Apologies if this has been discussed elsewhere, or if this isn't the right place for this.
I've always loved the scry ability. It smooths out the game for the Mage, and can be very powerful in a range of settings. I have a couple of philosophical questions, however.
1) how many "cards" do you consider scry to be worth? For example: if you play Ancestral Vision, it is effectively net 2 cards. Additionally, something like Harmonize would also be net two. If you have scry X on a card, what is each numeric of scry worth? 1/2 a card? 25% of a card? What feeling to you have when it comes to this? Clearly scry is worth some amount greater than 0 cards, because a known draw is worth more than a blank one.
2) what does R&D value scry to be, especially in light of it running rampant in theros? At first, I think the easy answer is 1= shock vs. magma jet. Do they have a formula in mind? 2 used to draw you a card, but what about scry?
TL;DR = Scry is fun. What value do you place on the ability?
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Modern: Merfolk
Commander:Grimgrin, Corpse-Born
Standard: Rabble/Dash Red
If you meant "2 gives you a cantrip", no it doesn't. It depends on the spell, which is why ember shot has a ridiculous cost while urza's bauble is free.
If I _really_ had to put a number on it, assuming equal cost and no other effects I'd rather have draw 3 than scrye 30 most of the time, but I'd rather than scrye 10 than draw 1 (especially if it is a combo deck).
I think scry and straight up card advantage are really hard to compare. Scrying away a land when you already have eight late game can be pretty amazing. But scrying into a card that you leave on top doesn't really give you card advantage.
Scry isn't card advantage but if you're digging for certain cards you can scry away the cards you don't want, letting you see more of your deck, increasing the probability you hit what you do want. So if you're thinking about for example, if you have say 28 creatures and you want a 75% chance of seeing 7 of them you know you need to see 17 cards. You draw 7 which means you would need to see 10 more which takes you to turn 10, of if you could draw 4 more cards turn, then turn 6. In this sense you could consider scry as worth part of a card because it's letting you skip what you don't want. In this case a scry 1 each turn would be worth .53 of a card (32/60) per turn. You're not drawing that card though so you're not gaining advantage in that sense, instead you're filtering to what you do want.
Scry is less about card advantage than it is consistency. Imagine if you got to Scry every turn then you could see twice the amount of cards, keeping the ones you want, than your opponent does who isn't doing it. You don't actually get any cards extra in hand but you have the advantage of filtering out what isn't useful to you.
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I'll just add this: when the scry card includes "draw a card" as part of its effect, the order in which you scry/draw matters. Preordain is better than Serum Visions, for example.
If you'd like, you could say that draw and scry are not commutative.
It depends but I would say scry is like a 1/3 or 1/2 of a card but in no case would you want to play something solely for its scry effect.
I would say scry 1 is significantly weaker than cantrip.
Scry 2 is sometimes better than getting another card, particularly in decks digging for particular cards ie combo and silver bullets.
Scry 3 is almost always better than an additional card.
However a card can't just scry, I don't think a 1 mana scry 3 card is playable for example.
Scrye is card quality, not quantity. As such, ascribing it to number of card advantage generated would result in misleading equivalence.
To put it another way, it's like comparing a tutor to a draw spell.
Mondu is absolutely right here. It all depends on the deck, too.
Tutoring, for instance, is much more useful in a combo deck than in an aggro deck. Aggro would generally prefer card advantage for gas.
You don't call "dying to removal" if the removal is more expensive in resources than the creature. If you have to spend BG (Abrupt Decay), or W + basic land (PtE) to remove a 1G, that is not "dying to removal". Strictly speaking Goyf dies to removal, but actually your removal is dying to Goyf.
I'll just add this: when the scry card includes "draw a card" as part of its effect, the order in which you scry/draw matters. Preordain is better than Serum Visions, for example.
This is a good example of how much it really depends on what other attributes that card has, another one is whether the card is instant or sorcery speed, because instant adds a lot of value to Scry. Scry is one of my favorite "almost evergreen" abilities, with Cycling being up there too. I think I may just really like cards that improve the qualities of your draws and allow you to mitigate flood and screw.
