The one who must not be named is banned.
Pod is banned.
Tron now runs Eldrazis and is midrange.
Jund was eaten by Eldrazis, and split into many variants.
Valakut dropped blue and is now pure ramp.
But Affinity always stood there through the ages as a pillar of the format.
Midrange vs midrange modern was so cool. I liked when there were only a few format defining decks
Sure, there was less diversity, but most of the games were high quality with very few loopsided matchups (mostly Tron's fault).
What are you talking about. The meta for the majority of moderns existence was BG/x,UR/x twin, Tron, Pod, Affinity. Any other deck that qualified as T1 likely got a banning like 12Post or Seething Song Storm. UR twin, BG/x decks invalidated aggro, Pod invalidated burn, infect, and non-Pod non-Jund/Junk decks. Looking at top 8's for the majority of Modern Pre-banning doesn't show a variety of decks and this is why Pro's got so bent out of shape about the banning. What archetypes viability was destroyed?
And that's what made modern great. "BG/x,UR/x twin, Tron, Pod, Affinity" is way funnier than fifty shades of uninteractive linear decks.
It has been mentioned that Curse of Death's Hold will stop Viscera Seer in the combo, but keep an eye out for the Melira + Anafenza + Murderous Redcap combo. This is another way to combo off for infinite +1/+1 counters and it doesn't require a sac outlet.
Help me understand this combo, please. The only combo I see is using murderous redcap to do damage to itself, creating a loop where every time it dies, it comes back and triggers Anafenza, kin-tree spirit. However, the bolster mechanic says to add a +1/+1 counter to a creature you control with the least toughness. Since redcap will always enter the battlefield as a 2/2, won't you run into a situation where once all of your creatures (except redcap) have a toughness of at least 3, you'd be forced by the mechanic to put the counter on redcap... at that point the recap can still kill itself but every time it will come back as a 2/2, so the infinite combo would be irrelevant.
Or is there something else I'm missing entirely?
You get infinitely big Melira and Anafenza if you make the red riding hood kill himself before the bolster ability resolves.
Redcap enters the battlefield, then his damage ability and anafenza's bolster trigger.
Choose his damage to resolve first, then the bolster. The result is that he kills himself, then another creature will receive the bolster.
Every other creature will eventually get bolstered, except redcap which will keep returning and killing himself before the bolster could be wasted on him.
Boil is an abomination from an ancient era, it's made of evil and hate. Anyone who plays it loses its humanity.
I agree wholeheartedly with it's removal from the format.
Card draw doesn't breaks combo decks in modern.
However, card selection like Ponder or Dig Through Time actually beneffit more combo decks than control decks.
Raw card draw is actually stronger in control than in mos combo decks, but it can't be cheap enough because then you end up actually powering up Storm or Delver.
The only kind of draw spells that would benefit control and not combo or Delver are slow draw spells like AV or Jace. But then you can end up with midrange abominations stomping you with Tarmogoyfs and Lilianas as well as those draw spells.
I believe the answer for control in modern are broader, better answers.
Innoceny Blood, Counterspell, Toxic Deluge.
While Counterspells could benefit Splinter Twin or Scapeshift, it pushes them further into control territory, and control decks beneffit more (Counterspell won't prevent that Abrupt Decay).
Scapeshify definitely likes Counterspell, but it can be argued that Remand is even better for that deck ad is it is right now, and every control player is happier with counterspell than with the lame at lategame Mana Leak or Remand.
I sorta agree here, I'll agree that card selection benefits combo way more than control and they should be careful about strong cards there. I'll also say that control could use a bit better card draw... at least at the 4 cmc slot or for non-esper versions.
I'll also agree that broader, better answers would help control, and Innocent Blood and Counterspell would be great.
However, I don't agree with Toxic Deluge, too many aspects of that spell make it way better in midrange than control, and I'd consider it almost broken against aggro. 3 cmc conditional sweepers in more colors would be helpful, but Deluge's ability to pay life to be as big as it needs to, yet no bigger, allows it to punish aggro too much without paying the full costs while also being able to take out bigger threats when needed, and often lets midrange kill all opposing low toughness aggro critters while keeping their own higher toughness midrange creatures, making it essentially a Plague Wind that you pay a tiny amount of life for, while still having the option of killing everything against an opponent with more big creatures on the field than you if you pay slightly more life. I don't think it's a safe spell for Modern, especially with how strong various BGx midrange decks have been for a long time. I'd only consider it if midrange was nearly dead as a deck archetype, comparable to where control is now.
