Much more abuseable. Under your example, you're able to construct your own opening hand, more or less, which the current mull rule does not allow for, and never should.
well...
draw 7 and keep 6 is only marginally better than just drawing 6.
it helps a lot to avoid mana screw, but don't really helps finding combos...
Bestow has the issue that it's a benefit, not a detriment, like Devotion. Bestow only adds to the power of the card, while Devotion basically takes away from it, so when Bestow is good, it's alright, but when Devotion is good it's broken.
Imagine the following card:
Rancored Elf G
Trample, Bestow 1G
Enchanted Creature gets +2/+0 and has Trample
2/1.
Not only is it basically a Rancor, but it's also an early creature, that can then be rancored for more benefit, that also comes into play if the creature it targets dies/gets bounced/etc, unlike the original Rancor. So either the bestow or the body has to be a lot worse, as in the case of Boon Satyr having a good body but a so-so Bestow. The other option is that both are mediocre, and mediocre doesn't get played, like the white prerelease promo, it's decent in either mode, but neither mode is attractive. More so, the Bestow cost can't be the stronger part, since it can be used to negate the weakness of the main body if its cost, just throw it on a dude that can die easily, or sacrifices itself, and you get the body for a heavily discounted rate. Maybe if they made something that had a strong Bestow, ok main body, but got some negative side effect if it came into play after being Bestowed on something... Who knows, there's a lot of design space for the mechanic, and maybe next time (or set) it will be more interesting.
I think they tried pushing Boon Satyr, but they didn't push the Bestow cost on it quite enough, but the creature itself is good. As a whole Bestow is a very complicated and powerful mechanic, and they're probably trying to be cautious with it, whereas Devotion is a lot simpler and promotes their desire to have a more mono-coloured format despite Shock Lands.
your version is way too powerful.
that does not change the fact that the ones that were printed are way too weak.
Maybe if you make your dude cost and bestow 1 mana more expensive then it probably would see some play.
Take for example... Celestial Archon, which is one of the most playable bestow dudes.
A rare card, that will not see any play.
It has about the same power level as Serra Angel if you play it as a creature and that's not playable outside of limited for years now.
Don't even get me started on Baneslayer Angel... I know it's a mythic, bla bla bla, but rarity isn't important to measure what is or is not playable on constructed.
Would Celestial Archon be broken at 2WW?
Make it 1WWW, it would help a lot with white devotion, and maybe be playable in constructed.
That bestow cost could have been 4WW without warping any formats...
Even limited wouldn't be ruined any more than it already is if someone has this card.
Bestow is a really powerful mechanic, but WotC was way too much conservative with it.
they were scared this mechanic would ruin the metagame, so they buffed the costs to make everything unplayable, pretty much like they did with Cipher....
Unlike Clone, Shapeshifter's Marrow sends the original creature card to the graveyard. So it's more like a bad Desertion. And Desertion is awesome.
yes, but it's a godawful bad Desertion.... look at the amount of stuff you've got to make happen to make this card awesome....
1- cast it for 2UU
2- pray you don't flip a Grizzly Bears
3- wait until your opponent casts a nice target.
4- put it on the top of his deck for added lulz.
or just....
5- be lucky.
well, of course, if he never reveals a creature, you get to see everything he's drawing (if he's just drawing cards regularly), which is nice information
but more often than not, you'll just be paying 4 mana for a 2 drop, and will not even get card advantage in the process.
You can always try and search for hardware reasons....
is something heating up?
clean your coolers, check if the memory connectors aren't loose or rusty...
that can be hard to do on a laptop, but if the performance just went down for no reason, you should look everywhere
Black responds to everything Blue does by sacrificing everything to one of its billion sac outlets and getting Blood Artist triggers to win the game. Teferi doesn't stop this. You can only Stifle once
I vote for Black.
My post is only 7 above yours and it treats EXACTLY this situation and explains how blue still wins against it.
