How are they useful?

I simply don't see a situation where considering whether a card is active or reactive leads to new insight.

Broken Blue spell is worded like Pyroblast.  It can target non-red spells, but it won't counter them.

To clarify, my issue with the active vs. reactive classification is twofold:

1) It does not line up with intuition.  In fact, for any definition of "active" or "reactive", there will probably be a weird card that gets miscategorized.  Broken Blue Spell is an auto-include in any deck and feels like an "active" card, as it is a draw spell; however, it is designated passive by your classification.
2) The exclusion of a card from your opponent's deck is no different than the inclusion of a card in your opponent's deck.  Broken Win Condition could be viewed as a metagame inclusion against decks that don't run Broken Blue Spell, i.e. it is a reactive card that reacts to their not having Broken Blue Spell.  Time Vault is more conditional than Ancient Grudge (null rod on the table?  opponent has artifact destruction?  ancient grudge can almost always blow something up), yet it gets the "active" designation while Ancient Grudge gets the "passive" designation.  What I'm trying to say here is that the metagame and the synergies in your deck change relative card strength by so much that any attempts to categorize cards into "active" or "reactive" or anything else are probably counterproductive.

This categorization is almost completely useless.  It is possible to split cards up into two piles unambiguously with your definitions, but it's also possible to split cards up based on the first letter of the card name.

Active cards, while not dependent on the existence of other cards in your opponent's deck, are generally still dependent on other cards NOT being in your opponent's deck.

Thus, from a game theoretic standpoint, the inclusion of an active card in your deck vs. a reactive card depends on exactly the same analysis - what you expect to face.

Including a win condition when it is weak to a certain "reactive" card that is commonly played is clearly a mistake, just like including a reactive card when nobody is playing the threats it reacts to.

Consider the following card:

Broken Win Condition
Instant
Broken Win Condition deals 20 damage to target player.

One might argue that this card is strong and worth splashing red for.  However, suppose the following card also exists:

Broken Blue Spell
Instant
Broken Blue Spell is Blue.
Counter target spell an opponent controls if it is red.  Draw four cards.

Broken Blue Spell is a reactive card.  It is as reactive as Force of Will.  Your opponent must play a spell for you to cast it.

Everyone in your metagame will run Broken Blue Spell, even Ichorid.  Broken Win Condition is much weaker as a result.  But I thought it was active, right?  It doesn't depend on the existence of other cards in the metagame...

What we have here is a reactive card shaping the metagame.  Broken Win Condition starts to feel very conditional.  It reads, "You win the game if an opponent doesn't have Broken Blue Spell in hand."  The existence of reactive cards that answer them, in fact, makes all active spells just as conditional and dependent as the reactive cards.  Well, what card is it dependent on your opponent playing or running?  The answer, of course, is "any card other than Broken Blue Spell".  This is no more convoluted than Force of Will being dependent on your opponent running "any spell".  There is only a superficial difference between the two categories of active and reactive.

I'd also like to point out that even active cards are dependent on mana.  This seems like a stupid point, but when you consider how mana acceleration warps the format, it starts to seem important to consider.  The strongest active cards differ depending on how fast mana is available.  Would TPS run Yawgmoth's Bargain if Dark Ritual was banned?

Yawg Will works fine under Necro.  You can't use your discarded extra cards since they're rfg, but anything else that goes to your graveyard is fine.

Not e the wording on Necro: "Whenever you discard a card".  If you cast a spell, for example, it still goes to your graveyard.

I think we might have semantic differences here.

I interpret the word bomb to mean a spell that has a good chance of winning the game for you if they resolve.  Cards like Necropotence fall into this category.  Thirst for Knowledge, for example, does not.  Your opponent may want to counter a Thirst, but it is not the case that that is the correct play in all situations that it is possible in.  Thus, if you have a hand with turn 1 Tinker and turn 2 Necropotence, you probably don't care if they drain your Tinker.  Even if they cast Fact or Fiction off the drain mana, chances are they are not able to counter your turn 2 Necro.

Under this definition of "bomb", if your hand has more than two bombs/protection, at least one of which is a bomb, the fact that drain costs your opponent less than force is pretty irrelevant because you are probably going to win anyway.  If you're playing Grim Long, for example, the other thing you typically do is tutor, and your opponent probably won't counter your tutor unless they really need the drain mana for their next turn (like if they're using disposable mana sources like Lotus Petal, I guess).  I know that if I'm playing drains and my opponent tutors, I'd typically rather cast Brainstorm at the end of their turn than drain the tutor.

