Guided Passage = Gifts?!

[sam.]

So I was looking through Gatherer the other day and stumbled upon this card:

Guided Passage

Guided Passage
Sorcery - URG
Reveal the cards in your library. An opponent chooses
from among them a creature card, a land card, and a
noncreature, nonland card. You put the chosen cards
into your hand. Then shuffle your library.

And that got me thinking.

You notice you "draw" 3 cards with this one, but that they're very specific.

I was wondering if this can be broken and combined with some combination of good deckbuilding and good recursion to make it function a lot like Gifts, except the opposite, where you run many 4-ofs to make your opponent's choices very limited.

When I was approaching this idea at first, these ideas came to me:

Build the deck to run Eternal Witness, Academy Ruins, Mindslaver
Build the deck for HexLage
Build it with the AeonBridge template for consistency
Play with 1 or 2 duals, run Land Grant, and have the only other 4-of land in the deck be something utile

But I don't have enough deckbuilding experience to pull it off.



So, has anyone else tried to break this card?

[dahcmai]

It's the colors that hurt it. I use it if I can get away with it, but it always ends up being tossed out since I find I can end up doing the same stuff without using one of those colors. That combination just doesn't lend itself well.

[Aggro_zombies]

This card seems terrible because your opponent will always give the absolute worst cards in your deck in any given scenario.

For example, if you build a combo kill into the deck, you'd need to have your only lands be Depths and your only creatures be Hexmages so that your opponent is forced to give you exactly those two cards. Otherwise, you'll get a Hexmage and an Underground Sea or something that gets you nowhere, and then you lose because you're playing a card that's worse in every conceivable way than an already barely playable card.

[Infinitium]

I'd say the best way to break it is most likely to only have onetype of creature in your deck, possibly Eternal Witness in order to recur answers instead of relying on your opponent to draw them for you. Then again building a control deck without Black or White, alternatively building a 4 or 5 colored one with that sort of mana requirements seems tough in the least.

[Aggro_zombies]

I'd say the best way to break it is most likely to only have onetype of creature in your deck, possibly Eternal Witness in order to recur answers instead of relying on your opponent to draw them for you. Then again building a control deck without Black or White, alternatively building a 4 or 5 colored one with that sort of mana requirements seems tough in the least.
Even if you have exactly one creature for the opponent to give you, he's still going to give you the two biggest blanks in your deck for the land and non-creature, non-land. The card is terribad.

[Infinitium]

How the hell do you blank a land? A landdrop is a landdrop is a landdrop is a landdrop, especially as you most likely have your colors fixed already if you managed to cast passage. It still sets up your T4 play. Intuition cannot do that for an example unless you fetch 3 lands all at once. It's niche, and probably not as good as the alternatives, but yeah you could probably build around it if you set your mind to it.

[sam.]

That's what I was thinking. I'm going to try and come up with a combo or card suite (that doesn't use Selective Memory because that's just bad) that takes advantage of this. As I get ideas I'll post them here.

[Aggro_zombies]

How the hell do you blank a land? A landdrop is a landdrop is a landdrop is a landdrop, especially as you most likely have your colors fixed already if you managed to cast passage. It still sets up your T4 play. Intuition cannot do that for an example unless you fetch 3 lands all at once. It's niche, and probably not as good as the alternatives, but yeah you could probably build around it if you set your mind to it.
If your opponent has a Nacatl, a Loam Lion, and a Goyf in play and opts to give you a fetchland over, say, a Mishra's Factory or Maze of Ith, you're basically down a card that does anything. Even if that was the last fetchland you needed to get to four mana to somehow cast Damnation or something with your million-color mana base, you still blew your entire third turn and some ridiculous amount of life to do it. And if you play this card later in the game with the intention of trying to win with it, your opponent giving you a fetchland gets you exactly nowhere, unless you're trying to set up Rampaging Baloths + Pandemonium.