Serra Avatar has a triggered ability that goes in the stack the first time a player would get priority after he hits the graveyard.
In normal situations, no one would receive priority during the resolution of Tome Scour (or any spell for that matter), so, you finish dumping the 5 cards in the graveyard and then shuffle.
Only thing I didn't really know about was Gitaxian Probe... I mean, it's a really good card, especially with Young Pyromancer on the field, but I'm quite not sure about the mandatory loss of life, as there are no Islands in play... anyway, my question is: will another Surgical Extraction do the trick as hand looker and free spell / library disruption, even though it doesn't draw a card?
Sure, Surgical Extraction can act as Probe.
The cantrip is a nice addition but you can live without it, no question about that.
Deck seems legit now, IMO.
you need to playtest it to find extra issues
Well, without any more cards involved, this wouldn't have a defined board state, most judges would determine a random amount of repetitions to be actually executed as a shortcut as more repetions than enough to flip the whole deck in the graveyard are completely random, it's irrelevant from the deck order standpoint if you resolved 100 or 100 thousand brainfreeze copies, anything is possible either way.
Unless you make it clear for the judge that you'd actually expecting something to happen so you could react, this would be an ok solution other than issue a draw game.
I've seen some similar situations handled in such a way.
If you have, for example, something that can actually force a draw at instant speed, eventually in those million repetitions, Emrakul would be revealed as the latest card of the graveyard, then in response to the trigger, you make them draw the card from the empty library and win on the spot, this would be a real problem... lol.
Specially if the situation you're waiting for happen to take a long time to actually happen.
You started your comments saying you're "making them discard everything"
I just think with just Inquisition and Therapy, you'll not accomplish that very often.
Hymn could very well be a bit of overkill, but it's a very powerful card, it ruins the early turns for your opponent, generate card advantage, etc.
I'm not really sure if the deck really needs it, probably not, you comments made me think you really wanted to discard their hands entirely, but if you want just strip them out of their best cards and have a discard-ish theme, then just don't add hymn and be happy about it.
With just Therapy and Inquisition you're not likely to have anyone to "discard everything" as both are hand disrupt 1 for 1 cards.
I'd use some more aggressive discard options, stuff that discard more than one card at a time. Mind Twist and Hymn to Tourach come to mind.
I'm not really sure why you're using Infernal Tutor, your deck doesn't really seem to need tutor effects, specially as a 4of.
Grim Lavamancer and Tombstalker are also both fighting for the same resource.
Even though both are amazingly good cards, each time you tap Grim Lavamancer, you make tombstalker 2 mana harder to cast, and if you remove a lot of cards of your graveyard to cast tombstalkers, chances are you're transforming the Lavamancer into Mons's Goblin Raiders, to tell the true, I don't really like Grim Lavamancer outside of a REALLY aggressive build (i.e. Burn decks)
Probably some more burn spells (Magma Jet is my favorite) in place of Terminate, could help you with consistence... how many times do you really have to kill big guys with it?
If the other guy is casting big creatures, you're already screwed anyway.
well, in a nutshell...
I'd get rid of the Grim Lavamancers, Terminates and Tutor effects.
Add at least 4 more (multi card) discards, some burn and 2 more Young Pyromancers.
If you go the "4 young pyromancer" route, you can consider adding a Hellrider or 2 (maybe even in the Vampires spots). This little guy wins games.
You have nothing at 4 mana for Stone to ramp you into. Chromatic Lantern is much better in your deck. Even prophetic prism (while it doesn't ramp you) is better than Stone.
But the ability of playing the Stone in turn 2, then follow it with with Plowshares, Spell Pierce or Duress (depending on which color my opponents are playing), or being able to cast Daxos, Ashiok, Specter or even tinker to tutor for Triplets in turn 3 and still have mana to spell pierce the removal was relevant a LOT of times.
Also, the deck has plenty of ETBT lands...
