Avacyn Restored Card Discussion [SIMMERING POT OF FECAL MATTER]

[Greenpoe]

Insidious Dreams + any number of Miracles is a neat combo (and it's an instant!). Getting 4 extra turns on turn 5 sounds pretty cool.

[Koby]

Getting 4 extra turns on turn 5 sounds pretty cool.

I'm sold. Temporal mastery is the real deal. Turn 5 auto-win!*

*Oh wait, I need to discard 4 cards? and tie up over 5 turns? And resolve all five of these? What could possibly go wrong?

[Barook]

Insidious Dreams + any number of Miracles is a neat combo (and it's an instant!). Getting 4 extra turns on turn 5 sounds pretty cool.

Too bad you go -5 CA.

[Kich867]

I'm sold. Temporal mastery is the real deal. Turn 5 auto-win!*

*Oh wait, I need to discard 4 cards? and tie up over 5 turns? And resolve all five of these? What could possibly go wrong?

Well, when you resolve the first one you inherently resolve the rest unless they're actually sandbagging that force for your fourth extra turn--but that sounds suboptimal and mind games can only really go so far.

Aside from that though it's a terrible play. You lose out on 4 draw steps and unless you have something to beat them to death with I don't see the extra turns doing anything.

[Vacrix]

Honestly, I'd rather Insidious Dreams for Reforge the Soul, and then go nuts.

[xfxf]

I'd rather be a very good TES player and kill you on Turn 2. (not you in particular to the above poster, you in general)

[SpikeyMikey]

I don't think Insidious Dreams is where you want to be. However, while I, personally, am not willing to put the time in, I would not dismiss the idea that there might be a playable Doomsday aggro deck with this. I've been playing with Temporal Mastery in a New Horizons (Eternal Horizons, note the name now, bitches!) shell and what I've found is this:

The biggest complaint I see, and it was outlined in Ari Lax's article on the card today, boils down to "it's a win more card". Play something with impact, they say. But I've had a number of games that have been won on the back of setting up a Time Walk. I'm playing against burn. I'm at 5 life and he's tapped out with 3 cards in hand. He's at 18. I have a Hierarch and a 2/2 Terravore. I EoT set up Mastery with Brainstorm. Untap, Walk, drop KotR, Waste one of my duals, swing in for 5, putting him to 12. Take my second turn. Waste a second dual, swing in for 13 and win the game. If Temporal Mastery is a counterspell there, I probably lose that game. He's got 3 cards in hand and will draw a 4th and 5th one before I can close it out. Two burn spells will kill me. Possibly 1, if it's a PoP. I can counter 1 thing. Plow is about as good as a counterspell there.

Of course, we can walk through scenarios where the card has been good or bad all day long. So here's the point. It's a card that, if you're slightly behind, can buy you the breathing room to catch up. If you've got an advantage on board, it can win you the game, right now. This is a swingy format. Having an advantage is not the same as being able to keep the advantage. Temporal Mastery is scary for the same reason that Psychatog was scary. It's a time bomb. Psychatog on turn 3, not that amazing. Mediocre on defense. But you have to play around it, turn in and turn out, because the moment your guard is down, they're Cunning Wishing for a Berserk and just like that, you've lost. All the incremental jockeying meant nothing. Sometimes, it's just an Explore. Sometimes, it's just an Evermind. But the same could've been said for Decree of Justice back in the day. Sometimes, you're just going to cycle it hoping to draw into a card that's relevant. And sometimes, you're going to crack it under Standstill for 6 duders and you're going to give people fits.

Is its power level situational? Of course. But so is the power level of cards like Lion's Eye Diamond, Wasteland, Force of Will, Swords to Plowshares, Hymn to Tourach, etc. Will the power level be above the curve often enough to make it worth running? I say for a lot of decks, yes, it will. I think it's a high impact card. Not a 'break the format in half' card, but an impact card, like Green Sun's Zenith. Think about how much Zenith has changed the format without ever hitting anyone's radar as "broken". Temporal Mastery will be like that.

[Mr. Safety]

I always appreciate your comments, SpikeyMikey. I was thinking that Temporal Mastery would fit best in BantAggro/New Horizons myself. Not as a 4-shot, but definately 2-3 to be enabled by Brainstorms and Horizon Canopy's.

I am more keen to see the impact of Reforge the Soul than Temporal Mastery, but both are going to shake up the format for sure.

[matunos]

3. Regardless of what the manual says about blue having troubles with permanents, blue can easily deal with creatures and enchantments.

That's really what keeps this land from being such awesomesauce in legacy. Control decks usually focus on creature removal over creature counters. Sure, if you can counter a SFM, Tarmogoyf, or a Dark Confidant (all reachable with Spell Snare), you typically do, but legacy's current tier 1 control barely runs counters and rarely uses them on creatures unless the timing is just right. Otherwise, what are those 4 Swords to Plowshares for?

