Sin Prodder and manipulating your opponents draws
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@xouman It's certainly a solid point that you can include 8 CMC delve stuff, Tasigurs, etc. But does this card really belong in the same deck as Tasigur?
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I'm actually not even thinking about the viability of the card, but trying to grasp an abstract concept to understand the game better. Just like it's good to undestand things like card advantage, card selection, virtual card advantage, etc.
For me, the card your opponent takes out of your hand with Prodder is a form of draw manipulation. I mean, if you play an Extract on your opponent, you're taking out of the deck a card that may not have even come into the equation this game. Like if you mill him, etc. But here, his decision to bin the card or not actually affects the game directly, right? My point was that the possible card advantage the card can give you would not be sufficient enough to overcome this manipulation against you.
My friend's point is that either way, Prodder generated one more effect for you (damage or card) and that's card advantage any way you look at it, even in a hard control deck. -
@fsecco To start with, your opponent has no more control over your normal draws than before, he only gets a measure of control over this extra one. So let's think about what happens when this ability resolves.
Now, it's never going to put a land into your hand and lands won't deal any damage, but you don't want to be drawing those lands in a mono-red deck anyway so there's still value to be had there by not drawing them.
As to the spells in your deck, for most of them it's probably going to be a better deal for your opponent to take damage than put it into your hand. But that's damage you get without spending a card or mana. It's free, and free is a great price. Occasionally you'll see a card you didn't want to mill get sent to the bin, but you can't base decisions on repeated effects like this based on the worst thing that could happen; you need to look at the average case.
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@Klep that's the point for me. On a monored deck, where you pressure your opponents life, then ok, I can see it. But in a control deck I believe having this guy is worse than not having. You're paying mana and a card just to let your opponent have the opportunity to take good spells out of your reach. Of course, I'm not considering things like 4 Prodder, 4 Snapcaster builds. That could be something.
The ting is if you analyse all the options, you're in bad shape in most of them. If you think in terms of Good and Bad cards, good or bad meaning something you would want to draw or not, this is what you get with Prodder and your draw step (G is good, B is bad):
GG
GB
BG
BBHalf that options take out of the game a good card out of your reach. The BG case is the only one you profit, since you get to dig deeper. BB is not that relevant.
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I have upvoted Klep because, without any manipulation, that is how it works. If you need specific cards, don't play this, otherwise the average draw of your draws is EXACTLY the same, your opponent only affects the extra effect. And with that, if card was just mana, you are losing it (not a big deal). If card is business, it's either damage or CA.
Saying that Sin Prodder has a bad effect because you are playing it in a wrong deck (no manipulation. silver bullets) is like saying that confidant is bad because it kills you all the time (deck with high CC, no manipulation) or that oath is bad because your opponent gets 50% the effect (deck without orchard, 15 creatures). You can't see the effect in a generic deck, it must be seen in a correct build.
@AmbivalentDuck Well, tasigur was not on the list, but it could be a card too. If you are going for an aggro kill, tasigur or Gurmag Angler are good choices. I don't know if it's really possible to create a good deck, or even playable, from those cards (I have seen Angler even in vintage). Maybe something like the legacy Dragon Stompy deck, with moons and other prison cards, overall high costs.
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@xouman that's the thing, though. My discussion was more theoretical and abstract, based on the effect in a vacuum and trying to understand the value of being able to decide if certain card in an opponents deck wouldn't be drawn by him. We weren't trying to get to a Sin Prodder perfect deck, but analyse the card and effect in a more global scenario.
It seems nice enough with Tasi and Gurmag.
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To me, you have to consider this card in the context of Grixis Delver. You're going to want to be able to flip Gush, FoW, 8 CMC delve spells, and Gurmag/Tasigur. The question is, do you really want this guy over Dack Fayden or Vendilion Clique? I don't think you do. Menace basically only gives this evasion from Lodestone Golem. Thalia/Mentor/etc is always going to have a second critter to block with without losing value. Also, I might just play Dark Confidant and eat the damage if I think Grixis Delver is where I want to be.
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Consider splitting your deck into two piles: those your opponent would bin and those she will let you keep at any moment in time.
Contrast drawing a card. Sin Prodder's ability's value is the weighted average of the converted mana cost in damage of the binned pile plus the in-hand value of the kept pile.
Plainly, the ability shines when your bad cards are good and your good cards are expensive.
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My though on seeing this was how it's a little like Gifts. Ideally you want the cards to be usable from the graveyard so they have no good choice.
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@benjamin_berry said:
My though on seeing this was how it's a little like Gifts. Ideally you want the cards to be usable from the graveyard so they have no good choice.
Could play this in some sort of Life from the Loam deck with the new Frog so when they mill a land you draw a card anyway.
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Discounting everything that has been mentioned already about him being of more value than just the draw in the proper deck, even if he was a free fate seal as you described, he is still a free fate-seal attached to an additional draw.
What I think is interesting about the guy is that if he was just 3/2 menace with "every upkeep draw a card" I don't think we would be having this conversation. I think he would just not see play. But because of how his ability interacts with the yard and delve, it potentially adds value to him.