Other options might include new modular spells or variants in different colors on things like Maelstrom Pulse and Abrupt Decay that can remove multiple non-land permanent types including creatures, maybe even a Vindicate reprint (although I'd hesitate due to it's ability to hit lands at that cmc while hitting all other card types, so maybe one with a non-land restriction and a minor rider to keep up with maelstrom pulse, such as Scry 1 or something). An alternative to something like Toxic Deluge would probably be something like each player sacrifices two creatures with different names, then all creatures with the same names as the sacrificed creatures, along with a heafty life payment, like 4 life, so that it doesn't specially benefit midrange with the variableness and able to avoid hitting your own creatures if opposing creatures you need to get rid of are smaller, while still being able to scale up without the help of more mana.
Yeah, I thought of control players plague-winding their opponents once they had their win condition on the table, but thinking it deeper, that simply makes it unfair and overkill for aggro while boosting midrange even more.
What I was trying to get to is that rock has simply better removal cards than esper or even grixis have.
Even an Abrupt Decay without the uncountereable clause would help.
Card draw doesn't breaks combo decks in modern.
However, card selection like Ponder or Dig Through Time actually beneffit more combo decks than control decks.
Raw card draw is actually stronger in control than in mos combo decks, but it can't be cheap enough because then you end up actually powering up Storm or Delver.
The only kind of draw spells that would benefit control and not combo or Delver are slow draw spells like AV or Jace. But then you can end up with midrange abominations stomping you with Tarmogoyfs and Lilianas as well as those draw spells.
I believe the answer for control in modern are broader, better answers.
Innoceny Blood, Counterspell, Toxic Deluge.
While Counterspells could benefit Splinter Twin or Scapeshift, it pushes them further into control territory, and control decks beneffit more (Counterspell won't prevent that Abrupt Decay).
Scapeshify definitely likes Counterspell, but it can be argued that Remand is even better for that deck ad is it is right now, and every control player is happier with counterspell than with the lame at lategame Mana Leak or Remand.
I think the fear about RUG midrange with BBE and AV isn't cascading into Visions, but the raw power of just having both of them in the same deck.
Lets imagine turn one AV, turn 2 Goyf, turn 3 Courser (or Scooze/Tarmo + Bolt/AV), turn 4 BBE.
That BBE doesn't need to cascade into another AV to be brutal.
Although neither AV nor BBE interact well with Snappy.
I feel like we are walking on circles (my fault for not straight to the point before), so I will just ask you this:
What is a good card for you?
Depending on constraints, of such a power as to be within a reasonable grasp of the best card.
To me that's the best card of certain category (based on the constraints you choose).
And for me a good card is one that is able to perform well in most scenarios given, instead of comparing it to cards similar to it.
To me, Remand, Cryptic Command and Path to Exile are good cards, even if there are cards that are much better at what they do. I think they are good cards because they are Modern and Commander maindeck-able, and are strong for most standard environments.
The problem is that the original question was about cards in a vacuum, without regard to format or rules.
To me, it's a good card in a vacuum, without any help of special synergies/builds or ignoring if it's bad against certain decks, and compared to most of the cards in MTG existence.
To say something is good or bad implies comparing it on a given context. You can't just take away format, rules, and other cards completely. At least one metric of comparison has to remain.
So I interpreted "in a vacuum" as comparing it to other cards without any help of special synergies/builds or ignoring if it's bad against certain decks, and compared to all cards in MTG existence (not only the best ones).
And in the hypothetical case where the best creature that existed was Archangel (and it saw play nowhere), I would still consider it bad compared to any other card, and worse, even if they were from different categories.
If the best creature was Archangel, Archangel would be a good card. Hence why Shivan Dragon used to be a great card. It is meaningless to say that the card is worse than AR, as they do not perform the same function, and thus their capability to do that function is incomparable.
