[SCD] Mental Misstep

[Octopusman]

Haha this card is so controversial.

I love how this card will still counter 1 CMC spells later in the game. Yes, it's exciting to talk about T1 plays, but it can also counter spells later on. Often, Daze fails in this regard.

Early MM combined with Daze and Spell Snare will be game ending.
I can't WAIT to take Legacy Fish (Not Merfolk Fish) to the next level with this card. It enables Standstills so much easier (and although I don't think Hunter Horror will be the best card to use with Torpor Orb I do think that with MM and the Orb we might see more Dreadstill. *gasp* Another price hike for Dreadnaught?! Say it isn't so.

And akin to what some other folks have been saying about trying to wrap your brain around the paradigm shift that is Mental Misstep, I think this might be exactly the card that my WR deck has been looking for...

[preddi]

*edited: Deleted stupid question :)

[evanmartyr]

Vintage is diverse since there is FOW Oath, FOW Storm, FOW Control, FOW Fish...

So how is Misstep Zoo, Misstep Folk, Misstep Bant, Misstep Countertop any less diverse?

It's not less diverse than Vintage, but compared to the recent top 16s that the SCG series have been giving us, it sounds fucking awful. Also, you know, it's not a bunch of blue-based decks that have totally different game plans, it's different decks that ALL run four of a card. While everyone and their brother knows Wasteland exists and plans for it, it remains to be seen just how good MMS is in actual play, and whether it restricts deckbuilding the same way Wasteland does.

[Master Shake]

For people who are talking about playing this in Zoo, Goblins or other non-blue decks... or really any deck at that, you do realize that you need to actually put this card in the deck, right?

I mean to say that you can't just have it in your hand when your opponent casts that clutch, game-winning 1cc spell, but you will actually have to cut a card from your deck to play it.

I know this is a fundamental step in deck building, but look at it this way: You need to identify the card in your deck that is 100% worse than Mental Misstep and then play it over it. This means in Zoo, you would literally have to cut a card that actively kills your opponent so that you can play a card that you can pay 2 life to counter whatever their turn one play is.

This means for a fish deck, that you want to play all of the sweet Blue, black and/or white cards that you already wanted to play, Force of Will, Daze, Dark Confidant, Swords to Plowshares, etc... and then cut one of those cards out and play Mental Misstep in it's place. I see the slot being cut most often as Thoughtseize, but Mental Misstep is clearly not always better than Thoughtseze.

The idea that you can counter so many spells with this card is great and all that, but that's like making a list of all the cards that Force of Will can counter and then surmising that becuase Force of Will can counter a Brainstorm, that is clearly what you're supposed to do.

I doubt many of you have, but I've done testing against this card already and the results were pretty much what I anticipated them being from the decks I tested against. Either the effect was minimal, but annoying, or the effect was negligible and a hindrance to my opponent's game plan.

Also, for those of you who are claiming that you need to play Mental Misstep to counter opposing copies of the card, that seems like one of the worst uses of the card imaginable unless it's countering your Entomb or Reanimate.

That said, I'm highly in favor of everyone playing this card.

[Sims]

For people who are talking about playing this in Zoo, Goblins or other non-blue decks... or really any deck at that, you do realize that you need to actually put this card in the deck, right?

I mean to say that you can't just have it in your hand when your opponent casts that clutch, game-winning 1cc spell, but you will actually have to cut a card from your deck to play it.

I know this is a fundamental step in deck building, but look at it this way: You need to identify the card in your deck that is 100% worse than Mental Misstep and then play it over it. This means in Zoo, you would literally have to cut a card that actively kills your opponent so that you can play a card that you can pay 2 life to counter whatever their turn one play is.

This means for a fish deck, that you want to play all of the sweet Blue, black and/or white cards that you already wanted to play, Force of Will, Daze, Dark Confidant, Swords to Plowshares, etc... and then cut one of those cards out and play Mental Misstep in it's place. I see the slot being cut most often as Thoughtseize, but Mental Misstep is clearly not always better than Thoughtseze.

