Deconstructing Misdirection

[Tin_Mox5831]

If there were ever such a thing as a "niche card", Misdirection would have to be included among the shining examples. Misdirection is heavily played in the Vintage format despite having many shortcomings. Scenarios involving Ancestral Recall aside, Misdirection functions as a counterspell, but only during a counter war. In that respect, it can only be considered a functional piece of countermagic if it's controller initiated a counter war by playing a bomb such as Tinker or if it's controller is engaged in a counter war that will involve several counters from both sides. This fact appears to make Misdirection a much more narrow card than many people imagine it to be. Playing PitchLong, I have had a fair number of games end because my Misdirection is not a true analog for Force Of Will and is bound by the aforementioned constraints. In summary, Misdirection is a very enigmatic card. It's a free "Counterspell with bonuses" effect, but only when it's controller has other countermagic or when it's controller is defending his or her bomb. It's a card that embraces the control player and the combo player equally despite it's awkward appearance. What is your opinion of Misdirection as it relates to both specific metagames and the format in general?

Peace,
Dave

[Malhavoc]

As you said, Misdirection isn't a card you can auto-include in any deck running blue like we do with FoW: the reasons are obvious. However, in those decks which aim to protect their own bombs, Misdirections are as good as FoW, and in some situations even better - let me take this example:

- Your opponent casts a bomb (for example, Fact Or Fiction)
- In response, you cast a bomb of yours (example: ancestral)
- Your opponent decides to counter you bomb, let's say he FoW you Ancestral
- You can now Misdirect his FoW onto his own Fact Or Fiction

In such a situation Misdirection achieves something incredible, working as a DOUBLE counterspell, protecting your bomb and slowing down your opponent.

Of course, there are many situations in which Misdirection could seem far inferior to even Counterspell: it can't counter a deadly Yawgmoth Will for example. However, I think we have to understand which is Misdirection's best role: being a protection in an overall aggressive deck. If YOU are the one attacking, it's your opponent the one who needs to counter your stuff, not the other way around. You mostly need to protect your bombs, and in that Misdi is even better than FoW: no point of damage, and great tricks like the one I've described above.

[MaxxMatt]

Mis-D cover his best role in any deck that can do two things:

1) Play overpowered bombs with a lot of mana at his disposal.
2) Play early threats with the minimum mana available.
 
While the *protect your bombs* role seems to be the same, there are a lot of subtle differences in their usage.

The best example among scenarios number 1) are the ones played by MD-G or Pitch-Long's players. They have a lot of mana and a lot of overcosted bombs that need free counters to be protected.

The other best example among scenarios number 2) are Gro_A_Tog and Fishes.dec. Their inherent little mana development help you to feel how good are free spells that can mimic real counterspells.


On the contrary, decks filled with Sorcery speed bombs cannot be considered the ones that can optimize Mis-Ds as well as the other proposed.
As Malhavoc pointed out, when you can't responde with something significant against opponent's bombs in order to maximize MIs-D use, Mis-D seems weaker than any other counterspells.

Oath, 5C-Draw7, can't cover all the possible roles among the ones available for MIs-D: you are optimizing it only with an aggressive and *proactive* play.
Their own EoT-Bombs are far less frequent than MDG or C-Slavery ones, so, Mis-D's flexibility can be misunderstood and you can consider it such as  a *bad counterspell*.

If you are facing a lot of *pure combo decks* in your metas, you can prefer to maindeck other cards rather than play with Mis-Ds, but only because sometimes you can only deplete opponent's hand, in order to stop him from winning: Mis-D is one of the worst thing on accomplishing this goal *alone*.  On the other hand,  in general porpouse contexts, Mis-Ds, is far more intriguing than FoW#5,FoW#6 or FoW#7.

Maxx