If Diabolic Tutor were the only hard tutor available, it wouldn't stop being a bad card because it wouldn't see any play. It would be bad in a vacuum.
To me, back on Alfa times, every creature was bad because you could just win with a deck full of Black Lotus, Time Twister and Lightning Bolt, Channel-Fireball. Black Lotus is without a doubt more powerful than Lightning Bolt, and I'm sure I can make that claim because BL will give almost every deck higher chances to win than LB even if they fulfill completely different roles.
You chose to compare Serum Visions it to the best cards that fulfill it's supposed role. While myself and Lord Seth chose to take it to the context of magic as a whole.
Mediocre____|_Pyretic Ritual ____| Sylvan Caryatid___ | Peek*** Bad________|____None________| Golden Hind______| Reach Through Mists*** Terrible_____|____None________| Greenside Watcher | Index
***Although drawing cards isn't fixing your draws per se, they do increase your chance of drawing your desired cards.
This table is just to illustrate, and it doesn't intends to be an exact representation.
And again, saying that Serum Visions is bad because Brainstorm exists is as bad as saying that Llanowar Elves is a bad card because Deathrite Shaman exists.
While it's true that there are stronger cards than both, that doesn't make them immediately bad cards, since they can do a good job in many environments.
Wizards isn't about lowering prices with sought-after reprints, they're about putting cards in binders so you at least have an option to trade for them
This. They are a business, and if suddenly modern became even more popular than standard, and nearly everyone got every staple of the format, the interest to keep investing would drastically reduce, and their sells may plummet.
Why would I buy another pack ever if I only played modern and already got all the modern staples? Maybe if I wanted cards from the new sets, which on the long run would imply unhealthy power creep.
If they keep supply limited, they could even support a lot of Modern tournaments and profit from it on the long run, probably forever.
It's expensive for us, yes, but it's the clearest way to keep it sustainable.
PD: I apologize for the inappropriateness. It's not that I simply ignored the mod message, I had the misfortune to finish writing and posting a few moments after him.
Still, Deep Analysis got a new friend.
I can't tell if people are joking of not, damn internet sarcasm! Banning IoK, discussing if Ancestral Recall is a cantrip or not (and if it's better than brainstorm)... is this the real life?
I know you want to be funny, because you can't really be surprised that weird ban and unban proposals happen on a public forum called "modern banlist discussion", and it has been this way since it's origins and it will continue until it's end as long as it keeps being a public forum.
And nobody questioned if Ancestral Recall is better than Brainstorm, and all the people directly involved in that discussion always considered Ancestral Recall as a cantrip. But it's true, it's a bit ridiculous that the very simple discussion "Serum Visions is bad" vs "Serum Visions isn't bad" was fuel for a very very long discussion that still got nowhere.
On topic: I am happy with the current state of Modern, it annoys me a little to see aggro so over-represented, but I feel many decks can do well currently.
It can't be second to AR, because AR is second to AR? What?
I never wrote that.
You listed three cards which could arguably be second to AR. One was AR. It's not a major point though, and I'm surprised you would put any effort into it by denying it, rather than just calling a mistake a mistake.
I rewrote it and it wasn't clear enough, it was meant to say "Except it isn't the second best cantrip when cards like this exist:". Yeah, my mistake, but still, that would've been inferred. Pointing it out was irrelevant to the discussion (like most of what I've posted...)
I feel like we are walking on circles (my fault for not straight to the point before), so I will just ask you this:
What is a good card for you?
To me, Remand, Cryptic Command and Path to Exile are good cards, even if there are cards that are much better at what they do. I think they are good cards because they are Modern and Commander maindeck-able, and are strong for most standard environments.
And in the hypothetical case where the best creature that existed was Archangel (and it saw play nowhere), I would still consider it bad compared to any other card, and worse, even if they were from different categories.
We definitely have different criteria, and maybe mine is horribly wrong. So I want to know yours.
I apologize if this is derailing the topic too much.
Serum Visions is a controversial card. It is widely considered the best of the available one mana cantrips, better than Sleight of hand. Many decks feature this cantrip in winning lists. And yet, there is also widespread contempt for it's efficacy when compared to two banned cards (ponder and preordain).