This is a similar situation to some other famous punisher cards, like Vexing Devil and Browbeat in other formats. If vexing devil was just a 4/3 for R it probably would not even get considered in Burn, and likewise if browbeat was just sorcery draw 3 for 3cmc, the decks that want browbeat would likely not even look at the under-costed draw 3. As is the recent trend with punisher cards, when you can build a deck that can utilize both halves of the card, it tends to wind up being stronger than the sum of its parts.
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@Protoaddct said:
Discounting everything that has been mentioned already about him being of more value than just the draw in the proper deck, even if he was a free fate seal as you described, he is still a free fate-seal attached to an additional draw.
What I think is interesting about the guy is that if he was just 3/2 menace with "every upkeep draw a card" I don't think we would be having this conversation. I think he would just not see play. But because of how his ability interacts with the yard and delve, it potentially adds value to him.
If the drawing was granted, the card would be better. As it is now, the opponent can choose to make it work that way, but often it's better for him not to give us the card.
This is a similar situation to some other famous punisher cards, like Vexing Devil and Browbeat in other formats. If vexing devil was just a 4/3 for R it probably would not even get considered in Burn,
Disagree again. The opponent can choose, making it worse. In fact, a 4/3 for R would be played in lots of decks.
and likewise if browbeat was just sorcery draw 3 for 3cmc, the decks that want browbeat would likely not even look at the under-costed draw 3. As is the recent trend with punisher cards, when you can build a deck that can utilize both halves of the card, it tends to wind up being stronger than the sum of its parts.
And again disagree. Some decks would play a non-optional draw 3 for 2R. Now, vexing devil and browbeat are played in decks where the bad mode can be taken profit. That is the same I suggested for Sin Prodder: play it in a deck where the opponent has to choose between bad and worse cases.
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2R for draw 3 cards and R for a 4/3 with no drawbacks on either would see a lot and I mean a lot of play. Giving your opponent a choice is never good, but when it's all or nothing it's even worse.
The good thing about this card is its not all or nothing. It's more like Gifts or Fact than Vexing Devil and Browbeat. So it compares to cards that have been playable in the past in terms of giving your opponent options.
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@vaughnbros said:
2R for draw 3 cards and R for a 4/3 with no drawbacks on either would see a lot and I mean a lot of play. Giving your opponent a choice is never good, but when it's all or nothing it's even worse.
The good thing about this card is its not all or nothing. It's more like Gifts or Fact than Vexing Devil and Browbeat. So it compares to cards that have been playable in the past in terms of giving your opponent options.
Nah, the kind of option Prodder gives your opponent is more comparable to Steam Augury than Fact or Fiction.
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I think you guys are skipping the context I am painting for those cards.
Obviously a 4/3 for R would be playable, but I am talking about it in the context of the (legacy) burn deck to illustrate my point about the mechanic in general.
In burn, a 4/3 for R without the 4 life option may actually be worse than the punisher version of the card. Because players are playing with imperfect information, it may never actually be possible to select the correct option. I have had a great number of games in the past when the card was an option (before swiftspear) where because my opponent chose to take the 4 life hit on turn 2 instead of letting the devil resolve, they lost the game because what they wound up drawing would have been a blocker that could have dealt with the creature or forced me to target the blocker instead of my opponents dome. If devil did not have that downside, then he basically is just a creature that has to be resolved turn one and then hit at least once to at least be on part with most of the other creatures burn already has, and is still equally a terrible on turn 3+. The punisher mechanic of that card (and many punisher cards) allow you to make the card more valuable than either one of its options when the deck and situation accommodate it.
A great example of this is treasure cruise. In both situations, flipping a treasure cruise with sin prodder is bad for your opponent, and they are obligated to pick the least bad options. But because they do not know what you have in your hand, they do not know what you will top deck with a cruise , etc, there is a very real possibility they are forced into picking the worst option and you get more value than just a blind draw. Also remember that your opponents choice is information in a lot of cases. What they chose to let you have vs what they let you bin can be very telling, and as we all know better informations helps win games.
In many ways, if they printed a lighting bolt that was exactly the same, except your opponent could chose to counter it by sacrificing a land, I'm not entirely sure you could call it strictly worse in a deck that could utilize both halves, even though in most other circumstances it would be. I feel similarly about sin prodder.
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I feel like my earlier point is getting missed here. Let's just assume we all agree that:
- Prodder does not really have a "downside" because the worst your opponent can do is mill a random card; and
- You have crafted your deck such that milling a random card is never going to blow you out.
That means there's no downside to Prodder other than his mana cost and card. Alright, let's also add the new factor started by Xouman:
- We construct our deck to maximize then number of high-CC cards in it because it is only when we flip a high-CC card off of Prodder that the card does serious work (lots of damage or a draw).
The next question still remains: are you actually getting much of an effect? In Xouman's list, you have 17 cards that have really high casting costs. So, 17/60 times (I assume you draw randomly and are not thinning out all the small cc cards over time) the Prodder will do work. That still means the ability reads something like this:
During your upkeep, flip a coin twice. If you win both flips, deal 5 damage to target opponent. If that opponent has 5 or less life, this ability deals no damage instead and you draw a card.
