Eye of Sauron aka "Eye of The Storm", post ravnica vintage deck

[policehq]

To me it sounds like this decklist would cast the first Twiddle, then:

Twiiddle is removed from game.

With the word "Then" in Eye of the Storm, I'd say that the player gets a copy of THAT Twiddle.

So in a sense, it resolves, or at least the player gets it to do what that player wants it to do.

[Limbo]

So in a sense, it resolves, or at least the player gets it to do what that player wants it to do.

This is indeed right. Nobody implied that casting one brainstorm resulted in infinite brainstorms or something. Intended use is this:

Cast Instant A.
Result: "Imprint" A, then copy A, then A may be put on the stack. Resolve A
Cast Instant B
Result: "Imprint" A, then copy A and B, then A and/or B may be put on the stack. Resolve A and/or B.
Wash hands, rinse and repeat.

[or-line]

ok so if i understand what happens correctly using the example from this post it would work like this?

cast merchant scroll
eots removes and imprints scroll, then puts a scroll copy on eots, scroll gets played for free grabing twiddle
cast twiddle
eots removes and imprints twiddle, then puts a scoll and a twiddle copy on eots, then either can be cast for free and the process repeats?

please correct me if i am wrong here

[Jacob Orlove]

ok so if i understand what happens correctly using the example from this post it would work like this?

cast merchant scroll
eots removes and imprints scroll, then puts a scroll copy on eots, scroll gets played for free grabing twiddle
cast twiddle
eots removes and imprints twiddle, then puts a scoll and a twiddle copy on eots, then either can be cast for free and the process repeats?

please correct me if i am wrong here

You are correct.

[or-line]

ok i understand how it works now thank you for the clarification

[vartemis]

vartemis:
if you fear that they will wreck your combo with an instant with ToA on top, just use Merchant Scroll/Cunning Wish EoTS activations prior to tendrils to get counters or other instants. I have mana and more cards that way and so I'll still come out as the last player to play a spell. I've thought about Abeyance/Mana Short but it's just not worth slowing down the deck.

My main tournament deck is oath, and my mitt is always full of instants, be it card draw or counter/control.  I havent goldfished the deck, but on average how big is you hand?  are you looking at having 4-5 instants to out instant me?

j

[Lelolith]

Eye of The Storm, Interacts well with Sorceries, because Your opponent cannot play the copies he may or not have generated of them until his turn. And obviously bad with instants because he can keep saying no, and it gets crazy and theres no point to playing the eye in the first place, maybe think about Chant or Abeyance.

But Type I is the format of powerful sorceries, which win on their own quite easily without a 7cc enchantment / 4cc+ sac device, although it is fun. Mind's desire is the key culprit of over the topness here, unfortuately this is hard to put into a deck with the resistance that is needed when eyeing up your win.

[ShoryuuReppaX]

Wouldn't Cunning Wish be a better win condition than Twiddle?

It took me a while to think of how to go off with Cunning Wish, so I'll just write it down.


You have 4 Cunning Wishes main, 1 Turnabout side, and 1 Brain Freeze side.

With Eye of the Storm out, cast Cunning Wish for Turnabout. Eye of the Storm triggers before Cunning Wish resolves, Cunning Wish removing itself is irrelevant. Cunning Wish is removed by EotS, and you get Turnabout.

Cast Turnabout, and Eye of the Storm will get you an additional Cunning Wish. Cunning Wish for Cunning Wish, which will active Turnabout.

I'm not absolutely sure about how Cunning Wish for Cunning Wish affects Eye of the Storm, whether by returning it to your hand will make Eye of the Storm cease make copies of Cunning Wish or not. But it does not matter - You have mana again via Turnabout, you have Cunning Wish in your hand, and Turnabout is again in the RFG zone.

As you can see, this is an infinite loop assuming turnabout nets 4 mana back. Is this kill valid? or is Twiddling more useful?

[Jacob Orlove]

Eye of The Storm, Interacts well with Sorceries, because Your opponent cannot play the copies he may or not have generated of them until his turn.

That's not true. The Eye lets you play all the copies, which means you ignore any restrictions on when you could normally cast the spells in question.

Furthermore, you do not get to "save" copies for later. You play whatever copies you wish as the ability resolves, then the rest disappear when state based effects are checked and the game notices that they are not on the stack.

[Rafka]

Jacob Orlove:
I believe that you are wrong about the whole "EotS copies sorceries during opponent's turn. Here is the description word for word.

5uu
Eye of the Storm
Enchantment
Whenever a player plays an instant or sorcery card, remove it from the game. Then that player copies each instant or sorcery card removed from the game eith Eye of the Storm. For each copy, the player may play the copy without paying its mana cost.


I think that the key part  is "may play the copy without paying casting cost". You are given the choice play sorceries/instants without paying casting costs but you can't play sorceries since it's not your turn.

