Introduction

Adam Barnello said that every deck in Legacy is essentially now fifty-six cards. PV said it will forever change Legacy. LSV, Patrick Chapin (shrouded in darkness), Drew Levin, and a host of others are all over the top, excited about Mental Misstep. Initial reactions to the card were "Broken!" and "Likely to warp the format." Everyone seemed to think Legacy would devolve into a Mental Misstep–centric environment. The dissenting opinions have been relatively few and certainly far between. As I was writing this, Matt Elias stepped up and was among the first voices (aside from a few on The Source) to refute the claim that Mental Misstep was the new Force of Will; today, I too intend to walk that thin line.

On Being Wrong

I wasn't going to write an article about Mental Misstep, I chose not to write an article about the rising values of Legacy cards, I had better things to do than bore people with yet another article giving an irrelevant opinion on reprints or proxies, and I was convinced that there was no room for anyone to say anything about Mental Misstep that would be valuable. I had some great ideas on other topics to write about, but just a couple of days after the New Phyrexia godbook was spoiled, I saw this video. Go ahead and take a look at it. It's about eighteen minutes long, but I won't mind if you take a break in the middle of this paragraph. If you positively can't be bothered to take a look at the video, I'll sum it up for you: People do everything in their power to avoid being wrong, because being wrong implies a level of incompetence, and in the here and now, no one can think of anything they can possibly be wrong about, though we all accept that mankind is certainly not infallible. After watching this video, it occurred to me—it's probably a good idea for me to write about Mental Misstep because I'm willing to be wrong, and so this is a piece that I can write because I don't have to be right. I'm willing to be the guy who gets it wrong, because it doesn't impact my ability to play the game or function in society if I make a bad call on Mental Misstep, which isn't as good as you've heard.

One of the points that Kathryn Schulz makes in this video and in her book is something that is quite pertinent to a point I was discussing a couple of weeks ago that factors into the breakdown of communication, the same kind that we identify yet again in the discussion threads on Mental Misstep. I'm talking about her series of unfortunate assumptions:

1. Assumption of Ignorance – Navigating through almost any discussion about Magic theory, we will see people who display this assumption. This assumption is the idea that because the people in this thread don't understand exactly which cards Mental Misstep can counter, I'll provide yet another list of these cards so they can see exactly what it does. At that point, everyone will be on exactly the same page, the world will be a better place, and we can all agree I was right all along.

2. Assumption of Idiocy – This assumption suggests that when we know the people with whom we're engaging have exactly the same information that we do and they still disagree, the only possibility is that they are of inferior intelligence. This is where, in Magic, most of our conversations end. On a message board, you're seldom able to interact with a person enough to be convinced of a person's worth, so it's easier and sometimes difficult to do anything but stick with the idea that everyone else is inferior and only you and the select people who agree with you are the beacons of intellect in a bleak night sky of imbeciles.

3. Assumption of Evil – When we are convinced that the people with whom we're dealing are comparatively intelligent and have the same data that we do, yet still refuse to agree with our incredibly valid point, there is one final assumption that most everyone makes—clearly, we're dealing with someone who knows every aspect of the truth but has malicious intentions and is trying to deceive everyone else. This is not something we often see in Magic, but it's important to know if you're at all interested in how people interact—and I hope you're in a position where you interact with people now and then.

Kathryn covers it pretty well, but if these assumptions are true, there would really only be one successful deck. There is room for different views, and if there were not, Legacy would be like Standard.

Caw-Blade

Caw-Blade

Caw-Blade

It was brought to my attention that we were seeing far less saturation of Survival of the Fittest or Mystical Tutor in the Top 8 of Legacy events prior to those cards being banned. I'm not really one to jump on the wagon about banning Jace in Standard, but that was an interesting frame of reference to consider.

Now that I've got some of that out of my system, back to the topic at hand.

Is This Your Card?

When we're defending something, specifically a card in Legacy, we tend to think of all the times that card has worked for us. Recently, I tried working with a relative stranger after we played to tune his burn deck. One of the slots that he was positively not going to change was Browbeat, a card that hasn't been good enough to make the cut for a long time. He explained to me that it's a linchpin card against ANT because they lose either way, and for so many decks, they just can't afford to take the five, so he gets to draw three cards. This sort of situation isn't uncommon at all, and The Ferrett (I'd link his site but it is NSFW) shares some great insight into this in his article Is This Your Card?, a piece that is essential reading for any player who wants to move from casual Magic to a more competitive realm. Politicians do this all the time, and the rest of us tend to focus on success and overlook faults when dealing with something we hold dear, be it a girlfriend, an idolized actor, or a favorite card (mine is Land Tax, as you know; speaking of which, we can unban that now that Mental Misstep exists?).

