Howl of the Horde

[evouga]

Howl of the Horde 2R
Sorcery

When you cast your next instant or socery spell this turn, copy that spell. You may choose new targets for the copy.

Raid -- If you attacked with a creature this turn, when you cast your next instant or sorcery spell this turn, copy that spell an additional time. You may choose new targets for the copy.

So Fork is nothing new, and is unplayable. Still, this version differs in two substantial ways that make it interesting:
1. You can copy spells *twice* if you satisfy the (rather mild) requirement of having attacked that turn. Utility cards like Lightning Bolt become credible threats when copied twice, even apart from the obvious shenanigans with restricted cards.
2. You cast this spell first before revealing what you're trying to copy. Howl of the Horde is therefore must-counter if you're presenting the possibility of a remotely dangerous spell, since otherwise they will need three counters to deal with all of the copies separately.

[serracollector]

Attack with delver or goyf cast this copy time walk ftw? Could this be a possible inclusion in gush storm as you can cast this and still gush possibly three times for free? i think it could be quite usabale in bug or rug as a one or two of. copying any restricted card gush or even abrupt decay could be so advantageous.

[JarofFortune]

I can actually see a single sb copy in Rug. Against something like half of the decks in the format, raided howl + gush is good game. Even with Preordain you get so much value.  You can also set up insane stuff with Mystical, such as Ancestral or Time Walk.

[evouga]

I agree that this + Gush is insane, but with a Mystical it's a bombo (unless you have a way to draw cards in between the copies resolving): each tutor will shuffle away the card you previously put on top.

[TheWhiteDragon]

This is pretty ridonculous in a delver list.  I can see it played in multiples just because copying walk, recall, bolt, OR gush is gg.

[JarofFortune]

I agree that this + Gush is insane, but with a Mystical it's a bombo (unless you have a way to draw cards in between the copies resolving): each tutor will shuffle away the card you previously put on top.

I said you can set up something explosive to copy using mystical, ie, searching for the howl, or an ancestral/walk/gush.

This is pretty ridonculous in a delver list.  I can see it played in multiples just because copying walk, recall, bolt, OR gush is gg.

The problem with multiples is that by its nature, delver is rather mana-light, so the card wOn't be relevant in many matchups. Maybe you could cram two in the board, but not maindeck.

[H]

I can't tell you how much I want to do the following:
Step 1: Attack with Confidant
Step 2: Cast Howl
Step 3: Cast Ancestral
Step 4: Draw 9 cards
Step 5: Put on shades
Step 6: Moonwalk away from the table

[Protoaddict]

3 mana + 2 cards in hand + an attacking creature is a big requirement. Keep in mind if the creature gets swords'ed or hit with a bolt before attacking it will not trigger the raid requirement.

If this does see a home, I think its going to be with snapcaster since you can drop the creature eot and set up an attack next turn. In a deck with gush, AND bolt its a decent card, but consider it compared against snapcaster in the first place.

Bolt + snapcaster = UURR for 6 damage and a body, easier to achieve, always instant speed on both turns
vs.
Bolt + Howl = RR2 for 9 damage only on your turn and only on second main, plus requires a body attacking.

or

Ancestral + Snapcaster = UUU1 for 6 cards and a body, easier to achieve, always instant speed on both turns, only requires one color mana
vs.
Ancestral + Howl = UR2 for 9 cards, only on your turn and only on second main, plus requires a body attacking.


Honestly the reward seems marginal compared to the set up you need to make it happen. Losing instant speed is to me the biggest deal here because the cards you want to cast are all things you typically do EOT. I may try experimenting with 1 just to see since snapcaster/delver is already running everything else you need to abuse this, but I think likely its not efficient enough.

[StanleyAugust]

Lol this card sucks big time. Zero chance it will ever see play. If you really want to reuse your spells, just play Snapcaster.

[Saya]

If you attack with flipped Delver and copy time walk and flashback walk by Snapcaster next turn,the total damages amounts to 22.

[Twiedel]

If you are sticking this card in a delver list, I feel you misunderstood how delver works. This is in my view a combo card, not a tempo card.

If you can make a deck work that can use this card even without a creature attacking, then you're good. I'm thinking of Rituals right now, but I'm not sure how this should look like. This could work as a must-counter, and if resolve you could always follow up with double duress + double threat. But then again, we already have a lot of draw 7s for 3 mana as a must-counter that don't require you to have more mana.

Gush Storm could be a deck that wants one or two of these, as it is potentially at least a drawspell without further mana required. Would be 2R: Draw two cards. in the worst case. But it can be a dead card so often it's not even funny.

