It's closer to Flood of Recollection than anything else... worse maybe, since I have to come up with the mana for both spells at the same time. I'm not excited for it.
Reasonable analogy.. I agree with you that flood has a notable advantage over this card in the department you mentioned... and that it's less color restrictive.
However,
Instant speed is suchhh a big advantage over sorcery speed with an effect like this. It's magnified by the nature of the card and the color it's in.
Blue is the most reactive color in cube, and that's even more true in decks that cast UU and are interested in flashing back instant/sorceries.
Being able to get the card best suited to what your opponent does next turn is a big information advantage... You may have a card better suited to what the opponents doing in your hand, or an option of spells to cast in the graveyard that depends on what they do.
There's also a lot of information value in hiding what you have in hand and what you plan to cast.
Think about how large the difference in power would be between imperial seal and vampiric tutor, if your opponent could also see the card you tutored for!
I'd guess it's instant speed nature is enough to make it slightly more powerful than flood without factoring in surveil 2. At least, when casting UUU is a minor issue as opposed to a major.
I think it's good but not great. Costing UU and requiring me to cast the spell right away can really limit my options. Surveil is a nice addition, but this is nowhere near Snapcaster Mage. It's closer to Flood of Recollection than anything else... worse maybe, since I have to come up with the mana for both spells at the same time. I'm not excited for it.
Surveil 2 is not nothing, and being able to do it at instant speed rather than telegraph is is a real advantage.
This seems like a real stretch. The floor of double blue for Surveil 2 as a cantrip effect (Serum Visions) is ludicrous and absolutely never what you're wanting to do at that price. Snappy's body is a big deal, and it's an ETB, AND its 1U. This has a similar effect, but with an expensive whimper. It's really the double blue, ultimately. I disagree with a previous poster that this is better than the top 1/3 of blue. This is debatable in the top 1/20th of blue.
Costing UU and requiring me to cast the spell right away can really limit my options. Surveil is a nice addition, but this is nowhere near Snapcaster Mage.
While I certainly wouldn't say this was as good as Snapcaster Mage, I don't think requiring me to cast the spell right away is that big of a detriment. In my experience, and obviously YMMV, most of the time Snappy is cast at instant speed, targets a reactive spell in the graveyard, and casts that spell immediately. There are definitely times where you flash him in to block and then flashback the spell EOT or some other similar line, but having that as an option is why we aren't arguing that this card is better than Snapcaster.
Also, regarding the UU cost, blue is inherently reactive in nature, so holding up mana (even the UU requirement here) shouldn't be too hard considering so many of blue's best cards also require a heavy blue commitment.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that this spell is the second coming of any amazing blue spell. It is good, though, and I don't think it's fair to judge by how much worse than Snapcaster it might be.
Costing UU and requiring me to cast the spell right away can really limit my options. Surveil is a nice addition, but this is nowhere near Snapcaster Mage.
While I certainly wouldn't say this was as good as Snapcaster Mage, I don't think requiring me to cast the spell right away is that big of a detriment. In my experience, and obviously YMMV, most of the time Snappy is cast at instant speed, targets a reactive spell in the graveyard, and casts that spell immediately. There are definitely times where you flash him in to block and then flashback the spell EOT or some other similar line, but having that as an option is why we aren't arguing that this card is better than Snapcaster.
Also, regarding the UU cost, blue is inherently reactive in nature, so holding up mana (even the UU requirement here) shouldn't be too hard considering so many of blue's best cards also require a heavy blue commitment.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that this spell is the second coming of any amazing blue spell. It is good, though, and I don't think it's fair to judge by how much worse than Snapcaster it might be.
I think WTwlf meant as opposed to flood of recollection, as unless I'm mnissing something this card basically gives a card flashback. You still have all turn to cast it, and it still gets exiled.
In my experience, and obviously YMMV, most of the time Snappy is cast at instant speed, targets a reactive spell in the graveyard, and casts that spell immediately.
Sure. But Snappy doesn't cost UU, so I don't need 1UUU to play a Remand, or UUUU to play a Counterspell. And that does matter. A lot.
Snappy gives me this effect at a splashable cost (and with card advantage). Flood allows me to split the heavy blue costs across multiple turns. Surveil 2 is great ...but I don't think it makes up for either of those shortcomings.
While this card is cool, I agree that the UU matters a lot.
Just to exercise a thought experiment, consider all the cards you flashback with Snapcaster as one card. With Mana Leak, you get 2UU 2/1 etb Mana Leak. With Bolt, you get 1UR 2/1 etb Bolt. And the list goes on. If you go down the list, you'll realize that you would put almost every single one of these hypothetical cards in your cube. They're all fantastic and efficient, and it's why Snapcaster is as good as it is.
Now do this with Mission Briefing. UUR Surveil 2 + Bolt, I would much rather have Electrolyze, which isn't even at the top of the guild. Sure, I would absolutely play 1UUU for Surveil 2 and Time Walk. But barring the most powerful AND efficient spells in the cube, I wouldn't be interested in the slightest. This leads me to be believe the card just isn't going to be potent enough to crack the best color in cube.
While this card is cool, I agree that the UU matters a lot.
Just to exercise a thought experiment, consider all the cards you flashback with Snapcaster as one card. With Mana Leak, you get 2UU 2/1 etb Mana Leak. With Bolt, you get 1UR 2/1 etb Bolt. And the list goes on. If you go down the list, you'll realize that you would put almost every single one of these hypothetical cards in your cube. They're all fantastic and efficient, and it's why Snapcaster is as good as it is.