Basically, this card is a million times worse than Browbeat, a card that is already absolutely awful. The fact that your opponent is also going to know exactly what your deck does as soon as you play the first Passage just makes it worse. It's like saying, "I want to build a :u::b::g: Threshold deck with Werebear and Mongoose. I want to get threshold really fast to power up my guys, so I think I'll run One With Nothing. Not only does it blank their discard, it gets me almost all the way to threshold for just one mana!" No matter how much of a happy face you put on this card, it will still be so incredibly terrible that you will probably lose against your round one bye just because you have it in your deck. I mean, this card is like Gifts Ungiven in the same way that Akki Rockspeaker is like Dark Ritual, which is to say that one is orders of magnitude worse than the other. There is literally nothig this card can do that can't be done with a good Intuition pile.

EDIT: Saying Selective Memory is bad is laughable, considering what card we're talking about. In fact, I would say that the absolute best deck you could make with Guided Passage would involve using Selective Memory to force your opponent to give you a specific creature, a specific spell, and any land.

[Infinitium]

If your opponent has a Nacatl, a Loam Lion, and a Goyf in play and opts to give you a fetchland over, say, a Mishra's Factory or Maze of Ith, you're basically down a card that does anything. Even if that was the last fetchland you needed to get to four mana to somehow cast Damnation or something with your million-color mana base, you still blew your entire third turn and some ridiculous amount of life to do it. And if you play this card later in the game with the intention of trying to win with it, your opponent giving you a fetchland gets you exactly nowhere, unless you're trying to set up Rampaging Baloths + Pandemonium.

What exactly is your argument here? That 3cc Sorceries that don't affect the board directly are generally slow against aggressive decks? No shit sherlock, but that doesn't change the fact that control decks are generally mana hungry and lands typically taps for mana. Also, the example you gave assumes that the decks controller won't do anything against a fast start from Zoo until his or hers third turn, which I don't need to tell you is at best lazy theorycrafting.


Basically, this card is a million times worse than Browbeat, a card that is already absolutely awful. The fact that your opponent is also going to know exactly what your deck does as soon as you play the first Passage just makes it worse. It's like saying, "I want to build a :u::b::g: Threshold deck with Werebear and Mongoose. I want to get threshold really fast to power up my guys, so I think I'll run One With Nothing. Not only does it blank their discard, it gets me almost all the way to threshold for just one mana!" No matter how much of a happy face you put on this card, it will still be so incredibly terrible that you will probably lose against your round one bye just because you have it in your deck. I mean, this card is like Gifts Ungiven in the same way that Akki Rockspeaker is like Dark Ritual, which is to say that one is orders of magnitude worse than the other. There is literally nothig this card can do that can't be done with a good Intuition pile.

I get the feeling that you're trying to push this argument in absurdum without any thought whatsoever put behind your claims. Argmunting from an Ethos standpoint won't get you anywhere on the internet I'm afraid. A deck built around this card would most likely only contain one sort of creature, most likely a utility creature such as Witness or Shriekmaw to answer specific archetypes, with supplementary creatures in the sideboard to swap in should it be a dead draw in the current matchup, example given Glen Elendra Archmage for the control and combo matchups. Also, this isn't strictly worse than either Intuition nor Gifts, it just manipulates the opponents choices by deck design rather than graveyard engines, which again is a point in its favor since it's graveyard independent.

For the record, Browbeat isn't a bad card because it gives your opponent choices, but rather because it is much too slow for decks caring about direct damage.

As for the last card, you are correct in that it will be the "worst" card for any given situation, which in a control shell means that you're given the choice between counters, card filtration, or creature removal, which again means that you will most likely be given a counterspell or another passage versus Yes, there's win conditions to be considered as well which in a blue control shell pretty much defaults to Jace 2.0, which fulfills all of the above functions as well incidentally.

[Aggro_zombies]

Wait, are you seriously arguing that your opponent is just going to give you a Jace TMS? You read the card, right? Your opponent is the one who searches for the cards. That means that he has an incentive to give you the worst possible combination of cards he can, unless your opponent is some sort of bizarre Magic altruist and/or you hit him with a Mindslaver activation.

So, let's say you've got something along the lines of the following:

4 Vampire Hexmage
1 Eternal Witness
1 Shriekmaw

4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder

4 Force of Will
2 Daze
3 Spell Snare

1 Pernicious Deed
3 Firespout
4 Swords to Plowshares

1 Life from the Loam

4 Guided Passage

24 lands, including X Dark Depths

...and your plan is to Marit Lage them to death.