Preordain (Or scry cantrips in general) has the upside of letting you play a 22 land deck and still be able to reguarly hit 4, 5 and 6 mana.
In the days of Cruel Control and 5CC you had to play 27 - 28 lands to ensure you can be able to get to you're 7 mana win condition. If their was reasonable scrying in that format you could probably cut three to four lands and not sacrifice any consistency.
Scry 1 has two potential outcomes with your library. It's been shown to be worth one mana, but not a card, when at instant speed on Opt. Scry one has about the same filtering quality as using Merfolk Looter once and immediately discarding the card you drew, as long as you are scrying to the bottom. If you scry to the top, you've gained no value other than knowing the top card of your library, which is only relevant in cases where you or your opponent are actively doing something with topdeck.
Scry 2 has six potential outcomes. The cost of Scry 2 is still not a card, at least at sorcery speed, since we have Serum Visions and Preordain which also replace the card.
Scry 3 has a lot of different potential outcomes, it's not easy for me to imagine in my head. Mystic Speculation, for 3 mana, replaces itself and gives you Scry 3, with the additional option of -1 CA in exchange for Scry 3 at the U cost.
When is naked Scry worth trading a card for without additional options like the ones given on Mystic Speculation? It's hard to say, but it looks like one mana Scry 5 at sorcery speed would be printable, fair, though probably not competitive. Scry 3 at instant speed might be the same way.
We could also measure the power level of various levels of Scry by comparing to similar effects that would create a sort of negative card advantage without a cantrip. Abundant Growth for instance, Thought Scour, Needle Drop.
Scry is mostly limited to one in Theros to keep from messing up the pace of the game while waiting for a decision to be made about two or more upcoming cards. I think. It's definitely neat and I like scry'ing.
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I value Scry 1 at a quarter of a card. Scry 2 is more that twice as good, Scry 3 more than three times as good as Scry 1, and so on.
Reasoning:
It's pretty common in a game for half of your deck to be cards you want to draw, and the other half to be irrelevant. A land is likely the best card you can draw if you need it and almost totally worthless otherwise.
If 50% of your deck is worth 1 card at a given time, and 50% worth 0, your average effective draws are 0.5 per card drawn.
Scry 1 allows you to check the top card of your library, pretty much giving you two shots at getting a worthwhile card. So your odds of having something worthwhile go to 75%.
Technically this is true, but realistically it only has five (if you put both cards on the bottom of your deck, it doesn't much matter which order they go in).
The number of actually-different outcomes from scry n is given by this sequence. In particular, there are 16 possible ways to scry 3.
I value Scry 1 at a quarter of a card. Scry 2 is more that twice as good, Scry 3 more than three times as good as Scry 1, and so on.
Reasoning:
It's pretty common in a game for half of your deck to be cards you want to draw, and the other half to be irrelevant. A land is likely the best card you can draw if you need it and almost totally worthless otherwise.
Are you running 30 land in your 60 card decks? The standard is more like 23-25, but lets use 25 because it is easy. Then you have to take into account the number of lands you need in play for you to win, so for the sake of simplicity lets say that is five. So at best, assuming no land loss due to removal, you are looking at your "useless" cards being a third of your deck.
Even given that, I still don't see how possibly improving the card you legitimately draw makes card quality some subset of draw. It is like saying that 5 lands equal three life...they are two different aspects of the game.
Scry is mostly limited to one in Theros to keep from messing up the pace of the game while waiting for a decision to be made about two or more upcoming cards. I think. It's definitely neat and I like scry'ing.
They may be mostly Scry 1, but Theros has much more Scry effects in general than any other set before. Both Fifth Dawn and Future Sight had 9 scry cards each (or about 5% of those small sets), M11 had 5 (being a bit set, that's just 2%), and Theros has 29 (about 11,5% - with 23 cards or 9% Scry 1 and 6 cards or 2,5% Scry 2+).
