Wow... these leaks are insane. Honestly, I'd rather have Pithing Needle most of the time, and I don't run it. I think it's more exciting for standard than anywhere else. What if you look at their hand on T2 and they just have land + aggro beaters or something? You have to name an on-color card you HOPE is in their deck and you paid an extra mana over needle to do it. The problem is that you HAVE to name a card after you look at their hand. You could have just held the needle for CA + an answer. Not to mention that artifact removal is rampant in my cube, so this could pretty easily get removed by anything from Disenchant to Manglehorn. Not to mention that the ceiling isn't even that great. They have Thoughtseize and Griselbrand? They still get a huge beater and you just spent arguably your most important turn... just looking at their hand. I wouldn't even include this at 900+.
I prob would rather needle too, but I think I would pay that extra mana to know what to name. It makes it a LOT more palatable to MD this guy vs needle.
I really like this card, probably as much as Revoker / Needle. Information is key and this gives you info and lets you be disruptive. This will be a shoe-in for me at 540 over a random mana rock, been trying to replace a few of those without lowering my artifact count since I support the artifact.dec at Unpowered 540.
Spyglass seems MUCH better to me than Pithing Needle (difficult to adequately compare to Revoker as the body changes the equation quite a bit). This card can actually accurately mimic a colorless discard effect (not literally, but often enough the outcome will be the same), while retaining all that made Needle a solid role-player. Getting a fetchland as a pseudo-Stifle with Needle was extremely rare due to the "called shot" nature of doing so, but with this new card, you can effectively Sinkhole an opponent with the same play. With Needle, that Vedalken Shackles could act as a 5 mana Control Magic, but with this you can get ahead of the game with the hand reveal. Same situation for various equipment (specially Swords, Jitte, and Clamp), planeswalkers (this way they can't get a single activation first), or cards like Sneak Attack. I can understand certain small cubes not running Needle despite it's versatility, but I think this card on the other hand should be a staple.
oh wow I didn't even think of the fetchland interaction. I was leaning towards running it before but, yet again, KMAYER comes in with the ill break down.
This seems like an instant inclusion for all non-powered cubes that run Pithing Needle as an easy swap. The added flexibility this card makes the card far more palatable maindeck than Pithing Needle Game 1. The ability to turn a fetch still in hand into a dead card seems super sweet.
Oh, and you get to see their hand too.
I understand in powered cubes, it may be one turn too slow, so it's really up to you to run Pithing Needle or Spyglass.
I almost got a pithing needle earlier this week but went for phyrexian revoker instead, for flexibility reasons. For me this comes down to a similar choice and I think I am happy to pay the extra 1 for the added information, I don't think my cube is so fast that decks that want this effect need it to cost 1.
One slight upside I can see to the spyglass is that is you are bouncing/blinking (kor skyfisher, flickerwisp Venser) it to reset its target you get the added bonous of seeing their hand each time; that proabaly won't come up too often but I will proabaly feel pretty good about it when it comes up.
I understand in powered cubes, it may be one turn too slow, so it's really up to you to run Pithing Needle or Spyglass.
It's probably not. The biggest mistake people make when talking about powered environments is assuming that everything important happens in turns 1-3, and while big blowouts can occur there should be something I can stop on t2 with this in almost all games as long as it's not dead in the same spots needle would be.
A rare occurrence: This card is good enough for the tighter cubes, but likely not good enough for mine. There are a lot of activated abilities in my cube, but the size is such that you simply can't predict the sorts of things that will be in your opponent's pool. Phyrexian Revoker is great because it goes in any deck, but I've found Pithing Needle to be strict sideboard material, and I've since cut it. My sister loves these kinds of effects, so she may persuade me to include this anyway.
They're intended to be reactive plays to "turn off" the opponent's in-play permanents that they've already invested mana on. Spyglass opens up opportunities for a version of the effect that's more proactive, but predicting the opponent's cards isn't a hurdle that Needle/Revoker have to leap.
They're intended to be reactive plays to "turn off" the opponent's in-play permanents that they've already invested mana on. Spyglass opens up opportunities for a version of the effect that's more proactive, but predicting the opponent's cards isn't a hurdle that Needle/Revoker have to leap.
I understand that, and I've used the effect to good benefit, but like enchantment hate, activated ability hate is dead against a lot of decks. That doesn't make it useless, but it does make it harder to justify slots, which is hard to do even at 1600 cards. The meta just doesn't warrant it maindeck like it would in your cube.
There are some things too that only need to be activated once to be effective, like a sword or a shackles. I'm not saying that is every scenario, but this card will perform better there than needle will at times, at least in game 1s.
Pithiness Needle hits about 28% of all cards in my cube, it almost always has a "target" just not an immediate one. Shutting down planeswalkers, equipment, manlands, a bunch of creatures, and broken enchantments like Recurring Nightmare / Survival of the Fittest / Sneak Attack is big game.
That's why I like this card a lot though, you tend to eliminate the scenarios where you name a card you want to turn off and they play something else or you have to name the card after a turn of Nightmaring or whatever.
I like this card. I've cut pithing needle because of it just sitting in sideboards. I think sorcerous spyglass is to pithing needle, what forsake the worldly is to disenchant. 1 additional mana for a more mainboardable effect. I've been happy with the swap to forsake so I will give this a try as well and if it leads to more mainboarding then happy days.
The problem I've had with needle was not the lack of targets, but rather that turning off the activated abilities of a lot of them is not worth a card. Eldrazi Displacer has one of the most powerful activated abilities, yet if you play a Pithing Needle on it, it was still a 2W 3/3 Ravenous Rats.
I think it is absolutely worth playing a Needle to stop Displacer. Turning a game-ending, board protecting engine into a Ravenous Rats is something I'm fine doing for one colorless mana.
A bunch of Ixalan leaks, one card seems promising. It'd 2-mana Pithing Needle that lets you peek at your opponent's hand before you name a card.
Too bad we can't make out what the 3BB Mythic Rare says : /
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an extra mana for a pithing needle effect is pretty huge, but seeing the hand first might be enough to be worth it?
Really not sure.
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Oh, and you get to see their hand too.
I understand in powered cubes, it may be one turn too slow, so it's really up to you to run Pithing Needle or Spyglass.
Easy slam dunk for me since I don't run power
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One slight upside I can see to the spyglass is that is you are bouncing/blinking (kor skyfisher, flickerwisp Venser) it to reset its target you get the added bonous of seeing their hand each time; that proabaly won't come up too often but I will proabaly feel pretty good about it when it comes up.
It's probably not. The biggest mistake people make when talking about powered environments is assuming that everything important happens in turns 1-3, and while big blowouts can occur there should be something I can stop on t2 with this in almost all games as long as it's not dead in the same spots needle would be.
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But definitely Phyrexian revoker > Pithing Needle ?= this
In my artifact cube, a definite include, as there are a lot of activated abilities there.
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I understand that, and I've used the effect to good benefit, but like enchantment hate, activated ability hate is dead against a lot of decks. That doesn't make it useless, but it does make it harder to justify slots, which is hard to do even at 1600 cards. The meta just doesn't warrant it maindeck like it would in your cube.
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