[Free Article] Mental Misstep Hysteria

[voltron00x]

A look at the hysteria surrounding Mental Misstep.

http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/l..._Hysteria.html

[bakofried]

Thank you. It's a good read, and, IMO, an accurate one.

[kinda]

He still covered himself by saying it was good in blue decks...which are the vast majority of legacy. The card is still an amazing source of tempo and ruling it out of play in zoo, goblins, and junk already seems hasty to me. Especially zoo...the card is great vs. their worst matchup (combo) and still good vs. everything else except decks running chalice. The card can also be sided out...force of will is bad vs. zoo but it's still a md 4 off in every deck that can play it.

Edit: He also discussed why it wouldn't see play in dredge/tendrils...which no one is contesting.

[Gui]

Reading it yet, but you denied MM in goblins, and I'm seing some good movement around it in its thread. Can't deny it yet; Maybe it end up not making the cut, but still.

Ended up reading - pretty good article, pretty good analysis, agree with most, if not all, of it. Well done. ^^
Just let us know about the gobbos part. I mean, you explained it, but there are still testings being done... well, I dunno whether I'm making any sense anymore.

[Nessaja]

Thanks. I got the same thoughts on the card pretty much. Huge hype right now, lets re-evaluate in a couple of months, I got my money on CB decks, tempo decks and Merfolk as well. The rest.. I seriously doubt it.

edit: I want to add something to the discussion that you didn't touch upon

Something on Mental Misstep

There's a few scenario's

1. Your opponent has MM in his/her opening hand (40% of the time)

This is by far a worst case scenario for us because it means our opponent can shut down initial mana resources. The good part is that we're running a deck with 12 1 drops, so a new one will come and we're running a good manabase. The scary part comes when the opponent opens with a 1 drop, MM's our 1 drop, puts a 2 drop in play, dazes our two drop, puts another 2 drop in play, forces our 3 drop. I mean, there's absolutely nothing you can do against that.

2. Your opponent does not have MM in his/her opening hand (60% of the time)

Statistically this happens more often. And everytime it happens it's not going to be any good against us. Sure we might play 1 drops later but they're never worth losing a card or even 2 life later in the game. Certainly the card taken out was better then this against us. In this scenario it's pretty much a dead card against us.

So statistically, decks playing Mental Misstep are going to be worse off against us. It's really simplified math but it's true, in a 60 card deck you got 40% chance to have a card in your opener and 60% chance to not have it in your opener. I do think however, when scenario 1 occurs, especially when your opponent is on the play it's a very crippling tempo play. I'm not sure if it's gamewinning, but it's certainly good.

Above I was talking about tribal Elves; but the same can be applied to Goblins.

[kinda]

Thanks. I got the same thoughts on the card pretty much. Huge hype right now, lets re-evaluate in a couple of months, I got my money on CB decks, tempo decks and Merfolk as well. The rest.. I seriously doubt it.

Are you counting zoo/goblins as tempo decks?

[Nessaja]

Sorry, blue based tempo I meant, temp thresh, new horizons, team america all that stuff (also counting Eva Green)

[Rico Suave]

Few things are as vague, nondescript, and frustrating as when people talk about tempo on a MTG website.

That being said, there's a very clear reason in the article why Misstep is a poor fit into Goblins, and if it isn't clear enough to you then I can explain why in a very short amount of space: it's not a Goblin.

[Nessaja]

That being said, there's a very clear reason in the article why Misstep is a poor fit into Goblins, and if it isn't clear enough to you then I can explain why in a very short amount of space: it's not a Goblin or Aether Vial.

Fixed that..

It's not entirely out of the blue though. In the past Goblin builds have played 4* Lightning Bolt when Zoo was dominant. This isn't very different. Note; I'm not saying it's good, just that it has been done with success before.

[kinda]

Swords has been played to good success in the past too (though I may be biased here). Also, the entire goblins sb is non goblins...and yes the sideboard is used. Misstep is also an easy card to side out in goblins for more specific hate.