If the opponent is ahead on the board, he's likely to give you Hexmage, fetch/dual/basic, Daze.

If the opponent is combo, he's likely to give you Hexmage, fetch/dual/basic, Firespout.

If the opponent is control, he's likely to give you Shriekmaw, fetch/dual/basic, Swords.

Do you see where I'm going with this? The opponent is always going to try to figure out what combination of cards does the absolute least to help you win, and then give it to you. Furthermore, since your opponent sees your entire deck, every card in your graveyard, and every card you have in play, it's not too hard to work backwards to figure out what you have in hand based on the idea that you're a (relatively) rational deckbuilder trying to maximize the number of high-value cards. That basically means you're paying three mana in three colors to draw three blanks/low value cards while your opponent continues to win.

The only historically playable cards that give your opponent choices have been ones with such ridiculously back-breaking effects that you can come out ahead no matter what the opponent chose to do. Gifts was retarded back in the day because it was possible to set up a lose-lose situation; your opponent could go through the motions, but basically you were going to either get exactly what you needed to win, or you were going to set up some sort of recursive loop that would allow you to eventually get back all four cards. There is basically no way to rig this card in your favor short of a Mindslaver loop (which wins on its own) or a combination of Selective Memory and Mana Severance to stack your deck so that the opponent has no choice (but if you're on the Severance plan, just Belch them to death). In any other situation, you are playing a tutor that gives your opponent tons of information, does not immediately win the game, and does not affect the board unless your opponent wants it to. That is the textbook definition of awful, especially considering there is nothing you can do with this card that can't be done in one color with Intuition (for the same mana cost!). Plus, Intuition can find three copies of a card you need, guaranteeing you get what you want when you want it.

I mean, this card is painful levels of bad. It's 100000% worse than Gifts or Intuition in a control shell, and most control decks these days don't even want tutors badly enough to consider running the two best ones in the format. In a combo shell, it doesn't do anything for you because the opponent will never willingly give you all of your combo pieces. In an aggro shell, this card does not attack, kill the opponent, or stop the opponent from stopping you. Like, how could you possibly put this card to any good use?

Also, why do I feel like I fell for the troll bait?

[Infinitium]

Bizarre double post.

[Atwa]

I remember a deckthread posted on the site a couple of years ago on Guided Passage which looked pretty promising. I even went as far as buying 4 at the time, but testing showed the card simply isn't worth it. If you want to some ideas about what the card can do, it should be somewhere in N&D.

Remember this was before Future Sight, when deck were a lot slower and even then it couldn't compete (before Ichorid became a deck and when the best 2cc creature in green was a tie between Werebear and Wild Mongel, hell even Kavu Titan was playable back then).

Guided Passage is a cool card for Johny to play around casualy, but the card simply isn't good enough to play in competive Legacy. If you want to play a 3 mana tutor, just go for Intuition. It's less demanding on your manabase, it's an instant and you don't have to build a complete deck around it for it to get what you want.

[Benjammn]

The card only seems like it would be a decent political card in EDH with Intet, the Dreamer or a 5c general. Even if you wanted to build around the card, you can still only run 4. Do you really want to warp your deck so much that it can't even remotely function without the card? Because that is what these decklists look like.

[Infinitium]

Also, why do I feel like I fell for the troll bait?

So you constructed a strawman decklist and proceeded to lament your fate on the internet. Woe.

Not only don't you seem to grasp anyones line of thought on this card but did you even bother to read our posts? No one on this thread has advocated running multiple types of creatures in a decklist because that forces the opponent to pick that specific creature. If that specific creature is dead in a given matchup you side it out in favor of a creature that isn't. The Jace argument isn't that the opponent will pick it, because they almost certainly won't. The argument is that it -limits- the opponents choices to give you a counter, removal spell, a card filtration spell or a second Guided Passage.

In fact, the only proper argument you gave is that the opponent might figure out your hand by the time you cast it, which is indeed a pretty hefty point against it, but somewhat diluted by Brainstorm and/or Jace being present in the deck.

I'm not necessarily saying that the card is good enough to see play; there's usually a pretty good reason why unplayed cards remain such. I'm saying that your argumentation is.. lacking.