Now do this with Mission Briefing. UUR Surveil 2 + Bolt, I would much rather have Electrolyze, which isn't even at the top of the guild. Sure, I would absolutely play 1UUU for Surveil 2 and Time Walk. But barring the most powerful AND efficient spells in the cube, I wouldn't be interested in the slightest. This leads me to be believe the card just isn't going to be potent enough to crack the best color in cube.
This thought experiment is very misleading... It's using a top 30-40 card in cube as a baseline of comparison. Snapcaster is multiple levels of power above the majority of cube cards. So, just because the cards snapcaster flashes back are still effecient with the increased cost and 2/1 body ,doesn't mean they need to be, to be powerful.
Your example diminishes the versatility value of being able to select from a variety of cards in your graveyard at instant speed. You aren't paying UUR for a lightning bolt, you are paying UU for the option of casting a variety of spells in your graveyard, and bolt happened to be the best option at the time.
It's similar as narrowly viewing goblin cratermaker as a 3 mana shatter...
Third, how good mission briefing is with blue power plays a significant roll in it's overall value... Because it isn't a very high pick, it should find it's way into a deck with recall or timewalk a good % of the time. UUU Draw 3 Surveil 2 and 1UUU Time walk Surveil 2 are both insanely powerful cards.
Although deep down my heart lies with the Cube, I play a LOT of draft, Standard, and I find myself occasionally dabbling in the eternal formats at my LGS when given the opportunity to borrow a trusting stranger's extra deck. With that in mind, one of my friends who's played UWR Control for what's coming close to 2 years strait in standard (ever since Torrential Gearhulk was printed in the same standard format as Nahiri the Harbinger, and he still hasn't changed his preferred Standard color combination even with all the crazy Turbo-Fog shenanigans running around, in favor of red for Abrade and Harnessed lightning to ensure victory against any and all vehicles decks that dare to test their luck) told me earlier today that he personally thinks Mission Briefing could be the real deal, and based on his background playing almost exclusively Blue decks since Mirrodin Besieged dropped, I can't say that I don't trust his judgment as he's been consistently accurate with his passionate predictions in recent years. He told me to think of it as a "Build-Your-Own-Cryptic Command" in the context of standard, where having a blocker in play as a reactive deck is usually less valuable then cost-effective card filtration or pseudao-card advantage à-la Champion of Wits in Grixis Control, which unlike in limited formats, almost never gets Externalized (I've literally never seen it happen, not even once) and cannot trade or even chump block most creatures in standard effectively, or alternatively the ever-present and increasingly narrow single copy of Commit / Memory that gets played with the sole purpose of binning it early off of an Azcanta trigger as a means of later refilling your hand vs midrange decks on their EOT with one of your only two copies of Torrential Gearhulk, if you are specifically enough ahead on both mana sources and creatures as a valuable means to solidify your victory with your brand new grip of cards and (much more importantly) to utilize the disruptive element of shuffling your opponents perfectly sculpted hand back into their library and making them find all those important utility and tech cards again.
Although it may seem like I'm rambling, I assure you that the previous examples of weird cheap cards are relevant to this discussion in that they are both narrow cards that are not played with the intention of generating card advantage, but rather to simply help you find more gas and effectively disrupt your opponents gameplan with consistency. Tracing back to the Cryptic Command example, Mission Briefing is imo better to be looked at as simply a cog in an oftentimes more powerful (and in turn an occasionally worse) Cryptic Command that requires a tad more setup but has a considerably higher ceiling in matchups where the irreplaceable Sleep ability is irrelevant (which for standard will probably settle out at about half the matchups because they only have access to unconditional Boardclears at 5cmc, but for cube decks with access to any number of the 4cmc/Rolling Earthquake variants and wraths in White, Black and/or Red, the odds of needing the uber-Gigadrowse to survive until you can effectively stifle the board pressure will likely drastically improve). With that new and more optimistic mindset, I think the card will be playable as a two or three-of in standard for it's versatility in control decks, and in turn may actually be nothing short of a house in cubes that can already support Cryptic Command's irreverently restrictive mana cost. Although that criteria happens to exclude my powered 360 list, for cube lists that include all the additional fixing that larger cubes typically grant players access to, or alternatively for those that still see the power-packed Mono-Blue Control decks from the 2015 MODO-cube era pop up with consistency, I think this card looks perfect for you and your friends' playstyles.
A similarly important issue that my playgroup currently comes across often enough that makes this card look especially appealing to us, and could potentially make this the first card of many that begins a trend of helping remedy the surprisingly small quantity of cheap blue interactive spells, is that when multiple people move into blue decks of completely separate archetypes based on accurate strategic reads, although they almost always purposely relegate themselves to drafting decks they are confident they aren't fighting over core cards for, players still find themselves getting punished because even at 360 cards with 16 instant speed answers to game-ending spells they often just can't get the proper quantity of countermagic and removal to take down even their best matchups because the already-small quantity of interactive spells was spread too thin among just 2 or 3 drafters who chose to splash blue, and only 6 of those aforementioned interactive cards are even pseudo-hard counterspells or hand attack (Vendilion Clique) with cmc 3 or less to appropriately interact with early combos. We always find ourselves so starved for remotely-playable countermagic when drafting and deckbuilding that the mediocre quality and painful card-disadvantage from most of the counterspells don't even matter, as there are many games and matchups that single-handedley revolve around a few specific haymaker cards resolving or not, and although countering a Sneak Attack or a Natural order with an Arcane Denial in your WU Control deck doesn't contribute to your deck's overarching gameplan of remaining at card advantage or parity until they have have enough mana to swing the game with some high-value power plays, being able to survive one additional turn at a time is vital for every blue deck's survival, and the disappointing lack of enough cheap and/or versatile interaction may be enough to allow Mission Briefing the ability to seamlessly slip it's way into a variety of different style cubes that aren't even remotely interested in partaking in any graveyard shenanigans or recurring crazy spells like Balance or Ancestral Recall.
