Thoughtseize

Sorcery

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

Combos

• Quicken + Thoughtseize
• Dreadhorde Arcanist + Thoughtseize

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
Legacy	Legal
Leviathan	Legal
Limited	Legal
Modern	Legal
Oathbreaker	Legal
Pioneer	Legal
Planechase	Legal
Quest Magic	Legal
Tiny Leaders	Legal
Vanguard	Legal
Vintage	Legal

Discussion (49)

K4nkato on Tomb of Annihilation (Venture into the Dungeon)

1 week ago

I did some due diligence and looked into the dungeon mechanic & some lines to set it up. I think your best three cards are Varis, Silverymoon Ranger, Acererak the Archlich and Intrepid Outlander. Varis and Outlander push you in a creature-heavy direction whereas Acererak wants long games to accumulate value. I think it's important to focus on cards that let you grind and get those cast triggers & creatures. You can stay Black / Green for a solid two-color manabase with Castles and Eye Tyrants, or you could consider splashing white for some incredible creature cards like Wedding Announcement  ^Flip. I think 2 colors is the way to go but an Abzan build opens a lot of great doors. It's worth a test.

For one-drops, I think 4 Thoughtseize and 4 Fatal Push is a good standard for a reason. It fights combo decks, aggro decks & control decks well. You can always swap out the Pushes and Thoughtseizes for matchups where they're irrelevant.

For two-drops, I think 4 Mosswood Dreadknight and 4 Intrepid Outlander are solid, along with 2 Reckoner Bankbuster. Maybe there's another 2 drop creature worth considering?

For three drops I think you want 4 Varis, Silverymoon Ranger for sure. It's important to remember a lot of "Venture Into The Dungeon" creatures are a bit too expensive for Pioneer & need to stick around to accrue that value. Varis gives you venture triggers for playing spell you already want to be playing so moving him up to four seems like an easy inclusion. Idk if you need 4 Murderous Rider for this deck if you include all the removal I suggested, but 2 or 3 is understandable. I honestly wonder if Acererak should be limited to 2 copies. He doesn't impact the board when you play him for several turns in a row but he's a 5/5 that attacks for 7 in the late game after you've completed Tomb of Annihilation.

A note on Glissa Sunslayer: She's amazing on boards where combat matters but awful against any opponent who doesn't care about getting attacked. Putting her in a shell where people have to fight her gets you the most value. If you disrupt your opponent's hand and force them to get into the red zone she'll take you far.

As weird as it sounds I don't think the Tomb of Annihilation -> Acererak should be the only focus of the deck. It's nice to set him up but it might be worth it to play a curve-out game into Lost Mine or Mad Mage. Something to think about perhaps.

RockIV on the book of the dead

2 weeks ago

hey there darklight90 , thnks for the advice , i appreciate it alot!.

I been watching an testing your deck , its awesome. I remember wondering if the deck would be better with other type of spells like dicard, but i ended up only using reanimate type spells only, to make the deck quicker. I always felt that if i start with a hand with no reanimate chance, it would be a loss. ive seen people using Hymn to Tourach as a defensive sepll. The most optimal woul be using dicard spells that can be used with me or with the oponent, like you do.

Thoughtseize is an awesome card, sadly i dont have it, thats why im using Cabal Therapy. i need to get some copies of it, but is too expensive T_T

Love how the Lotus Petal interact with the deck!.

Collective Brutality its another interesting card, so many uses!

BioProfDude on Homebrew Rakdos Mid for Pioneer

1 month ago

TheVarcster, thanks for the upvote!

With Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth, Mutavault isn't a problem for me and in the meta of my particular (admittedly non-competitve) lgs and I rarely have issues. It's just a great card, so I like 3x.

As I say in the description, this deck is very much a response to my lgs meta. A few players play planeswalkers, and a couple play a lot of them. This lgs meta is very control light, and minimal combo played. Aggro and some Midrange are the most common decks. Thus, I need removal that can target creatures and planeswalkers more than I need a card like Collective Brutality when I already have Thoughtseize.

