suppose i manage to draft three (or four) mind sculpt. i really like mind sculpt!
what's the best kind of deck that i could make to make mind sculpt "work" as best as it can? is mill even possible in this format? what makes mind sculpt a bad card, and what are the best ways to minimize the effects of those bad aspects?
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Goblins have poor impulse control. Don't click this link!!
some of my favourite flavour text:
Wayward Soul "no home no heart no hope"
—Stronghold graffito
Raging Goblin He raged at the world, at his family, at his life. But mostly he just raged.
If you're desperate to try to get Mind Sculpt to work for you, I recommend going either the Undergrowth Scavenger route or the Endless Obedience route. The reason it's a bad card is that it doesn't change the board state or do anything to help you win... until the last one you cast. If you're intent on playing it, try it with something that has some synergy or cards (such as walls or Rotfeaster Maggot) that can keep you alive long enough to dig for all the Mind Sculpts you need.
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My helpy helpdesk of helpfulness.
My Decks: EDH: Sygg, River Cutthroat , Road to Scion
Grimgrin, Corpseborn Modern: Polytokes IRL: Progenitus Polymorph , Goblins
In a 12-turn game (this is already pretty long to be surviving ... your deck had better be super defensive), you see about half your deck. In 12 turns your opponent has 40-7-12=21 cards left in their deck. If you want to win by mill, you needed to cast 3 Mind Sculpts. Since you only saw half your deck, that means your deck has 6 Mind Sculpts. Basically, if you drafted 5 or fewer Mind Sculpts, I would shelve the idea of making the mill deck. Even with 6 Mind Sculpts, I seriously doubt your deck's ability to defend until turn 12 when 6 of the spells in your deck does nothing to help you defend or mess with your opponent's board position.
If you're insistent on winning off the back of bad cards though, you might as well throw a Profane Memento in there as well
Unless you have a good control deck (which is VERY hard to do with multiple Mind Sculpts in your deck), you will probably need at least 6-7 Mind Sculpts to have any real chance of milling someone out. If you can get that many in a draft, go for it - but it's pretty unlikely. I agree with Hardened that the best way to leverage Mind Sculpt is with other graveyard-based cards. Unfortunately, most of the payoffs for filling graveyards come in green and black, which already have fine enablers (Satyr Wayfinder, Necromancer's Assistant) that actually help on the board. The GB Graveyard deck does not need to splash blue for a subpar enabler like Mind Sculpt.
A more likely way to mill someone out is to build a strong control deck that has a Grindclock as one of its finishers. It's a very slow wincon that doesn't affect the board, but it will get the job done eventually if they don't have any artifact destruction available. However Torch Fiend and Naturalize are both commons in this format and are both borderline maindeckable. I'd rather use a few good fliers or green fatties to close out the my control deck's games - they can block if necessary.
In conclusion, I don't think milling your opponent out is a thing in M15. I've had 3 different opponents try it against me - none of them beat me, and it generally wasn't close.
It's just not really viable in M15 due to the lack of additional support for it. In m14 we had Tome Scour, Millstone and Archeomancer at common and uncommon. Blue was also so good in it, that taking the available blue playables and then prioritizing mill was really pretty viable.
suppose i manage to draft three (or four) mind sculpt. i really like mind sculpt!
what's the best kind of deck that i could make to make mind sculpt "work" as best as it can? is mill even possible in this format? what makes mind sculpt a bad card, and what are the best ways to minimize the effects of those bad aspects?
Mind Sculpt as a card is a skill tester. It's not meant to be played in decks.
It can only really be good if you're milling yourself. So a deck built around Undergrowth Scavenger seems like your best bet.
alfindeol, it's a good point you make, about m14 having more support [archeomancer and, well, being able to control the board enough to force long games] to try to live the dream in milling out your opponent.
and randomdragoon, your analysis is very sobering, about only seeing on average half your deck in a 12-turn game, and thus needing about 5-6 mind sculpts for mill to actually do stuff. sigh.
i like the idea of trying to make it work, though; if i get get one win from milling out my opponent out of a night of FNM, i'll be happy.
