Its not nearly as amazing as FoF but good nonetheless. It isn't amazing in the sense that unlike FoF, you don't absolutely get the card you want but if they want to keep you from it, it means you're getting 3 or 4 cards. On the other hand, sadly, the graveyard synergy is mostly going to rotate.
Someone did complain that is should of been in RTR but I think Innstrads flashbackness was the reason they moved this forward.
I feel like RTR really shouldn't of been next to innstrad. All the cards that would of been great in RTR but got broken by things like snappy are appearing now in Theos.
Anyway... I'd play it.
It is a replacement for Forbiden alchemy. I am intending to try to play some sort of UR control this is what I'd be looking for. With enough redunancy in your deck you should be able to work around the downside.
Although it will be much worse at getting you that 5th land you desperately need.
Yes, the thoughtflare mention is a big one. Control doesn't care all that much about paying one more for a draw spell like this to convert the advantage. Barring mistakes by the opponent, thoughtflare would usually be well worth paying one more and then some. Possibly even more importantly, revealing an aetherling and 4 other cards is not so good. Due to the way a control deck wins these days, you're prettymuch dropping the aetherling. Its too slow for any but a control or a really slow midrange/control so the uses would be limited. While a nice throwback and not innately bad (I think its pretty decent), between thoughtflare, opportunity (why not just pay a little more and not have to pick?), etc. The cost factor is only further mitigated with the presence of scrying in the set to help make sure that you hit lands drops when you need it.
This card is going to dominate the format for 2 years. That's abundantly clear.
It's different from FoF, but not directly worse. I mean, the cost is clearly worse--but aside from that, it has upsides and downsides. FoF forces your opponent to split 2 piles, which puts the burden on your opponent to set up something along the lines of a number of permutations between 5 cards. A lot of the time, your opponent will screw that up. Not a lot of players really know how to split those kinds of piles, and even if they do--there's always the possibility that they're going to make a bad judgment call.
With this card, it's different. You don't get to be so lazy and just flip them over and hand them to your opponent; you have to reveal them and then show your opponent the piles as you make them, which can be a tell--a major slip of information. It also can be a slip of false information, based upon body language and which order you arrange the cards. In addition, you're also going to gain the advantage (over FoF) by being able to set up two piles that can't possibly fail you, regardless of which one you get. Often, that's going to mean: "I'll get the 3 cards if you don't give me the 2 best cards," or "I'll get the 3 cards, or I'll get the best card and something else I can use (like a land)."
Most of the time, this is going to be an Inspiration that gives you 2 really, really good cards out of 5. The rest of the time, it's going to draw you 3 cards. If you built your deck with cards that don't suck, getting the 3 pile is going to be pretty good.
FoF isn't insane just because of graveyard interactions. Those are honestly just icing on the cake. FoF is insane because it costs 4 mana and digs 5 cards deep, and very few draw spells chain together as effectively as FoFs. Steam Augury's biggest downside is that your opponent can break the chain--but, then again, what happens when your deck has more than just 4 Steam Auguries for the draw spells? What happens when you split Steam Augury+X and another draw spell+Y+X? You're going to get another Augury, or you're going to get some kind of draw spell out of 3 cards? I mean, they can break the chain if you only play Steam Auguries...but if you have any way of digging it back out of your yard, or you have other draw spells in the deck, they're just not going to break the chain.
What will be interesting/funny (to me) is how often people are going to screw this up and lose both their Aetherlings, without a way to get them back. More interesting than funny will be how people actually solve this problem. This card is going to see lots of play. The question is: what does it do to deck design?
I think this card puts more pressure on the deckbuilder than players making decisions, but the payoff is big enough to try.
Also it's a good value card
Think twice = two random cards for 5
Thoughtflare = two selected cards for 5
Augury = 2-3 cards for 4 of which 1-2 will be selected, and that's not mentioning the 1vs4 piles case
It's certainly an interesting card, the question is what deck does it belong in?
I was hoping to be able to have 6-7 temples if I ran a three colour deck but this is looking to push us to UR which doesn't have a temple, URG is the only three colour combo this could go in that gets two types of temple immediately on rotation, but the best green cards for control are green black (abrupt decay etc).
This seems to be trying to push Grixis or UWR despite a less good mana base. Without Snapcaster available I don't know how to start on a Grixis list, but it could be good with say 4x Inspiration and 4 of this as the draw suite, I think I'm going to wait for more spoilers before brainstorming up a first list though.
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I'm a control player, because I like to reserve the right to say no.
This card is bad. FoF main advantage was your opponent created the piles. This is the opposite. You make the piles and your opponent picks which one you get.
You won't get the pile you'll need and it is in colors that cannot take advantage of anything put in the graveyard.
This card is exactly what Grixis needed for CA. Now it just needs a better sweeper than Mizzium Mortars.