Kolaghan's Command might be good-- thanks for the suggestion.

I appreciate the comment! This deck is specifically tailored to my lgs. I do appreciate ideas, though!

DreadKhan on Competitive dimir faeries- sideboard help!

1 month ago

Glad I could help! Baleful Strix is a very good stand alone card IMHO, people have tried to run stuff like Fallen Shinobi in Dimir Faeries to good effect, so I think you could justify using Strix, it's replaces itself and can kill something big. Palantir of Orthanc is another mainboard card that is less likely to get banned than The One Ring, it can also help you out, and can get in some damage, I think it's lower budget too.

Most of your sideboard seems reasonable, you have answers to a variety of decks in there. If you are adjusting the sideboard, you might want something like Thoughtseize to deal with fast combo decks that run counters, Thoughtseize can dig out most cards if you have it in your opening hand, and you can then hit the discarded card with Surgical Extraction to remove a combo piece from anywhere but the battlefield, which can make some decks suck. Hymn to Tourach is hard to cast, but if you think you can cast it turn 2 if you have it in your opener and you will be going first that game you could sideboard it in, it's an incredibly hostile card if it hits early, but it can whiff. You might want a board wipe if your board isn't big/fast enough, I run Damnation, not sure if there is better.

jdogz32 on Obliterate

1 month ago

Your decks extremely heavy for only having 21 lands. I'd recommend going up to 24. I'd take out Cabal Stronghold in order for you to even break even on it you'd have to have 4 swamps in play and your deck only has 6. I'd also take out any land that enters the battlefield tapped. As heavy as your deck is with no form of ramp you can't afford to be waiting for lands to untap just to make your opponent lose a life. So I'd take out Piranha Marsh I'd also take out Mortuary Mire.

As slow as your deck is I'd add cards like Thoughtseize Inquisition of Kozilek or Duress taking your opponents best cards early game will really help give you the time you need to set up. I'd also replace Victim of the night for either Fatal Push or Heartless Act hope this helps

DreadKhan on Competitive dimir faeries- sideboard help!

1 month ago

I've always loved the idea of using Oona's Blackguard with Bitterblossom, I tried it out in a Rogue deck, but I couldn't get it to work the way I wanted it to, so I put the Bitterblossoms in a Faerie deck instead. I also like how Scion of Oona further buffs them, but it's pretty strange seeing the non-Faeries in here. I also think you'll want more control elements, either more counter magic, such as more Force of Wills, or more discard, such as Thoughtseize. Lots of decks like this will run x4 of each, but I did notice you might struggle to have enough Blue spells to work with Force, so perhaps you'll need to look further afield? I use Dispel in my Faerie deck, but I usually need to protect my combo to win from Instants. There is also Spell Pierce that might work. The reason I mention control is because I don't think your Aggro plan is going to be fast enough for Legacy, even Burn decks want to finish the game turns 3 or 4, more control elements will give you that much more time for your Aggro to work.

A lot of people are talking about it eating a ban at some point, but The One Ring is always worth considering, it's hard to kill and while it starts out as a slightly worse Harmonize, it quickly draws a lot of cards, which would have big synergy with your Aether Vials, as well as your generally low MV. It also makes things like Force of Will a LOT better, once you're drawing 3 or 4 cards, you are not only more likely to see a Force, you're more likely to have spare Blue spells.

As for lands, I like a lot of it, but I think Marsh Flats is the wrong dual for this deck, I actually like the idea of running a bunch of Basics so you don't just lose to a Blood Moon, so if you're looking to upgrade your mana base, you could try Polluted Deltas. Blood Moon will still suck, but between Aether Vial and the ability to sneak out the right Basic early you should be in much better shape.