And my problem with Prodder is that I do not think this ability is actually very good. Here, let's look at it from the other direction. To what extent would Mana Crypt be better if it said this:
During your upkeep, draw a card and flip a coin. If you lose the flip, and have more than 3 life, take 3 damage. If you have 3 or less life, then you take no damage and target opponent draws a card instead.
I posit that this change would make Mana Crypt DRAMATICALLY better. And to the extent it makes Crypt better, it makes Sin Prodder worse.
@Protoaddict - You disagree with criticizing the punisher mechanic of this card. I understand the concept that a punisher that doesn't really care which option the opponent chooses is a good card. See: Vexing Devil in a burn deck. But here, I don't really even think the opponent has a very hard choice much of the time. And, when they do, we're really talking about Browbeat - damage or cards - and that particular combination has not shown itself to be of Vexing Devil quality.
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@MaximumCDawg I still contend that this card can be more than the sum of it's parts which makes it much harder to evaluate, especially when those things are all attached to a reasonable sized body. This is also makes it much harder if not impossible to evaluate if this card when played within the context of a deck designed for it truly is just giving your opponent a level of card selection. There are a few cards that stick out in my mind that make the ability more than Draw or Discard and pay life and make the calculation tough.
Ancient Grudge combined with this can be a very strong anti-shops toolkit, which is combined with the fact that this creature can block a lodestone and then potentially not be blocked itself really. Individually the pieces themselves are fine but when combined with the punisher mechanic it makes the shops player ask a very tough question, which is do I enable my opponent to cast this spell under my spheres and limit what they can get to 1 card and 2 life, or do I put it in their hand in hopes they do not draw fast mana sources to try to undercut my spheres and get 2 cards with it. It is a question that the shops play may very well not have enough information to properly answer.
Likewise I think Cabal therapy has similar interactions in some other decks.
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@MaximumCDawg said:
I feel like my earlier point is getting missed here. Let's just assume we all agree that:
- Prodder does not really have a "downside" because the worst your opponent can do is mill a random card;
That's exactly why I disagree with this. You're NOT milling a random card. You're actually letting your opponent choose if that card should go to your hand or not.
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@fsecco said:
@MaximumCDawg said:
I feel like my earlier point is getting missed here. Let's just assume we all agree that:
- Prodder does not really have a "downside" because the worst your opponent can do is mill a random card;
That's exactly why I disagree with this. You're NOT milling a random card. You're actually letting your opponent choose if that card should go to your hand or not.
You are milling a random card, though. The top card of your library is (usually) a random card. The next card down is also a random card. The opponent is not able to "select" what you draw normally, like they could with a Fateseal; they just pull a random card out of your deck and decide whether they'd like it milled or whether they want to take damage.
You can certainly construct situations where, after-the-fact, you were worse off with this ability than without. Say the top of your library is Lightning Bolt, Land. Your opponent is at three life and Prodder's ability triggers. They pay 1 life and deny you the bolt, and then survive because you drew a land instead of gas. HOWEVER, for each situation you can construct like that, the OPPOSITE IS EQUALLY LIKELY. That is, you Prod past a land and draw the kill spell immediately. So, looking ahead to the future, we look at one random card like any other.
The only exception to this is where your deck has critical silver bullets, like Hurkyls, and can auto-lose if they get milled. So, you don't build a deck like that featuring Prodder.
@Protoaddct said:
@MaximumCDawg I still contend that this card can be more than the sum of it's parts which makes it much harder to evaluate, especially when those things are all attached to a reasonable sized body. This is also makes it much harder if not impossible to evaluate if this card when played within the context of a deck designed for it truly is just giving your opponent a level of card selection. There are a few cards that stick out in my mind that make the ability more than Draw or Discard and pay life and make the calculation tough.
Ancient Grudge combined with this can be a very strong anti-shops toolkit, which is combined with the fact that this creature can block a lodestone and then potentially not be blocked itself really. Individually the pieces themselves are fine but when combined with the punisher mechanic it makes the shops player ask a very tough question, which is do I enable my opponent to cast this spell under my spheres and limit what they can get to 1 card and 2 life, or do I put it in their hand in hopes they do not draw fast mana sources to try to undercut my spheres and get 2 cards with it. It is a question that the shops play may very well not have enough information to properly answer.
Likewise I think Cabal therapy has similar interactions in some other decks.
Look, I agree you could make a deck that maximizes this mechanic. A deck full of Flashback cards, for example, where it doesn't matter if the opponent mills it or puts it in your hand. Or a deck with high CC spells. There are ways to warp your deck around squeezing value from this little dork.
But, absent that, I don't think the choice is as difficult as you are presenting. Until the opponent is down within bolt range, they will simply pay the life to deny you any card that they do not know for a fact is useless (Misstep or Spell Pierce on turn 10, for example). Prodding will accomplish nothing -- it doesn't put the opponent in a hard situation -- until the very end of the game.
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@Protoaddct said:
If vexing devil was just a 4/3 for R it probably would not even get considered in Burn
I'm pretty sure that a vanilla 4/3 for R would see play in every burn deck. It would see more play than other creature in Vintage in a variety of archetypes.
