Building Around Mind's Desire in Legacy

Legacy hasn't seen any haymaker unbans in a long time. , , and proved to be of modest consequence. and were the last heavy hitters to get unbanned in 2009 and 2010 respectively.

Now what about ? The previously fastest banned card in Legacy—that's what the lore says—is free after twenty years. It has already sparked some new brews and taken some spots in established decks. In this article I want to evaluate its impact on combo builds and Legacy in general.

Understanding Mind's Desire

Let's do this quickly. Mind's Desire is a storm sorcery. Each copy makes you shuffle your library, then lets you play the top card of same for free until end of turn. Thus it is not possible to set up specific cards with Mind's Desire, but it is possible to cast exiled instants before other storm copies resolve. Assuming the first copy exiles a , you can choose to play it in response to the next copy to shuffle payoff spells back into the library. This can be relevant sometimes. You cannot cast an exiled sorcery, though, until all storm copies have resolved and the stack is empty again.

How powerful is it in today's Legacy? One relevant factor is that numerous answers have been printed over the past twenty years that deal with Mind's Desire on their own. Where previously only existed as a viable counter, now and provide more cheap answers to our new-old storm spell.

Understanding Play Patterns

Understanding play patterns means understanding Legacy and the game of Magic itself. It's a most overlooked and my favorite concept when building and playing decks. Let me give you an example: A Burn deck wants to play three lands and cast seven bolts every game. It is built to repeat its primary pattern as often and as consistently as possible. It's the most proactive and basic strategy. Throwing in some cute cards that situationally provide extra value like can mess up Burn's streamlined patterns.

This simplified explanation of play patterns works best for proactive decks. Reanimator always wants to cast a discard spell on turn one followed by an Entomb and a reanimation spell. Tempo typically tries to land a cheap threat and disrupt the opponent's game with mana denial and taxing counters. Dedicated control decks, however, are like a fluid that changes constantly. They need to adapt to the format's main threats and provide answers rather than state questions. Their play patterns are far more shrouded in theory, and I'd argue that we should then speak about different objectives during a game: establishing a safe mana base against tempo, finding and a way to win the game against combo, or resolving and countering card quality spells in control mirrors.

At this point you might wonder what all or any of this has to do with . Why not put it into a storm deck and call it a day?

Understanding Storm

Legacy is home to a variety of storm decks, foremost two: The Epic Storm (TES), a very fast variant that accelerates via and with the help of , and Ad Nauseam Tendrils (ANT), which values a stable mana base and utilizes . Somewhere on the outer perimeter of storm we find the High Tide decks: Solidarity, channeling the power of , and Spiral Tide, which makes use of the card, not the set.

While Solidarity can only win during the opponent's turn due to Reset's restriction, it seems like a no-brainer to include Mind's Desire in Spiral Tide as it does everything the deck wants to do. It's another haymaker business spell next to Spiral, and once resolved with enough copies on the stack, it should be almost impossible to fizzle and not keep the spell chain going. Spiral Tide generates mana via , draws and untaps with Time Spiral, and repeats the process until it can win with either targeting the opponent, for more than the opponent can draw, or a after drawing its own library. A modern Spiral Tide list could look like this:

Even though the addition of Mind's Desire created some buzz around Spiral Tide, the deck remains too clunky and bad against discard. Overall it did not age well enough to be a serious consideration when it comes to real results. Let's move on to the big boys in the room: TES and ANT. What does Mind's Desire do for these decks? The issue is that it demands certain deck building that is rather unfavorable regarding mana requirements and a critical mass of spells.

A quick look at ANT's play patterns reveals that Mind's Desire causes major problems for the deck. (I do not want to dive too deep into this topic here but rather create a basic understanding for typical and desired ways to win a game.)

1. Land, × 2, , .
   What does this line of cards do? It can cast , perform a non-lethal Past in Flames loop, create a bunch of Goblins, or desire the mind for a total of five. Even this quasi-deterministic hand prefers Ad Nauseam, obviously depending on life totals, or . A Mind's Desire for five can flip lands, cantrips, rituals, and leave you stranded.

2. Land × 2, , Dark Ritual, Lion's Eye Diamond, Infernal Tutor.
   What does this line of cards do? This is one of my favorites in ANT because it demonstrates a viable win off limited resources. The only possible play is to go for ten Goblins after the Thoughtseize. No other payoff spell can be cast.

3. Land × 2, Lion's Eye Diamond × 2, Infernal Tutor.
   What does this line of cards do? It most certainly ends in Ad Nauseam with one mana floating or yet again in ten Goblins after another Infernal Tutor in between. Sure, Mind's Desire for four is a possibility here, but it's way more risky than any of the alternatives.

In general, a Mind's Desire from hand is way more powerful because it allows fewer interaction, whereas Infernal Tutor lets the opponent use their counters. Thus Mind's Desire won't ever become best friends with . There are instances where it'll be the game-winning best option, but overall it acts like in Burn. It's a very specific card that is only good situationally. At least it relies on neither graveyard nor life totals, which makes it somewhat unique.

If I had to play it in ANT, I would cut green entirely to stabilize the mana base, even if Veil of Summer is at its best right now. I'd end up with a list like this:

TES, on the other hand, can easily incorporate one Mind's Desire in the sideboard. It runs a lot of artifact mana that usually comes down on the first turn. A Mind's Desire tutored for or cast from hand in the following turns sounds rather underwhelming, though. I am most certain that Ad Nauseam is still the correct card here. In order to get full use from a full set of Mind's Desire across the 75, TES would need to adapt to playing Chrome Mox and changing its tutor suite.

A standard TES list with Mind's Desire would look like this:

Understanding the Future

This is by far the most difficult chapter. There are many great minds in Magic, and people come up with brilliant ideas all the time. is a card that certainly sparks the imagination.

I can see two routes going forward with this card. On the one hand, it suits fast and Belcheresque decks a lot. Playing no protection at all or maybe paired with a flurry of rituals and ; something that resembles the Spanish Inquisition with and as its draw engines.

On the other hand, let's not forget that Mind's Desire is a blue card and can be played alongside and . and round out what could be described as a combo-control storm deck:

Overall Mind's Desire is a good unban, not too impactful but interesting enough. In my estimation it won't establish itself in ANT, may see play in faster versions of storm, and will most likely find a home in fringe decks with unconventional card choices, such as .

Either way, it's a great time to play Legacy with so much going on right now. The European Legacy Masters qualifiers all over the continent, Four Seasons in Bologna, the freshly announced Eternal Weekend in Prague in November, and all the big tournament series in the States and Japan make the format come to life again. Legacy is not dead. It's just the beginning.

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