The idea that you can counter so many spells with this card is great and all that, but that's like making a list of all the cards that Force of Will can counter and then surmising that becuase Force of Will can counter a Brainstorm, that is clearly what you're supposed to do.

I doubt many of you have, but I've done testing against this card already and the results were pretty much what I anticipated them being from the decks I tested against. Either the effect was minimal, but annoying, or the effect was negligible and a hindrance to my opponent's game plan.

Also, for those of you who are claiming that you need to play Mental Misstep to counter opposing copies of the card, that seems like one of the worst uses of the card imaginable unless it's countering your Entomb or Reanimate.

That said, I'm highly in favor of everyone playing this card.

<3.

Thank you.

[Mana Drain]

Regardless, free counterspells that likely counter 1/3 of your opponents deck and can be played by any color is pretty ridiculous. This is the best counterspell since Spell Pierce, and Spell Pierce is pretty damn good.

[sroncor1]

I'm not exactly sure why everyone thinks this card will redefine the format. It is a good card no doubt but I see it largely on the power curve with Hymn. Both cards are best early. Who cares if Merfolk or goblins land a vial 3 turn. If that beats you,then you need to rework your deck.

If anything this card keeps zoo down and only hurts bad combo players. You would be best hitting the cantrips as it is worthless against the rest of the chain. Of course this requires producing a clock to capitalize on the gain.

[kusumoto]

I'm just dreaming of the opening hand with thresh that has Stifle, Mental Misstep, a land, and other stuff.

It's so beautiful.

[nwong]

You're imagining the best case scenario. What you need to do to look at the card properly is imagine topdecking that Mental Misstep later in the game when it's almost useless.

[Jonathan Alexander]

The awesome thing about this card is that it counters your opponents Swords To Plowshares or Path To Exile targetting your Tombstalker or Knight Of The Reliquary on turn four or five, while Spell Pierce most likely won't be able to do this. Honestly, this card is really strong, but like some other pointed out already, it's best in blue. I don't see any room for this in Zoo (Big Zoo in particular, the deck is so tight on slots) or most other non-blue decks. In Goblins it might actually be decent as well, perhaps replacing the Lightning Bolts some lists are running right now. What I really like about it is that it finally allows boarding out Force Of Will against Zoo when playing tempo while still letting me keep countermagic for my opponents spotremoval when I'm playing tempo. It would be prety cool in tempo decks if it cost just one blue mana, but being able to cast it for free? Amazing.

[nwong]

Yeah, it's basically great for blue, especially tempo.

I highly doubt it'll be seen in any non blue deck since drawing them late with no way to shuffle them away or feed to FoW is terrible. Sure it stops removal later one, but the same effect could be achieved by simply running more creatures in its place.

[ramanujan]

Master Shake,

Thank you for stating what needed to be stated about this card. One thing is for sure true about this card, it is popular. By that I mean that this card is the type of good card that players of legacy like to play. Dredge is a good strategy, but people both hate playing it and playing against it, and especially losing to it. That is why there has been so much hate for the deck in every sideboard since forever. I am aware that this is changing as I post this. This card will play a role just because people like to do what it does. Shake analized the strengths as best as anyone can this early on. He actually playtested it.

[AriLax]

Here's the breakdown:

-Unless you are having issues racing and just want to peg their one drop to get to turn 4 on the draw (or similarly are stabilizing on turn 4 at slightly too low of life), this card does not fundamentally solve your deck's problem with Zoo.

-It does not solve a lot of deck's fundamental problems with Vial decks. Merfolk the issue is too often the issue is you don't have enough relevant cards to combat Daze/Force in a timely manner. Wx Vial the issue is often threat density (notably the WG lists that are popping up with GSZ). Goblins hurts a bit as it leans more heavily on the mana, but Goblins was already on its way out. It is likely best in Vial mirrors where the tempo Vial gives is often more important than creature density or trumps.