So, it may be good if you run a lot of creatures susceptible to Spell Snare or don't want to have to play around Daze, but other than that, your creatures probably weren't getting countered all that much anyway (they might be getting Inquisitioned and Thought-seized, though), and now you have a land that can only be used to produce colored mana for a subset of them (unless you're playing a tribal deck).

Is it terrible? Probably not. Does it make Maverick 10 times better off against Stoneblade than it was before? Probably not. Anyway, we can still counter GSZ.

[Wanderlust]

Something that actually seems worth tutoring up with Personal Tutor.

[Cire]

I know i spoke of this before....but i think this is a viable direction for a miracle deck

4 Banishing Stroke
4 Entreat the Angels
4 Terminus
4 Temporal Mastery
4 Devastating Tide
4 Fade Away
4 Bonfire of the Damned
4 Thunderous Wrath
4 Brainstorm
4 ScrollRack
20 lands

Yes it's extremely dumb...but hear me out.. You are guaranteed to draw into a miracle card 1/2 the time...and you get a broken effect for the cost... removal, mass removal, time walk, massive amount of tokens, etc.... If you draw into Scroll rack/Brainstorm, you can now set up any amount of broken plays, or keep your opponents board clear of creatures and permanents. Will it beat combo? No. Does it seem like a hilarious use of miracle? Hell Yeah!

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

Something that actually seems worth tutoring up with Personal Tutor.

That's... insanely good. Terribly ironically superior in pretty much every way except pitching to Force of Will to Temporal Mastery in Blade Control decks.

[Oiolosse]

One of my favorite cards, Ancestral Knowledge, will get tested yet again. It'll take a miracle (or tw0), so we'll see!

[TsumiBand]

I know i spoke of this before....but i think this is a viable direction for a miracle deck

4 Banishing Stroke
4 Entreat the Angels
4 Terminus
4 Temporal Mastery
4 Devastating Tide
4 Fade Away
4 Bonfire of the Damned
4 Thunderous Wrath
4 Brainstorm
4 ScrollRack
20 lands

Yes it's extremely dumb...but hear me out.. You are guaranteed to draw into a miracle card 1/2 the time...and you get a broken effect for the cost... removal, mass removal, time walk, massive amount of tokens, etc.... If you draw into Scroll rack/Brainstorm, you can now set up any amount of broken plays, or keep your opponents board clear of creatures and permanents. Will it beat combo? No. Does it seem like a hilarious use of miracle? Hell Yeah!

To be fair, Entreat the Angels does look pretty fucking good. 2WW for 8 power in the air? Sweet Jesus.

Terminus is probably going to make a lot of EDH players very sad.

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

I'm not sure if Scroll Rack is going to make the cut, but if they're going to print such a critical mass of incredibly powerful Miracle effects, it's certainly worth considering if completely building around that engine is worthwhile. Although it's probably worth not over-committing. The following seems reasonable to me;

Manabase; 23 lands (15 fetchlands/duals, 4 Halimar Depths, 4 Mishra's Factory?)

Enablers: 4 Brainstorm, 3 Sensei's Divining Top, 3 JtMS, ... 2 Condescend?

Independently undercosted cards: 4 Force, 4 StP

Miracle Cards: 3 Banishing Stroke, 4 Fade Away, 3 Terminus, 3 Entreat the Angels, 4 Temporal Mastery

I'm not sure about bannings, but it seems to have the seeds of greatness. It's probably going to be completely incorrect to not maindeck Gaddock Teeg in Maverick for a while.

Also;

4 Fade Away

[morgan_coke]

Ok, so does this make Long-Term Plans a real thing now? Or is it still junk?

Cause, I mean with top, you can tutor and then cast a miracle during your opponents' end step with this thing. Or with brainstorm you can set it up for your draw phase.

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

Still junk. It does mean that Mystical Tutor will probably never be unbanned.

[majikal]

The part of me that flies into a murderous rage when people topdeck their outs wants someone to bleed because of this set. I will likely not play Standard until this block rotates and god only knows what I'll do if this bullshit becomes widespread in Legacy.

[matunos]

The part of me that flies into a murderous rage when people topdeck their outs wants someone to bleed because of this set. I will likely not play Standard until this block rotates and god only knows what I'll do if this bullshit becomes widespread in Legacy.

In Legacy, you make your own topdecks.

[dontbiteitholmes]

Miracle Wrath seems really fucking dumb in standard.
Yay conditional 1 cmc Day of Judgement, but better because it doesn't activate Undying, allow recursion, or trigger dying, and Troll can't regenerate. Miracle should be called Lucksac, because that's what a lot of games are going to come down to when you can randomly draw into a 1 cmc board wipe then have all your other mana to drop a bomb. Can't wait to see what Standard looks like after all this. There's just no way something from this set isn't going to make it just awful though. Oh well.