[Rafka]

ShoryuuReppaX:
When testing this, the problem was that i try to go off the same turn i pop my Academy Rector with Cabal Therapy. If I used you plan of Cunning Wish/Turnabout, I'd need 4BUUU to go off, instead of 1BUU with Merchant Scroll/Twiddles. If the EotS ruling about sorceries unplayable when it's not your turn is correct, then Merchant Scroll can't be copied during your turn if you're interrupted unlike Cunning Wish. I think I've read too much Oscar Tan and it made me think too much about fundemental turns... I need to playtest this somehow but I forgot how to work apprentice online...

PS: I wonder if it would be better to call think combo EotS (pronounced "oats") as a tribute of old combo decks. Problem is that it would kinda sound like Oath...

PS2: is it just me or does the card look like the eye of Sauron in the "ring world" with Gandalf/Saurumon underneath it?

[Komatteru]

Jacob Orlove:
I believe that you are wrong about the whole "EotS copies sorceries during opponent's turn. Here is the description word for word.

5uu
Eye of the Storm
Enchantment
Whenever a player plays an instant or sorcery card, remove it from the game. Then that player copies each instant or sorcery card removed from the game eith Eye of the Storm. For each copy, the player may play the copy without paying its mana cost.


I think that the key part  is "may play the copy without paying casting cost". You are given the choice play sorceries/instants without paying casting costs but you can't play sorceries since it's not your turn.

No, Jacob is correct.  Here's why: EotS triggers whenever an instant or a sorcery is played, and being able to play the copies of the cards removed by EotS is part of its effect.  The only thing preventing you from playing sorceries on your opponent's turn is a game rule that says that sorceries can only be played on one's turn when the stack is empty.  However, EotS is allowing you to circumvent that rule (and recall that when it comes down to cards vs. rules, cards win).  Compare Panoptic Mirror, which says:

Panoptic Mirror
5
Imprint — X , Tap: You may remove an instant or sorcery card with converted mana cost X in your hand from the game. (That card is imprinted on this artifact.)
At the beginning of your upkeep, you may copy an imprinted instant or sorcery card. If you do, you may play the copy without paying its mana cost.

According to the way you have it, you wouldn't be able to play imprinted sorceries with the mirror.  However, clearly, that's not how the card works.

In addition, I'll add that Eye of the Storm allows you to have more than one "sorcery" on the stack at the same time.

[vartemis]

I thought all the copies get put on the stack right away, or is it like mind's desire how they just sit removed from the game and you play them whenever you want, ignoring the sorcery restriction?

j

[cssamerican]

So if EotS is in play:
Player A cast Cunning Wish
Player B plays Force of Will targeting Cunning Wish
Player B can now put Cunning Wish on the stack.
Player A cast Ancestral Recall
Player A can now play Cunning Wish and Force of Will, but must decide before Player B gets priority. So, in this case Player A puts Force of Will on the stack targeting Player B's Cunning Wish, And his own copy of Cunning Wish on the stack.
Everyone passes till the stack is clear.
The result is Player A has resolved 1 Cunning Wish, 1 Ancestral Recall
Now if Player A cast Turnabout he can put Cunning Wish and Ancestral on the stack. There is no point putting Force of Will because you have to announce the targets for it before you pass priority.

Did I get this correct, or am I misunderstanding something?

[Rafka]

JDizzle:
You are correct and so is Jacob, especially with the example of Panoptic Mirror. POW. I didn't think R&D would throw out the "soceries only during you turn" rule so easily though but with Panoptic Mirror, it was a must since it activates during upkeep. I don't mean to belittle you, but I'd like to hear from a jodge about this otherwise, this combo would become a lot more unsafe...

[vartemis]

this deck would be alot better if your opponent couldnt play sorceries as your opponent wouldnt be able to cast their copied tendrils.  With a copied tendrils you are permanently stuck as they can just wait for you to cast your stuff and in response cast their tendrils after everything has been stacked.  Your only option would be to cast another instant to put another set of spells plus another tendrils on top of your opponents.

j

[Rafka]

Well there's always been that issue with the "i interrupt your combo with a counterspell and do tendrils on my turn". The problem is that if the "sorceries out of turn" thing comes up, they can even use the Merchant Scroll and get more instants so that point in moot. Cunning Wish would be more versatile in that situation but as I stated before, it's unsafe. Maybe I'll ask Wizards' judges on the site and I might get a reply.

[ShoryuuReppaX]

Cunning Wish has several things going for it. Unlike Merchant Scroll, it is highly unlikely your opponent has counterspells in your sideboard. Stifles in the board, however, can be annoying. The ability to search for answers can compensate for its higher casting cost.

This portion is probably better suited for Rules Forum. But since all the questions are about the deck I'll just throw it here for now.

