Teferi’s Ageless Insight
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http://www.magicspoiler.com/mtg-spoiler/teferis-ageless-insight/
Are you kidding me??? 2UU is not cheap (but it's cheap). Vintage can plop this out on turn 2-3 easy, or turn 1 with lotus. Now ancestral and brainstorm draw SIX for 1 mana? All cantrips are a filter + draw 2 for one mana? Gush for 4 cards for ZERO mana? WTF? How is this even a thing???
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An Alhammarret's Archive that can't be cast off of Mishra's Workshop? Don't sign me up.
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Shops doesn't draw extra cards (the occasional Staff of Nin here or there excepted). Blue decks on the other hand are stuffed full of cantrips and draw spells.
That said it's a fair question to ask how cheap the (completely busted, IMO) effect needs to be to be worth playing. Five mana is too high, and I agree four is still too high.
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@80percentbuffoon
Getting your Alhammeret's Archive Dack'd was the worst part of running Alhammeret's Archive in Vintage. Not that I would know. This is a strict upgrade in that your opponent can only Pyroblast it, not steal it outright. I think it's going to be held back by the desire of most Vintage players to win games of Magic and not do absurd things like play Palinchron, Mikokoro, and Minamo, in an Academy-style combo deck.
I built a Gush Shops deck that ran it. UR with Batterskull and Archive as Shops payoffs, and JVP, Gush, Dack, and Blue draw spells as Archive payoffs. It was not terrible...Batterskull and Shops helped in the Shop matchup but then you would run into issues with opposing Dacks. The big issue is this card ends up being a win more or trades with the even more prevalent Pyroblast or they counter you draw spell. Gush is restricted now and doubling up on Preordain is not worth it since the first couple are just replacing the cards and mana invested in the enchantment. Narset also hoses this card, hard.
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@chubbyrain1 There are many cards that punish card draw - but card draw decks are still prevelant and the majority. I mean - even bazaar draws 4 with this. Dack +4/-2 cards? What? This is the cheapest and least-backfirable effect of this kind we've seen. I think 4 mana is playable. People also said a 4 mana brainstorm on a stick was unplayable, and we all saw how that turned out.
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This and Jace are ludicrous. Time for Mana Drain to make a comeback?
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This feels really winmore to me. 4 mana do nothing on its own enchantments do not have any track record to speak of in the format, I actually can't think of any other card in the format right now that does nothing on its own, to the point where I think this is actively bad.
Then, assuming you land it and it's not blown out from a 1 mana counter, you need to resolve another spell, best case scenarios is you resolve Ancestral and draw 6, but you only net 4 cards on the first exchange and you have spent 5 mana, 4 at sorcery speed. A 5 mana voltron to make a slightly better Tidings does not ring out as a winning strategy.
I actually think this card is bad also because it takes up a slot that could have just been a draw spell. Draw spells tend to lead into other draw spells and resolving ancestral into treasure cruise or Ancestral into Snapcaster seems way more reasonable and mana efficient to me than this.
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@protoaddict What about playing things like bazaar...or sylvan library? Those cards are good and are played for themselves anyway. Now you play Sylvan and follow up with this. If it doesn't get blown out by pyroblast (as could be said for ancestral, tinker, jace, yaddayadda), you are now drawing 5 cards on your draw step every turn and only putting back 2. That smells busted to me. Would I rather play sylvan library and a random cantrip vs sylvan (in a deck loaded with draw spells) and this 4 mana enchantment? I don't think so.
Turning a preordain into a +1 CA for the setup of this card is probably not worth it. Comboing it with things like sylvan and bazaar or giving the 20 cantrips a +1 card boost most certainly could be.
And saying "blue spell dies to pyroblast" is the countermage's version of "X dies to doom blade."
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@thewhitedragon69 The primary issue is it generates no value or impact on the board on its own. I don't know why you are bringing up Jace when I literally posted my top 8 result with Alhammarret's Archive and talked about the limitations and experiences I had with a card that has almost identical text. Saying people were wrong about a previous card is not a sufficient defense of that card, especially given the selection bias involved.
I also think you misunderstand the "dies to Doom Blade" argument. While cards are not rendered unplayable solely to being susceptible to certain removal spells, they become better and worse based on the prevalence of certain removal. 4 toughness creatures are better in a format where the primary removal spell is a 3 damage burn spell than a Doom Blade. Part of deck building is adjusting your threats and removal based on the metagame. Enchantment is typically a beneficial type maindeck as it is difficult to remove but being a Blue Enchantment in a format where Pyroblast is played in 48% of decks is a significant detriment. It is not the sole reason it is unplayable - again, it's more you drop this for 4 mana and it does nothing that is the issue. But proper card evaluation requires you to account for the summation of circumstances in which you draw the card in a deck in which you would play the card. Which will include those times you go nuts and the times it gets Pyroblasted or shut down by Narset.
