Inverter of Truth Ability
Asked by 9-lives 4 years ago
When I exile my library, then shuffle into my deck my graveyard, do I get my library back? How does this work?
Eh, one note here. Inverter of Truth exiles your cards face-down (and so have no properties), so there's basically nothing you can do to interact with those cards again, even in eternal formats. Riftsweeper, Pull from Eternity, Runic Repetition, Mirror of Fate can't fetch them. Misthollow Griffin and friends can't be cast. Processors (like Ruin Processor) only interact with your opponents' exile zones.
April 5, 2020 7:09 a.m.
Thank you, Yesterday. I hadn't paid attention to the fact that Riftsweeper requires the exiled cards to be face-up. I did know that Processors only interact with opponents, so you'd need your opponent to process your cards into your graveyard for you.
Largely, the point of Inverter of Truth seems to be A. getting a 6/6 flyer for four mana, B. sculpting the perfect graveyard beforehand, and then turning that into a sculpted library with the Inverter, and/or C. "recovering" a lot of useful cards from your graveyard at the expense of what remains of your library (late-game, or with a library that's been milled a lot, this is very useful).
It is very important to note that the exiled cards from Inverter are face-down, though, because as Yesterday pointed out, most things that interact with exiled cards want them face-up. Inverter also gives you no provision to look at the exiled cards, so you can't even check what you've exiled, and any opponent that Processes them can't look and choose what to Process first. In this regard, it's not quite a "second hand" because the utility isn't really there.
April 5, 2020 11:57 a.m.
So you basically have 0 cards in your library after you cast Inverter of Truth? Doesn't that mean you would lose the game?
April 5, 2020 1:09 p.m.
Your graveyard becomes your new ilbrary that isn't exiled?
April 5, 2020 1:11 p.m.
I plan on using Thassa's Oracle after playing a few creature cards if I play Inverter of Truthon my 4th turn, and possibly cast Opt a few times if I have less devotion to blue than my cards in my deck, which means that I can self-mill to win! This would be the fastest way to win besides using Fraying Sanity then Traumatize, which is also a 'broken Over-Powered' mechanism. Are there other cards than Thassa's Oracle that are Pioneer legal that don't depend upon devotion? Laboratory Maniac unfortunately isn't Pioneer legal, but would be extremely useful.
April 5, 2020 2:38 p.m.
And why would my cards in play function in my graveyard?
"irstly, let's suppose you have 36 cards in your library and you are playing with a normal 60 card deck. Of the remaining 24 cards, you have seven lands on the battlefield, three creatures, and five cards in hand.
24 - (7+3+5) = 9. You have 9 cards in your graveyard."
This doesn't make sense to me. Why would cards in play count as graveyard?
April 5, 2020 2:39 p.m.
@TypicalTimmy, same minor note as before. I know it wasn't the main point of what you were saying, but Hedron Alignment wouldn't synergise with Inverter of Truth because the exiled cards are face-down and treated as though they have no qualities.
@9-lives, the only other card that's legal in Pioneer that does a similar thing is the above-mentioned Jace, Wielder of Mysteries. Those two and Laboratory Maniac are the only cards currently in Magic that allow you win the game this way.
April 5, 2020 3:32 p.m.
Rhadamanthus says... Accepted answer #10
I think that very long and unnecessarily complicated explanation did more harm than help.
The key things to know are that Inverter of Truth's instructions are followed in order and each step only does as much as it says.
- First, you put all the cards currently in your library into exile face-down
- Then you put all the cards currently in your graveyard into your library (the library zone, not the cards in exile) and shuffle them up
This leaves you with a bunch of cards in exile and a library made up of what used to be in your graveyard. If you're trying to win with Thassa's Oracle, then before playing Inverter of Truth you either need to try to have a very small graveyard or make sure you'll be able to shrink your library quickly after Inverter's ability resolves.
April 5, 2020 3:32 p.m.
I have 4x Opt. That will cause my really small graveyard on turn 4, which is the turn I can cast Inverter of Truth, to be an even smaller library when used I make my graveyard my library. Perhaps a better drawing card is needed because Opt is only 4 cards for 4 mana total? If I want to win badly and am taking a lot of damage, I can kamikaze with milling myself, but it is very dangerous. If I want to win through milling, I can simply use the other win condition. Even if I can't use either win condition, I can still mill them to death, especially with creatures blocking and Crypt Incursion to give me far more life than 20.
April 5, 2020 3:40 p.m.
All I needed to know was that the old library is exiled, and that the new library consists of graveyard. It's really that simple! But tip o' the hat to everyone whom helped me out! Now I just have to perfect my win condition strategies!
Oh, and TypicalTimmy did you read my response to you on my wall?
Kogarashi says... #1
Your original library stays in exile.
When Inverter of Truth enters the battlefield, its ability triggers. When that resolves, two things happen. First, your library as it currently is goes into exile face-down (so no one, including you, can look at the cards). Second, your graveyard becomes your library, getting shuffled and placed face-down where your library goes.
The ability doesn't specify anything else happening, so you end with a new library, no graveyard, and a pile of face-down cards (your previous library) in exile.
If it were an effect that gave you your library back from exile, it would say so. For instance, ending the ability with "then put the exiled cards into your graveyard," would result in your previous library becoming your graveyard. An example of how this might work can be seen on Living Death and Living End, which ultimately swap all the creatures on the battlefield with all the creatures in the graveyards. You can see there that there is wording for the exiled creatures to then go to the battlefield. Inverter of Truth doesn't have such wording, so your exiled cards stay exiled until something else interacts with them (Riftsweeper, a Processor creature of some sort).
April 4, 2020 10:52 p.m.