[Aleksandr]

Infinitum, do me a favor, please.

Build a deck around this awful card, take a trip to Prague and visit our club on Friday evening. We'll be more than glad to play against you.

And as the MWS thread is locked, I use this thread as a proxy, until it'll be locked too.


Aleksandr puts Ponder to Graveyard from Play
<Aleksandr> End my turn
<Player> everyone uses the same fucking deck.. get lost
<System> Player Lost
<Aleksandr> lol
<System> Session Lost
<System> Disconnected


IBTFL


EDIT:

<Aleksandr> Thinking
<Marco [ITA]> Ok?
<Aleksandr> you played Ponder EOT?
<Marco [ITA]> yes
<Aleksandr> quite strong
<System> Player Lost

[alderon666]

Let's think about what the card does for a second.

It tutors the worst land in your deck, the worst creature in your deck and the worst nonland noncreature card in your deck. Saying anything else is crap, that IS what the card does.

Now, if you can build a deck with one or two creatures that are always good, that needs landdrops hard and that don't run dead spells like Daze I think this card could be good. The restrictions are harsh, but when you think about it it's basicaly a draw 3 spell. The 3 worst cards in your deck, sure, but still is heavy card advantage. To me, this card is more like Standstill than most people would like to acknowledge. Standstill imposes severe restrictions to deckbuilding, its uses vary heavily on board position and it's not good on all matches (Dredge, Merfolk, etc). The colors also hurt, building a control deck without white is nearly sinful.

[Combo Winter]

I think people are under estimating guided passage first of all its a +2 card advantage which is pretty good. Also it says put a creature of your choice into your hand. Also by the worst spell in your deck means you will probably get another guided passage because no one is giving you a counter or cantrip. In a way it is similar to gifts in that it requires you to build your deck around it, despite this similarity is that gifts opens up tons of lines of play through one offs while guided passage forces you to have only creature based plan one plan. While this limits your deck building options it's also sick to have your draw spell always give you a goyf. I think the best decks for guided passage would be mask, show and tell, or a control deck with 4 goyf and a few plainswalkers.

4 phyrexian drednought
3 goyf/fathom seer

4 Illusionray mask
4 guided passage
4 daze
4 fow
4 brain storm
4 stifle
3 ponder
4 lightning bolt

4 waste land
3 volcanic island
3 tropical island
1 forest
3 island
8 fetch

[Fons]

The original Deck "Burning Passage" played Burning and Cunning Wish to make a bigger toolbox that your opponent doesn't get to choose.

[Combo Winter]

Ya thats a option but people probably don't wanna ever give you a whish That list ran a tidespout show and tell plan which probably be replaced with emrlaku. Here is the list for referance http://www.deckcheck.net/deck.php?id=18373

[jrsthethird]

Just run 4 Jace, TMS with all creatures and lands, after casting all 4 of them you'll have a ton of land, 4 creatures, and a Jace.

[AngryTroll]

I think people are under estimating guided passage first of all its a +2 card advantage which is pretty good. Also it says put a creature of your choice into your hand. Also by the worst spell in your deck means you will probably get another guided passage because no one is giving you a counter or cantrip. In a way it is similar to gifts in that it requires you to build your deck around it, despite this similarity is that gifts opens up tons of lines of play through one offs while guided passage forces you to have only creature based plan one plan. While this limits your deck building options it's also sick to have your draw spell always give you a goyf. I think the best decks for guided passage would be mask, show and tell, or a control deck with 4 goyf and a few plainswalkers.

4 phyrexian drednought
3 goyf/fathom seer

4 Illusionray mask
4 guided passage
4 daze
4 fow
4 brain storm
4 stifle
3 ponder
4 lightning bolt

4 waste land
3 volcanic island
3 tropical island
1 forest
3 island
8 fetch

With that list, your opponent will give you a basic island, check to see if you have Stifle or Illusionary Mask, then give you a Dreadnought if you don't; then a Guided Passage. So, if you're holding a Mask or Stifle, you'll get Goyf, Forest/Island, Guided Passage for RGU at sorcery speed. If you don't have a Stifle or Mask, you'll get a blank, Island, Guided Passage.