And I'm not discounting the positives. I built a deck that really tried to maximize the brokenness of the doubling effect. Preordain is a bit tame - Scry 2, draw 2? I went for Thoughtcast for a 1-mana draw 4 since that was more powerful. But why stop there? I ran draw 7's and Thirst for Knowledges. Even Notion Thieves. I was trying to maximize the chances that Alhammaret's Archive won the game for me. There was no Blightsteel in the main - it and Jar were my main Tinker targets.
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@chubbyrain1 said in Teferi’s Ageless Insight:
The primary issue is it generates no value or impact on the board on its own.
There are many cards in Vintage that "generate no value or impact on the board on their own" including some of the most busted cards in the format, such as Yawgmoth's Will and Paradoxical Outcome.
In general it is much more fruitful to consider the distribution of board states that are likely to arise in a deck build around a card as context for evaluation, rather than a total vacuum. Is it likely a deck playing Insight will have a Bazaar in play by the time they resolve Insight? If so, already Insight does not have "no value on its own."
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I think another way to frame @chubbyrain1 's point of view is as this:
The publishing of this card is approximately equivalent to adding the following card errata on Alhammaret's Archive:
- This card's mana cost is reduced by (3) and increased by (UU).
- This card can now be Pyroblast'ed.
How many cards in Magic, if given the above errata modification, would move the card from vintage-unplayable territory to vintage-playable territory? Is there reason to believe that Alhammaret's Archive is one of those cards?
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@dshin said in Teferi’s Ageless Insight:
How many cards in Magic, if given the above errata modification, would move the card from vintage-unplayable territory to vintage-playable territory?
Losing one 1 CMC is a huge boost in power level (far beyond what you lose from being Pyroblastable) for anything you plan on casting in a blue deck without Workshop. It's hard to think of cards that are totally unplayed right now that would become playable (many of course would get a lot better, including Memory Jar, provided it stayed an Artifact) but maybe something like Damping Matrix?
Several already-blue cards probably get better (though UUU starts to become awkward), such as Gifts Ungiven and Gush.
Serum Powder would be absurd as a blue card, but that's something of a special case.
Is there reason to believe that Alhammaret's Archive is one of those cards?
No, probably not.
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If you have:
Dack Fayden
Library of Alexandria
Senseis Divining Top
JTMS
Baby Jace
Bazaar of Bhagdador others I'm not thinking of in play before dropping the enchantment, then it's definitely at least paying for itself.
And I would look at it from the opposite perspective as well. Would JTMS have been played (in blue decks) if it was 5 colorless vs 2UU?
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@serracollector said in Teferi’s Ageless Insight:
And I would look at it from the opposite perspective as well. Would JTMS have been played (in blue decks) if it was 5 colorless vs 2UU?
likely so, at least when mana drain was playable.
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@evouga PO literally draws cards, Yawgmoth's Will "draws" the cards in your graveyard. They generate considerable value when cast. This doesn't. You have to resolve some other spell or some other ability to derive value from it. The concept of a "do nothing" card is frequently used in card evaluation to describe cards like these and would not describe Yawgmoth's Will or PO.
Also, it would be helpful if you kept reading...
@chubbyrain1 said in Teferi’s Ageless Insight:
It is not the sole reason it is unplayable - again, it's more you drop this for 4 mana and it does nothing that is the issue. But proper card evaluation requires you to account for the summation of circumstances in which you draw the card in a deck in which you would play the card. Which will include those times you go nuts and the times it gets Pyroblasted or shut down by Narset.
I go back and forth on whether or not it's beneficial to participate in these single card discussions because it's rarely productive. People never critically evaluate their ideas, they never learn from mistakes, they never seem to play with the cards they are actually discussing, and all meaningful discussion evaporates once cards are released. The result is a repetitious forum of bad evaluations after bad evaluations. People lost their minds with Damping Sphere and then they lost their minds with Deafening Silence, even though the cards had similar limitations. Shenanigans was panned as the best artifact removal spell while people were crapping on Force of Vigor.
