Illusory Angel

[Protoaddict]

I couldn't find a discussion about this card anywhere.

Illusory Angel
2U
Angel Illusion
Flying
Illusory Angel
4/4

I got to thinking about just how easy this card is to play in vintage, the fact that its blue, and the fact that its a damn fast clock.

All you have to do is lead with a mox, lotus, Gitiaxian probe, Gush, etc and you can play it no problem. Made me wonder if there is not some sort of blue skies deck to be made with this thing. 4/4 is out of bolt range and you are playing blue so you can protect it. A 5 turn clock is not bad when the rest of your list is almost all protection for it.

I mean just off the top of my head:

4 Illusory Angel
4 Sea Drake

4 Force of will
4 Mental Misstep
4 Gitixian Probe
3 Flusterstorm
1 Brainstorm

4 Gush

1 Mox Sapphire
1 Black lotus
1 Lotus petal
1 Solring

Etc etc

The principal is sound enough for a mono blue skies deck. Has anyone else tried this card/have any results for it?

[credmond]

This card seems really good and possibly Vintage worthy. It seems strictly better than serendib efreet by enough of a margin to make a UR aggro and burn deck viable. Go go psionic blast! However, the big downside to this card are those times that you need to cast him and you don't have cards in hand available to cast or that you don't want to cast just yet (counterspells) making it better for aggressive style decks and not so great for controllish type decks. Ethersworn Canonist is this guy's sworn enemy! And to note is that this guy is hard to cast versus prison strategies where you can maybe only cast one spell a turn due to sphere and tangle effects making this card possibly a no go for Vintage altogether. 

[gkraigher]

Yeah, this could be something in vintage.  It's blue and it's fast.  

To play devil's advocate, many creature based decks out there rely on null rod effects.  Illusory Angel wants you to play all the moxes you can.  

BTW, Sea Drake and Gush maindeck is HOT

[A.-1.]

CJ Moritz has had some success with Sea Drake/Daze in the past.

I'd recommend playing Daze over Flusterstorm and Chalice of the Void somewhere.

[StanleyAugust]

CJ Moritz has had some success with Sea Drake/Gush in the past.

I'd recommend playing Daze over Flusterstorm and Chalice of the Void somewhere.

That deck doesn't play Gush...

[A.-1.]

Fixed.

Considering that tournament was 4+ years ago, I think it's amazing I remember the event at all.

[nineisnoone]

Should probably include the rules text in there.

Surprisingly not bad sounding. I wouldn't run Probe just for this though. Cantrips + Full Moxen (and Crypt) should be enough. Also, I'd axe Sea Drake for Jace because, you know, Jace.

[AmbivalentDuck]

How is that better than Esperzoa? The issue is that for 2U, you get Tinker.

[nineisnoone]

How is that better than Esperzoa? The issue is that for 2U, you get Tinker.

Lighting Bolt, I suppose, which is nice if you are running Jace. This is also less conditional overall (my opinion at least).

Certainly, Tinker is the better card, but if I'm fishing for reasons I can say it doesn't cost an artifact to play and doesn't get bounced by artifact hate.

Nothing mind blowing, but I could see fish variants using it as their beater of choice if they wanted to cut green or tarm (or whatever they run these days). If you took a mono-blue control shell, threw in back to basics, I'm sure you would do perfectly fine.

[gkraigher]

You could easily fit 3 Jace, 1 Tinker, and 1 Darksteel Colossus in this mix of cards.  There are a lot of open slots right now, right. 

[Protoaddict]

@AmbivalentDuck
Its "better" that Esperzoa in that it is different in some situations. While zoa lets you get double duty out of a mox sometimes, Angel has the following benefits:
- Can't be bolted
- Can block and be blocked by Delver and live
- Cannot be killed with artifact hate (which is everywhere) or countered by steel sabotage
- Works better against standstill (don't have to recast something every turn)

As for tinker, once again it has some benefit over it, take them for what you will.
- Not a 2 for 1
- Not shut down by Aven Mindcensor or Leonin arbiter
- You can run 4 copies for consistency
- Cant be countered by pierce or flusterstorm
- You can't accidentally draw one and then need to find a way to put it back like blightsteel
- its not a CMC = Dead if you want to run bob
- It is blue for FOW (tinker is, blightsteel and timevault are not)
- Not mutually exclusive (you can run tinker in the same deck as 4 angels, both want artifacts to sac)

@nineisnoone
Back to basics is a good find. Probably need to think about my list a bit. I have another thread in creative for it now.

