MTG Salvation

Brainwave is pretty hideously overpowered. actually almost all of these are. But the designs are freaking sweet, so kudos for that! I'd love to custom cube with some of these.

Treacherous Tutor is busted at B, maybe fair at 1B or more likely BB. Factually speaking in most formats you'd play this early, pay 6 or so which basically means your opponent gets nothing, and combo off next turn despite the life loss. It's probably fair at BB though, it would ensure only dedicated combo could really abuse it.

Temporal Necromancy is the fairest of them all, so it probably doesn't need the cost to change. I'd maybe suggest 1BB as well to give extra incentive to play heavy B. The main issue is there's no cmc restriction, so you can use this as a pretty busted reanimation spell as well. Maybe 2 time counters is more fair? I dunno.

Brainwave should be 2UW and find 2 or less. Also lose the split-second.

As explained, Capital Sin doesn't work as worded, since epic prevents the casting of the spells you tutor. If you can find a way around that, then it's still kind of overpowered as a combo enabler since you can spend turns just shredding their hand or putting out protective permanents and then get a 2-card combo and just win. Not to mention just getting Emrakul is probably enough, or if that's banned some hexproof/unblockable dude and then chaining time warp effects. It should probably be 3BB and just put a permanent from your deck into play, makes it more fair with the bonus of bypassing Epic's restriction.

Quote from sperry

Changing three out of five to two out of three is not a good change IMO. A longer match greatly reduces the effects of mana screw/ mulligans. While that's a big part of the game, I feel that it's something better to avoid when determining a pro tour champion.

I mean, every single round they played before then to get to the top 8 was best of three, so it's not statistically relevant that they should suddenly have to play 2 more matches compared to the "luck" that got them there in the first place. It also inadvertently hurts the types of decks that are favored in most G1s but have sideboard hate available. These decks can be good choices for an event, because if you can rely on winning every game one you can just try to scrape one out in the post board games and get a W. but suddenly if you actually top 8 you're playing twice as many post board games, which skews your win percentage downward considerably.

Plus, even under the best-of-five structure we have a large amount of pro tours being solely decided by luck anyway (PT Dark Ascension, PT Avacyn Restored, etc) so it's not as big an issue. It takes a massive amount of things to go right for you to win a PT, and I'll go ahead and guarantee that not one PT champion got there on pure skill alone.

To be quite honest I prefer best of five matches precisely for the reasons listed (removes a bit of the chance factor, depresses the prevalence of glass cannon g1 decks, makes sideboarding matter more) but it's logistically unreasonable for every match in the Swiss to be Best of Five, so it's illogical to change formats suddenly in the single elimination rounds. If tournaments were smaller, such as the Player's Championship or other small events, then all rounds being best of five would be a lot better for the game and help prevent luck (or unluck) from deciding such an important event.

I immediately disregard and ignore 90% of cards printed because they don't go into a competitive control or combo deck in any format, which are the only archetypes I find skillful or fun to play. This also includes 99.999% of all creatures ever made, because I "outgrew" the stage where people find combat interesting or skill intensive within my first few months of playing Magic and thus the only creatures that interest me are ones that function as efficient spells with a negligible body attached. Any time a card that doesn't interest me is printed, I gleefully trade off the overpriced jank to players for carda that are actually powerful and will likely maintain value.Thusly, almost every single card wizards works so hard to make I consider trade bait at best and unplayable trash at worst.

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Except nothing in any other color combination compares to the Uw ones, even considering the opportunity costs you're mentioning. Those sorts of things can be a factor in more powerful metagames (abrupt decay is better than a lot of other cards, but it costs 2 specific colors, doesn't pitch to force, and doesn't kill Jace, for instance) but in a Standard that's as low-powered as this, the alternatives just don't exist. Versatility means a lot more than people think. Yes, other colors offer specific scenarios where one card choice can outpace a single card choice in UWx, but it's not that simple. Let me break it down for everyone here, slot by slot.

Control in this format needs sweepers because an abundance of swarm aggro exists. To claim otherwise is simply ignorant. Not having a sweeper means you probably just lose to Mono u, Mono G or splash, GW or Gr aggro, White Weenie if anyone plays it, etc. So your two choices for a playable sweeper in this format are Anger and Verdict. They're both sorceries that cost double off-color mana. Anger is cheaper so that's ahead. They're functionally the same against small aggro, but Verdict is significantly better versus all types of Devotion decks, midrange, and control. Anger's upside is only relevant against two creatures, Voice and Phoenix (Necromancer is unplayable, as is Varolz and anything with Scavenge). Conveniently, White offers multiple exiling answers to those same cards. So I think clearly in any metagame that isn't 100% swarm aggro, Verdict wins out. So white pulls ahead here. Not to mention simply by choosing Verdict you get the "bonus prize" opportunity of maybe Elspeth or Merciless Eviction to supplement, whereas choosing Anger gives you "maybe I'll overload Mizzium Mortars someday."