Given that I have Cabal Therapy in the graveyard and Academy Rector in play, if I sacrifice the Rector for the flashback, will Eye of the Storm remove Cabal Therapy from the game? The comp rules state that "remove this card from the game instead of putting it anywhere else any time it would leave the stack,� so I take it that EotS will remove Cabal Therapy and will create additional copies in the future.

If EotS has a Cunning Wish removed and I cast Turnabout, can I wish for the Cunning Wish? the Turnabout? If I wish for either spell, would EotS still create copies of the spells in the future, or does EotS function like imprint?

[Limbo]

Given that I have Cabal Therapy in the graveyard and Academy Rector in play, if I sacrifice the Rector for the flashback, will Eye of the Storm remove Cabal Therapy from the game? The comp rules state that "remove this card from the game instead of putting it anywhere else any time it would leave the stack,� so I take it that EotS will remove Cabal Therapy and will create additional copies in the future.

The trigger happens when you play the spell, so when you announce it. As a result EotS's trigger removes the spell when the trigger resolves, after which a copy is created of the original spell + any other spells already on EotS. In the case of getting EotS with the therapy'd rector, EotS is not in play when you play the therapy, so there is no trigger, so there is no removal of therapy, so there is no "imprinted" therapy at that specific point in time and space.

If EotS has a Cunning Wish removed and I cast Turnabout, can I wish for the Cunning Wish?

Yes, it is in the RFG zone.

the Turnabout?

Yes, it also is already in the RFG zone.

If I wish for either spell, would EotS still create copies of the spells in the future,

Yes, EotS just requires a spell to be once removed, not to stay removed.

or does EotS function like imprint?

No. The big difference is that EotS also works on opponents spells. WotC probably didn't want to imprint opponents cards, to prevent messing up decks by forgetting to change back cards.

[Komatteru]

this deck would be alot better if your opponent couldnt play sorceries as your opponent wouldnt be able to cast their copied tendrils.  With a copied tendrils you are permanently stuck as they can just wait for you to cast your stuff and in response cast their tendrils after everything has been stacked.  Your only option would be to cast another instant to put another set of spells plus another tendrils on top of your opponents.

j

Play Xantid Swarm.  Then they can't play any of the copies that are on Eye of the Storm.

[Rafka]

Xantix Swarm is green and would be a 4th color to the deck. If I take out white, then I could but what other green cards would be worth the sacrifice of Academy Rector search engine? I don't think Sylan Library and City of Solitude would be enough.

[Skink_123]

What about Orims chant? Or is it to risky?

And one thing I wonder, if somebody would be so kind to straighten this up for me, the spell you play from your hand thats get RFG, do you get to play that too? Or just the spells previously RFG with Eye?

[Jacob Orlove]

And one thing I wonder, if somebody would be so kind to straighten this up for me, the spell you play from your hand thats get RFG, do you get to play that too? Or just the spells previously RFG with Eye?

You get to play all the spells RFG'd with Eye, including the one you just cast.

[andrewpate]

Olivier Ruel just posted a list for Eye of the Storm on wizards.com that kills with Maga, Traitor to Mortals instead of anything else because, as a creature, it doesn't get removed by the EotS.  That is so easy to discover that it suggests conspicuousness or little need for perspicacity in the observer. this version would need some major tweaking to get a big-mana kill instead of a Storm kill, but it would eliminate one of this deck's biggest weaknesses, namely losing to an opponent with a lot of instants.

[Jacob Orlove]

You still lose to someone with more instants if they ever cast a Force.

[Kieranwolf]

You might need to rely on duress/suppress to empty your opponents hand. That sounds like it would be too difficult to pull off the combo afterwards, though, unless you cast time walk to gain an extra turn.

Swarm would require a splash, but Tropical Islands would probably fit in, since there's still some fetch in there.

There's also Dosan the Falling Leaf, or City of Solitude as well, but those would just be harder to resolve than Swarm, wouldn't they?

The whole combo with EotS just sounds too inconvenient to me when I consider how it works, especially if you're playing against the average control deck. Cunning wish makes it really cool, though, you just need to lock down your opponent somehow.

[Rafka]

I think the only way for it to be decent with the ruling of "opponents can play your sorcery copies during your turn with an instant" would be to include Abeyance in the deck. I don't want to make a decklist with it in it right now since I'm a little busy. If someone is up for the challenge, go ahead. 

[Ocat]

But if you play an Abeyance, can't the opponent just copy that abeyance in response? The ability triggers when a player plays an instant or sorcery, then a copy comes on the stack. If the second player plays an instant after the first player played an Abeyance, the second player can get an Abeyance copy?

[Rafka]

Play Abeyance during their EoT and go off the next turn. Either that or run Xantic Swarm but that'd put in Green as a 4th color.

[Ocat]

So you want to use a copy you get from EoTS the next turn. but he can use a copy too.