@gkraigher
Jace may be overkill. The deck is not utilizing the tools or the mana to support him in my eyes. I may be wrong, but since the deck does not need card selection as much as it needs card quantity because it has a lot of redundancies, it may almost be better to run baby Jace to draw cards and to deal with other jaces.

Also unsure if tinker makes sense or not. I mean do fish decks run tinker, cause anything running the angel will probably be the same thing.

[MaximumCDawg]

Yeah, I'm with Duck here.  This is a fine card, but it seems like just another in a long line of awesome 2U fliers that see no play. We got:

Serendib Efreet
Sea Drake
Esperzoa
Fettergeist
Illusory Angel

All of these are good.  Esperzoa seems the best right now, since it dodges Thorn and Golem, can tinker and be tinkered, and potentially generates mana.  One of my favorite things to do is run a Grixis fish deck that has Tangle Wire.  Set up your upkeep stack like: Tap->Bounce->Fading, so you Fade, then bounce the Wire, then tap 3.  Hopefully you can replay the Wire and keep your opponent stuck under maximum wire-age.  If you have Hex Parasite at the party too, then you can avoid tapping anything. 

Anyway, Illusory Angel seems fine, but there are times you won't be able to cast it.  When you do, it's just a beat stick.  All said and done, I just don't see how it gets there if its competition does not.

[Oath of Happy]

Yeah, I'm with Duck here.  This is a fine card, but it seems like just another in a long line of awesome 2U fliers that see no play. We got:

Serendib Efreet
Sea Drake
Esperzoa
Fettergeist
Illusory Angel

All of these are good.  Esperzoa seems the best right now, since it dodges Thorn and Golem, can tinker and be tinkered, and potentially generates mana.  One of my favorite things to do is run a Grixis fish deck that has Tangle Wire.  Set up your upkeep stack like: Tap->Bounce->Fading, so you Fade, then bounce the Wire, then tap 3.  Hopefully you can replay the Wire and keep your opponent stuck under maximum wire-age.  If you have Hex Parasite at the party too, then you can avoid tapping anything. 

Anyway, Illusory Angel seems fine, but there are times you won't be able to cast it.  When you do, it's just a beat stick.  All said and done, I just don't see how it gets there if its competition does not.

Why wouldn't you set up the stack as Bounce, Tap, Fade so that you can tap the wire before bouncing it?

[AmbivalentDuck]

What it comes down to is that for 2U you can have Blighty/Sundering Titan. No French Vanilla 4/4 can compete with that. Show and Tell now makes 2U the going rate for Emrakul/Griselbrand, too.

[Meddling Mike]

@AmbivalentDuck
Its "better" that Esperzoa in that it is different in some situations. While zoa lets you get double duty out of a mox sometimes, Angel has the following benefits:
- Can't be bolted
- Can block and be blocked by Delver and live
- Cannot be killed with artifact hate (which is everywhere) or countered by steel sabotage
- Works better against standstill (don't have to recast something every turn)

As for tinker, once again it has some benefit over it, take them for what you will.
- Not a 2 for 1
- Not shut down by Aven Mindcensor or Leonin arbiter
- You can run 4 copies for consistency
- Cant be countered by pierce or flusterstorm
- You can't accidentally draw one and then need to find a way to put it back like blightsteel
- its not a CMC = Dead if you want to run bob
- It is blue for FOW (tinker is, blightsteel and timevault are not)
- Not mutually exclusive (you can run tinker in the same deck as 4 angels, both want artifacts to sac)

Part of the problem here is that you're sort of reaching to make the case that this card is better than a card that doesn't even see marginal play. I checked up on morphling.de. Esperzoa showed up in one tournament in Nebraska as a two-of in the maindeck of this weird blue shops list a few months back and that's about it. I don't think this card is better than Esperzoa, but even if I did it's still doesn't mean it's vintage playable.