Thirdly, although I don't personally play it for a lack of excellent targets (we only have around 20 cards worth paying the extra 3 mana to tutor for them, and about half of those cards are only worth paying extra for because they are used exclusively in Reanimator and Storm combos, both of which I thoroughly enjoy playing with and against, but that do not require additional support at the moment), I don't think anybody has mentioned so far how insane the synergy between this card and Spellseeker is, in that Spellseeker is almost exclusively used to tutor for strictly broken spells that if cast a single time can already break a game wide open, but if you happen to draw you single powerful spell and your Spellseeker in the same game you might find yourself being forced to grab a Remand or another weak filler spell, which although isn't necessarily an abysmally bad use off 3 mana, it generally feels pretty bad to get punished so severely for something that remained completely out of your control for its duration, like losing immense value on your tutor or even the game to some mildly unfortunate draws. However, although this notably helps resolve much of the feels-bad nature of your Spellseeker RNG, that portion of its interaction with Trinket Mage's spell-slinging older sister comes nowhere close in terms of powerlevel to its ability to preforming some clearly degenerate, blatantly underpriced, and overall excitingly unique lines of play like taking back-2-back extra turns with added card selection in between draws when paired in conjunction with Time Walk, or hitting your opponent with your second Mind Twist that game, just as they were beginning to recover from the initially crippling first one.
That's just my 2 cents (or as I like to call it whenever I find myself transcribing questionably large walls of text, just my 361,900 Zimbabwean dollars), so take it as you will, but if you want a TL;DR of my thought process and a summary of my current and completely untested conclusions on this card, I'd summarize my thoughts as
1. If you have the ability to cast Cryptic Command in your cube on turn 4 or 5 with relative consistently, then this card likely belongs in your cube too based on power level alone.
2. Counterspells often become scarce after players get the hang of drafting your cube because the drafters with any experience whatsoever quickly recognize their immense value in virtually all variants of blue decks (besides U/R/x Wildfire), so this card will likely serve a functionally valuable role as a pseudo-counterspell for blue drafters that didn't get passed enough countermagic while drafting to protect themselves against combo and other "swingy" decks.
3. The combined power and crazy stories that Mission Briefing can create when combined with Spellseeker in a powered cube should be more than enough incentive for cube managers who play the latter to include the prior.
Sure. But Snappy doesn't cost UU, so I don't need 1UUU to play a Remand, or UUUU to play a Counterspell. And that does matter. A lot.
Snappy gives me this effect at a splashable cost (and with card advantage). Flood allows me to split the heavy blue costs across multiple turns. Surveil 2 is great ...but I don't think it makes up for either of those shortcomings.
You're not wrong and again, I wouldn't argue that this card is anywhere close to as good as Snapcaster. Obviously getting the effect at a splashable price attached to a 2/1 is much better than what we have here.
When it comes to CC costs maybe my own experience differs from others, but I honestly haven't found it to be that detrimental, especially when the card is worth it. Obviously 1C is preferred to CC and when cards are competing for the same slot, that does come up when deciding on cuts. However, this card isn't fighting for the same slot as Snapcaster just because it's a similar effect. When a CC card is good, and I certainly think this one is, I don't think that's a reason to write it off completely. If you draft this card with the intention of flashing back Counterspell and Remand, then you need to expect that heavy blue requirement on your mana base and draft and build the deck accordingly. It's no different than drafting Cryptic Command. Not that I'm comparing power levels on the two, but when draft a card like Cryptic, you know what to expect from your mana base. You know you need to get to UUU regularly, so you build accordingly with a heavy blue deck that maybe splashes or you value duals and rainbow lands higher than you might normally value them.
I just think the effect of instant speed flashing back something is so incredibly powerful, especially in a powered cube, that even with a UU cost, it's still worth at least a test run.
When it comes to CC costs maybe my own experience differs from others, but I honestly haven't found it to be that detrimental, especially when the card is worth it.
Except it's not just a CC cost. It's a CC cost plus additional colored mana costs at the same time, since the card doesn't do anything worthwhile unless you're flashing back additional spells with it. So it needs to be evaluated as a 1UUU cost probably at the very minimum, and I don't think it's good enough to compete as a card with that kind of mana demand in this format.
Again, I'm not saying the card is bad, I just think it's too colored-mana intensive in most scenarios to be competitive for smaller cubes.
I don't expect it to be as good as Snapcaster Mage, because that's unfair to all cards not named Snapcaster Mage. I'd play this in a second with a 1U cost. But at UU, I think this is far more comparable to a card like Flood of Recollection than a staple like Snappy.
So it needs to be evaluated as a 1UUU cost probably at the very minimum, and I don't think it's good enough to compete as a card with that kind of mana demand in this format.
Why would it have to be evaluated as a 1UUU card? I’m pretty sure a statistical majority of the time you’ll be casting non-blue spells with this, so to say that this is on average a 1UUU is simply false. So no, you certainly don’t need an absurdly heavy blue commitment to play this card successfully.
I’m pretty sure a statistical majority of the time you’ll be casting non-blue spells with this
What? Why would this possibly be the case? It's in a deck engineered to cast double-blue cards, and blue has the highest saturation of spells. Why would the statistical majority of the time be targeting a non-blue spell? I think assuming you won't be casting other blue spells with regularity would be setting yourself up for failure.