I think scry can be considered a form of card advantage, because drawing more relevant spells than your opponent can be considered a form of advantage IMO. Consider these two unsummon cards.
[mc]1U[/mc] Return target creature to its owner's hand. Draw a card.
[mc]1u[/mc] Return target creature to its owner's hand. Scry X.
At some value of X, the second spell will be better even though the first is better in that it is card neutral, where as the second costs a card, but ensuring you draw relevant cards for the next x turns will be better than drawing a card at some number.
The real trick though is what value of X is that true for. I think at 3 I would still rather draw a card. At something like 8-10, I would rather have the scry spell. I think the sbreaking point would be around scry 4-6, so I guess my answer is that I think scry 5 would be worth a card.
I think scry can be considered a form of card advantage, because drawing more relevant spells than your opponent can be considered a form of advantage IMO. Consider these two unsummon cards.
[mc]1U[/mc] Return target creature to its owner's hand. Draw a card.
[mc]1u[/mc] Return target creature to its owner's hand. Scry X.
At some value of X, the second spell will be better even though the first is better in that it is card neutral, where as the second costs a card, but ensuring you draw relevant cards for the next x turns will be better than drawing a card at some number.
The real trick though is what value of X is that true for. I think at 3 I would still rather draw a card. At something like 8-10, I would rather have the scry spell. I think the sbreaking point would be around scry 4-6, so I guess my answer is that I think scry 5 would be worth a card.
Scry gives you card quality, not card advantage. Both are good things that help you win, but that doesn't mean they are the same concept.
Yes, at some value of X the second cards will be better than the first. But the same would be true for "Return target creature to its owner's hand. That creature's controller loses X life" or "... you gain X life". Doesn't mean gaining life or an opponent losing life is card advantage.
I see this as "half-card". I define half-card as any play that doesn't actually change card advantage, but does something in addition to the balance. Hideous End, for instance, is a half-card play: You lose a card, your opponent loses a card and gets shocked.
Note that half-card plays can become more than a card, through engines and triggered abilities.
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Card advantage is not the same thing as card draw. Something for 2B cannot be strictly worse than something for BBB or 3BB. If you're taking out Swords to Plowshares for Plummet, you're a fool. Stop doing these things!
I think scry can be considered a form of card advantage, because drawing more relevant spells than your opponent can be considered a form of advantage IMO.
Of course it is an advantage, but it is quality advantage not card advantage. Card advantage is a numbers game, pure and simple, and scry does not change any quantities.
Are you running 30 land in your 60 card decks? The standard is more like 23-25, but lets use 25 because it is easy. Then you have to take into account the number of lands you need in play for you to win, so for the sake of simplicity lets say that is five. So at best, assuming no land loss due to removal, you are looking at your "useless" cards being a third of your deck.
Even given that, I still don't see how possibly improving the card you legitimately draw makes card quality some subset of draw. It is like saying that 5 lands equal three life...they are two different aspects of the game.
Include early plays that are irrelevant in the lategame as lands. Drawing Firedrinker Satyr on turn 9 is as irrelevant as drawing a land in most games.
Most decks have about 50-70% dedicated to that deck's conception of the early game and 30-50% dedicated to the later game, and when you are in one of those phases cards for the other phase are usually close to dead.
The question isn't 'how much Scry gives you +1 cards', it's 'how much Scry does it take to increase your chance of winning about as much as drawing a card'. My rough answer '4' remains, although this will vary in situations.
Scry gives you card quality, not card advantage. Both are good things that help you win, but that doesn't mean they are the same concept.
Yes, at some value of X the second cards will be better than the first. But the same would be true for "Return target creature to its owner's hand. That creature's controller loses X life" or "... you gain X life". Doesn't mean gaining life or an opponent losing life is card advantage.
I do not consider drawing a totally redundant land in the very lategame to be +1 card at all. Card quality must be taken into account or card advantage is meaningless. Ditto drawing a big dumb ground creature that can't meaningfully block when my opponent controls a Moat I cannot remove.
