As it stands, its usefulness has been significantly diminished, but single cards from the block combo with it in ways that are potentially interesting so I kept the card as the typical janky rare that requires a bit of ingenuity to get great results out of. In this case, Minstrel will almost always eliminate your opponents' hands, the trick it to break the symmetry in your favor.
I mean, I got that, but since nobody gets priority during cleanup, when maximum hand size matters, there's no way to break the symmetry here.
(Unless you have a bunch of triggered "at the beginning of the next cleanup step" abilities, but as far as I saw, there aren't any in your set, and there's only about a dozen of them that saw print.)
EDIT: Man, that wouldn't work either. Even if you manage to gain priority and cast spells/activate abilities, it just produces an additional cleanup step after. See CR 514.3a.
Mindnumber Minstrel :2mana::symu::symu:
Creature — Human Rogue Bard (R)
Attunement — Each player’s maximum hand size is equal to the number of spells and abilities he or she controls on the stack. Ciceron found himself suddenly dropped onto an Israfiel battlefield. Lost and surrounded by belligerent warclans, he picked a direction and began to walk, all the while playing a hypnotizing tune.
2/4
I'm relatively sure this doesn't work as intended. Maximum hand size is only ever checked during cleanup step, when you can't cast spells or activate abilities.
Oh. Hurf durf, 's what I get for not paying attention.
I mean, I got that, but since nobody gets priority during cleanup, when maximum hand size matters, there's no way to break the symmetry here.
(Unless you have a bunch of triggered "at the beginning of the next cleanup step" abilities, but as far as I saw, there aren't any in your set, and there's only about a dozen of them that saw print.)
EDIT: Man, that wouldn't work either. Even if you manage to gain priority and cast spells/activate abilities, it just produces an additional cleanup step after. See CR 514.3a.
I'm relatively sure this doesn't work as intended. Maximum hand size is only ever checked during cleanup step, when you can't cast spells or activate abilities.