In conclusion, I don't think milling your opponent out is a thing in M15. I've had 3 different opponents try it against me - none of them beat me, and it generally wasn't close.
*clenches fist* i want to be the exception!!! *fist quivers in determination*.
well, at least i can try it out on apprentice. at least it's no risk, that way
so, i'm going to try to make a black-blue-green stalling deck ... yeah.
*exhale* okay. so this analysis showed me that mind sculpt is even less of a thing in m15 than it was in m14, but i'm free to try to build a stalling deck with walls and typhoid rats and 2/5 lifegaining roadblocks, and to throw in some black and green cards (and profane memento?! probably not, lol) to make my mind sculpts do /something/ in the majority of games where they don't actually make me win. maybe i'll live the dream and animate an opponent's mythic rare creature or something, i dunno
'k, thanks everyone.
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Goblins have poor impulse control. Don't click this link!!
some of my favourite flavour text:
Wayward Soul "no home no heart no hope"
—Stronghold graffito
Raging Goblin He raged at the world, at his family, at his life. But mostly he just raged.
alfindeol, it's a good point you make, about m14 having more support [archeomancer and, well, being able to control the board enough to force long games] to try to live the dream in milling out your opponent.
and randomdragoon, your analysis is very sobering, about only seeing on average half your deck in a 12-turn game, and thus needing about 5-6 mind sculpts for mill to actually do stuff. sigh.
i like the idea of trying to make it work, though; if i get get one win from milling out my opponent out of a night of FNM, i'll be happy.
In conclusion, I don't think milling your opponent out is a thing in M15. I've had 3 different opponents try it against me - none of them beat me, and it generally wasn't close.
*clenches fist* i want to be the exception!!! *fist quivers in determination*.
well, at least i can try it out on apprentice. at least it's no risk, that way
so, i'm going to try to make a black-blue-green stalling deck ... yeah.
*exhale* okay. so this analysis showed me that mind sculpt is even less of a thing in m15 than it was in m14, but i'm free to try to build a stalling deck with walls and typhoid rats and 2/5 lifegaining roadblocks, and to throw in some black and green cards (and profane memento?! probably not, lol) to make my mind sculpts do /something/ in the majority of games where they don't actually make me win. maybe i'll live the dream and animate an opponent's mythic rare creature or something, i dunno
'k, thanks everyone.
Best of luck! I too want to live the dream, but I've just not had it happen yet.
There was some enlightened fellow trying to make the Mind SculptEnsoul Artifact deck work at FNM last Friday. He must have drafted every Ornithopter known to man or planes walker. While I didn't get to play him, both my kids did (9 & 12) and they crushed him in about 10 or 15 minutes each match while playing very simply, creature-based decks that you would expect for kids their age. Hysterical. Just no.
Unlike Tome Scour and most of the Dimir mill spells, Mind Sculpt can only target opponents, so you can't use it to feed your own graveyard. This doesn't matter with Undergrowth Scavenger though.
Never go mill in M15. I love mill, I go mill whenever I can, but I will not go Mill unless you get more than 5 Mindscuplt and a lot of good blue stall. I ran mill in Gatecrash and JBT whenever I could (and won with it).
The only way Mind Sculpt could ever work is if you notice 3 go around in the first set of packs, gobble them up with picks 8-14, then get another four in the junk time over the course of the next two packs.
I mean, you'd need at least six... What are the odds of even having 6-8 Mindsculpts in 24 packs?
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Master of inaccurate, non-thought-out baseless and naive statements.
I like baby fowl.
I wouldn't run Mind Sculpt unless you can get 6-8. With that plus some Divinations and solid defense, now you're talking about actually having a high enough chance of seeing lethal mill effects over the course of a game. We still haven't factored in whether you have enough "spare" mana (after playing stuff to manage the board) to actually resolve 4+ Mind Sculpts on the opponent, but hopefully that is possible as the game drags on. We're also assuming you have superior defensive spells because you're seeing a lower proportion of board interaction cards than the opponent so you need the ones you draw to actually have major impact. But anyway, with 8 Mind Sculpts drafted you stand a reasonable shot of milling someone out.