I’m pretty sure a statistical majority of the time you’ll be casting non-blue spells with this
What? Why would this possibly be the case? It's in a deck engineered to cast double-blue cards, and blue has the highest saturation of spells. Why would the statistical majority of the time be targeting a non-blue spell? I think assuming you won't be casting other blue spells with regularity would be setting yourself up for failure.
There are two types of spells in cube that would ever be worth casting this card on:
1. Contermagic+Power9
2. Non-blue spells
Since you aren’t going to have Time Walk or Recall in your deck in well over 90% of your games, the only blue cards you can expect to favorably play are counterspells, which are either conditional, card parity, card disadvantage, or multiple of the prior options. Counterspells are important and are vital to gameplay, but the best counterspells are all clearly worse in this situation than even the mid-tier spells in other non-green colors. If I’m playing UW control, why would I cast a Condecend when I could cast a Balance or Wrath of God? I wouldn’t, because blue spells not only often fail to scale well into the late game, but they also don’t generate card or board advantage nearly as effectively as spells in other colors that are actually capable of generating loads of value and doing crazy *****.
Outside of powered cubes, the difference between blue spells and spells in other colors becomes even more polarizing, and this card obviously becomes substantially worse. I’ve played more than my fair share of Snapcasters over the years, and the best card in your graveyard is almost always not Blue, and whenever it is Blue you’re usually pretty disappointed that you missed out on substantial value and had to cast a Remand again so that you wouldn't die.
That still doesn't remotely address my comment. In a deck with at least 10 sources of blue, how are you going to safely assume that the majority of the instants and sorceries in that deck are going to be non-blue?
When building your deck with this spell in it, assuming that you won't need to target another blue spell with it is just setting yourself up for failure.
I agree that the card is worse without access to power. So does that mean I won't put it in my deck if I don't have power? I agree that it would be ideal in decks where it has access to a huge pool of non-blue spells, but does that mean the card is unplayable with other reactive blue spells? If that's the argument, all you did was just make this card so narrow that it's damn-near unplayable.
If it's only playable when:
A) You have power to flash back, OR
B) You have a deck that can cast UU spells reliably but has more non-blue spells than blue ones
You just convinced me that the card is WAY to narrow to be considered in this format.
The only way the card is playable is when I can use it in my typical cube decks that contain blue spells. And in those decks, I'm going to reliably need to flashback other blue spells with it in order for it to be good enough. And in those cases, it's going to cost me at least 3 blue mana to do so.
1. If you have the ability to cast Cryptic Command in your cube on turn 4 or 5 with relative consistently, then this card likely belongs in your cube too based on power level alone.
2. Counterspells often become scarce after players get the hang of drafting your cube because the drafters with any experience whatsoever quickly recognize their immense value in virtually all variants of blue decks (besides U/R/x Wildfire), so this card will likely serve a functionally valuable role as a pseudo-counterspell for blue drafters that didn't get passed enough countermagic while drafting to protect themselves against combo and other "swingy" decks.
3. The combined power and crazy stories that Mission Briefing can create when combined with Spellseeker in a powered cube should be more than enough incentive for cube managers who play the latter to include the prior.
As an overly analytical person who has a strong drive to exhaust my reasoning, my advice is to curate these posts to focus on the points you find most essential.... mostly because people don't read it otherwise.. I know this from a lot of experience with my own wall of text posts and the feedback they get
#1 is debatable, as the card is unproven and cryptic command is widely accepted as mucho powerful. This card is arguably MORE color demanding than cryptic command. Thats a big deal.
#2 The counterspell point is very good.
I've said it many times before and I'll say it again, 2-3 mana Counterspells and 1-2 mana Targeted discard are more powerful in cube than any other competitive format. Almost all cubes I've seen are under-saturated with these effects ,when it comes to building optimal high win % decks that use them. My own included.
#3, How well it works with spell seeker + power was high up on my list, but figured enough people don't run spellseeker on these forums (they should) that I didn't bother to mention it.
You lost me before I even finished reading the first paragraph. What are you trying to say? Because it’s unclear to me what your complaint about the card is and it feels like your just jumping around from reason to reason without actually explaining anything, or at least not in a way that can be understood by somebody who doesn’t have any idea what you’re talking about and where you’re going with this. I don’t think this card is especially good in cube but it looks playable in larger lists, but first you were complaining about the mana cost being too blue intensive, and now you don’t think it’s blue enough?
I also want to be clear that this is not a jab in an attempt to be condescending or some petty ***** like that, I seriously have no idea what you’re talking about and I don’t want to respond only to realize later that we aren’t talking about the same thing.
I’m pretty sure a statistical majority of the time you’ll be casting non-blue spells with this
What? Why would this possibly be the case? It's in a deck engineered to cast double-blue cards, and blue has the highest saturation of spells. Why would the statistical majority of the time be targeting a non-blue spell? I think assuming you won't be casting other blue spells with regularity would be setting yourself up for failure.
There are two types of spells in cube that would ever be worth casting this card on:
1. Contermagic+Power9
2. Non-blue spells
Don't agree with this, blue draw spells generate quite a bit of value. An end of turn 6 mana surveil 2 then fact or fiction is a pretty incredible value option, one I would be happy to take if I had room to cast it.
The power differential of spells between the colors is not nearly enough IMO to make what you are saying true, given the obvious mana base incentive to play many more blue spells than a complimentary color.
I don’t think this card is especially good in cube but it looks playable in larger lists
It looks like we agree on at least this, and since other communication is proving difficult, we should settle on this level of agreement.
Quote from NotScottMescudi »
...first you were complaining about the mana cost being too blue intensive, and now you don’t think it’s blue enough?