So here we go again. One of the only players who has actually played with the "Double the amount of cards you would draw" effect in a Vintage event (I think Dan Miller and Brian Kelly were the others of course) chimes in and players are making loose and often irrelevant comparisons like "But Jace. But Yawgmoth Will. But PO."Comparisons that are not functionally equivalent should be banned. They lead to horrible card evaluation and discussion.
This card isn't JTMS. It's Thassa's Bident. Worse. Thassa's Bident you can atleast play off of Mishra's Workshop. So I guess Coastal Piracy. It's Thopter Spy Network, but you don't get the 1/1. It's Kefnet (Both Kefnets). And both Thassas. It's Jace's Sanctum. It's the Jeskai Enchantment from the old new set that draws cards whenever you cast a noncreature spell. Not Song of Creation but the one that's much worse. The problem with crappy comparisons based on superficial characteristics is they just tell you nothing, absolutely nothing about a card.
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Not costed aggressively enough. At 3cmc, it would be playable. This is not.
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@chubbyrain1 said in Teferi’s Ageless Insight:
@evouga PO literally draws cards, Yawgmoth's Will "draws" the cards in your graveyard. They generate considerable value when cast. This doesn't. You have to resolve some other spell or some other ability to derive value from it. The concept of a "do nothing" card is frequently used in card evaluation to describe cards like these and would not describe Yawgmoth's Will or PO.
I'm not seeing the difference.
PO does nothing if you don't have any permanents in play to bounce.
Yawgmoth's Will does nothing when you have an empty graveyard.Insight does nothing if you have an empty board and hand. It does plenty if you have a Bazaar, Dack, or Jace in play, or cantrips in hand, etc. In that case Insight "literally draws cards" exactly the same as PO.
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@chubbyrain1 said in Teferi’s Ageless Insight:
They lead to horrible card evaluation and discussion.
Nobody is forcing you to post in or read these threads if they're a source of aggravation for you.
I read your post and decklist and appreciated your perspective. I don't see why it gives you special status to insult and pontificate over me and others.
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@evouga said in Teferi’s Ageless Insight:
I'm not seeing the difference.
PO does nothing if you don't have any permanents in play to bounce.
Yawgmoth's Will does nothing when you have an empty graveyard.
Insight does nothing if you have an empty board and hand. It does plenty if you have a Bazaar, Dack, or Jace in play, or cantrips in hand, etc. In that case Insight "literally draws cards" exactly the same as PO.There is so much difference.
This card will not do anything upon resolution other than be in play. You need to have another effect to get any benefit from it at all.
Yawgs will, when resolved, basically reads draw your graveyard, and PO, when resolved, reads make a bunch of mana and draw a bunch of cards.
All cards in magic rely on other cards, so to say that this card is strong with a bazaar in play is kinda a wrong minded argument, because I am almost certain that PO and Yawgs will are even stronger with cards in the right zones. It's really about opportunity cost.
If I'm sitting with a counterspell in my hand and facing an opponent with 2 cards in hand, I would much rather they be holding this card and ancestral than ancestral and Gush, for instance. I feel like 9 times out of 10 I'm just going to let this resolve and counter the draw spell and leave you with a card in play that does nothing on its own.
Likewise, how many effects do you have to resolve for your investment into this 4 mana, sorcery speed spell to pay off versus you just playing a 4 mana draw 3 like tidings? It feels like at least 2 of the better draw spells, minimum.
I also think the idea that you can resolve a 4 mana enchantment and have a bazaar in play over multiple turns is a god damn fever dream. Most other bazaar strategies in that situation would have just won already with no mana (dredge) or with like 1 mana to bring back a bunch of vengevines.
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@protoaddict said in Teferi’s Ageless Insight:
This card will not do anything upon resolution other than be in play. You need to have another effect to get any benefit from it at all.
PO does not do anything upon resolution other than move from the stack to the graveyard. You need to have another nonland, nontoken permanent (and ideally, a large number of efficient mana-generating or utility artifacts) to derive value.
I completely agree with the second half of your post. The careful way to evaluate the value potential of the card is to ask questions such as: in what circumstances will this card generate value? How easy is it to set up such circumstances? How much value is expected, and over what time scale? What are the risks and opportunity costs?
"Does nothing on its own" is a meaningless evaluation criterion because for both PO and Insight, there are game states where the card does nothing, and game states where the card leads to a sequence of plays which win the game on the spot. The difference is not some intrinsic "does-nothing" characteristic of the card itself, but the difference in ease and reliability of setting up the right circumstances for each card to shine.
