1) I intend the scope of this thread to be the card Plagiarize.
2) The idea is to Denial your own Baubles or just cycle them early. This gets you to a lot of mana and Threshold by turn 3-4.
3) At that time you ideally want to Plagiarize your opponent on their upkeep and then activate Coliseum targeting them.
4) Note that if they Force Plagiarize, you can either Drain it and still gain a 2 for 1 CA along with 4 Drain mana the following turn.
5) You can also Denial your own Plagiarize giving you +2 card advantage.
6) If Plagiarize resolves then you draw 4 and your opponent loses their draw and must discard 3 for +6 card advantage which is basically game over.
7) Plagiarize is amazing in response to draw sevens like Twister and Wheel where you opponent is Mindtwisted and you draw 14.
8) Plagiarize is also amazing with Jace out. When they go to "Brainstorm" with Jace then you Plagiarize in response. The result is you draw 3 and they shuffle back 2.
9) What makes Plagiarize better now than it was back in the Brainstorm days is Jace. Brainstorms used to be run out on turn 1 usually before Plagiarize mana was up. Now Plagiarize is up by the time Jace hits.
10) Could Plagiarize be run in multiples?
Numbered for my convenience:
1) Cool. It's a very fun and potentially powerful card!
2) Was a more conventional cantrip engine explored? I would think that some combination of Tops, Repeals, Mystic Remoras and Preordains would be preferable to Bauble/Denial (which has problems with Null Rod and getting 2-for-1'd).
3) So you have six mana including
, interesting. I'm wondering why if you have such resources you didn't just play a JTMS of your own on your turn, protected perhaps by Negate/Spell Pierce/Arcane Denial (or Drain if you have quad
)?
4) Or you could Drain the Force to get five drain mana and resolve Plagiarize, stealing their draw.
5) You may want to save your Denial in this case, since you're essentially lowering your defenses just to draw three on your next upkeep. If they advance to their main phase, play JTMS you're going to wish you'd just let Plagiarize get countered without any tricks, and held that Denial.
6) Yeah, probably. But all six-mana two card combos are basically game over anyway, see Painter-Grindstone (reshuffling Emrakul notwithstanding) etc.
7) Yet you're not running either Draw Seven. If you're planning on having six mana on your opponent's upkeep isn't it better to hold up countermagic then, then go to your turn and have seven mana for Twister+Plagiarize?
8) You're talking about intentionally ceding JTMS advantage to your opponent? Once you get scouted what do you do when you 'tricked your opponent into resolving JTMS' just to have them Fateseal you?
9) Plagiarize is better against JTMS than Brainstorm, that's true, but I don't think it is good enough to see play for that reason alone. It wasn't used against 4x Thirst for Knowledge Tezzeret.
10) Possibly, though my first change would absolutely be to cut Plagiarize #4 for Merchant Scroll #1. Scroll has a lot of utility here, finding Plagiarize (though you telegraph it), Rebuild, Drain, Denial, pitchmagic etc.
Also, I would note (though you didn't mention it anyway) that you can't effectively Plagiarize on upkeep to steal an opponent's draws from Denial. The timing works such that they aren't locked into how many cards they want to draw until the resolution of the Denial trigger, so you have to respond to the trigger with Plagiarize, at which point they can opt to forgo the draws from Denial.