The whole concept of card advantage is based around 'the player with more live plays usually wins'
Include early plays that are irrelevant in the lategame as lands. Drawing Firedrinker Satyr on turn 9 is as irrelevant as drawing a land in most games.
Most decks have about 50-70% dedicated to that deck's conception of the early game and 30-50% dedicated to the later game, and when you are in one of those phases cards for the other phase are usually close to dead.
There are just too many factors that influence this to make any kind of reliable estimation accurate enough to be usefull, IMO. Early turn will always have a few useless cards due to curving out your mana, but in Modern I try not to build decks that have any cards that are going to be totally irrelevant given I have the mana to play them. The uses might be reduced but I would not call them dead or even "close to dead".
The thing about top-deck card quality improvement is it is almost better than drawing an additional card to begin with since you are drawing every turn anyway so if you can increase the quality you can almost always benefit from it. With giving yourself one more additional draw in the game you are just relying on the luck of the...well, draw. I point this out to simply show that even when you broaden the definition out to "the benefit you gain from having an additional draw" it still becomes two very different realms of the game that cannot be equated.
I've always loved the scry ability. It smooths out the game for the Mage, and can be very powerful in a range of settings. I have a couple of philosophical questions, however.
1) how many "cards" do you consider scry to be worth? For example: if you play Ancestral Vision, it is effectively net 2 cards. Additionally, something like Harmonize would also be net two. If you have scry X on a card, what is each numeric of scry worth? 1/2 a card? 25% of a card? What feeling to you have when it comes to this? Clearly scry is worth some amount greater than 0 cards, because a known draw is worth more than a blank one.
2) what does R&D value scry to be, especially in light of it running rampant in theros? At first, I think the easy answer is 1= shock vs. magma jet. Do they have a formula in mind? 2 used to draw you a card, but what about scry?
TL;DR = Scry is fun. What value do you place on the ability?
Modern: Merfolk
Commander:Grimgrin, Corpse-Born
Standard: Rabble/Dash Red
To put it another way, it's like comparing a tutor to a draw spell.
If you meant "2 gives you a cantrip", no it doesn't. It depends on the spell, which is why ember shot has a ridiculous cost while urza's bauble is free.
If I _really_ had to put a number on it, assuming equal cost and no other effects I'd rather have draw 3 than scrye 30 most of the time, but I'd rather than scrye 10 than draw 1 (especially if it is a combo deck).
"Sometimes, the situation is outracing a threat, sometimes it's ignoring it, and sometimes it involves sideboarding in 4x Hope//Pray." --Doug Linn
Modern
xWBreakfast at Urza'sxW
UWGBantUWG
GWRNaya ZooRWG
If you'd like, you could say that draw and scry are not commutative.
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Big Johnny.
I would say scry 1 is significantly weaker than cantrip.
Scry 2 is sometimes better than getting another card, particularly in decks digging for particular cards ie combo and silver bullets.
Scry 3 is almost always better than an additional card.
However a card can't just scry, I don't think a 1 mana scry 3 card is playable for example.
Mondu is absolutely right here. It all depends on the deck, too.
Tutoring, for instance, is much more useful in a combo deck than in an aggro deck. Aggro would generally prefer card advantage for gas.
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10/10, I tapped.
This is a good example of how much it really depends on what other attributes that card has, another one is whether the card is instant or sorcery speed, because instant adds a lot of value to Scry. Scry is one of my favorite "almost evergreen" abilities, with Cycling being up there too. I think I may just really like cards that improve the qualities of your draws and allow you to mitigate flood and screw.
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In the days of Cruel Control and 5CC you had to play 27 - 28 lands to ensure you can be able to get to you're 7 mana win condition. If their was reasonable scrying in that format you could probably cut three to four lands and not sacrifice any consistency.
Scry 2 has six potential outcomes. The cost of Scry 2 is still not a card, at least at sorcery speed, since we have Serum Visions and Preordain which also replace the card.