It's also funny how people complain that MtG is being "Dumbed Down." So a skill intensive card is printed. Everyone now complains about it. What a joke.
Read the Bones is sweet, but this card preserves your life total which is a problem for Grixis decks since they can't gain life back efficiently, if at all.
As for Opportunity, this card allows Grixis decks to run less 6 drops. Helps speed up the deck a little bit. I'm not saying cut Opportunity completely because that is the decks "Sphinx' Revelation." But it allows them to run only 1-2 of instead of 3-4.
If grixis wants to draw cards it will be using Opportunity or Read the Bones.
Your opponent is never going to give you the piles with 3 cards. If they do it is because there is something in the 2 pile that they cannot answer.
So what you are telling me is that if I flip over cards
A, B, C, D and E and I want card B then I get to choose Card B + another awesome card? (cause my deck is awesome)
Let me give you a situation here buddy.
I am holding an aetherling in hand and a board sweeper
I flip over an aetherling a board sweeper + 3 other cards. ANY intellimagent person will be able to split this in such a way to make it seem like you really want the aetherling/board sweeper when what you really want is more cards.
Oh Im running out if ways to count the games ill be winning off of my opponent picking the incorrect pile because they are terrible players.
QFT. This card is one that allows an inordinate amount of mind games to be thrown at your opponent. Yes you don't always get the single best card like you will with FoF, but if you get the piles right then you're going to be winning no matter how you split them. I can envision myself staring down an army of X/3 dudes, casting this EoT and flipping mortars and 4 other cards. I offer them the mortars, or the other 4. they give me 4 cards, and then I play the mortars I had in hand anyway.
Making plays like this is going to separate the great players from the good players.
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The steam augury is that case just made you go from a very good spot to a much better one.
People keep bringing this up, if I need X I'll split the cards 4/1 then ill get the 4 and win cause I already had what I needed. What about when you actually need the mortars to not lose. You get 4 cards and get to die.
If your deck has enough redundancy. Then you don't have a problem. If mizzium mortars is the only card in your deck that can save you well you should of had more sweepers in your deck.
All you have proved is that it isn't as good as fof. The real question is it better than inspiration and or thoughtflare.
It is a bad top deck in a desperate situation. But that is what magma jet and scry are for.
The thing I wonder is how much better will targeted discard be with this card in the format? I mean, we know Thoughtseize will be good, but this card makes it pretty well necessary. This card is much better than half the people here think.
Depending on when someone casts it is how useful it will be. Say my control playing opponent casts it at my end step on turn 4, depending on the cards I have in hand, I won't care whether or not they get an Aetherling, because if I have a Thoughtseize, by all means, cast another threat, leave a black open, strip it from your hand. However, end step of turn 7+ gets trickier.
As some other people have said, this card will punish bad players in a huge way, which makes me happy. Nothing infuriates me more than losing to a bad player because they had a good draw and I did not. But what I think will be interesting, what cards will get pushed to being incredible because of this card? Slaughter Games is already good, this just might make it better. Rakdos's Return, maybe (likely to be countered). Discard becomes all the more relevant when you force your opponent to take a pile of 1 (say you discarded their other Aetherling).
Overall, I like it. It adds to the intellectual aspect of the game, and if you are not playing control, this will make you think more, which is great. Be looking for 4x Thoughtseize in every deck that can support it, though, because this card begs for that to happen.
The steam augury is that case just made you go from a very good spot to a much better one.
People keep bringing this up, if I need X I'll split the cards 4/1 then ill get the 4 and win cause I already had what I needed. What about when you actually need the mortars to not lose. You get 4 cards and get to die.
Alright, so that happens. Now, let's say in a parallel universe, your deck shuffles the exact same way. What card to dig 5 cards deep (assuming it was the fifth card) to get that Mortars would you use?
This card is like Forbidden Alchemy but gets you potentially more cards and digs deeper. Think of it that way. Oh, also, if your opponent sucks, it punishes them, if they don't, then you get whatever pile your opponent thinks is less useful.
My point is it doesn't matter if mortars is the 5th card. If you NEED it you won't get it. I'm not saying this card is bad, it's playable, but I'm tired of everyone thinking they'll get these sweet 4 card draws off of it. This card is good enough to see some play in some decks. It's not a auto four of or even playable in most decks but decks like grixis and America control will want 1-3 of it.
With FoF your opponent wants two make both piles as even as possible so that when you pick the best one it is only slightly better than the other pile. With this you make the piles as even as possible so that when your opponent picks the worst pile it is only slightly worse. I think it's pretty clear that in any truly competitive environment this is strictly worse than FoF. The only case where this is not true is if you flip say 2 negates and 2 mizzium mortars then you get to make more balanced piles to that either way you get a good spread of answers. I don't believe that the few cases where solution diversity comes up will make up for the inherent disadvantage of giving your opponent the final choice though as any split in the symmetry and it goes back to being strictly worse.