-Unless your deck is 1 turn slower than Storm, it is not going to solve your issues with them. If you have Force and a clock it might make things better/more interesting, but it's not the end of the world for them at all. This is only really relevant against them if you also have another hard counter ie. Force, in which case it's just a second Force which is 100% beatable. Once you start having things like 2 Force + MM or 2 MM + Force it might get interesting, but how often is that real? When you just have MM, it's at best slowing them half a turn.

-This card might solve your problems with CB-Top, assuming your problem is that they are setting up or getting to a specific answer too quickly due to library manipulation.

-This card is obnoxious for Dredge, but Force was too. It is not unbeatable, just more incidental speed bumps. They can still just draw first, discard and likely the decks that want this aren't fast enough to punish them.

-This card is not a blue card, but it is best with Brainstorm to bin it later.

-This card is a tempo card, not a catch all answer. It is typically going to be messing up your opponent's curve on a one drop dude or Brainstorm.

This card will shine in attrition strategies with low threat counts where it trades for a Brainstorm to mess them up or stops a Swords. It will shine in strategies where buying 1 more turn of board or hand position is enough to swing the game. It will not shine when you just jam it into a deck.

Decks that it makes a lot better:
Sneak and Tell (Daze was ass in this deck, main issues are raced by 1 drop beats/faster combos and Seizes).

Decks that likely gain a lot of value out of it:
WGB Junk (Speed, Swords, Brainstorm are all huge issues)
Team America (see above, basically same deck)
Breakfast (Bolt, etc etc).
Caw-Blade/Fae (more weapons to get to 2 mana threats)

Decks that incidentally will play it (not necessarily 4x):
Merfolk
Bant
URG Thresh
CB Top
Standstill

Decks that get directly worse because of it:
Goblins (match ups that were once easy as hell now have a miser out, probably stilll ok)
Summoner's Pact Elves (Pact is now awk to fetch Sentinels/Druids with, can prob switch to other set up).
Non-LED Dredge (more having to play it like it's a real deck and now Dredge, probably still ok)
High Tide (more issues sticking High Tide, prob just play more counters, MM is ok here too)

Decks that incidentally benefit:
Hive Mind (kills w/o 1's, tutors/search less concentrated at 1)
Aluren (same)

There's probably more here, but if you notice the gist is some fringe decks get better, low threat disruption decks get better, and the only relevant decks that get worse are Goblins (and it's probably still fine) and High Tide (which was garbage and about 0% of the meta to begin with). The card will see a lot of play, but it's something that is just incidentally good, like a Thoughtseize or Daze, not something format shifting like a.... uummm... well there just isn't a utility spell that does that.

[Finn]

I think most decks just don't have that many targets for this. I would gamble that its benefit past turn 1 is fairly diminished. Folks are going to be cursing this card sitting in their hand.

[Michael Keller]

...

I think speculation can only be driven so far when I wonder if you've actually done a significant amount of testing with this card against those match-ups you insist the card will not "solve" issues against, because frankly it will, and here's why:

Cards like Aether Vial, Goblin Lackey, etc. are fundamentally their strongest the first turn, as that is when there is typically no interaction from an opponent - who has basically no way of stopping those cards that only get exponentially more powerful as each turn is passed. If you cannot decisively stop any of the aforementioned cards (including the list of decks sporting cards that can do a significant and irreparable amount of damage early), that decreases your chances of winning by a large margin. This is why decks that do not play Blue as either a splash or primary foundation are forced to lose games before they have a chance to interact (being a Storm player, you above all others know this).

I think you're already stating the obvious in that the card - while restricted to its own faults - are not "unbeatable" - I think you're focusing too much on how circumstantial the card can be without realizing just how good the good in the card actually is. The most intricate spells in the format (Dark Ritual, High Tide, Sensei's Divining Top, etc.) all setup the subsequent spells within a given turn. This card not only can stop an opponent from playing something before you have had a chance to, it can still restrict an opponent into warping his or her setup to adjusting to have to work around this card, which is a touch annoying because it is splashable.