DRAFTING MILL
I would pretty much only ever try to draft that mill deck if I was dumped Mind Sculpt in pack 1 cards 12-14 (3 in a row.. fluke but it can happen.. I've been dumped 3 in a row of other D-/F cards before). At that stage, if you notice more Mind Sculpts in your early packs in P2, you can count on wheeling them while you grab good cards. Then you might have 4-5 Mind Sculpts by the end of pack 2. Pack 3 is still a gamble but if you can cross that 6 threshold then you're in business and MAY actually be able to consider running a mill deck (you pretty much only do this if you were cut in your main colors and don't like the main deck you drafted, i.e. your plan A failed). If you don't end up running the mill, then it's not like you wasted valuable picks grabbing them so you're still safe!
Ideally you want to have some Horned Turtle/Rotted Hulk-type creatures to round out the deck, but sadly M15 doesn't have any.
CAVEAT
IMO the big problem in M15 specifically (vs other core set formats) is how much sideboarding matters to meet the various archetypes. And how much random 1/1s and bears matter to help convoke. So you're usually using those late picks on sideboard cards or archetype cards and giving those up for mill might actually cripple your plan A, which is the very thing you don't want when drafting mill. You only draft mill when it's using up picks that wouldn't affect your deck anyway.
DISCLAIMER: This is how to draft and win with mill if your friend just bet you $50 over it, not how to win at Magic in general. If you want to win at Magic in general, learn to realize that "Mind Sculpt" is actually Japanese for "non-foil Mountain". It has about equivalent draft value.
FTW1987, that was a great analysis. thanks for taking the time to write that up.
i have a differnet question, then. suppose i'm playing blue-green, and i drafted something silly like five Undergrowth Scavengers. would it be worth it to put one or two Mind Sculpt in? [or, if i have five of a combination of that black 3/5 that exiles a creature and gains you life, or that black convoke sorcery that reanimates a creature from a graveyard?] that is, can Mind Sculpt ever be worth putting in if you don't intend to win through mill?
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Goblins have poor impulse control. Don't click this link!!
some of my favourite flavour text:
Wayward Soul "no home no heart no hope"
—Stronghold graffito
Raging Goblin He raged at the world, at his family, at his life. But mostly he just raged.
I suppose I might run a Mind Sculpt or 2 if I got 3+ Undergrowth Scavengers - but then again I might not if I liked the rest of my deck enough. It turns out that creatures trade so much that Undergrowth Scavenger doesn't really need any help to be quite good in M15. In a weak deck, however, it might be worth it to try to power up your nut draws.
Even with the Scavengers I wouldn't grab Mind Sculpt over another playable card. Even if it grows your scavengers, you are wasting 1+ cards to do it. I mean, you're basically talking about drafting Crucible of Fire if you have some dragons. It CAN work, but you're just making already big creatures even bigger and you might not be able to keep any dragons on the table. If you got dumped Mind Sculpts and then you were struggling to find good 22nd and 23rd cards then I guess you could run 1-2 to pump your scavengers.
But this format has Souls and you can get blown out by milling a Soul into the opponent's GY, enabling creature recursion, or pumping any of their Scavengers.
The only time I've seen a mill deck do well in M15 was when they got Grindclock. With the proper support like the Memento, Wall of Frost, Frost Lynx and bounce it's very effective.
The problem is you need a whole lot of things to go right to pull it off so it isn't really something you chase during the draft, it sort of just happens
I wouldn't recommend the Profane Memento....no matter what kind of mill strategy...or ANY strategy you may be inclined to play. Strictly life gain, and bad life gain at that isn't worth a card.......even in a deck considering an unplayable startegy, such as mind sculpt mill.
A single Grindclock can do wonders as a win condition vs 5 or less mind sculpts, but if you insist on using Mind Sculpt, the numbers given are pretty easy to agree with. Less then 6 and the deck is simply unplayable....and I've never gotten 6 of any card ever in a draft......3 Garys and 4 Voyaging Ends in a triple Theros draft.....easy 1st place....but that was about as lucky as I got.
You wont need luck finding Mind Sculpts, no one wants them. You will need luck however....finding 6 of them. Then finding room to still make your deck not die trying to play them.