And this into recall ? Did you realize that Regrowth is unrestricted and combines with Ancestral to UUG1 Draw 6 cards, even payable over several turns ? You are often worse than a card that is much more versatile and sees no play right now... this is only better when you aim for a "big turn" in my view.

[MaximumCDawg]

The mana cost seems prohibitive for Vintage, but those who are writing this off as Regrowth are a little off target.

Think about what this card actually does in, say, Modern Sligh.  It's turn 4, you swing in with your now-outclassed Goblin Guide.  Second main, if you have a Lighting Bolt in your hand and four mana, you're dealing 9 damage for 4.  This spell dealt 6 damage for 3.  That's a big deal.  And, mechanically, look what the card really did; it "drew" you two more spells and cast them for free.  In a deck with 15+ lightning bolt effects and the usual red beaters, this seems both realistic and quite good.

The problem for Vintage, I think, is that you will almost never have the luxury of sitting around with 2R extra mana to blow on this, plus you'll be punished for sitting on this in your hand while you durdle for it to be useful.  The opportunity cost of mulliganing to 6 just for the off-chance of using this card to live the dream off Gush is not worth it as far as I can tell.

Maybe, as Tweidel says, there's a combo here.  Say we're in RB and we've triggered Raid somehow.  Then we cast this and Dark Ritual, leaving us with 9 B for an investment of 2RB.  That generated 5 black mana.  There are so many ways to turn this into a win with Burning Wish and a reasonable yard that it's almost trivial.  Even then, I'm not sure there's not better ways to do this.

[zeus-online]

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[evouga]

I'm definitely going to test this in a TMWA-type shell. The classic problem with TMWA is that you're stuck whittling away your opponent's life with Grey Ogres while each draw step brings them closer to drawing a basic and regaining control of the game. This + Fireblast easily puts the game away.

[MaximumCDawg]

I'm definitely going to test this in a TMWA-type shell. The classic problem with TMWA is that you're stuck whittling away your opponent's life with Grey Ogres while each draw step brings them closer to drawing a basic and regaining control of the game. This + Fireblast easily puts the game away.

Sure, but so does Fork.  The risk of having this clogging your hand early on seems very real and makes me leery that this will ever matter in Vintage.  It literally does NOTHING unless you're going for the win (unlike Fork which can at least participate in a counter war), which sounds like combo card, not a value card for TMWA.

[boggyb]

Exceedingly powerful with Gush. Turn 3 this -> Gush is GG for sure. Also works well as a Drain mana sink. Turn 2 Drain something -> Turn 3 this + any draw spell is nutty. That said, it's a high-variance card that doesn't win the game on its own, which is usually a non-starter for Vintage. It may just be powerful enough, though.

[AmbivalentDuck]

Exceedingly powerful with Gush. Turn 3 this -> Gush is GG for sure.

I wish this were true, but I'm not so sure that drawing 6 cards during your own turn, effectively at sorcery speed, and only in your second main if you attacked with a critter is enough.

It's not as though Izzet Guildmage is running amok right now.

[mmcgeach]

I sort of want to try this in storm - but I can't think of a good creature to attack with beside Xantid Swarm, and that'd put us into some kind of lame 4C or 5C storm build.

Although, attack with Xantid Swarm -> cast this -> cast anything seems like a hilarious sequence.

[vaughnbros]

So you need an attacker, another instant/sorcery, and 3 mana+the cmc of the spell you are casting.  The return for the set up is that with gush it ends up drawing 4 additional cards.  With bolt it deals 6 additional damage.  Although good I'm not sure that those effects are really worth all of the set up required.  

Chandra firebrand, a much easier to set up copy effect that is never truly dead, has seen basically no play making me think that this card also won't see play.

[zeus-online]

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[Protoaddict]

All I can do when I look at this card right now is see downside, when you consider the only shell it really fits is delver.

The biggest thing I can see with this is timing. It is not only a sorcery, but it is really just a second main phase sorcery. The spell you cast cannot be used to protect your attacking creature, can't use mana drain mana on it, etc. In a deck with creatures that have to attack to enable this, not being able to bolt out things in front of it can mean you trading board position to enable this.

I mean, it's sorcery speed right? So yes I can double fork a bolt at 4 mana + A creature in play and attacking and maybe dying. But honestly, for 2 mana and the same card investment with no set up I can just cast 2 bolts and run like Chain Lightning in its place. So the set up to get 3 free damage is really quite a lot when I would likely be better off running more bolts and card draw.

Gush is a weird one as well. Yes it lets you draw your hand back for 3 mana and 2 cards, but since your adding 2 lands back to your hand, each of those draws is potentially less valuable since it produces a higher chance for you to draw land. In gush it used to be that extra lands would get cycled by Jace or Dack but you just invested your mana into the fork so now you may just lose some of those cards to having too many in hand.