It's also funny how people complain that MtG is being "Dumbed Down." So a skill intensive card is printed. Everyone now complains about it. What a joke.
Evaluating a cards power and complaining it's too complex are two very different things. Just because some people are arguing that it's a bad card(or more commonly that it's not the second coming of FoF) doesn't mean they are complaining about it. There is a trend however that any time they make a complex card they also purposefully make it weak. This is because it's hard to judge the power level of complex cards and design and development are either lazy or bad at their jobs. This is one of the few cases where a complex card is actually good because they just took an already known card back from the glory days of magic and made it worse. I will admit that they did have a good set recently though. It was called timespiral and I'm pretty sure it was only good because it it was a time portal to the past. I honestly can't beleive that magic has gone so down hill after they printed future site. Even though future site was the worst set in the block it had some pretty cool stuff going on so I was optimistic about the future but then came lorwyn and morning tide which were still kind of cool... but... but then their was the block that won't be named... and no i'm not talking about Kamigawa! Anyways I digress. The point is I have not read a single post actually complaining that this card is in one of our rare slots and if I haven't seen any they must be rare. I think the argument is over it's power level.
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It's pretty much an inverse Fact or Fiction. You assemble the piles, but they choose the one you'll be keeping.
I feel like RTR really shouldn't of been next to innstrad. All the cards that would of been great in RTR but got broken by things like snappy are appearing now in Theos.
Anyway... I'd play it.
It is a replacement for Forbiden alchemy. I am intending to try to play some sort of UR control this is what I'd be looking for. With enough redunancy in your deck you should be able to work around the downside.
Although it will be much worse at getting you that 5th land you desperately need.
inspiration and thoughtflare are its comperition.
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This is a great card in modern. I don't doubt that for a second.
But in standard it's not good. There's simply no way to abuse the graveyard in the manner that you can in modern.
It's different from FoF, but not directly worse. I mean, the cost is clearly worse--but aside from that, it has upsides and downsides. FoF forces your opponent to split 2 piles, which puts the burden on your opponent to set up something along the lines of a number of permutations between 5 cards. A lot of the time, your opponent will screw that up. Not a lot of players really know how to split those kinds of piles, and even if they do--there's always the possibility that they're going to make a bad judgment call.
With this card, it's different. You don't get to be so lazy and just flip them over and hand them to your opponent; you have to reveal them and then show your opponent the piles as you make them, which can be a tell--a major slip of information. It also can be a slip of false information, based upon body language and which order you arrange the cards. In addition, you're also going to gain the advantage (over FoF) by being able to set up two piles that can't possibly fail you, regardless of which one you get. Often, that's going to mean: "I'll get the 3 cards if you don't give me the 2 best cards," or "I'll get the 3 cards, or I'll get the best card and something else I can use (like a land)."
Most of the time, this is going to be an Inspiration that gives you 2 really, really good cards out of 5. The rest of the time, it's going to draw you 3 cards. If you built your deck with cards that don't suck, getting the 3 pile is going to be pretty good.
FoF isn't insane just because of graveyard interactions. Those are honestly just icing on the cake. FoF is insane because it costs 4 mana and digs 5 cards deep, and very few draw spells chain together as effectively as FoFs. Steam Augury's biggest downside is that your opponent can break the chain--but, then again, what happens when your deck has more than just 4 Steam Auguries for the draw spells? What happens when you split Steam Augury+X and another draw spell+Y+X? You're going to get another Augury, or you're going to get some kind of draw spell out of 3 cards? I mean, they can break the chain if you only play Steam Auguries...but if you have any way of digging it back out of your yard, or you have other draw spells in the deck, they're just not going to break the chain.
What will be interesting/funny (to me) is how often people are going to screw this up and lose both their Aetherlings, without a way to get them back. More interesting than funny will be how people actually solve this problem. This card is going to see lots of play. The question is: what does it do to deck design?
Also it's a good value card
Think twice = two random cards for 5
Thoughtflare = two selected cards for 5
Augury = 2-3 cards for 4 of which 1-2 will be selected, and that's not mentioning the 1vs4 piles case
I was hoping to be able to have 6-7 temples if I ran a three colour deck but this is looking to push us to UR which doesn't have a temple, URG is the only three colour combo this could go in that gets two types of temple immediately on rotation, but the best green cards for control are green black (abrupt decay etc).
This seems to be trying to push Grixis or UWR despite a less good mana base. Without Snapcaster available I don't know how to start on a Grixis list, but it could be good with say 4x Inspiration and 4 of this as the draw suite, I think I'm going to wait for more spoilers before brainstorming up a first list though.
You won't get the pile you'll need and it is in colors that cannot take advantage of anything put in the graveyard.