Trying to compare this to Tinker is sort of a foolish exercise. If your deck can reasonably support Tinker you should be playing it over this card 100% of the time. The power level gap between these two cards is laughable.

[nineisnoone]

@AmbivalentDuck
Its "better" that Esperzoa in that it is different in some situations. While zoa lets you get double duty out of a mox sometimes, Angel has the following benefits:
- Can't be bolted
- Can block and be blocked by Delver and live
- Cannot be killed with artifact hate (which is everywhere) or countered by steel sabotage
- Works better against standstill (don't have to recast something every turn)

As for tinker, once again it has some benefit over it, take them for what you will.
- Not a 2 for 1
- Not shut down by Aven Mindcensor or Leonin arbiter
- You can run 4 copies for consistency
- Cant be countered by pierce or flusterstorm
- You can't accidentally draw one and then need to find a way to put it back like blightsteel
- its not a CMC = Dead if you want to run bob
- It is blue for FOW (tinker is, blightsteel and timevault are not)
- Not mutually exclusive (you can run tinker in the same deck as 4 angels, both want artifacts to sac)

Part of the problem here is that you're sort of reaching to make the case that this card is better than a card that doesn't even see marginal play. I checked up on morphling.de. Esperzoa showed up in one tournament in Nebraska as a two-of in the maindeck of this weird blue shops list a few months back and that's about it. I don't think this card is better than Esperzoa, but even if I did it's still doesn't mean it's vintage playable.

Trying to compare this to Tinker is sort of a foolish exercise. If your deck can reasonably support Tinker you should be playing it over this card 100% of the time. The power level gap between these two cards is laughable.

I don't think anyone is claiming that this is an optimal card choice, or the foundation of a deck that will win a world championship or something. At least, I'm not. If that's the question, then the answer is no. But if the question is, "can this card be meaningfully played in a viable deck?" then the answer is.... possibly, sure. yeah why not?

As far as the Tinker comparison goes, why run anything when you can run Ancestral Recall? Tinker exist within a continuum of actions. You don't just blind cast Tinker (well, ideally at least), you want protection or else you wasted resources permanently. (Not to mention you only have one). Tinker isn't valuable because of it's objective power. It's valuable because of it's power within a continuum of actions. A good example would be Dark Ritual. Dark Ritual is objectively worse than many cards, but becomes very valuable within a continuum of actions.

Blue hasn't (imho) had a very good stable 3 drop since Thirst for Knowledge got restricted. And by stable what I get at is the card is less restrictive about (and perhaps even enables) play choices, rather than is more restrictive. Honestly, I remember being bewildered when people thought See Beyond was going to be the next big thing. Nothing against those people, but to me that showed that a cards value is more relevant to how it fits into a continuum of actions rather than objective power level.

I'm not holding my breath, but at the same time, I can't think of very many unrestricted (and not even that many restricted) blue three cost that wow me. Ophidian and his ilk have seen play before (not currently, but in that sense I do think of them as Vintage playable), and I would say trading four damage for a single card draw is a good trade.

TLDR
It's not flashy, but it's not trashy.

[AmbivalentDuck]

As far as the Tinker comparison goes, why run anything when you can run Ancestral Recall?

Because you only get 1. Is blue power better than 4 Workshops? 4 Bazaars? Obviously mtg without quantity restrictions looks VERY different. The only deck in the format would be Leyline of Anticipation combo with 20 Black Lotus or so. Kill spell? Borders on irrelevant.

[serracollector]

I been testing the Card out in an Aggro Rug deck based around the cascade affects of shardless agent/bloodbraid elf.  The base of the deck is:

4 BB Elf
4 Shardless Agent
4 Illusory Angel
4 Ancestral Visions
4 FoW
2 MisD
2 Commandeer
2 Mindbreak Trap

the rest is just your basic restricted cards (full moxen), and anceint grudges/bolts/claims/bounce etc.  Its been decently fun, and even with all the countermagic being expensive, its all essentially free, and with the 4 visions/Acall, having the blue cards to pitch to FOW/MisD/Commandeer hasn't been problematic. Getting a turn 1/2 BB elf>Angel is a pretty damn quick clock.

If you were gonna stay mono blue tho with the list above, I would definitely include 4 delver of secrets.