Like above, if you want to have a mill win condition in a slow, defensive deck, grab a Grindclock, they usually go late. But even then, I'd usually cut Grindclock if I have more win conditions or control elements.
In M14, I *have* been milled out a few times (in hundreds of MTGO drafts) by very good blue decks. But blue was better then, with Essence Scatter, Claustrophobia, and most importantly Archaeomancer.
You need grindclock to even try to make the mill deck.
I got lost in a draft and was basically rare drafting and I accidentally built the G/U walls deck with grindlock. It worked reasonably well, 1:1:1 but I ran into some artifact hate and milled myself to death one game (wall of much allows a ton of card draw) died to fliers in the match I lost, a few more spiders and I might of been ok.
I think you could do it if you focused it from the start... probably needs the two wall of much to fuel like I had and some restock to repeatedly use the mill cards.
It is hard but not impossible.
I had someone keep a 1 land hand against because he had all 4 mindscuplts in hand.. I won with 3 cards in my library, had he found a land a turn earlier or if I didn't find Nissa I was dead.
I've only successfully played mill once in limited. At the Born of the Gods prerelease, I opened 2 Mindreaver (I was terribly disappointed at first). I looked at my pool, stared at two evanescent intellect, a floodtide serpent, a whelming wave, 3 Mnemonic Walls, divinations, and a retraction helix. I lost against a timmy deck with Bow of Nylea - with the bow out (all 3 games!) he just kept putting cards in his library and I drew my entire deck without being able to kill him.
I milled my opponents 3 times, won by controlling the board the rest of the time. I think I got 6 / 65 and I don't think I had seen a mill deck do so well before or since.
If you're talking about other formats, I found it pretty easy to 3-0 draft pods with UB Dimir mill (in triple GTC) if you opened a P1P1 Consuming Aberration. That was usually the only reason I would consider Dimir, but it happened a few times and was generally successful. Sometimes I was rewarded with a 2nd Aberration! You can end up getting Mind Grind as pick 12, which is honestly not that bad as a finisher. Dimir was underdrafted so not hard to force or grab key incidental effects (Balustrade Spy, Sage's Row Denizen, Grisly Spectacle, Mindeye Drake, Psychic Strike) and splash the powerful creatures from Orzhov while everyone else was overdrafting aggro, letting you mill while still playing normal Magic.
But for M15, sounds like Grindclock or go home. Too many cards invested otherwise.
Y'know, Mind sculpt isn't necessarily that bad of a card, but it's kind of lonely. Even really strong cards can be really bad in a set if they're too lonely. If you threw Plague Stinger by itself into a set it would be bad to draft because of its loneliness, even if you could theoretically get five copies.
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what's the best kind of deck that i could make to make mind sculpt "work" as best as it can? is mill even possible in this format? what makes mind sculpt a bad card, and what are the best ways to minimize the effects of those bad aspects?
Goblins have poor impulse control. Don't click this link!!
some of my favourite flavour text:
Wayward Soul
"no home no heart no hope"
—Stronghold graffito
Raging Goblin
He raged at the world, at his family, at his life. But mostly he just raged.
Ahem.
If you're desperate to try to get Mind Sculpt to work for you, I recommend going either the Undergrowth Scavenger route or the Endless Obedience route. The reason it's a bad card is that it doesn't change the board state or do anything to help you win... until the last one you cast. If you're intent on playing it, try it with something that has some synergy or cards (such as walls or Rotfeaster Maggot) that can keep you alive long enough to dig for all the Mind Sculpts you need.
My Decks:
EDH: Sygg, River Cutthroat , Road to Scion
Grimgrin, Corpseborn
Modern: Polytokes
IRL: Progenitus Polymorph , Goblins
Just a friendly reminder that I will drive this car off a bridge
In a 12-turn game (this is already pretty long to be surviving ... your deck had better be super defensive), you see about half your deck. In 12 turns your opponent has 40-7-12=21 cards left in their deck. If you want to win by mill, you needed to cast 3 Mind Sculpts. Since you only saw half your deck, that means your deck has 6 Mind Sculpts. Basically, if you drafted 5 or fewer Mind Sculpts, I would shelve the idea of making the mill deck. Even with 6 Mind Sculpts, I seriously doubt your deck's ability to defend until turn 12 when 6 of the spells in your deck does nothing to help you defend or mess with your opponent's board position.