Intuition for Anger/Wonder/Gigapede is in the same colors and is actually, well, maybe not good, but better than Guided Passage. 5cc is a lot, but a flying, hasty, recurring, Shrouded 6/1 is nothing to sneeze at. Now your deck building restrictions involve reliably getting to five mana in the late game, including double green, 3 slots for the creatures, and some number of Intuitions.

[Aleksandr]

Just run 4 Jace, TMS with all creatures and lands, after casting all 4 of them you'll have a ton of land, 4 creatures, and a Jace.

This thread is lovely.

I hope this is some kind of joke that I don't get, but if you really propose to build the deck that runs (and resolves) Jace TMS, and still needs to resolve Guided Passage to win, than I just don't have words.

I know this thread is full of people who like to think playing a difficult deck adds inches to their dick, but let's be honest - cards like G. Passage don't make your deck harder to play than a deck without G.Passage, they make it worse.

[Willoe]

Remember the Swans of Bryn Argoll / Chain of Plasma combo?

I, with the inspiration from the rest of the board made a deck with the combo powered by Guided Passage. I've deleted the list now since it was rather disappointing, but it was a blast to play. With a ton of burn spells and Swans being your only creature in the deck, the combo was rather easy to pull off because you could Bolt the Swan then draw the Chain of Plasma off your deck.

I made the list with some Bolt, Chain Lightning, Chain of Plasma, Firespout and perhaps Fireblast IIRC. The deck wasn't that good, but the Guided Passage worked pretty well. Filling the deck with burn, Swans and cantrips worked pretty good actually.

But I don't know if it was for playing at the kitchen table. It probably was.

[Mono_Thematic]

Screw the combo potential, guided passage is +2 advantage and I hear thats good stuff. The argument that the opp. will only give you the worst cards, is only valid if you play bad cards. So lets try something without bad cards, something simple, something like this...

Corporate Passage

4 tarmogoyf
3 terravore
3 countryside crusher

3 firespout

4 force of will
4 brainstorm
4 ponder
1 jace, the mindsculptor
3 counterspell

3 guided passage

4 engineered explosives
1 crucible of worlds

3 scalding tarn
3 misty rainforest
3 wooded foothills
3 tropical island
3 volcanic island
4 horizon canopy
4 wasteland


UGr midrange aggro-control seems like the best foundation to build this on.
Please critique intelligently,
-mono

Post-Script = if anyone wants to work on this outside of the usual forum related stupidity, just PM me.

[overpowered]

Guided Passage gives the opponent too much choice. Understanding the investment vs returns is the biggest problem with this card.

It is nearly impossible to get exactly what you're looking for with Guided Passage without hampering the tempo structure of any deck it is placed in. Furthermore, it is a sorcery. Zoo, and any aggro deck will punish you severely for running it. It's also 3 different colors. Without fetchlands, it might be hard to see on turn 3. The card itself is too dependant on the deck it's run in, and can't simply be tossed into a deck as a tutor. It will need a more specific and fragile mana base to support it. Intuition, for the same CMC and at instant speed has the option of taking the choice out of the opponent's hand. It is less susceptible to Wasteland, and can be run in mono color. While this is "hard card advantage" yes, Intuition promises card quality and card parity for the same investment with more flexibility.

I'm not saying that Guided Passage is horrible, I'm just saying that it requires too much specificity in deck construction to be as effective as Intuition. If the deck were built around Guided Passage, I could see that as a valid argument for it, but we must ask if it is a card worth building a deck around.

[frenchy-man]

http://www.deckcheck.net/deck.php?id=18373

It's a good tutor when you only play one creature. Playing show and tell is also a good way to cast it after.

[morgan_coke]

I saw a pretty decent Guided Passage deck running around online recently. It ran Bloodbraid Elf, Ancestral Vision, Tarmogoyf, Brainstorm, Lightning Bolt, Counterbalance, Sensei's Divining Top, Eternal Witness, etc. Drew a ton of cards and beat face reasonably well. Seemed like it had a lot of potential. I think the best way to use Guided Passage is in a zoo-ish style deck, where all of your cards have similar power levels and general utility.