Aven Mindcensor

wereotter

Is of just me or was this creature a swing and a miss?

Since we don't have a finite deck, the skill to exile two cards doesn't seem to really do anything except feed Trials Gideon's ultimate. The amazing power of the paper card is how it shuts down tutoring. It creates an effect of if an opponent would search his or her library, instead that player searches the top four cards. 

Imagine if this card did did something similar... like if Kiora would use her second skill to tutor up the only creature in the deck, if it's not in the top 4 cards, she gets nothing. Same thing for Dubious Challange. You get your creature since you can go through your whole library, but your opponent might get nothing.

Other effected abilities would include Tezzeret 1 and Arlin's fetch skills, and Gather the Pack. There may be others, but it would have been a good way to shake up the complacency some decks have fallen into.

Waschecht

@wereotter: would be good if exile would reduce your 40 card deck in fact.

Furks

I don't think any of those changes would really work. (they would introduce all kinds of new functionality, edge cases and bugs) 

The card should've just been changed to something more different than paper magic 

wereotter

Furks said:

I don't think any of those changes would really work. (they would introduce all kinds of new functionality, edge cases and bugs) 

The card should've just been changed to something more different than paper magic 

Obviously implementation issues aside...

However, we've been told multiple times that the game generates a 40-card deck, and then a new 40-card deck again every time those cards run out, implying that the game knows the entire time what cards are next in a deck. Therefore, the game should be able to tell if a valid card is in the next 4 as opposed to if a valid card exists anywhere.

Either way, cards like this and Winds of Rebuke seem to have absolutely no impact on the game as you can't kill your opponent by depleting a library.

James13

wereotter said:

Either way, cards like this and Winds of Rebuke seem to have absolutely no impact on the game as you can't kill your opponent by depleting a library.

Winds of rebuke puts cards into the graveyard.  The card says top two cards are destroyed from both player's libraries.  On the contrary, that's has a lot of impact given that we have access to lots of graveyard interactions.  Embalm from the set itself being among them.

Laeuftbeidir

To add to that comment above : and is has on the long term no impact at all on the cards the enemy pulls since it makes him only circle  faster through his deck. And filling his exile.. What doesn't do anything right now

shteev

Furks said:

I don't think any of those changes would really work. (they would introduce all kinds of new functionality, edge cases and bugs) 

The card should've just been changed to something more different than paper magic 

Or, yknow, the same. MTGPQ Aven Mincensor could shut down fetching, for example. That'd be fun

wereotter

James13 said:

wereotter said:

Either way, cards like this and Winds of Rebuke seem to have absolutely no impact on the game as you can't kill your opponent by depleting a library.

Winds of rebuke puts cards into the graveyard.  The card says top two cards are destroyed from both player's libraries.  On the contrary, that's has a lot of impact given that we have access to lots of graveyard interactions.  Embalm from the set itself being among them.

My mistake there, however, my point regarding the original card still does nothing. Exiling the top card of your opponent's library would only mean something if you could mill someone out of the game. Also since we can't see what we exiled, it's hard to know if we actually saved ourselves by knowing we exiled a god card, or if we just exiled ****.

edit: Wait... really?  krap is considered a "tiny kitty" word?

Yvendros

I think exiled cards should be unavailable for your rebuilt deck.  If a card is in exile, it can't be rebuilt in to your new 40(minus exiled)-card deck.  

issue with this: the remove-cards-from-your-hand feature.  that should really be discard.  and we should be allowed to have infinite cards in hand, until end of turn and you discard, just like paper magic.  discard should be graveyard.  etc.  i really don't think that allows for too many shenanigans.  

Corn_Noodles

Yvendros said:

I think exiled cards should be unavailable for your rebuilt deck.  If a card is in exile, it can't be rebuilt in to your new 40(minus exiled)-card deck.

That would be a good start to making exile a little more useful.

EDHdad

I assumed that's how it worked in the first place.  If you have Aven Mindcensor on board and force your opponent to draw 40 cards somehow, then they now shuffle a deck of 20 cards, and if they draw those, they shuffle a deck of 10 cards and so on until they have no cards.

However, that would seem to be an incredibly difficult feat.  Mass draw spells aren't that common or that cheap.  Maybe it's sideboard tech against the old Baral or the more recent "turn all the gems green" decks, but most normal opponents are unlikely to draw the 80 cards necessary to mill them out with Aven Mindcensor, even if Aven Mindcensor works that way.

If Aven Mindcensor actually does work that way, then one question is whether pitching a card from your hand means that the card is exiled and can never return. 

It's possible that "exiled" in this game is the equivalent of "putting the card on the bottom of its owners library".  So your 4 copies of Prized Amalgam / Akoum Firebird actually stay dead if Wrath of God is played.  If so, then I really don't see any use for Aven Mindcensor at all.  Which is unfortunate, because I'm very fond of the paper version.

Mburn7

I agree with @wereotter that it should prevent fetch cards.  Maybe not as drastically as the paper version (top 4 is a bit harsh), but same concept of locking out tutors.  That would make it extremely powerful, but not entirely broken.
That would be pretty difficult to implement, though

wereotter

Mburn7 said:

I agree with @wereotter that it should prevent fetch cards.  Maybe not as drastically as the paper version (top 4 is a bit harsh), but same concept of locking out tutors.  That would make it extremely powerful, but not entirely broken.
That would be pretty difficult to implement, though

I think leaving it at top four cards is actually not as brutal as the paper magic card since it's impossible to attempt to tutor a creature up in this game and have all four top cards be basic lands, and with only a 40-card deck, it would seem if you made it able to look at the top 6 or 10 cards, it's unlikely to prevent any fetching at all. As far as implementation, maybe @shteev has the right of it and just say your opponent can't fetch cards at all.

Phase

@THEMAGICkMAN and I designed a version of this card that would punish your opponent for each draw they made beyond the first. For every your opponent draws beyond the first card drawn in that turn, they would lose 2 mana. This way you would actually be doing a "censor" thing by making it harder to cast their cards, but not by any means a lock or shutdown- just an efficient beater with a niche hate effect (you know, like the paper Aven Mindcensor). You can even have fun breaking the synergy with stuff like Day's Undoing.

So if not that, i'd be fine if it disabled fetch completely. Make it a hate card like it was designed.