If you're insistent on winning off the back of bad cards though, you might as well throw a Profane Memento in there as well
A more likely way to mill someone out is to build a strong control deck that has a Grindclock as one of its finishers. It's a very slow wincon that doesn't affect the board, but it will get the job done eventually if they don't have any artifact destruction available. However Torch Fiend and Naturalize are both commons in this format and are both borderline maindeckable. I'd rather use a few good fliers or green fatties to close out the my control deck's games - they can block if necessary.
In conclusion, I don't think milling your opponent out is a thing in M15. I've had 3 different opponents try it against me - none of them beat me, and it generally wasn't close.
In m15 all you have is Mind Sculpt. If you're going to do it, you'll need a lot of Typhoid Rats, Research Assistant, Rotfeaster Maggot, Wall of Frost type cards to stall the board.
R Norin the Wary: I've Got a Bad Feeling About This
UG Thrasios & Kydele: Knowledge is Power
RG Borborygmos Enraged: The Breaking of the World
BG The Gitrog Monster: All Glory to the Hypnotoad
WUR Zedruu the Greathearted: Endless Possibilities, One Outcome
WBG Karador, Ghost Chieftain: What's Dead May Never Die
Turn your junk into something great with PucaTrade!
Mind Sculpt as a card is a skill tester. It's not meant to be played in decks.
It can only really be good if you're milling yourself. So a deck built around Undergrowth Scavenger seems like your best bet.
and randomdragoon, your analysis is very sobering, about only seeing on average half your deck in a 12-turn game, and thus needing about 5-6 mind sculpts for mill to actually do stuff. sigh.
i like the idea of trying to make it work, though; if i get get one win from milling out my opponent out of a night of FNM, i'll be happy.
*clenches fist* i want to be the exception!!! *fist quivers in determination*.
well, at least i can try it out on apprentice. at least it's no risk, that way
so, i'm going to try to make a black-blue-green stalling deck ... yeah.
*exhale* okay. so this analysis showed me that mind sculpt is even less of a thing in m15 than it was in m14, but i'm free to try to build a stalling deck with walls and typhoid rats and 2/5 lifegaining roadblocks, and to throw in some black and green cards (and profane memento?! probably not, lol) to make my mind sculpts do /something/ in the majority of games where they don't actually make me win. maybe i'll live the dream and animate an opponent's mythic rare creature or something, i dunno
'k, thanks everyone.
Goblins have poor impulse control. Don't click this link!!
some of my favourite flavour text:
Wayward Soul
"no home no heart no hope"
—Stronghold graffito
Raging Goblin
He raged at the world, at his family, at his life. But mostly he just raged.
Best of luck! I too want to live the dream, but I've just not had it happen yet.
R Norin the Wary: I've Got a Bad Feeling About This
UG Thrasios & Kydele: Knowledge is Power
RG Borborygmos Enraged: The Breaking of the World
BG The Gitrog Monster: All Glory to the Hypnotoad
WUR Zedruu the Greathearted: Endless Possibilities, One Outcome
WBG Karador, Ghost Chieftain: What's Dead May Never Die
Turn your junk into something great with PucaTrade!
My Custom Cube - a super-powered Core Set
I mean, you'd need at least six... What are the odds of even having 6-8 Mindsculpts in 24 packs?
I like baby fowl.
I wouldn't run Mind Sculpt unless you can get 6-8. With that plus some Divinations and solid defense, now you're talking about actually having a high enough chance of seeing lethal mill effects over the course of a game. We still haven't factored in whether you have enough "spare" mana (after playing stuff to manage the board) to actually resolve 4+ Mind Sculpts on the opponent, but hopefully that is possible as the game drags on. We're also assuming you have superior defensive spells because you're seeing a lower proportion of board interaction cards than the opponent so you need the ones you draw to actually have major impact. But anyway, with 8 Mind Sculpts drafted you stand a reasonable shot of milling someone out.