I often won't have 3 untapped lands by the end of turn 3.
Still, yes, I see the upsides of using more Lanterns, and may go in this direction as well.
Maybe change the split to 3-2 in favor of one or another, or maybe even cutting Stones entirely and just add 3 Lanterns and an extra land.
Felwar Stone and Exotic Orchard are gold in this deck because it warrants (most of times) that I'll be able to cast stuff with Sen Triplets or Nightveil Specter, even though Lantern can do the same, that extra mana is relevant.
As both Duress and Spell Pierce can't hit creatures, I'm lacking answers to early creatures, more often than not Ashiok stays in my hand because if I cast it It will just die because I can't protect him by getting rid of the guys that'll beat him down.
I thought about adding Propaganda or Norn's Annex to gain tempo and protect Ashiok (Propaganda wouldn't) but I guess this isn't the best course of action.
Does anyone think I should change my control cards?
I'm guessing that the key to success in this deck is within that 20 cards listed under "Control stuff".
The mana and wincons (and the proper equipment to protect the creatures) are easily worked around or swapped as needed.
I just need to be sure I'm running the most adequate control core for this deck to be working in it's best.
well...
draw 7 and keep 6 is only marginally better than just drawing 6.
it helps a lot to avoid mana screw, but don't really helps finding combos...
well, it could very well be
draw 7 -> draw 7, keep6 -> draw 6, keep 5 -> draw 5, keep 4....
I don't really think the mulligan rule is a problem today though
from everything I've seen to date, my favorite proposed change to mulligan was.
draw 7 -> draw 7, keep 6 -> draw 7, keep 5 -> draw 7, keep 4.... and so on.
a little less unforgiving, not much more abuseable than the current one.
your version is way too powerful.
that does not change the fact that the ones that were printed are way too weak.
Maybe if you make your dude cost and bestow 1 mana more expensive then it probably would see some play.
Take for example... Celestial Archon, which is one of the most playable bestow dudes.
A rare card, that will not see any play.
It has about the same power level as Serra Angel if you play it as a creature and that's not playable outside of limited for years now.
Don't even get me started on Baneslayer Angel... I know it's a mythic, bla bla bla, but rarity isn't important to measure what is or is not playable on constructed.
Would Celestial Archon be broken at 2WW?
Make it 1WWW, it would help a lot with white devotion, and maybe be playable in constructed.
That bestow cost could have been 4WW without warping any formats...
Even limited wouldn't be ruined any more than it already is if someone has this card.
Bestow is a really powerful mechanic, but WotC was way too much conservative with it.
they were scared this mechanic would ruin the metagame, so they buffed the costs to make everything unplayable, pretty much like they did with Cipher....
yes, but it's a godawful bad Desertion.... look at the amount of stuff you've got to make happen to make this card awesome....
1- cast it for 2UU
2- pray you don't flip a Grizzly Bears
3- wait until your opponent casts a nice target.
4- put it on the top of his deck for added lulz.
or just....
5- be lucky.
well, of course, if he never reveals a creature, you get to see everything he's drawing (if he's just drawing cards regularly), which is nice information
but more often than not, you'll just be paying 4 mana for a 2 drop, and will not even get card advantage in the process.
too much work... 4 mana is a lot for an effect that's completely random on it's own.
this card is just a bad clone.
unless, of course, your kitchen meta is filled with timmies... if that's the case, give it a run.
is something heating up?
clean your coolers, check if the memory connectors aren't loose or rusty...
that can be hard to do on a laptop, but if the performance just went down for no reason, you should look everywhere
My post is only 7 above yours and it treats EXACTLY this situation and explains how blue still wins against it.
sorry.
In normal situations, no one would receive priority during the resolution of Tome Scour (or any spell for that matter), so, you finish dumping the 5 cards in the graveyard and then shuffle.
Sure, Surgical Extraction can act as Probe.
The cantrip is a nice addition but you can live without it, no question about that.