Now with restricted cards, it's a different story since it gives you copies of stuff you didn't have before. but the set up cost remains, even if we are drawing Net 7 cards for 4 mana.

The real use for this card is going to be Legacy Burn, where on turn 3 you can attack with a goblin guide or Keldon marauders, cast this, and then fireblast them for 12 damage for game. Maybe we should look at fireblast or something.

[TheWhiteDragon]

I don't understand why these "requirements" are so constricting in some people's view.  In delver, if you are not swinging with delver, pyro, snap, or tarm fairly early, then you are losing anyway.  There are ample critters to swing with.  You don't have to connect, just attack.  You can even cast this AFTER you've attacked, so you're not forecasting your play to your opponent.  In comparison to snap and regrowth, the biggest reason this works in Delver is because of gush.  Regrowth and snap on gush do nothing big...this spell gives you 4 extra cards for 3 mana.  If you look at all the requirements out of context, it may seem hard to pull off.  But realize that an attacking creature in delver is a commonality and the odds of you having a profitable spell (bolt, walk,  recall, gush, preordain) are pretty dang high.  You're not actually setting any combo up to play this card, you are just playing this card to reap the benefits of what delver already does.  It's a sorcery speed double-fork for 2R basically.  Nothing else required that your delver deck isn't already doing anyway.

[Stormanimagus]

I just wanna preface this with a little "I love this freaking card!" I am wary of putting this in a rug delver list that runs no fbond. My concern is that a play you wanna be making with this car pretty commonly (swing the this into Triple Gush) puts 8 cards in your hand and you often won't have enough mana to play any of them without active fbond. Now you are just discarding down to 7 at your eot. Granted you can craft the perfect hand ala Necro but is that really worth it? It very well may be and this is so killer on a time walk in Delver, but does anyone share my concern for non fbond engine lists? I am imagining the following creature suite:

3-4 Pyromancer
1-2 Talrand
3 Snapcaster

In a 4-color fbond list.

Ideas?

-Storm

[vaughnbros]

@Whitedragon.  Delver doesn't really run enough mana to fully support this card.  The deck typically needs gush to accelerate to 3 mana, whereas this card requires you to have 3 when you gush.  Its also completely terrible against lodestone, thorn, sphere, Thalia, flusterstorm, and mindbreak trap.  When you factor in that it can't be pitched to force in those situations, this creates way more variance than a deck like delver wants from the top of its curve. 

[TheWhiteDragon]

@Whitedragon.  Delver doesn't really run enough mana to fully support this card.  The deck typically needs gush to accelerate to 3 mana, whereas this card requires you to have 3 when you gush.  Its also completely terrible against lodestone, thorn, sphere, Thalia, flusterstorm, and mindbreak trap.  When you factor in that it can't be pitched to force in those situations, this creates way more variance than a deck like delver wants from the top of its curve. 

Most cards suck against spheres and counters.  That's like saying ancestral recall is bad because of mana drain, FoW, Chalice@1, and Misstep.  I think the low mana count of delver might be a legit concern, but listing the cards that stop it (especially if your looking at maindeck mindbreak traps), that also stop ALL spells, is not.  I think it would take a bit more finess than taking a delver list and -2 cards, +2 this.  You might need to do a bit more tweaking and modifying.  A straight swap into a netdeck won't do it. 

Be creative guys.  Don't think every new card has to just be jammed into an existing pile of 75.

[vaughnbros]

@Whitedragon.  Delver doesn't really run enough mana to fully support this card.  The deck typically needs gush to accelerate to 3 mana, whereas this card requires you to have 3 when you gush.  Its also completely terrible against lodestone, thorn, sphere, Thalia, flusterstorm, and mindbreak trap.  When you factor in that it can't be pitched to force in those situations, this creates way more variance than a deck like delver wants from the top of its curve. 

Most cards suck against spheres and counters.  That's like saying ancestral recall is bad because of mana drain, FoW, Chalice@1, and Misstep.  I think the low mana count of delver might be a legit concern, but listing the cards that stop it (especially if your looking at maindeck mindbreak traps), that also stop ALL spells, is not.  I think it would take a bit more finess than taking a delver list and -2 cards, +2 this.  You might need to do a bit more tweaking and modifying.  A straight swap into a netdeck won't do it. 

FOW is a 1 for 2.  Chalice is a gamble that your opponent has cards at that CMC.

Flusterstorm and trap against howl of the board is an automatic 2 for 1.  Spheres have twice the effect on howl compared to other spells that may not be affected at all.  The variance is extremely high on this card because while it's upside is good it's downside is really bad.