On the removal front, Black offers excellent 1-for-1 removal in this format. Which is the primary (only) reason people play Esper over straight UW. Red removal is decent against aggro as usual but pretty poor otherwise, considering none of it deals with Gods, hexproof, indestructible, or anything over 4 toughness. That being said, Detention Sphere, Celestial Flare, and Last Breath between them can deal with all of the same things the Doom Blade/Shock variants can, while D Sphere offers potential X-for-1s, exiles, and hits noncreature permanents in exchange for sorcery speed. There are plenty of situations where instant speed one-for-one is relevant though, so I'll give the slight edge to Black.

As far as draw power goes, clearly Revelation is leagues ahead of everything else at instant speed. Opportunity gets you one more card but locks you in to a specific cost, while not gaining you any life or offering versatility. Inspiration is terrible outside of pure undiluted draw-go. Everything else is a cantrip (UW wins here, too, because of the versatility of Azorius Charm). At sorcery speed, all control variants have access to Divination, Jace, and other forms of card quality advantage like Thassa or Omenspeaker, though I don't recommend anything but Jace. Black would have an edge here with Read the Bones and Underworld Connections, so I'll call the downgrade of Rev->Opportunity and the upgrade of Divination->Read the Bones a wash.

As far as win conditions go, everyone has access to AEtherling and that's enough said. Though, again, UW gets the versatility points because its stabilizing cards like Elspeth and Rev basically can win the game on their own. Desecration Demon, Ashiok, Stormbreath Dragon (whatever UR would play) are all exceedingly fragile and do nothing to help you stabilize like an Elspeth would.

All U variants have access to the same countermagic, except UR gets Counterflux, UB gets Psychic Strike, and UW gets Render Silent. Of those, only Counterflux is playable and it's rarely better than Dissolve so it's a wash again. Black offers discard as disruption, but discard becomes quickly outclassed in this metagame. Given that our only win conditions are slow to come online, we give our opponents time to draw out of whatever advantage we got through early discard. Combine that with the fact that Thoughtseize's life loss and comparative lack of utility versus aggro after they dump their hand, and this means that a)no deck can rely on discard as its primary disruption without a fast clock, and b) no one advises running full sets of discard spells. So UB doesn't have a significant advantage here either.

To address the final argument that "playing white forces you to play more at sorcery speed," this is 100% true. All of our win conditions, and sweepers, plus half of the card advantage and removal, are sorcery speed. But I would always rather be able to play a sorcery removal, tapping mana on my turn and losing the opportunity cost of instants, than sit there with a hand of instants that can't answer the current situation. Multiple tokens, Planeswalkers, Enchantment threats like Whip, Assemble, and Underworld Connections are all things UW can answer that other colors have a hard time doing, and sorcery speed is the price we pay for that power. In general the metagame is favorable to a more tapout control deck right now, since outside of AEtherling there is not a single card that is must-counter independent of board state.

All of this points to the fact that while each color can shine in its own way, none of them even come close to offering a compelling reason to drop White. If anything this argument just gives more legitimacy to Esper as the top dog. But straight UW has the consistency and versatility to answer everything the other colors are good at and more. It all depends on the build and the answers you have access to, and UW has access to the most.

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It's terrible in High Tide. If you were going to go off it's easy to USZ for a crapton, and if that's not an option you can Brain Freeze, both of which are tutorable by Merchant Scroll and Cunning Wish. Running an extra card just to make it easier during the combo is just lazy. Remand effectively doubles storm on Brain Freeze, cantrips, has utility outside the combo, and STILL doesn't make the cut in any competitive list.

If you're playing a format with cards expensive enough to double sleeve, you should know how to play the game by then.

^except stores like Starcitygames set the price, which they do to hype the newest set so people will buy sealed product or singles while scarcity is still an issue...

Show me some data from when the most recent set was ever NOT the highest EV this soon after release. It takes time for the market to adjust down.

Quote from Jiyor

They dont have a stock of it just sitting around.Jhoria had to drink it for months to get the effect permanently.And the Tolaria with the slow time water was blown up.Oh and Teferi would be dead of old age seeing as he sacrificed his park during the mending.

So? There is nothing that prevents them from having bottled enough of it to use both for Teferi and Venser.

Regardless, it is pointless to speculate about it at this time, as it has very little influence if any on the RTR block.