In summary, my argument is that if you kept your hand you are probably either going to win the game no matter what, or you are not doing something on turn 1 that they want to drain. 

Perhaps when you use the word bomb, you mean a spell that provides you a significant but not game-winning advantage if it resolves.  It is true that for many of these spells, having them drained is bad for you while having them forced you don't really feel like you've lost out.  This makes a bit more sense to me.  However, the difference made by casting a card worth drain but not force on turn 1 is not spectacular when compared to the difference made by having to throw out a hand because it doesn't have enough stable mana.  I've played with Lotus Petal and gotten screwed by it a lot more than turn 1 drains have helped me.

The other thing I haven't mentioned yet is that so many Tezzeret lists run Duress, and that Lotus Petal does not help at all with the plan of turn 1 Duress, turn 2 drain.  The goal of these decks is not to get drain up as soon as possible, however nice of a bonus it is when it happens.


Sorry, I didn't intend to offend you at all, and my language was stronger than I intended.

I write directly and make strong claims so that people will tell me when I'm wrong.  Your post didn't make sense to me.  This could be for any number of reasons including that I failed to fill in the blanks in your argument correctly.  If I thought it was devoid of intelligent thought, I wouldn't have responded to it.

Disclaimer: I haven't played Doomsday in a while and wasn't that good of a pilot when I did.  But I think I understand how the deck works well enough.

Personal Tutor sucks, I know it fetches Doomsday but I wouldn't run it in any deck.  I would run Grim Tutor before I would run Personal Tutor.  And I wouldn't run Grim Tutor either.

I would include one Street Wraith to tutor for.  Street Wraith is a Time Walk if you have enough mana to cast Doomsday and go off in the same turn.  I wouldn't run more than one because life is at a premium in this deck and it makes mulligan decisions harder.

I would cut to 0-1 Unmask - again, it's good to be able to tutor for it if you have a card to pitch to it but in general you don't want to draw it.  There is simply better disruption available.

I don't see a reason to run less than 4 Duress.

Pact of Negation is fine as a 1of, I'd leave it in.  It's great protection once you are ready to win, which means you want it as a tutor target.

Tendrils is an auto-include in any deck that has cards named "Yawgmoth's Will" and "Dark Ritual".

I don't see a reason not to run Necro.  If you think the anti-synergy with Doomsday sucks, then run 1 Necro and 3 Doomsday.  Necro is simply a better card.  Unless you are already low on life, Necro and Doomsday both read "You win the game next turn."  Your opponent must counter Necro.  They can wait to disrupt Doomsday on their turn or your next turn.

There are a bunch of other singletons that are useful in random corner cases that you probably actually want: Lion's Eye Diamond, Chromatic Sphere/Star, Timetwister (yes, there are Doomsday piles with Timetwister in them), etc.  If you're building the same Doomsday pile every game, you're doing it wrong.

Hi all,

Thanks for the feedback in my last thread.

I'm building a deck similar to Shaymora that runs 4of Lorescale Coatl to help the aggro match without having dead cards (e.g. Old Man of the Sea) against control.  This means my colors are Ubg.

I think of the deck as control that can play aggro control.  This gives me flexibility to play the style that suits my opening hand and matchup best.  It also means I am unpredictable.

I don't know if this deck can be tier 1.  But it is incredibly fun to play and feels different from both drain decks and gro decks despite having common elements of each.

I started to consider using Cunning Wish so that I could wish for Berserk.  My idea was that resolving Coatl should be like resolving Oath.  My opponent either answers it or loses the game in 2-3 turns.  Losing to time vault when Coatl is 8/8 and my opponent is at 3 sucks.  Berserk often acts as a Time Walk to stop this nonsense.  It also often acts as win-more.  The reason for using it that finally convinced me was losing games without it when aggro.dec chump blocked my 30/30 Coatl for 5 turns.  If Coatl is supposed to help the aggro matchup, it needs to be able to actually do something there.  So I run Berserk.

I'm not sure whether Coatl is a better choice than Tarmogoyf.  The biggest advantage I see is that if my opponent has a Tarmogoyf, I'd much rather have a Coatl.  Coatl + Berserk can also win against Oath creatures, Inkwell Leviathan, etc. 

