal a fair bit of damage per turn. Then you lock down the opponent by using cards like Thoughtseize, Raven's Crime, and Inquisition of Kozilek to keep your opponents from being able to do very much.

Another popular discard deck is Pox. Pox uses Smallpox and similar effects, like Rankle, Master of Pranks, to slow down your opponents, while running things like Flagstones of Trokair and Bloodghast to break parity.

Omniscience_is_life on Blazing Specter on a Budget

1 month ago

If you're wondering about all the cards linked in red, those are ones that aren't legal in the chosen format. But don't fear! If you go into the editing page for this deck, on the top you will find a drop-down list of formats--scroll to Vintage and update it, and you'll find a much calmer, bluer list

As for the deck itself... Blood Crypt, maybe? Thoughtseize?

fatalzintomyum on Collected Conjouring, CoCo's weird cousin

1 month ago

With black in the deck you get Never/Return as well as Grim Tutor, maybe fetching another Collected Conjuring. Inscription of Ruin in dreamland can be cast with kicker off of conjuring, but it still has two relevant options, killing tarmogoyfs and shadow cards. Pain's Reward is very risky, can draw tons of cards, but I would play it in a deck that can consistently have your opponent be at less life or have pressure on the board. Pelakka Predation  ^Flip is kind of a freeroll, so that might be an option. Waking Nightmare effects might be too slow. Though the most value might seem to be accrued though getting 3 cmc cards, this is not as ruling as it is with coco. Thoughtseize is excellent hand destruction and has proven itself. Collective Brutality is just another way to sweeten the two for one. Night's Whisper and its ilk can be good, but better than the blue card draw? It would take testing to tell.

plakjekaas on Why Does Mono-Black Have So …

1 month ago

I think milling as a winning strategy is pure mind magic, pursuing theoretical knowledge (cards in library) by catching glimpses of it as it passes by, which feels very blue to me, with a touch of black if used destructively (destroying all their available knowledge, decking them out like Glimpse the Unthinkable). Attacking your opponent mentally is destroying their active knowledge (cards in hand), which feels like a more brutal and amoral act, and thus very black (Thoughtseize ) Most of the names of blue milling cards seem to suggest influencing the way your opponent learns. Mind Sculpt, Psychic Corrosion, blue representing affecting the way the brain works, vs black just interfering with opposing plans.

CheapBastard on And Everytime We Touch I Get This Feelin

1 month ago

ClockworkSwordfish first of all, nice name. Second of all, I didn't know viridian claw was a thing so that's really sweet and I didn't think about putting a reanimation package in here but looking at it now, I feel kinda dumb that I didn't before! I'm a big fan of the menace counters and maybe reviving 1 or 2 nighthawks with it is mighty fine. Servitude can get back my merchants if the game goes sideways and I'm hurting for some kind of advantage so that's definitely a solid option as well. I have alot of hand attacks in my sideboard like Inquisition of Kozilek, Blackmail, and Thoughtseize so that's 12 cards already so I'm thinking maybe just swap some of those out for more of a recursion package