It doesn't have to find its way into a Mono Blue deck and doesn't need to wait to play around a sculpted hand filled with Duresses or Chants (in which case it is already being effective); it only has to react at a given time to stunt just enough of your productivity, and depending on the schematics of the deck it is included in it could create a much faster clock for you than you realize as it basically can function as a pseudo-Time Walk between the first and second turns. If most of your cantripping is predicated on one-cost Blue cards (which they all are), this card's deleterious effect can be devastating the first turn, which in most cases when a player uses a cantrip that early they are (potentially) digging for something critical.

And to be honest, the decks that will benefit and lose out from this card will be "All of the Above," as any deck worth protecting its investments at free of cost will now have to deal with its own form of protection in the form of disrupt. At worst it's an Instant Thoughtseize that can take out a one-drop creature for zero mana.

That's still better than probably 70% of the removal spells in the format right off the bat.

[wcm8]

Is Misstep the be-all, end-all? No. It's certainly not an automatic 4-of in every deck, but it's definitely going to fit into a ton of different decks and have a direct impact on plenty of others. I am almost positive we will see at least a playset or two of the card in Providence's top 8 this year.

I'd liken its presence to that of Wasteland -- the card is played in tons of decks, and strongly influences deck building decisions -- you can play with it, plan for it, or avoid it entirely by playing all/mostly basics. The card doesn't "break" any one particular strategy, but it does help enable/strengthen a few.

To say Wasteland doesn't have a huge impact on the format would be short-sighted. I feel that Misstep is going to be the same way -- you can run it yourself, plan for it by just running a higher density of one-drops, or avoid it entirely by moving your curve up (or down in the case of dredge adopting Lion's Eye Diamond). So in this sense, yes, the card is going to be format warping.

[GGoober]

Misstep is only truly powerful in decks where it is supposed to fit in. Squeezing it in every deck doesn't seem plausible. The biggest question has and always will be "What do you cut?"

This question can't realy be answered in the short term, but as decks get to test with/without the card, whether the card improves the deck's win % or bad matchups significantly is going to take some time. E.g. Is this card good in Goblins? On paper yes, but in practice, it may not be so. If the sole purpose on playing this card is to narrowly answer opposing missteps, that's a terrible reason to play the card. It's not like the Survival case where people were playing SotF DECKS to answer SotF, they were not playing single cards that narrowly answer single cards.

The strength is Misstep, contrary to what most people have been posting here, isn't always in tempo. It is inherently a tempo card, that's for sure, but don't forget it's not just providing tempo, it also hard-counters 1cmc spell, and is argubly a much stronger FoW than FoW when it is hitting 1cmc spells. That's the biggest strength of the card. In tempo decks like Team America, Thresh, Merfolks, I can entirely see this card being an important spell to increasing the power level of those decks. In these tempo decks, Misstep will very often mean 2 turns of free turns (when going first).

Well, we all bitched abuot FoWs being expensive, so let's just say we should be glad that WotC gives a shit about Legacy and printed a better FoW for 1cmc spell at the uncommon level, and luckily, Legacy is a format where 1cmc spells are good.

[Aggro_zombies]

Cards like Aether Vial, Goblin Lackey, etc. are fundamentally their strongest the first turn, as that is when there is typically no interaction from an opponent - who has basically no way of stopping those cards that only get exponentially more powerful as each turn is passed. If you cannot decisively stop any of the aforementioned cards (including the list of decks sporting cards that can do a significant and irreparable amount of damage early), that decreases your chances of winning by a large margin. This is why decks that do not play Blue as either a splash or primary foundation are forced to lose games before they have a chance to interact (being a Storm player, you above all others know this).

And what happens when the Goblins player opens with Vial and you don't have Mental Misstep? Are you going to mulligan to your Missteps like people mulligan to Leylines against Dredge? That seems awful. At least Leyline of the Void is a long-term roadblock; pitching cards just to find a Misstep so you can answer a turn one Vial (and not even subsequent Vials!) is just terrible.