Anyway, here's an approximate list:

4 Remora
4 FoW
4 Meditate
1 MisD
3 Commandeer
4 Lorescale Coatl
1-3 Cunning Wish

Ancestral
Time Walk
Brainstorm
Mystical Tutor
Demonic Tutor
Library of Alexandria
Regrowth
Vampiric Tutor
Yawg Will
Timetwister
Tinker
Vault/Key

Mana (fetches + islands + dual islands + moxen + sol ring + lotus + crypt)

Debatable inclusions (some of Mana Drain, Inkwell Leviathan, Memory Jar, Rebuild, Gifts, Sylvan Library, Merchant Scroll, Fastbond, Gush)

Now, I need a sideboard.

I want 4xLeyline to board in against dredge.  I also probably want at least a couple basic lands to board in (I have 4 basic Islands MD).  Maybe Tarmogoyfs.

For the rest of the cards, I'm considering:
Extirpate
Darkblast
Hurkyl's Recall
MisD
Commandeer
Berserk
Repeal

Then we get kind of janky...
Gifts
Crop Rotation (gets LoA against drains)
Stifle
Trickbind
Gush (I can't decide where the hell I want Gush, if at all.  It's a beautiful combat trick with Coatl out and helps find pitch counters but sucks in an opening hand, sucks under Remora and loses the surprise factor if wished for.)
Naturalize (is there a better option?)
Pact of Negation
Mana Drain
Slaughter Pact
Brain Freeze
Demonic Consultation
Hatred (haha)

At this point I'm just brainstorming bad ideas.  The question is, have I missed any good ideas?

All of these cards are hit by null rod... I'm surprised there is no artifact destruction MD especially since the deck is mono red, and artifact removal can also stop time vault.  I'm not counting the monkeys since they need to blow up a null rod.

I haven't played shops in a while, so I could be wrong, but I'm pretty skeptical of the fish matchup, especially since you only gain two answers to null rod post board.

But maybe fish just sucks so much against shops that it doesn't matter.

That all makes sense.  What I was saying is that if you are casting a must-resolve bomb with no knowledge of your opponent's hand there is a 40% chance that you are screwed regardless of how much they have open.

Playing into UU open definitely sucks.  But the post I was arguing with didn't make any sense.  If you can't play a bait spell before a must-resolve bomb against drain control, you should have mulliganned.  You will really regret not mulliganning against UU open, but the extent to which you will regret not mulliganning is irrelevant because you should have just mulliganned.

For example, you're playing Long against drains game 2.  Your hand is: Dark Ritual, Underground Sea, Mox Emerald, Mana Crypt, Mox Ruby, Necropotence, Hurkyl's Recall.  This hand is a mulligan.  It doesn't matter whether your opponent runs Lotus Petal or not.

(And my other point which I haven't explicitly stated until now is that if their hand is Island, Lotus Petal, Force of Will, Blue Card, Mana Drain, and two other cards, then you roll over and die.  But this hand doesn't show up frequently enough to offset the times that their hand is Lotus Petal, Island, Time Walk, Thirst for Knowledge, Tezzeret, Duress and they are just sad.)

The spirit guides were just a dumb example to make the point that sacrificing consistency for a few awesome potential opening hands isn't always a good idea.

Perhaps Mox Diamond is a better example.  Two Islands and a Mox Diamond almost exactly the same in an opening hand as two Islands and a Petal.  In both cases, you lose a stable mana source and get UU on turn 1 instead.

Diamond is inferior to Petal mostly because a hand of one Island and a Diamond for mana sources is likely a mulligan, wheras a hand with one Island and a Petal could be keepable depending on what else it has.  But I don't run either card for the same reasons.  Petal and Diamond work similarly if you get the right hand, and both make you ask why you included them when you've mulled to 4 and your only mana source is one of them.


If Negate read "counter target spell" I believe it would see a hell of a lot of play.  The problem is it rolls over and dies to aggro.


An opening of Island, Mox Sapphire is definitely scary.  However, there's still a 60% chance your opponent does not have mana drain in their hand (ignoring mulligans... it's not like they will mull a hand because it didn't have a turn 1 mana drain).

Your argument that seeing UU open forces you to play a bait spell doesn't make much sense.  If your opponent plays Island, go, they have six cards, one of which might be Force of Will with approximately a 40% chance.  If they have UU open, they have five cards, one of which might be Force of Will or Mana Drain with approximately a 60-65% chance.  I'm doing the math in my head here based on the 40% chance that a 4of will be in a random hand of seven cards, and the probabilities change a bit when you account for the cards already known, but the point is that in either scenario, you want a bait spell.  In particular, if you're playing against drains and you kept a hand with only one bomb and no protection, you're probably doing it wrong.