Deck seems legit now, IMO.
you need to playtest it to find extra issues
Unless you make it clear for the judge that you'd actually expecting something to happen so you could react, this would be an ok solution other than issue a draw game.
I've seen some similar situations handled in such a way.
If you have, for example, something that can actually force a draw at instant speed, eventually in those million repetitions, Emrakul would be revealed as the latest card of the graveyard, then in response to the trigger, you make them draw the card from the empty library and win on the spot, this would be a real problem... lol.
Specially if the situation you're waiting for happen to take a long time to actually happen.
I just think with just Inquisition and Therapy, you'll not accomplish that very often.
Hymn could very well be a bit of overkill, but it's a very powerful card, it ruins the early turns for your opponent, generate card advantage, etc.
I'm not really sure if the deck really needs it, probably not, you comments made me think you really wanted to discard their hands entirely, but if you want just strip them out of their best cards and have a discard-ish theme, then just don't add hymn and be happy about it.
I'd use some more aggressive discard options, stuff that discard more than one card at a time.
Mind Twist and Hymn to Tourach come to mind.
I'm not really sure why you're using Infernal Tutor, your deck doesn't really seem to need tutor effects, specially as a 4of.
Grim Lavamancer and Tombstalker are also both fighting for the same resource.
Even though both are amazingly good cards, each time you tap Grim Lavamancer, you make tombstalker 2 mana harder to cast, and if you remove a lot of cards of your graveyard to cast tombstalkers, chances are you're transforming the Lavamancer into Mons's Goblin Raiders, to tell the true, I don't really like Grim Lavamancer outside of a REALLY aggressive build (i.e. Burn decks)
ok, now, for suggestions....
Gitaxian Probe is COMPLETELY BANANAS with Young Pyromancer (play 4 of this guy) and Cabal Therapy
Probably some more burn spells (Magma Jet is my favorite) in place of Terminate, could help you with consistence... how many times do you really have to kill big guys with it?
If the other guy is casting big creatures, you're already screwed anyway.
well, in a nutshell...
I'd get rid of the Grim Lavamancers, Terminates and Tutor effects.
Add at least 4 more (multi card) discards, some burn and 2 more Young Pyromancers.
If you go the "4 young pyromancer" route, you can consider adding a Hellrider or 2 (maybe even in the Vampires spots). This little guy wins games.
But the ability of playing the Stone in turn 2, then follow it with with Plowshares, Spell Pierce or Duress (depending on which color my opponents are playing), or being able to cast Daxos, Ashiok, Specter or even tinker to tutor for Triplets in turn 3 and still have mana to spell pierce the removal was relevant a LOT of times.
Also, the deck has plenty of ETBT lands...
I often won't have 3 untapped lands by the end of turn 3.
Still, yes, I see the upsides of using more Lanterns, and may go in this direction as well.
Maybe change the split to 3-2 in favor of one or another, or maybe even cutting Stones entirely and just add 3 Lanterns and an extra land.
Felwar Stone and Exotic Orchard are gold in this deck because it warrants (most of times) that I'll be able to cast stuff with Sen Triplets or Nightveil Specter, even though Lantern can do the same, that extra mana is relevant.
I'm also swaping my Duresses for Inquisition of Kozileks.
As both Duress and Spell Pierce can't hit creatures, I'm lacking answers to early creatures, more often than not Ashiok stays in my hand because if I cast it It will just die because I can't protect him by getting rid of the guys that'll beat him down.
I thought about adding Propaganda or Norn's Annex to gain tempo and protect Ashiok (Propaganda wouldn't) but I guess this isn't the best course of action.
Does anyone think I should change my control cards?
I'm guessing that the key to success in this deck is within that 20 cards listed under "Control stuff".
The mana and wincons (and the proper equipment to protect the creatures) are easily worked around or swapped as needed.
I just need to be sure I'm running the most adequate control core for this deck to be working in it's best.