Retract vs hurkyl's recall.

[Mark_Story]

Earlier this week I saw a tendrils based extended deck, which obviously lacked hurkyl's recall, and used rebuild instead.  I can understand that rebuild can act not only as a defensive spell against stax but also as storm enabler.  I started thinking about other spells that accomplished a similar end, as rebuild and hurkyl's recall, and remembered retract from darksteel.

Retract
U - Instant

Return all artifacts you control to their owner’s hand.

Very similar effect as H.Recall, and with one less mana which can be important in a mana tight deck.  So is the ability to target your opponent, that important and worth the extra mana?  Or can retract replace the odd  H.Recall as a storm combo enabler?   Or is the narrow ability of only being able to target your own artifacts a detractor to retract?

[Luiggi]

Hurkyl's Recall is used precisely because you can use it for both the purposes you mentioned: upping your Storm count by bouncing your artifacts , or bouncing your opponent's stuff, that can include annoying artifacts like Chalice of the Void and Sphere of Resistance, that can make comboing out next to impossible.

The same goes for Rebuild, except that you can always cycle it away if you don't want to use it.

For these reasons both Hurkyl's Recall and Rebuild see more play that Retract, despite the mana cost issue.

Luiggi

[Methuselahn]

Perhaps you could get some use out of this Vintage list:

The Rebuild Deck

after testing Rebuild, Hurkyll's, and Retract extensively, I had found Rebuild to be far superior.  Rebuild also let me play my backup plan, which was needed in a field full of Meddling Mages and Bird Shit.

Despite the Rebuilds, Stax can still be a tough matchup.  If they go first and drop Sphere, you are in for hard times.

[Disburden]

When I was playing Meandeck Tendrils a little while back I saw Retract  and swaped it for the one recall thats in the maindeck.

 This was good, at first...but later on it just wasn't useful enough. It gave me some turn one wins easier since I didnt have to worry about one more colorless mana , while digging through this complicated deck, and trying to find even more mana to resolve tendrils. I was happy with it.

But, there was some matches I needed to bounce opponents junk and I wish I  had the recall. In other words, I like the recall alot better than retract, I switched it back within a few weeks of playtesting.

[Jacob Orlove]

If you really want one-mana bounce that can also hit a few of your own artifacts, run Chain of Vapor.

[Disburden]

I should also mention that Chain of Vapor was the second Blue Bounce spell in Meandeck tendrils.

[Mark_Story]

I thought that retract would be worth a look.  As it is functionally similar to recall, but seeing people's thoughts on retract vs Recall and rebuild, it is easy to understand why retract is the ugly stepchild of rebuild.

[warble]

Retract is INFINITELY worse then Chain of Vapor.  Infinitely.  That's a lot worser dude.

 :shock:

Okay maybe only like ^^^3 worser.