Mental Misstep is an insufficient answer alone. That means you'll be boarding 5+ cards every time you want to use Misstep - 4 Misstep plus one or more cards to help mop up the damage from when your opponent had a Misstep target and you didn't have Misstep. Is having 5+ dead or weak cards realistic in every matchup in which you could want Misstep? Is having 4/15 slots in your sideboard dedicated to an overly broad but inefficient answer the best board plan?

In short, is listing everything Misstep can counter and how powerful those cards are really the right way to evaluate Misstep?

[Michael Keller]

And what happens when the Goblins player opens with Vial and you don't have Mental Misstep? Are you going to mulligan to your Missteps like people mulligan to Leylines against Dredge? That seems awful. At least Leyline of the Void is a long-term roadblock; pitching cards just to find a Misstep so you can answer a turn one Vial (and not even subsequent Vials!) is just terrible.

Mental Misstep is an insufficient answer alone. That means you'll be boarding 5+ cards every time you want to use Misstep - 4 Misstep plus one or more cards to help mop up the damage from when your opponent had a Misstep target and you didn't have Misstep. Is having 5+ dead or weak cards realistic in every matchup in which you could want Misstep? Is having 4/15 slots in your sideboard dedicated to an overly broad but inefficient answer the best board plan?

In short, is listing everything Misstep can counter and how powerful those cards are really the right way to evaluate Misstep?

And what are decks that have difficult match-ups with Vial-based strategies going to do, just sit there and cross their fingers and hope and pray an opponent doesn't have a Misstep? It's like reverse logic; with that method of thought, and an opponent now knowing you run Misstep, why wouldn't the Vial player be the one mulliganing to hit Vial so that he or she can get the fastest and most aggressive start he or she can before you can do anything relevant? That's not terrible, that's called extracting every possible use from a card from a linear standpoint to a "thinking outside the box" standpoint. How are you, the Vial player, supposed to know if your opponent has the Misstep? Are you willing to take the risk and get blown-out if you only have a Wasteland with all colored spells against a deck running Misstep?

You'd rethink that, and don't even admit otherwise. Misstep forces a player to rethink their strategy even before playing a land, and what makes it more dangerous is that it could be played it any deck in existence. You know just as well I do that there are a lot of players in this world who haven't the slightest clue how to mulligan their hands properly, and what you're failing to realize is how that not only affects the Misstep player, but the Vial (or what-have-you) player as well. You're saying in one way Misstep is restrictive, but then you call it broad and ineffective against someone's board plan. You've basically denominated this whole argument that conditional counter-magic is poor against decks that can easily play around it. That basically renders just about every relevant piece of counter-magic useless from an argumentative standpoint, which I totally disagree with. They serve a function and are played with the purpose of stopping threats before they materialize; I don't understand what you mean.

Also, I don't know what world you're living in but I would never sideboard a card like Mental Misstep, I would straight-up main-deck four to maximize its broad (as you put it) utility and stun decks making an inadvertently wrong - however incorrect - line of play, and open turns two and three up to punish those decks heavily predicated on a lower curve, which most of the format is riding on at the moment anyway.

And please don't try to sell me on Leyline-of-Whatever versus Misstep; they are a far greater investment of mulligan-based strategy and an even poorer mid-game draw than Misstep would ever be. Misstep can be played on the first turn on the play if it has to be, rendering it far more relevant than a four-cost Enchantment whose only suitability rests on the opening hand. A deck that has a hard time dealing with threats like Vial and other one-drops should be running four to compensate that problem anyways for protection, so according to you, that immediately should open up four slots in the board for additional hate or help.

Misstep is a card that should be played in a deck that needs it, not wants it.

[AngryTroll]

long post

Most of the argument it looks like AggroZombies is making (and certainly the one I've been making) is that Mental Misstep is not a good sideboard card. It is comparable to the Leylines if you need it to stop a turn one play like Vial.

If people want to maindeck 4 Mental Missteps, they need to decide if it actually improves their deck significantly over the threats they could be running in its place. That leaves sideboard space available for real bombs that can win matchups for you. Frankly, in most Brainstorm-less decks, I think the threat of a Mental Misstep is better than actually removing cards for them in the maindeck.