It seems like hedging your bet here and weakens your arguments by saying that it doesn't fit directly into delver after saying its amazing in delver...

Be creative guys.  Don't think every new card has to just be jammed into an existing pile of 75.

Would you care to point in the direction of what new archetype this card creates?  Just not seeing how situational double fork is a card to build around.

[evouga]

Flusterstorm and trap against howl of the board is an automatic 2 for 1.

Note that the copies are not cast, so these cards are actually *worse* against Howl + Spell than they would be against three random spells. You cannot get blown out by Trap unless you played another spell earlier that turn. Similarly, at least one copy of your spell will resolve against Flusterstorm if you have even 1 extra mana open.

[TheWhiteDragon]

@Whitedragon.  Delver doesn't really run enough mana to fully support this card.  The deck typically needs gush to accelerate to 3 mana, whereas this card requires you to have 3 when you gush.  Its also completely terrible against lodestone, thorn, sphere, Thalia, flusterstorm, and mindbreak trap.  When you factor in that it can't be pitched to force in those situations, this creates way more variance than a deck like delver wants from the top of its curve. 

Most cards suck against spheres and counters.  That's like saying ancestral recall is bad because of mana drain, FoW, Chalice@1, and Misstep.  I think the low mana count of delver might be a legit concern, but listing the cards that stop it (especially if your looking at maindeck mindbreak traps), that also stop ALL spells, is not.  I think it would take a bit more finess than taking a delver list and -2 cards, +2 this.  You might need to do a bit more tweaking and modifying.  A straight swap into a netdeck won't do it. 

FOW is a 1 for 2.  Chalice is a gamble that your opponent has cards at that CMC.

Flusterstorm and trap against howl of the board is an automatic 2 for 1.  Spheres have twice the effect on howl compared to other spells that may not be affected at all.  The variance is extremely high on this card because while it's upside is good it's downside is really bad.

It seems like hedging your bet here and weakens your arguments by saying that it doesn't fit directly into delver after saying its amazing in delver...

Be creative guys.  Don't think every new card has to just be jammed into an existing pile of 75.

Would you care to point in the direction of what new archetype this card creates?  Just not seeing how situational double fork is a card to build around.

Perhaps I should clarify by saying it would be great in Delver with some tweaks.  Damn, man. Every new card will require some tinkering with an existing shell.  They're not all 1-for-1 swaps.  Can you seriously not think of any way to tinker with a delver shell to fit this in?  It won't make a new archetype at all.  Add fastbond, maybe some mana, trim a few spells...done.  Not that hard.  Just because you can't function beyond netdecking and can't find a way to make this card fit seamlessly into the latest tourney winning list does not make the card crap.

[Twiedel]

Oh woooow.

I've been misreading this card so heavily, it's not even funny. I was thinking it would fork every single instant or sorcery you play in this turn... then I'd see this as a good playable in Storm lists with Gush where it could do really great things. But as it is, it is just plain too bad to ever be more than a 1-of for some cute tricks with restricted spells.

Just 1,5 forks for 1,5 times the cost of Fork? Seems way too fair to be really good.

[vaughnbros]

Flusterstorm and trap against howl of the board is an automatic 2 for 1.

Note that the copies are not cast, so these cards are actually *worse* against Howl + Spell than they would be against three random spells. You cannot get blown out by Trap unless you played another spell earlier that turn. Similarly, at least one copy of your spell will resolve against Flusterstorm if you have even 1 extra mana open.

Given the cost of the card mindbreak trap should be castable at this point in the game, and playing around a flusterstorm would require you to have even more mana to put through even a single copy of the spell.  It's not that much different from flusterstorming a tendrils of agony.

Perhaps I should clarify by saying it would be great in Delver with some tweaks.  Damn, man. Every new card will require some tinkering with an existing shell.  They're not all 1-for-1 swaps.  Can you seriously not think of any way to tinker with a delver shell to fit this in?  It won't make a new archetype at all.  Add fastbond, maybe some mana, trim a few spells...done.  Not that hard.  Just because you can't function beyond netdecking and can't find a way to make this card fit seamlessly into the latest tourney winning list does not make the card crap.

This is where I disagree.  It would have to change pretty tremendously from where it is at right now to accommodate this card, not just a few "tweaks".  You'd need more mana sources to reliably get to 4 mana in order to howl anything other than gush.  You'd probably have to cut the current top of the curve, Dack fayden, which means you are significantly worse game 1 against shops and have to change your entire sideboard.  To add fastbond back in you first of all have to be playing green, there are quite a few delver variants that don't now.  To reliably get the fastbond you'd probably want to play black for tutors...  At this point you are playing some weird delver+gush control hybrid.  By playing this card it has a massive ripple effect on the rest of your list.