In my Faerie deck I've been surprised at how useful the somewhat janky Exhaustion proves, with your might better Bitterblossom utility (you could be making 3/3s or better), it could feel even better. It is timing sensitive, but when people are tapped out it's 3 mana for what feels very close them skipping a turn if they can't untap while you get to advance your board with Bitterblossom. That said, I do run it with Mistbind Cliques, which I try to flicker to lock opponents out of mana, so Exhaustion is dual purpose in my deck.

Have you thought about using Faerie Miscreant over Faerie Seer? I suspect Seer is usually better, but Miscreant is a Faerie Rogue, which could be helpful with your Blackguards. It can also draw a card now and then.

Cool idea, I hope the upgrades go well!

Valengeta on Unholy Frenzy

1 month ago

Thank you! What deck are you using against it? I'm trying to fit in Champion of the Perished and Lord of the Accursed in there but had to remove Thoughtseize and Whip of Erebos for them. What do you think?

DreadKhan on Power Word Death

1 month ago

Phyrexian Totem isn't the easiest card to use, but most deck don't use a lot of instant speed burn spells or Flash creatures so as long as you've killed off their blockers it's a solid attacker. It can also force the opponent to keep blockers home. In practice, since it swings for 5 it can be fine to lose a few things to it in my experience (provided you're already ahead that game), and in situations where you can't use it to attack it's still a mana source that helps you cast your Obliterators.

Haha, yeah, I don't know if there is anywhere local I can buy cards, it's such a niche interest here, but online stores can make it easy to find cheaper versions of cards, though you have to do online shopping (which I wasn't eager to do). I know of a few European and North American companies who sell tons of stuff, and I think TCGPlayer.com has sellers from all over, and you can set the site to restrict sellers to ones that will ship to your area (it used to be pretty buggy, I have less trouble with it now).

The nice thing about 1 drops is that they allow you to start pressuring the board early, and some of them have useful abilities like Deathtouch, which let them trade with your opponent's better creatures. If you're not sure that Deathtouch creatures are good enough (or evasive lifelink creatures, like Cutthroat and Vault Skirge), you can also try out cards like Duress, Inquisition of Kozilek, or Ostracize, since you get to pick what they discard these can be incredibly useful for only B mana. The best of these is probably Thoughtseize, followed by Grief and Unmask, but Inquisition usually works well in a format where people hate using cards with MV higher than 3. Some more 1 drops you can consider are Cryptbreaker, which is a zombie tribal card that can make tokens and draw cards eventually, and Foulmire Knight, this has Adventure and can draw a card if you draw it later in the game, and a 1/1 Deathtouch can block fairly well.

Dark Ritual isn't quite an auto-include in every deck, but it's one of the best cards that's legal in Legacy, it's especially useful if you can use all 3 mana and can play it turn 1. In your deck as is, if you have Ritual you can play a Gatekeeper or Messenger turn 1, either of those is a fair bit of value that early, and Vampire Nighthawk is really good with Dark Ritual since you can start gaining life turn 2. It turns a Grave Titan in a turn 4 play, at which point it's a very strong creature when you're sneaking it out so early, and while it's unlikely, you can end up with 2 Rituals in your opening hand and play Titan turn 2. If you use 1 mana discard spells as well as Hymn to Tourach, you can cast both (for the record you should cast the Duress type effect before Hymn) turn 1 which should decide most games on turn 1. Dark Ritual is a key card in decks that are trying to be fairly competitive, so if you want to make your deck stronger it's a great card to consider.

With all your removal (and the discard you've got), have you thought about x1 or x2 Sangromancer? It's a 3/3 flyer for 4, which isn't terrible, but it can gain quite a bit of life while still threatening your opponent. I guess it'd be a creature version of your Incursion, it won't gain as much life but it'll deal more damage.

If you want something to accelerate your games there is Phyrexian Arena, which was printed into Standard again, so it's extremely cheap compared to a few years back. It's not the best draw effect out there, but drawing a card each upkeep is pretty good value if you're not playing the fastest games, this card is also good with Dark Ritual, but it will cost a bit of life over time.