These opposing evaluations of the card seem pervasive even in decklists. While we can count on URx Twin to employ the card consistently, some other blue decks eschew the card entirely or don't run it as a 4-of.
So what elements should one consider when playing Serum Visions? Why might 4 colour control and Ojutai control eschew it while sultai and other control decks are packing 4?
Why might one play more than 0 but less than 4?
Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
edit: Of course, banlist and reprint ideas are not for this thread. Please focus on the card Serum Visions. Thanks.
Serum Visions is the best one mana cantrip availabe for modern.
It is better than Sleight of Hand because it allows you to dig further on your library than it since you get to see an additional card.
While I really like playing with Serum Visions, it's definitely weaker than Ponder and Preordain, but it's still a good card, and those cards were banned because they pushed some decks a bit too much.
izzetmage pretty much explained why and when you'd run the card. Thought Scour can be better if you are running graveyard stuff like Tasigur and Lingeri Souls.
I think those 4 colour control decks skip that kind of cards completely because they are better running a sheer amount of goodstuff disruption.
Playing Serum Visions won't allow you to do those, while you'd be able to cast Anticipate at any moment you don't find the need or opportunity to answer your opponent.
(what Torpf said)
Aggressive but redundant enough decks like Zoo or Merfolk don't use any kind of dig because they are redundant enough already, don't want to dig for specific cards so much as combo decks and don't really want to find that narrow answer, just beat your face.
I could argue that Ancestral Recall isn't a cantrip either, as someone some posts above me argued that it's a card advantage card.
And if we consider a loose enough definition of cantrip in order to classify Brainstorm and Ancestral Recall as cantrips, we'd have to consider every card that replaces itself. At that point you may consider as well cards like Time Walk, wheel effects like Timetwister and Time Spiral and tutors like Intuition and Merchant Scroll siunce they replace themselves as well.
But if we are actually conservative and consider only one mana spells that do a small effect and draw a card for one mana, then Ponder and Preordain are the only unarguably better cantrips than Serum Visions.
I do agree with you to some extent in the sense that "good" and "bad" depend on the other cards we can compare with, and that talking about cards without comparing them to anything else would be ridiculous. But the cantrips we are talking about are just overpowered compared to the rest of the MTG cards.
No! That's not actually valid! The statement "AR being so much better is a statement about it's power, not SV's weakness" is complete bull*****. You can wish that the field weren't so competitive, but it is. SV has to compete with cards more powerful than it, that's what makes it awful.
It is a valid statement. Comparisons are always relative to something, that even on the definition of what comparing is.
I was basing my arguments on Magic as a whole, not just Legacy and Vintage.
On the context of Vintage, Legacy, Pauper and EDH, Serum Visions is definitely a bad card. Comparing it to Duel Commander, Modern, Standard, Block and several limited formats, it's actually pretty good.
I actually wish Modern was much more competitive so that Serum Visions were a bad card, but the truth is that it isn't.
To reach AR power level, there would need to be a one mana hasty 6/6 creature or a instant spell that discarded three cards for one mana.
No! Because that's an entirely different category and utterly irrelevant! It makes no sense to compare creatures to cantrips!
Changed to AR because AV is not that powerful.
It does makes sense, and it's outrageous to believe it's not.
Let's say someone says "Stoneforge Mystic is more powerful than Serum Visions". Would you try to argue "No! Because that's an entirely different category and utterly irrelevant! It makes no sense to compare creatures to cantrips!".
I'm sure you wouldn't.
While Brainstorm is not as broken as AR, I think we can agree that it's way above the power of any other card in modern's card pool.
I think we can agree that goats have fur.
That's another irrelevant fact we can agree on.
So you agree Brainstorm is a overpowered card compared to most of the cards on MTG.
Thus, it's not fair to say that Serum Visions is bad just because it's worse than one of the best cards ever printed.
This is how I know you entered the conversation without reading. I specifically said that the card was only good in Modern, and terrible everywhere else. He is the one to say it is good outside of modern. SV is good in Modern, but not good in a vacuum, which is what he was saying.
This is how I know you entered the conversation without reading.
I read the whole conversation.
I specifically said that the card was only good in Modern, and terrible everywhere else.
It's good in modern, duel commander, it would be good on standard, it would be good on most blocks.