[bowvamp]

My views have already been stated by Infamous Bear Assassin on this subject:

Mental Misstep offers a much smaller jump in power over the alternative cheap/free counters available to blue than to any other color, the sum list of which breaks down to awful shit like Mindbreak Trap and Illumination. Whilte Mental Misstep is limited in range, it's far more powerful than the alternative counterspells in other colors, and certainly a great dodge to combo/removal, if nothing else.

It's therefore inaccurate to describe Mental Misstep as a great blue card. It's a middling blue card and a fucking amazing green, red, white and black card.

In addition to this point, I will cover all the bases and say that this card may actually push for the inclusion of blue in some archetypes that can't normally beat combo. This is a stretch, however "It pitches to FoW" actually means something here in my opinion. Bumping the number of blue cards in your deck with freebies with a package like so:
4 MM
4 FoW

1 Wonder (if you're a graveyard based deck)
1 Progenitus (NO-Pro/screwing painter)

4 Fire/Ice (for fire)

And any number of blue alternate cost cards (idk what to call them) such as the Noggles.

My point being that decks that can pay blue mana have this role filled already. They can daze and spell-pierce etc whatever comes in their way anyways. It's not actually about synergy here. If merfolk were all about synergy with mermen, why would it run FOW? or if elves were all about synergy with elves, why would it run NO-pro in some builds? This is a card that is really useful in anything that can run mana-denial or that is hated easily by one drops or is weak against decks with strong one drops.

To me this means that decks that have trouble against decks running Dark Ritual don't see this card as a good MD unless they also have trouble with one of the MUs this card really hoses (like dredge, elves, Tempo Threshold).

That is my view on Mental Misstep.

PS: This goes really well in Pox (especially mana-denial centric pox)

[Gui]

Few things are as vague, nondescript, and frustrating as when people talk about tempo on a MTG website.

That being said, there's a very clear reason in the article why Misstep is a poor fit into Goblins, and if it isn't clear enough to you then I can explain why in a very short amount of space: it's not a Goblin.

I agree, I agree, this makes plenty of sense. But nevertheless, some of the best players @ goblins thread are testing it. I mean, I would say it won't see play there, but they got far more experience with the deck then I do, and I tend to think that it's still possible that MM will see play there.

[vilik]

A look at the hysteria surrounding Mental Misstep.

Sound reasoning IMO. Good read as always. Keep up the good work :)

- Vilik

[AngryTroll]

This article was a breath of fresh air. Thank you! I think I agreed with everything you said. Nice work.

[dahcmai]

Summed it up fairly well. Still going to be a pain for a bit to get foils until the dumb people get done with it.




And Yes, I remember Bonkers. I used to love those things.

[Humphrey]

hm in the end hes saying almost every deck that sees lots of play will run it exept goblins (ill run it there) and TES/ANT

[NyxathidHorror]

Very good read!

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

This is just depressing at this point. The author gives no coherent reason why the card would be great in blue decks but not in other. This seems like sheer laziness of thinking; well, it's a blue card, so you want to play it in blue, right? I mean it's not like Wizards would print a counterspell that was good in non-blue decks.

To say that Goblins doesn't want to ever run non-Goblins cards is to be ignorant of the archetype's history, and the reasoning for Zoo is specious. Of course Zoo wants to deploy threats faster than everyone else. You have a slight funnel of death problem there where your lands still only tap for one mana though. A card that's free that disrupts their early game and protects yours, enabling you to quickly assume an advantageous board position seems perfect. In fact, the author seems to think that disrupting turn 1 Aether Vials and Ponders and Tops and blanking removal is great in "Tempo" decks, but blithely tosses this all aside for Zoo, which I guess doesn't care about tempo now?

This article strikes me as more rationalizing than rational.


I'll agree to this, though;

Few things are as vague, nondescript, and frustrating as when people talk about tempo on a MTG website.

[bakofried]

Zoo is one of the few things I'm up in the air about concerning MM. It could happen, but then again, I don't see how it really improves combo MU's. They'll use the protection they naturally pack, but you wouldn't have the redundancy of multiple counterspells to deal with their protection.

[Humphrey]

maybe the same i plan to do in gobs. play 4mm main because its always useful and put 4 mindbreak trap in the sb. this should improve the combomatchup.