Add to this that if your deck is the type to resolve bombs on turn 1, and they kept a hand without UU open on the first turn, it was probably because that hand had Force of Will in it.

Petal in drains is definitely not the worst idea ever, and plenty of people run it, but I believe it to be suboptimal.


This makes a lot of sense.  I forgot about the interactions with Gifts and Top.  I can see how MisD is strong in a deck that runs those cards.

So why not play 2of Tezz, 2of Top, 0of MisD?

Not that this is relevant to the MisD question, but Petal is a highly debatable inclusion.  There are a lot of opening hands where you wish it was an Island, up to and including most hands that don't have a drain at first (~60% of them).

Petal doesn't show up in many of the lists I've seen.  Turn 1 drain mana is nice, but if that's all that mattered, we'd run 8of Spirit Guides and 4of Manamorphose.  (That would be a hilarious deck to play, though... some of your opening hands can support turn 0 drain.  I guess I'll save the idea for the day that turn1.dec is dominant.)


You're saying 2of MisD sucks.  I agree with you.  I'm wondering why the card is played at all in drain builds.

Sorry, I wasn't clear.  I definitely think some cards are running 1of but not 2of because either they make your tutors stronger but are otherwise too weak (Colossus and Inkwell are the most extreme examples here), or they are just plain bad in multiples (many cards fit this category).

But I don't think Misdirection is one of those cards.  There is no reason to believe that the second MisD is weaker than the first.

JudasKilled:
Everyone expects your drain deck to run 1of MisD because everyone runs 1of MisD.  In particular, since more than 1of MisD is rarely seen, not seeing MisD in game 1 gives your opponent neither relevant information nor relevant misinformation.

If I wanted surprise, I'd play 1of Daze instead.  Or if returning an island is too much anti-synergy with drain (which isn't given, as some drain lists run LoA for example), 1of Commandeer, 1of Red Blast, 1of Spell Snare, 1of Nix, etc.

None of these cards are that strong in your standard drain deck, sure, and surprise is the only reason you'd run them.  But MisD is weak, too, right?  And narrow.

Also, "it surprises them game 2" sounds like a reason to put something in a sideboard.

arctic79:
You can always cut cards.  If Yawgmoth's Will is unrestricted, I'm running at least 3.  I don't care if the cards I'm cutting are awesome, because Yawgmoth's Will is better. 

If you're playing Tezzeret, cut Tezzeret.  Or Sensei's.  Or Lotus Petal (your mana probably works out fine as MisD is free, and Petal wasn't a stable source anyway, but obviously testing should confirm this before we believe it).

I'm not claiming these cards are the best to cut or that the deck would not have to change in some other way due to the ripple effect of changing card choices.

What I'm claiming is that if MisD is a card worth running as 1of, it's worth running as 2of.  And if it's not worth running 2of, then there are many other cards that are better as 1of, like Sensei's Top.  I would even consider running Street Wraith over MisD if I couldn't think of a good card for slot #60.

To clarify, if I'm running cards A and B in slots 59 and 60, and there is no obvious reason that they should be 1ofs, then either 2of A or 2of B must be a better choice barring the case that 2of A is win-more in some matchups and 2of B is win-more in other matchups and 1of each happens to be just right.

Hi all,

I've seen a lot of drain lists that run 1of Misdirection.  I'm kind of curious why.  Usually I justify a 1of by the presence of critical tutor mass - the card is less powerful than another choice, but it makes every tutor in my deck stronger.

In a remora list, I run 1of MisD almost entirely because of this sequence:

Them: Ancestral
Us: Remora on stack, Mystical/Vamp for MisD, Remora resolves, cast MisD.

Here the presence of MisD actually makes three different cards in my deck capable of stealing Ancestral or some similar bomb.

But in a non-remora drain list we need to have both mystical or vamp and a draw spell and the mana to cast both to make MisD a meaningful tutor target.  How often does that happen?

Misdirection in a drain deck is mostly useful in the mirror.  Sure, it  works against Thoughtseize, randomly wins the game against Ancestral, and works in a few corner cases.  However, if it's really that good against other decks, why not run more than 1of? 

I've heard that it's there as FoW #5.  But MisD is a lot weaker than FoW against other decks.  And if I could run 6of FoW in a drain list, I probably would.

So why 1of MisD?