He is the one to say it is good outside of modern.
And he's right.
SV is good in Modern, but not good in a vacuum, which is what he was saying.
It's good enough compared to most magic cards, and good enough for modern. Not that many cards happen to actually be good in modern.
Ponder and Preordain are more powerful than you are giving them credit for.
Nope.
They're more powerful than the modern's power level that Wizards wants. Serum Visions is a fine card unless you compare it to the 0.001% of the most powerful cards.
Ponder and Preordain are not mini tutors. A tutor specifically refers to searching your library for a card and adding it to your hand. Ponder and Preordain merely fix your next draw and replace themselves, which is the definition of a cantrip.
I think they can be compared to small tutor effects.
(Notice that comparing, and using the term "small" doesn't equates to saying that they are the same, just comparing).
While a tutor allows you to choose a card from your whole library, Ponder and Preordain let you choose one card from the top three/two of your library. Not as powerful as choosing from ~50 cards, but it's for much less mana.
A cantrip is a slang term used to refer to a spell that draws a card in addition to its other effects (usually minor) and can therefore be said to replace itself.
By that definition isn't Ancestral Recall a cantrip as well?
I mean, if you use it on yourself it's "draw two cards, draw a card" :^)
The one who must not be named is banned.
Pod is banned.
Tron now runs Eldrazis and is midrange.
Jund was eaten by Eldrazis, and split into many variants.
Valakut dropped blue and is now pure ramp.
But Affinity always stood there through the ages as a pillar of the format.
Midrange vs midrange modern was so cool. I liked when there were only a few format defining decks
Sure, there was less diversity, but most of the games were high quality with very few loopsided matchups (mostly Tron's fault).
I liked Cawblade vs Cawblade standard.
And that's what made modern great. "BG/x,UR/x twin, Tron, Pod, Affinity" is way funnier than fifty shades of uninteractive linear decks.
You get infinitely big Melira and Anafenza if you make the red riding hood kill himself before the bolster ability resolves.
Redcap enters the battlefield, then his damage ability and anafenza's bolster trigger.
Choose his damage to resolve first, then the bolster. The result is that he kills himself, then another creature will receive the bolster.
Every other creature will eventually get bolstered, except redcap which will keep returning and killing himself before the bolster could be wasted on him.
I agree wholeheartedly with it's removal from the format.
Yeah, I thought of control players plague-winding their opponents once they had their win condition on the table, but thinking it deeper, that simply makes it unfair and overkill for aggro while boosting midrange even more.
What I was trying to get to is that rock has simply better removal cards than esper or even grixis have.
Even an Abrupt Decay without the uncountereable clause would help.
However, card selection like Ponder or Dig Through Time actually beneffit more combo decks than control decks.
Raw card draw is actually stronger in control than in mos combo decks, but it can't be cheap enough because then you end up actually powering up Storm or Delver.
The only kind of draw spells that would benefit control and not combo or Delver are slow draw spells like AV or Jace. But then you can end up with midrange abominations stomping you with Tarmogoyfs and Lilianas as well as those draw spells.
I believe the answer for control in modern are broader, better answers.
Innoceny Blood, Counterspell, Toxic Deluge.
While Counterspells could benefit Splinter Twin or Scapeshift, it pushes them further into control territory, and control decks beneffit more (Counterspell won't prevent that Abrupt Decay).
Scapeshify definitely likes Counterspell, but it can be argued that Remand is even better for that deck ad is it is right now, and every control player is happier with counterspell than with the lame at lategame Mana Leak or Remand.
"Never give blue good card draw in Modern ever?"
Dig Through time is not the answer.
Lets imagine turn one AV, turn 2 Goyf, turn 3 Courser (or Scooze/Tarmo + Bolt/AV), turn 4 BBE.
That BBE doesn't need to cascade into another AV to be brutal.
Although neither AV nor BBE interact well with Snappy.
To me that's the best card of certain category (based on the constraints you choose).
And for me a good card is one that is able to perform well in most scenarios given, instead of comparing it to cards similar to it.
To me, it's a good card in a vacuum, without any help of special synergies/builds or ignoring if it's bad against certain decks, and compared to most of the cards in MTG existence.