This card is exactly what Grixis needed for CA. Now it just needs a better sweeper than Mizzium Mortars.
It's also funny how people complain that MtG is being "Dumbed Down." So a skill intensive card is printed. Everyone now complains about it. What a joke.
Your opponent is never going to give you the piles with 3 cards. If they do it is because there is something in the 2 pile that they cannot answer.
As for Opportunity, this card allows Grixis decks to run less 6 drops. Helps speed up the deck a little bit. I'm not saying cut Opportunity completely because that is the decks "Sphinx' Revelation." But it allows them to run only 1-2 of instead of 3-4.
If netting the larger pile is your primary goal, you are doing it wrong.
You either get Aetherling or a 4 cards CA, good enough.
I don't think it will dominate the format, but it seems like exactly what a UB deck wanted.
So what you are telling me is that if I flip over cards
A, B, C, D and E and I want card B then I get to choose Card B + another awesome card? (cause my deck is awesome)
Let me give you a situation here buddy.
I am holding an aetherling in hand and a board sweeper
I flip over an aetherling a board sweeper + 3 other cards. ANY intellimagent person will be able to split this in such a way to make it seem like you really want the aetherling/board sweeper when what you really want is more cards.
QFT. This card is one that allows an inordinate amount of mind games to be thrown at your opponent. Yes you don't always get the single best card like you will with FoF, but if you get the piles right then you're going to be winning no matter how you split them. I can envision myself staring down an army of X/3 dudes, casting this EoT and flipping mortars and 4 other cards. I offer them the mortars, or the other 4. they give me 4 cards, and then I play the mortars I had in hand anyway.
Making plays like this is going to separate the great players from the good players.
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People keep bringing this up, if I need X I'll split the cards 4/1 then ill get the 4 and win cause I already had what I needed. What about when you actually need the mortars to not lose. You get 4 cards and get to die.
All you have proved is that it isn't as good as fof. The real question is it better than inspiration and or thoughtflare.
It is a bad top deck in a desperate situation. But that is what magma jet and scry are for.
Pioneer:UR Pheonix
Modern:U Mono U Tron
EDH
GB Glissa, the traitor: Army of Cans
UW Dragonlord Ojutai: Dragonlord NOjutai
UWGDerevi, Empyrial Tactician "you cannot fight the storm"
R Zirilan of the claw. The solution to every problem is dragons
UB Etrata, the Silencer Cloning assassination
Peasant cube: Cards I own
Depending on when someone casts it is how useful it will be. Say my control playing opponent casts it at my end step on turn 4, depending on the cards I have in hand, I won't care whether or not they get an Aetherling, because if I have a Thoughtseize, by all means, cast another threat, leave a black open, strip it from your hand. However, end step of turn 7+ gets trickier.
As some other people have said, this card will punish bad players in a huge way, which makes me happy. Nothing infuriates me more than losing to a bad player because they had a good draw and I did not. But what I think will be interesting, what cards will get pushed to being incredible because of this card? Slaughter Games is already good, this just might make it better. Rakdos's Return, maybe (likely to be countered). Discard becomes all the more relevant when you force your opponent to take a pile of 1 (say you discarded their other Aetherling).
Overall, I like it. It adds to the intellectual aspect of the game, and if you are not playing control, this will make you think more, which is great. Be looking for 4x Thoughtseize in every deck that can support it, though, because this card begs for that to happen.
Alright, so that happens. Now, let's say in a parallel universe, your deck shuffles the exact same way. What card to dig 5 cards deep (assuming it was the fifth card) to get that Mortars would you use?
This card is like Forbidden Alchemy but gets you potentially more cards and digs deeper. Think of it that way. Oh, also, if your opponent sucks, it punishes them, if they don't, then you get whatever pile your opponent thinks is less useful.
MTGS egos at their finest.
Thoughts on proxies:
Evaluating a cards power and complaining it's too complex are two very different things. Just because some people are arguing that it's a bad card(or more commonly that it's not the second coming of FoF) doesn't mean they are complaining about it. There is a trend however that any time they make a complex card they also purposefully make it weak. This is because it's hard to judge the power level of complex cards and design and development are either lazy or bad at their jobs. This is one of the few cases where a complex card is actually good because they just took an already known card back from the glory days of magic and made it worse. I will admit that they did have a good set recently though. It was called timespiral and I'm pretty sure it was only good because it it was a time portal to the past. I honestly can't beleive that magic has gone so down hill after they printed future site. Even though future site was the worst set in the block it had some pretty cool stuff going on so I was optimistic about the future but then came lorwyn and morning tide which were still kind of cool... but... but then their was the block that won't be named... and no i'm not talking about Kamigawa! Anyways I digress. The point is I have not read a single post actually complaining that this card is in one of our rare slots and if I haven't seen any they must be rare. I think the argument is over it's power level.