Single Card Discussion: panoptic mirror

[Purple Hat]

Panoptic Mirror
  , artifact
Imprint- , :you may remove a sorcery or instant in your hand with converted mana cost X from the game. (the removed spell is imprinted on this artifact)
at the begining of your upkeep you may copy and imprinted instant or sorcery card and play the copy without paying it's mana cost.




panoptic mirror seems like it's a card for which the art work should have been a postit note with the following message:

Dear Type one community,
we challenge you to find a way to break this badly.
your friends
wizards R+D

it seems like with the abundance of fairly broken instants and sorceries out there you should be able to find some good ones to put on the mirror.  Also since the copy effect triggers regardless of weather or not there is anything imprinted on the mirror at the begining of your upkeep you can respond by tapping the mirror to imprint.

to me it seems that the trick is getting the mirror into play early enough with enough protection to get it to stay around long enough to activate.  

has anyone come up with any ideas for how to do that?

beyond the obviously broken plays, ie, imprint time walk take infinite turns, can this card be useful enough to build a deck around despite the 5 mana casting cost?

also if I ever play anyone who puts Shaharzzad on one of these things I'm gonna kill them on general principal.  :lol:

[firebird365]

can this card be useful enough to build a deck around despite the 5 mana casting cost?

Honestly, no. First of all, the card costs 5 mana, as you said. That means it's very difficult to accelerate out early in the game. Other 5-mana artifacts in T1, such as Gilded Lotus (which partly pays for itself) and Memory Jar (broken enough to compensate), Panoptic Mirror pales in comparison. You also have to take into account that you must pay for the spell in addition to playing Panoptic Mirror; in T1, the card better do a lot more than what this one does for such a large investment.

[Plainswalker]

I don't think it's so much that it's not powerful, it's that you can't really build a deck around it without making the deck pretty weak without it, and it's hard to just toss into other current decks. I don't think the 5 mana cost is bad at all, Firebird used the example of Memory Jar, but useally I wait a turn anyways to activate it unless I need card draw right that second. It can also be welded in, or just left there until the time becomes useful unlike Scepter, which you need to imprint right away. Honestly I think the only thing holding this card back is the problem that there are just better things to do on your turn then this that let you win just as much. Slaver might be the only thing I'd say it's worth putting it in right now, but Slaver is powerful enough without it and again there are other things it rather be doing.  

[johnstown713]

I don't see a deck for it right now but I really want to put a time walk on it.

[mrieff]

If you see how quite difficult it is to deal with the tempo loss of Isochron Scepter, I'd be very surprised if this would make an impact in T1

[johnstown713]

I guess it could be welded in but are there that many things to put on it in welder decks?  I play Void and stompy so I don't know much about welder decks.

[Purple Hat]

If you see how quite difficult it is to deal with the tempo loss of Isochron Scepter, I'd be very surprised if this would make an impact in T1

I don't see the mirror as a similar card to isochron scepter in almost any way.  you'd never put almost any of the things you put on a scepter (counterspells, stp, edict) on a mirror.  the one exception is draw spells.

then again there are some, non restricted, things that are just insane on it.  Hymn to Taurach and Duress come to mind.  free hymn durring your upkeep is really freaking mean.  of course virtually any sorcery on the restricted list is totally nuts, demonic tutor and time walk are certainly my favorites.

also since you can play the mirror one turn and then imprint with the trigger on the stack durring your next upkeep it doesn't generate card disad the same way the scepter does.

[slighguy]

just a thought:hs anyone thought of putting yawgwill on the mirror for when you need it in a pinch or even sinkhole could be devastating(think about it bye bye land every turn).

[Matt]

The most interesting thing about Mirror is that once you get someting on it, it isn't shut off by Null Rod or Damping Matrix.

[pocketmoxen]

just a thought:hs anyone thought of putting yawgwill on the mirror for when you need it in a pinch or even sinkhole could be devastating(think about it bye bye land every turn).

Repeated YawgWins wouldn't be worth it. Any cards that go to the graveyard get removed from the game, so the next YawgWin would have even less to do stupid things with.

-jkn

[mtgmooner]

Just an idea...

I had been tinkering (i love puns) around with a George W. Bosh type build of a deck in recent weeks, and have been looking for some fun ways to make the deck ridiculous.  

In the Type One environment, I think using thirst for Knowledge, and Welder can potentially bust this card wide open.  The memory jar that was brought up earlier in this thread is a perfect example of using a high-cost artifact with a great benefit to advantage with such manipulation.  The only discrepancy between the two being however, that additional mana is required to imprint and therefore make use of the mirror.  Null rod, although not stopping the ability, DOES stop the re-useable imprint...

I will test further and post...PLEASE keep this thread going...I would love to hear more ideas on how to build synergistic card relationships on this potential gem...

[Purple Hat]

here's what I've been trying to get on mirrors recently.  the deck is turning out to be pretty disruptive.  I'll post a list when I'm happier with what I have.  it's way too unfocused right now.

Hymn to taurach-puts people in top deck mode rapidly
sinkhole-free reusable land destruction is VERY good
fire/ice-we're thinking of using this as a kill, but i'm not so pleased with it

of course tutors are broken on it as is good draw, and time walk.

mooner, can you PM me a list of what you're working on with the mirror?

[Garth One Eye]

As far as I can tell, only Welder decks can abuse it.  The trick is to load the deck with as much broken stuff as possible.  

Tutors come to mind at first, but I'm taking a good hard look at the restricted list to come up with additional cards.  I just want to make sure it's not a one trick pony.  Aside from your staple cards like Mana Drain and Demonic Tutor, Time walk out right wins for you.  I might even be able to try playing Fork again.  

I mean, even welding in a Mirror and imprinting Swords to Plowshares is pretty scary.  

[Machinus]

The most powerful thing you could do with Mirror is go infinite on turns. Compare the following:


Panoptic Mirror + Time Walk.

Mindslaver + Goblin Welder & Lots of Artifacts.


You decide.

[Purple Hat]

imprinting time walk is obviously broken.  thanks for the note machinas.  

also infinite turns is meaner then slaver unless you go infinite off the slaver.

I think there is just too much synergy between some of the black disruption and the mirror to not play it though.  targeted abyss for lands is savage.

[Meddling Mike]

I'm thinking that there may be some potential with a Less aggro version of Sui that could do some good things with it, some Ideas I've already noticed are Sinkhole and Hymn. Imprinted Diabolic Edict or Chainer's Edict would certainly be helpful as well against aggro creature dependent decks like Fish or Ostompy. The ability to power it out reasonably early with Dark Ritual has potential as well as it's synergy with null rod as long as something has already been imprinted on it. It could just be far too slow and cumbersome, I'd have to test it out before I could say anything more definitive on the matter.

[Shadow Ninja]

I tried to make a deck based around the Panoptic Mirror, but once I had like 40 cards in it, I realized what I had constructed was Drain Slaver with a worse win condition (Slaver > Mirror in every way).

The Mirror also suffers from the random artifact hate flying around the metagame these days.  It seems a Mirror deck would most likely go the way of Mask decks unless something drastic happens in the metagame.