To say something is good or bad implies comparing it on a given context. You can't just take away format, rules, and other cards completely. At least one metric of comparison has to remain.
So I interpreted "in a vacuum" as comparing it to other cards without any help of special synergies/builds or ignoring if it's bad against certain decks, and compared to all cards in MTG existence (not only the best ones).
If Diabolic Tutor were the only hard tutor available, it wouldn't stop being a bad card because it wouldn't see any play. It would be bad in a vacuum.
To me, back on Alfa times, every creature was bad because you could just win with a deck full of Black Lotus, Time Twister and Lightning Bolt, Channel-Fireball.
Black Lotus is without a doubt more powerful than Lightning Bolt, and I'm sure I can make that claim because BL will give almost every deck higher chances to win than LB even if they fulfill completely different roles.
You chose to compare Serum Visions it to the best cards that fulfill it's supposed role. While myself and Lord Seth chose to take it to the context of magic as a whole.
I think different kind of cards can actually be compared to other cards. The following is a loose example of me comparing the power level of some cards, just so that you get an idea:
Tier________| Ritual effect______| Mana Dork_______| U Cantrips
Just broken__| Black Lotus______| None____________| Ancestral Recall***
... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Huge gap in power level ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...
Overpowered | Dark Ritual_______| Deathrite Shaman_ | Brainstorm
...
Very Strong__| Rite of Flame_____| Noble Hierarch____| Ponder
Strong______| Seething Song____| Birds of Paradise__ | Preordain
Ok_________| Simian Spirit Guide | Llanowar Elves____ | Serum Visions
Mediocre____|_Pyretic Ritual ____| Sylvan Caryatid___ | Peek***
Bad________|____None________| Golden Hind______| Reach Through Mists***
Terrible_____|____None________| Greenside Watcher | Index
***Although drawing cards isn't fixing your draws per se, they do increase your chance of drawing your desired cards.
This table is just to illustrate, and it doesn't intends to be an exact representation.
And again, saying that Serum Visions is bad because Brainstorm exists is as bad as saying that Llanowar Elves is a bad card because Deathrite Shaman exists.
While it's true that there are stronger cards than both, that doesn't make them immediately bad cards, since they can do a good job in many environments.
Serum Visions isn't bad on a vacuum.
This. They are a business, and if suddenly modern became even more popular than standard, and nearly everyone got every staple of the format, the interest to keep investing would drastically reduce, and their sells may plummet.
Why would I buy another pack ever if I only played modern and already got all the modern staples? Maybe if I wanted cards from the new sets, which on the long run would imply unhealthy power creep.
If they keep supply limited, they could even support a lot of Modern tournaments and profit from it on the long run, probably forever.
It's expensive for us, yes, but it's the clearest way to keep it sustainable.
PD: I apologize for the inappropriateness. It's not that I simply ignored the mod message, I had the misfortune to finish writing and posting a few moments after him.
Still, Deep Analysis got a new friend.
I know you want to be funny, because you can't really be surprised that weird ban and unban proposals happen on a public forum called "modern banlist discussion", and it has been this way since it's origins and it will continue until it's end as long as it keeps being a public forum.
And nobody questioned if Ancestral Recall is better than Brainstorm, and all the people directly involved in that discussion always considered Ancestral Recall as a cantrip. But it's true, it's a bit ridiculous that the very simple discussion "Serum Visions is bad" vs "Serum Visions isn't bad" was fuel for a very very long discussion that still got nowhere.
On topic: I am happy with the current state of Modern, it annoys me a little to see aggro so over-represented, but I feel many decks can do well currently.
The original post was:
I rewrote it and it wasn't clear enough, it was meant to say "Except it isn't the second best cantrip when cards like this exist:". Yeah, my mistake, but still, that would've been inferred. Pointing it out was irrelevant to the discussion (like most of what I've posted...)
I feel like we are walking on circles (my fault for not straight to the point before), so I will just ask you this:
What is a good card for you?
To me, Remand, Cryptic Command and Path to Exile are good cards, even if there are cards that are much better at what they do. I think they are good cards because they are Modern and Commander maindeck-able, and are strong for most standard environments.
And in the hypothetical case where the best creature that existed was Archangel (and it saw play nowhere), I would still consider it bad compared to any other card, and worse, even if they were from different categories.