DRAFTING MILL
I would pretty much only ever try to draft that mill deck if I was dumped Mind Sculpt in pack 1 cards 12-14 (3 in a row.. fluke but it can happen.. I've been dumped 3 in a row of other D-/F cards before). At that stage, if you notice more Mind Sculpts in your early packs in P2, you can count on wheeling them while you grab good cards. Then you might have 4-5 Mind Sculpts by the end of pack 2. Pack 3 is still a gamble but if you can cross that 6 threshold then you're in business and MAY actually be able to consider running a mill deck (you pretty much only do this if you were cut in your main colors and don't like the main deck you drafted, i.e. your plan A failed). If you don't end up running the mill, then it's not like you wasted valuable picks grabbing them so you're still safe!
Ideally you want to have some Horned Turtle/Rotted Hulk-type creatures to round out the deck, but sadly M15 doesn't have any.
CAVEAT
IMO the big problem in M15 specifically (vs other core set formats) is how much sideboarding matters to meet the various archetypes. And how much random 1/1s and bears matter to help convoke. So you're usually using those late picks on sideboard cards or archetype cards and giving those up for mill might actually cripple your plan A, which is the very thing you don't want when drafting mill. You only draft mill when it's using up picks that wouldn't affect your deck anyway.
DISCLAIMER: This is how to draft and win with mill if your friend just bet you $50 over it, not how to win at Magic in general. If you want to win at Magic in general, learn to realize that "Mind Sculpt" is actually Japanese for "non-foil Mountain". It has about equivalent draft value.
i have a differnet question, then. suppose i'm playing blue-green, and i drafted something silly like five Undergrowth Scavengers. would it be worth it to put one or two Mind Sculpt in? [or, if i have five of a combination of that black 3/5 that exiles a creature and gains you life, or that black convoke sorcery that reanimates a creature from a graveyard?] that is, can Mind Sculpt ever be worth putting in if you don't intend to win through mill?
Goblins have poor impulse control. Don't click this link!!
some of my favourite flavour text:
Wayward Soul
"no home no heart no hope"
—Stronghold graffito
Raging Goblin
He raged at the world, at his family, at his life. But mostly he just raged.
But this format has Souls and you can get blown out by milling a Soul into the opponent's GY, enabling creature recursion, or pumping any of their Scavengers.
The problem is you need a whole lot of things to go right to pull it off so it isn't really something you chase during the draft, it sort of just happens
A single Grindclock can do wonders as a win condition vs 5 or less mind sculpts, but if you insist on using Mind Sculpt, the numbers given are pretty easy to agree with. Less then 6 and the deck is simply unplayable....and I've never gotten 6 of any card ever in a draft......3 Garys and 4 Voyaging Ends in a triple Theros draft.....easy 1st place....but that was about as lucky as I got.
You wont need luck finding Mind Sculpts, no one wants them. You will need luck however....finding 6 of them. Then finding room to still make your deck not die trying to play them.
if you like packs / MTGO tickets.
Like above, if you want to have a mill win condition in a slow, defensive deck, grab a Grindclock, they usually go late. But even then, I'd usually cut Grindclock if I have more win conditions or control elements.
In M14, I *have* been milled out a few times (in hundreds of MTGO drafts) by very good blue decks. But blue was better then, with Essence Scatter, Claustrophobia, and most importantly Archaeomancer.
I got lost in a draft and was basically rare drafting and I accidentally built the G/U walls deck with grindlock. It worked reasonably well, 1:1:1 but I ran into some artifact hate and milled myself to death one game (wall of much allows a ton of card draw) died to fliers in the match I lost, a few more spiders and I might of been ok.
I think you could do it if you focused it from the start... probably needs the two wall of much to fuel like I had and some restock to repeatedly use the mill cards.
It is hard but not impossible.
I had someone keep a 1 land hand against because he had all 4 mindscuplts in hand.. I won with 3 cards in my library, had he found a land a turn earlier or if I didn't find Nissa I was dead.
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
I milled my opponents 3 times, won by controlling the board the rest of the time. I think I got 6 / 65 and I don't think I had seen a mill deck do so well before or since.
But for M15, sounds like Grindclock or go home. Too many cards invested otherwise.