No. I'm saying that the card needs to be evaluated as a really heavy blue one, because if you try to evaluate it exclusively in the windows you were describing it being good in (power, non-blue spells, etc) it becomes too narrow. So I either need it to be good enough at 1UUU, or deal with the fact that it'll rarely make my final 40s. Because of that, I don't think the card is great for cubes, despite its high ceiling.
Except it's not just a CC cost. It's a CC cost plus additional colored mana costs at the same time, since the card doesn't do anything worthwhile unless you're flashing back additional spells with it. So it needs to be evaluated as a 1UUU cost probably at the very minimum, and I don't think it's good enough to compete as a card with that kind of mana demand in this format.
First, let me be clear of my argument here. I don't even know if I'll be able to make room for this in my 540 list. I don't think the card is OP by any means. It looks like a fine card that could easily make it's way into larger lists and wouldn't be embarassing to run in medium lists. The UU cost is definitely a consideration and it really depends on how impactful the surveil 2 upside is. I'm not kidding myself on the mana requirements of the spell.
It's not just a UU cost. It's a at least a CUU card if not even more intensive than that. I'm definitely going to test it, though, because I think the ability is powerful and might be worth the mana requirements, especially given the possibilities in a powered cube.
My argument is that people seem to over evaluate color intensive costs. I've read the articles and seen the math on the odds of getting CCC by a certain turn with X amount of that color in your deck. I've also played enough games of Magic to know that math is just a baseline and isn't always guaranteed. You can calculate percentages and have perfect mana, yet still play games where you never see your second color. You can also play a five color deck with Kiki Jiki as the only red card and somehow cast it on turn five without issue every game. Don't get me wrong, I'm not advocating throwing a CCC spell into your deck as a splash, but you should keep in mind how intensive your mana requirements are when you're building your deck and especially when you're drafting. If you want to play a card like Mission Briefing, then build your deck and manabase accordingly and the color intensive cost probably won't be an issue. In a two color deck, assuming you've drafted enough duals and rainbow land and know how to accurately put your manabase together, getting the UU plus the cost of the card you flash back shouldn't be an issue.
In a two color deck, assuming you've drafted enough duals and rainbow land and know how to accurately put your manabase together, getting the UU plus the cost of the card you flash back shouldn't be an issue.
But it's not easy, and it won't be every draft, no matter how well you prioritize mana during the draft process. The number of times this card will rot in your sideboard because you can't pay UUU+ costs has to be factored into the evaluation. For a card as powerful as Cryptic Command, I can live with it. For this card, I don't think I can.
Either way, one stance seems to be: "It's good, but not quite good enough to find room for it..." and the other is: "I think there are issues with the card that'll keep it out of my cube..." ultimately, it doesn't seem to matter. We're arguing two sides of the same coin when the end result is that neither of us are likely to cube with it.
In a two color deck, assuming you've drafted enough duals and rainbow land and know how to accurately put your manabase together, getting the UU plus the cost of the card you flash back shouldn't be an issue.
But it's not easy, and it won't be every draft, no matter how well you prioritize mana during the draft process. The number of times this card will rot in your sideboard because you can't pay UUU+ costs has to be factored into the evaluation. For a card as powerful as Cryptic Command, I can live with it.
Agree, especially in blue. I was thinking about this card as I was drafting last night.. p1p1 jace the mind sculptor, p1p2 swords to plowshares, p1p3 mystical tutor.. My intention was to go heavy blue control, hopefully with a miracle element, but no matter how hard I tried, it couldn't have happened.
Too many drafters were in blue to my right, and could not find any UW dual lands. What happened is no one had a heavy blue deck and 2/3 of my deck was white. Would not have played this card in my deck with my mana base.
This happens more often in blue than any other color because it's the best and most versatile color in cube.
UU is a real cost, but it is only a single colored pip more than casting any spell with snappy. I think we're probably over-estimating how often that's actually going to be an issue a bit.
Apart from cryptic and actual counterspell, it's pretty rare for me in our unpowered-but-powerful card that I'm using all my blue with a snappy + flashback.
For me the real issue is that not leaving a body behind is real. I think that will be the deciding factor, not UU. I think if this card doesn't make it at UU, it wouldn't make it at 1U either. I just know this effect is very strong, which is why I need to test it to see if this is good enough.
At 1U I think this would be a slam dunk, at UU I think it's pretty fringe. CC / 1CC can make or break a 2 or 3 cmc card over 1C / 2C, not too big a deal on anything more expensive.
Reasonable analogy.. I agree with you that flood has a notable advantage over this card in the department you mentioned... and that it's less color restrictive.
However,
Instant speed is suchhh a big advantage over sorcery speed with an effect like this. It's magnified by the nature of the card and the color it's in.
Blue is the most reactive color in cube, and that's even more true in decks that cast UU and are interested in flashing back instant/sorceries.
Being able to get the card best suited to what your opponent does next turn is a big information advantage... You may have a card better suited to what the opponents doing in your hand, or an option of spells to cast in the graveyard that depends on what they do.
There's also a lot of information value in hiding what you have in hand and what you plan to cast.
Think about how large the difference in power would be between imperial seal and vampiric tutor, if your opponent could also see the card you tutored for!
I'd guess it's instant speed nature is enough to make it slightly more powerful than flood without factoring in surveil 2. At least, when casting UUU is a minor issue as opposed to a major.
Last Updated 02/07/24
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Surveil 2 is not nothing, and being able to do it at instant speed rather than telegraph is is a real advantage.
375 unpowered cube - https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/601ac624832cdf1039947588
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While I certainly wouldn't say this was as good as Snapcaster Mage, I don't think requiring me to cast the spell right away is that big of a detriment. In my experience, and obviously YMMV, most of the time Snappy is cast at instant speed, targets a reactive spell in the graveyard, and casts that spell immediately. There are definitely times where you flash him in to block and then flashback the spell EOT or some other similar line, but having that as an option is why we aren't arguing that this card is better than Snapcaster.