Scry 3 has a lot of different potential outcomes, it's not easy for me to imagine in my head. Mystic Speculation, for 3 mana, replaces itself and gives you Scry 3, with the additional option of -1 CA in exchange for Scry 3 at the U cost.
When is naked Scry worth trading a card for without additional options like the ones given on Mystic Speculation? It's hard to say, but it looks like one mana Scry 5 at sorcery speed would be printable, fair, though probably not competitive. Scry 3 at instant speed might be the same way.
We could also measure the power level of various levels of Scry by comparing to similar effects that would create a sort of negative card advantage without a cantrip. Abundant Growth for instance, Thought Scour, Needle Drop.
Reasoning:
It's pretty common in a game for half of your deck to be cards you want to draw, and the other half to be irrelevant. A land is likely the best card you can draw if you need it and almost totally worthless otherwise.
If 50% of your deck is worth 1 card at a given time, and 50% worth 0, your average effective draws are 0.5 per card drawn.
Scry 1 allows you to check the top card of your library, pretty much giving you two shots at getting a worthwhile card. So your odds of having something worthwhile go to 75%.
Technically this is true, but realistically it only has five (if you put both cards on the bottom of your deck, it doesn't much matter which order they go in).
The number of actually-different outcomes from scry n is given by this sequence. In particular, there are 16 possible ways to scry 3.
Even given that, I still don't see how possibly improving the card you legitimately draw makes card quality some subset of draw. It is like saying that 5 lands equal three life...they are two different aspects of the game.
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They may be mostly Scry 1, but Theros has much more Scry effects in general than any other set before. Both Fifth Dawn and Future Sight had 9 scry cards each (or about 5% of those small sets), M11 had 5 (being a bit set, that's just 2%), and Theros has 29 (about 11,5% - with 23 cards or 9% Scry 1 and 6 cards or 2,5% Scry 2+).
[mc]1U[/mc] Return target creature to its owner's hand. Draw a card.
[mc]1u[/mc] Return target creature to its owner's hand. Scry X.
At some value of X, the second spell will be better even though the first is better in that it is card neutral, where as the second costs a card, but ensuring you draw relevant cards for the next x turns will be better than drawing a card at some number.
The real trick though is what value of X is that true for. I think at 3 I would still rather draw a card. At something like 8-10, I would rather have the scry spell. I think the sbreaking point would be around scry 4-6, so I guess my answer is that I think scry 5 would be worth a card.
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Scry gives you card quality, not card advantage. Both are good things that help you win, but that doesn't mean they are the same concept.
Yes, at some value of X the second cards will be better than the first. But the same would be true for "Return target creature to its owner's hand. That creature's controller loses X life" or "... you gain X life". Doesn't mean gaining life or an opponent losing life is card advantage.
Note that half-card plays can become more than a card, through engines and triggered abilities.
On phasing:
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Include early plays that are irrelevant in the lategame as lands. Drawing Firedrinker Satyr on turn 9 is as irrelevant as drawing a land in most games.
Most decks have about 50-70% dedicated to that deck's conception of the early game and 30-50% dedicated to the later game, and when you are in one of those phases cards for the other phase are usually close to dead.
The question isn't 'how much Scry gives you +1 cards', it's 'how much Scry does it take to increase your chance of winning about as much as drawing a card'. My rough answer '4' remains, although this will vary in situations.
I do not consider drawing a totally redundant land in the very lategame to be +1 card at all. Card quality must be taken into account or card advantage is meaningless. Ditto drawing a big dumb ground creature that can't meaningfully block when my opponent controls a Moat I cannot remove.
The whole concept of card advantage is based around 'the player with more live plays usually wins'
The thing about top-deck card quality improvement is it is almost better than drawing an additional card to begin with since you are drawing every turn anyway so if you can increase the quality you can almost always benefit from it. With giving yourself one more additional draw in the game you are just relying on the luck of the...well, draw. I point this out to simply show that even when you broaden the definition out to "the benefit you gain from having an additional draw" it still becomes two very different realms of the game that cannot be equated.
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