We definitely have different criteria, and maybe mine is horribly wrong. So I want to know yours.
I apologize if this is derailing the topic too much.
Serum Visions is the best one mana cantrip availabe for modern.
It is better than Sleight of Hand because it allows you to dig further on your library than it since you get to see an additional card.
While I really like playing with Serum Visions, it's definitely weaker than Ponder and Preordain, but it's still a good card, and those cards were banned because they pushed some decks a bit too much.
izzetmage pretty much explained why and when you'd run the card.
Thought Scour can be better if you are running graveyard stuff like Tasigur and Lingeri Souls.
I think those 4 colour control decks skip that kind of cards completely because they are better running a sheer amount of goodstuff disruption.
And IMO, Anticipate supports better draw go styles.
For example, if you want to be able to interact with your opponent with Spell Snare, Lightning Bolt, Spell Pierce turn one; andRemand, Mana Leak, Shadow of Doubt, Lightning Helix turn two.
Playing Serum Visions won't allow you to do those, while you'd be able to cast Anticipate at any moment you don't find the need or opportunity to answer your opponent.
(what Torpf said)
Aggressive but redundant enough decks like Zoo or Merfolk don't use any kind of dig because they are redundant enough already, don't want to dig for specific cards so much as combo decks and don't really want to find that narrow answer, just beat your face.
Which is exactly what you are doing with Serum Visions.
That depends on your definition of cantrip.
I could argue that Ancestral Recall isn't a cantrip either, as someone some posts above me argued that it's a card advantage card.
And if we consider a loose enough definition of cantrip in order to classify Brainstorm and Ancestral Recall as cantrips, we'd have to consider every card that replaces itself. At that point you may consider as well cards like Time Walk, wheel effects like Timetwister and Time Spiral and tutors like Intuition and Merchant Scroll siunce they replace themselves as well.
But if we are actually conservative and consider only one mana spells that do a small effect and draw a card for one mana, then Ponder and Preordain are the only unarguably better cantrips than Serum Visions.
I never wrote that.
Just no. Not better than BS.[/quote]
Comparable. And in the proper deck, it is better.
Again, that depends on your definition of "cantrip".
It is a valid statement. Comparisons are always relative to something, that even on the definition of what comparing is.
I was basing my arguments on Magic as a whole, not just Legacy and Vintage.
On the context of Vintage, Legacy, Pauper and EDH, Serum Visions is definitely a bad card. Comparing it to Duel Commander, Modern, Standard, Block and several limited formats, it's actually pretty good.
I actually wish Modern was much more competitive so that Serum Visions were a bad card, but the truth is that it isn't.
It does makes sense, and it's outrageous to believe it's not.
Let's say someone says "Stoneforge Mystic is more powerful than Serum Visions". Would you try to argue "No! Because that's an entirely different category and utterly irrelevant! It makes no sense to compare creatures to cantrips!".
I'm sure you wouldn't.
So you agree Brainstorm is a overpowered card compared to most of the cards on MTG.
Thus, it's not fair to say that Serum Visions is bad just because it's worse than one of the best cards ever printed.
I read the whole conversation.
It's good in modern, duel commander, it would be good on standard, it would be good on most blocks.
And he's right.
It's good enough compared to most magic cards, and good enough for modern. Not that many cards happen to actually be good in modern.
They're more powerful than the modern's power level that Wizards wants. Serum Visions is a fine card unless you compare it to the 0.001% of the most powerful cards.
R Instant - [Card] deals 2 damage to target player. Draw a card.
Brainstorm is on a similar level.
I think they can be compared to small tutor effects.
(Notice that comparing, and using the term "small" doesn't equates to saying that they are the same, just comparing).
While a tutor allows you to choose a card from your whole library, Ponder and Preordain let you choose one card from the top three/two of your library. Not as powerful as choosing from ~50 cards, but it's for much less mana.
Ponder, Preordain, Dig Through Time and Impulse all help you find specific cards in your deck.
http://mtgsalvation.gamepedia.com/Cantrip
By that definition isn't Ancestral Recall a cantrip as well?
I mean, if you use it on yourself it's "draw two cards, draw a card" :^)