Also, regarding the UU cost, blue is inherently reactive in nature, so holding up mana (even the UU requirement here) shouldn't be too hard considering so many of blue's best cards also require a heavy blue commitment.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that this spell is the second coming of any amazing blue spell. It is good, though, and I don't think it's fair to judge by how much worse than Snapcaster it might be.
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I think WTwlf meant as opposed to flood of recollection, as unless I'm mnissing something this card basically gives a card flashback. You still have all turn to cast it, and it still gets exiled.
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Sure. But Snappy doesn't cost UU, so I don't need 1UUU to play a Remand, or UUUU to play a Counterspell. And that does matter. A lot.
Snappy gives me this effect at a splashable cost (and with card advantage). Flood allows me to split the heavy blue costs across multiple turns. Surveil 2 is great ...but I don't think it makes up for either of those shortcomings.
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Just to exercise a thought experiment, consider all the cards you flashback with Snapcaster as one card. With Mana Leak, you get 2UU 2/1 etb Mana Leak. With Bolt, you get 1UR 2/1 etb Bolt. And the list goes on. If you go down the list, you'll realize that you would put almost every single one of these hypothetical cards in your cube. They're all fantastic and efficient, and it's why Snapcaster is as good as it is.
Now do this with Mission Briefing. UUR Surveil 2 + Bolt, I would much rather have Electrolyze, which isn't even at the top of the guild. Sure, I would absolutely play 1UUU for Surveil 2 and Time Walk. But barring the most powerful AND efficient spells in the cube, I wouldn't be interested in the slightest. This leads me to be believe the card just isn't going to be potent enough to crack the best color in cube.
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This thought experiment is very misleading... It's using a top 30-40 card in cube as a baseline of comparison. Snapcaster is multiple levels of power above the majority of cube cards. So, just because the cards snapcaster flashes back are still effecient with the increased cost and 2/1 body ,doesn't mean they need to be, to be powerful.
Your example diminishes the versatility value of being able to select from a variety of cards in your graveyard at instant speed. You aren't paying UUR for a lightning bolt, you are paying UU for the option of casting a variety of spells in your graveyard, and bolt happened to be the best option at the time.
It's similar as narrowly viewing goblin cratermaker as a 3 mana shatter...
Third, how good mission briefing is with blue power plays a significant roll in it's overall value... Because it isn't a very high pick, it should find it's way into a deck with recall or timewalk a good % of the time. UUU Draw 3 Surveil 2 and 1UUU Time walk Surveil 2 are both insanely powerful cards.
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Although it may seem like I'm rambling, I assure you that the previous examples of weird cheap cards are relevant to this discussion in that they are both narrow cards that are not played with the intention of generating card advantage, but rather to simply help you find more gas and effectively disrupt your opponents gameplan with consistency. Tracing back to the Cryptic Command example, Mission Briefing is imo better to be looked at as simply a cog in an oftentimes more powerful (and in turn an occasionally worse) Cryptic Command that requires a tad more setup but has a considerably higher ceiling in matchups where the irreplaceable Sleep ability is irrelevant (which for standard will probably settle out at about half the matchups because they only have access to unconditional Boardclears at 5cmc, but for cube decks with access to any number of the 4cmc/Rolling Earthquake variants and wraths in White, Black and/or Red, the odds of needing the uber-Gigadrowse to survive until you can effectively stifle the board pressure will likely drastically improve). With that new and more optimistic mindset, I think the card will be playable as a two or three-of in standard for it's versatility in control decks, and in turn may actually be nothing short of a house in cubes that can already support Cryptic Command's irreverently restrictive mana cost. Although that criteria happens to exclude my powered 360 list, for cube lists that include all the additional fixing that larger cubes typically grant players access to, or alternatively for those that still see the power-packed Mono-Blue Control decks from the 2015 MODO-cube era pop up with consistency, I think this card looks perfect for you and your friends' playstyles.
A similarly important issue that my playgroup currently comes across often enough that makes this card look especially appealing to us, and could potentially make this the first card of many that begins a trend of helping remedy the surprisingly small quantity of cheap blue interactive spells, is that when multiple people move into blue decks of completely separate archetypes based on accurate strategic reads, although they almost always purposely relegate themselves to drafting decks they are confident they aren't fighting over core cards for, players still find themselves getting punished because even at 360 cards with 16 instant speed answers to game-ending spells they often just can't get the proper quantity of countermagic and removal to take down even their best matchups because the already-small quantity of interactive spells was spread too thin among just 2 or 3 drafters who chose to splash blue, and only 6 of those aforementioned interactive cards are even pseudo-hard counterspells or hand attack (Vendilion Clique) with cmc 3 or less to appropriately interact with early combos. We always find ourselves so starved for remotely-playable countermagic when drafting and deckbuilding that the mediocre quality and painful card-disadvantage from most of the counterspells don't even matter, as there are many games and matchups that single-handedley revolve around a few specific haymaker cards resolving or not, and although countering a Sneak Attack or a Natural order with an Arcane Denial in your WU Control deck doesn't contribute to your deck's overarching gameplan of remaining at card advantage or parity until they have have enough mana to swing the game with some high-value power plays, being able to survive one additional turn at a time is vital for every blue deck's survival, and the disappointing lack of enough cheap and/or versatile interaction may be enough to allow Mission Briefing the ability to seamlessly slip it's way into a variety of different style cubes that aren't even remotely interested in partaking in any graveyard shenanigans or recurring crazy spells like Balance or Ancestral Recall.
Thirdly, although I don't personally play it for a lack of excellent targets (we only have around 20 cards worth paying the extra 3 mana to tutor for them, and about half of those cards are only worth paying extra for because they are used exclusively in Reanimator and Storm combos, both of which I thoroughly enjoy playing with and against, but that do not require additional support at the moment), I don't think anybody has mentioned so far how insane the synergy between this card and Spellseeker is, in that Spellseeker is almost exclusively used to tutor for strictly broken spells that if cast a single time can already break a game wide open, but if you happen to draw you single powerful spell and your Spellseeker in the same game you might find yourself being forced to grab a Remand or another weak filler spell, which although isn't necessarily an abysmally bad use off 3 mana, it generally feels pretty bad to get punished so severely for something that remained completely out of your control for its duration, like losing immense value on your tutor or even the game to some mildly unfortunate draws. However, although this notably helps resolve much of the feels-bad nature of your Spellseeker RNG, that portion of its interaction with Trinket Mage's spell-slinging older sister comes nowhere close in terms of powerlevel to its ability to preforming some clearly degenerate, blatantly underpriced, and overall excitingly unique lines of play like taking back-2-back extra turns with added card selection in between draws when paired in conjunction with Time Walk, or hitting your opponent with your second Mind Twist that game, just as they were beginning to recover from the initially crippling first one.
That's just my 2 cents (or as I like to call it whenever I find myself transcribing questionably large walls of text, just my 361,900 Zimbabwean dollars), so take it as you will, but if you want a TL;DR of my thought process and a summary of my current and completely untested conclusions on this card, I'd summarize my thoughts as
1. If you have the ability to cast Cryptic Command in your cube on turn 4 or 5 with relative consistently, then this card likely belongs in your cube too based on power level alone.
2. Counterspells often become scarce after players get the hang of drafting your cube because the drafters with any experience whatsoever quickly recognize their immense value in virtually all variants of blue decks (besides U/R/x Wildfire), so this card will likely serve a functionally valuable role as a pseudo-counterspell for blue drafters that didn't get passed enough countermagic while drafting to protect themselves against combo and other "swingy" decks.
3. The combined power and crazy stories that Mission Briefing can create when combined with Spellseeker in a powered cube should be more than enough incentive for cube managers who play the latter to include the prior.
You're not wrong and again, I wouldn't argue that this card is anywhere close to as good as Snapcaster. Obviously getting the effect at a splashable price attached to a 2/1 is much better than what we have here.
When it comes to CC costs maybe my own experience differs from others, but I honestly haven't found it to be that detrimental, especially when the card is worth it. Obviously 1C is preferred to CC and when cards are competing for the same slot, that does come up when deciding on cuts. However, this card isn't fighting for the same slot as Snapcaster just because it's a similar effect. When a CC card is good, and I certainly think this one is, I don't think that's a reason to write it off completely. If you draft this card with the intention of flashing back Counterspell and Remand, then you need to expect that heavy blue requirement on your mana base and draft and build the deck accordingly. It's no different than drafting Cryptic Command. Not that I'm comparing power levels on the two, but when draft a card like Cryptic, you know what to expect from your mana base. You know you need to get to UUU regularly, so you build accordingly with a heavy blue deck that maybe splashes or you value duals and rainbow lands higher than you might normally value them.
I just think the effect of instant speed flashing back something is so incredibly powerful, especially in a powered cube, that even with a UU cost, it's still worth at least a test run.
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Except it's not just a CC cost. It's a CC cost plus additional colored mana costs at the same time, since the card doesn't do anything worthwhile unless you're flashing back additional spells with it. So it needs to be evaluated as a 1UUU cost probably at the very minimum, and I don't think it's good enough to compete as a card with that kind of mana demand in this format.
Again, I'm not saying the card is bad, I just think it's too colored-mana intensive in most scenarios to be competitive for smaller cubes.
I don't expect it to be as good as Snapcaster Mage, because that's unfair to all cards not named Snapcaster Mage. I'd play this in a second with a 1U cost. But at UU, I think this is far more comparable to a card like Flood of Recollection than a staple like Snappy.
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Why would it have to be evaluated as a 1UUU card? I’m pretty sure a statistical majority of the time you’ll be casting non-blue spells with this, so to say that this is on average a 1UUU is simply false. So no, you certainly don’t need an absurdly heavy blue commitment to play this card successfully.
What? Why would this possibly be the case? It's in a deck engineered to cast double-blue cards, and blue has the highest saturation of spells. Why would the statistical majority of the time be targeting a non-blue spell? I think assuming you won't be casting other blue spells with regularity would be setting yourself up for failure.
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There are two types of spells in cube that would ever be worth casting this card on:
1. Contermagic+Power9
2. Non-blue spells
Since you aren’t going to have Time Walk or Recall in your deck in well over 90% of your games, the only blue cards you can expect to favorably play are counterspells, which are either conditional, card parity, card disadvantage, or multiple of the prior options. Counterspells are important and are vital to gameplay, but the best counterspells are all clearly worse in this situation than even the mid-tier spells in other non-green colors. If I’m playing UW control, why would I cast a Condecend when I could cast a Balance or Wrath of God? I wouldn’t, because blue spells not only often fail to scale well into the late game, but they also don’t generate card or board advantage nearly as effectively as spells in other colors that are actually capable of generating loads of value and doing crazy *****.
Outside of powered cubes, the difference between blue spells and spells in other colors becomes even more polarizing, and this card obviously becomes substantially worse. I’ve played more than my fair share of Snapcasters over the years, and the best card in your graveyard is almost always not Blue, and whenever it is Blue you’re usually pretty disappointed that you missed out on substantial value and had to cast a Remand again so that you wouldn't die.
When building your deck with this spell in it, assuming that you won't need to target another blue spell with it is just setting yourself up for failure.
I agree that the card is worse without access to power. So does that mean I won't put it in my deck if I don't have power? I agree that it would be ideal in decks where it has access to a huge pool of non-blue spells, but does that mean the card is unplayable with other reactive blue spells? If that's the argument, all you did was just make this card so narrow that it's damn-near unplayable.
If it's only playable when:
A) You have power to flash back, OR
B) You have a deck that can cast UU spells reliably but has more non-blue spells than blue ones
You just convinced me that the card is WAY to narrow to be considered in this format.
The only way the card is playable is when I can use it in my typical cube decks that contain blue spells. And in those decks, I'm going to reliably need to flashback other blue spells with it in order for it to be good enough. And in those cases, it's going to cost me at least 3 blue mana to do so.
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#1 is debatable, as the card is unproven and cryptic command is widely accepted as mucho powerful. This card is arguably MORE color demanding than cryptic command. Thats a big deal.
#2 The counterspell point is very good.
I've said it many times before and I'll say it again, 2-3 mana Counterspells and 1-2 mana Targeted discard are more powerful in cube than any other competitive format. Almost all cubes I've seen are under-saturated with these effects ,when it comes to building optimal high win % decks that use them. My own included.
#3, How well it works with spell seeker + power was high up on my list, but figured enough people don't run spellseeker on these forums (they should) that I didn't bother to mention it.
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I also want to be clear that this is not a jab in an attempt to be condescending or some petty ***** like that, I seriously have no idea what you’re talking about and I don’t want to respond only to realize later that we aren’t talking about the same thing.
Don't agree with this, blue draw spells generate quite a bit of value. An end of turn 6 mana surveil 2 then fact or fiction is a pretty incredible value option, one I would be happy to take if I had room to cast it.
The power differential of spells between the colors is not nearly enough IMO to make what you are saying true, given the obvious mana base incentive to play many more blue spells than a complimentary color.
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It looks like we agree on at least this, and since other communication is proving difficult, we should settle on this level of agreement.
No. I'm saying that the card needs to be evaluated as a really heavy blue one, because if you try to evaluate it exclusively in the windows you were describing it being good in (power, non-blue spells, etc) it becomes too narrow. So I either need it to be good enough at 1UUU, or deal with the fact that it'll rarely make my final 40s. Because of that, I don't think the card is great for cubes, despite its high ceiling.
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First, let me be clear of my argument here. I don't even know if I'll be able to make room for this in my 540 list. I don't think the card is OP by any means. It looks like a fine card that could easily make it's way into larger lists and wouldn't be embarassing to run in medium lists. The UU cost is definitely a consideration and it really depends on how impactful the surveil 2 upside is. I'm not kidding myself on the mana requirements of the spell.
It's not just a UU cost. It's a at least a CUU card if not even more intensive than that. I'm definitely going to test it, though, because I think the ability is powerful and might be worth the mana requirements, especially given the possibilities in a powered cube.
My argument is that people seem to over evaluate color intensive costs. I've read the articles and seen the math on the odds of getting CCC by a certain turn with X amount of that color in your deck. I've also played enough games of Magic to know that math is just a baseline and isn't always guaranteed. You can calculate percentages and have perfect mana, yet still play games where you never see your second color. You can also play a five color deck with Kiki Jiki as the only red card and somehow cast it on turn five without issue every game. Don't get me wrong, I'm not advocating throwing a CCC spell into your deck as a splash, but you should keep in mind how intensive your mana requirements are when you're building your deck and especially when you're drafting. If you want to play a card like Mission Briefing, then build your deck and manabase accordingly and the color intensive cost probably won't be an issue. In a two color deck, assuming you've drafted enough duals and rainbow land and know how to accurately put your manabase together, getting the UU plus the cost of the card you flash back shouldn't be an issue.
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But it's not easy, and it won't be every draft, no matter how well you prioritize mana during the draft process. The number of times this card will rot in your sideboard because you can't pay UUU+ costs has to be factored into the evaluation. For a card as powerful as Cryptic Command, I can live with it. For this card, I don't think I can.
Either way, one stance seems to be: "It's good, but not quite good enough to find room for it..." and the other is: "I think there are issues with the card that'll keep it out of my cube..." ultimately, it doesn't seem to matter. We're arguing two sides of the same coin when the end result is that neither of us are likely to cube with it.
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Agree, especially in blue. I was thinking about this card as I was drafting last night.. p1p1 jace the mind sculptor, p1p2 swords to plowshares, p1p3 mystical tutor.. My intention was to go heavy blue control, hopefully with a miracle element, but no matter how hard I tried, it couldn't have happened.
Too many drafters were in blue to my right, and could not find any UW dual lands. What happened is no one had a heavy blue deck and 2/3 of my deck was white. Would not have played this card in my deck with my mana base.
This happens more often in blue than any other color because it's the best and most versatile color in cube.
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Apart from cryptic and actual counterspell, it's pretty rare for me in our unpowered-but-powerful card that I'm using all my blue with a snappy + flashback.
For me the real issue is that not leaving a body behind is real. I think that will be the deciding factor, not UU. I think if this card doesn't make it at UU, it wouldn't make it at 1U either. I just know this effect is very strong, which is why I need to test it to see if this is good enough.
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It's hard to express how wrong I think this is. It means everything. It's literally twice as hard to utilize because of that difference.
Colored mana demand is so dramatically misunderstood and undervalued by the majority of the cube community.
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