It's easy for people to list all the times that they were right about something, and people will go to great lengths to establish that trend. I for one told everyone to pick up Show and Tell, Hypergenesis, and assorted huge creatures. I warned people not to take Lands.dec to Grand Prix: Columbus last year; many of those people did rather poorly. I and everyone else knew that Stoneforge Mystics were going to be great and made sure we had them. I've been right about a lot of things; we tend to remember the times that the beliefs we hold were at their strongest. Being human, I've also been wrong about some things. I thought that Merfolk was an awful deck that people only played because they had to; I've eaten my words on this matter. I thought a competitive Affinity list could never exist in Legacy; I played built one myself not too long ago. I still own a stack of Damping Matrixes that I'm waiting to have appreciate in value; that doesn't seem likely. Even last week, I ended my segment on my ability to luck out of almost any situation with presenting two hands that I couldn't top-deck with. I've been wrong about a few things, many more than I care to admit to here—let's leave it at that.

Examining the Card

Looking at what the card does is more complicated than just singling out every card that it can counter, but the strength of Mental Misstep directly correlates to the power of the cards it's able to counter and the frequency with which it is able to counter them. To find that metric, we're going to take the long road.

If you've heard about the card, you probably were given a list of all the cards it counters and how good it has to be as a result of countering these cards. I've seen quite a few lists now, and figured it was time that someone really turned up the boring scale with a more comprehensive list of all the cards that Mental Misstep realistically counters in Legacy. I now wish to present to you just such a list:

In this list, I've gone to the trouble to identify the cards that I think it's most important that Mental Misstep can counter, and I've gone ahead and highlighted those cards to easily identify. Some of the highlights are cards you've heard several times already—Swords to Plowshares and Path to Exile, most of Dredge's outlets, almost any Elf, AEther Vial, Goblin Lackey, and many of the Rituals in the format. From looking at this list, it's hard to identify a deck that doesn't use at least some of these cards, and it's apparent that Legacy truly is a format dominated by 1cc spells. One-casting-cost spells are generally the most efficient for any given effect; in fact, it's difficult to spend less mana and gain a worthwhile result. However, there are times where you can't get a great effect for 1 mana, and you have to play a more expensive card. After being barraged with a list such as the one we just looked at, we're seldom presented with the other side of this spectrum—all of the cards Mental Misstep can never counter. Conveniently, I made a small list of some of those cards for comparison.

Just as with the last list, I went ahead and highlighted all of the cards that Mental Misstep can counter that I think are worth noting. There are about a dozen or so Blue cards that got cut off, but you get the idea. I'll admit that Meditate is on the list twice, and there are a few other questionable cards, but the list doesn't account for all of the factors in Legacy that you can never predict, such as when someone plays the Allies deck or Helldozer and Oblivion Stone, and clearly doesn't address any of the problematic lands in the format like Maze of Ith, The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale, or even Wasteland, all of which are clearly cards that Mental Misstep is seldom going to have anything to say about.

In the abstract, we can see all these card names, and we know that some of them are really good and some of them are really popular, but it's difficult to really work with that. So far, all I've done is establish that there are good cards that cost 1 and good cards that don't cost 1. The good news is that I've realized this, and the bad news is that there is a lot more to go. Take a look at one of these:

The data collected begins with the month of March. This is a chart of just about every archetype that has placed in a Top 8 of an event with fifty or more players, and a breakdown of the mana costs in those decks. The "Clutch One" is a rather arbitrary category where, of the 1-costed spells in a deck, I wanted to sort which spells I felt were very strong, if not vital to a game plan. An example of this would be Merfolk's AEther Vials, accounting for all four cards in Merfolk's Clutch One section. For a deck like T.E.S., this is limited to Rite of Flame and Dark Ritual (eight). For a deck like ANT, I only count Dark Ritual as a part of this because it is the only piece of the combo chain that can be Mental Misstepped while cards like Brainstorm and Ponder are seldom able to be used at that point to produce a win. Decks such as Junk and Team America often don't lean on any of their 1-cost spells, so you can't count any of them as pivotal to the strategy. After factoring all of that together, I found that on the high end, 8% of a given deck (including lands) is made up of 1-costed spells that are somehow significant to the deck's overall strategy, about one-third of the 1-costed spells played in the average deck.

We see from this data that on average, a deck, including lands is made up of 26% or 15.74 (rounded up to 16, so four playsets) 1-costed spells, 15% (or 9.28) 2-costed spells, 8% (or 5.05) 3-costed spells, 4% 4-costed spells, and 4% Force of Wills, and the remainder more/less expensive spells and lands. Sadly, the flaw with this system is that it's difficult to value cards with variable costs such as Green Sun's Zenith and Repeal, so they are accounted for along with 0- and 66-casting-cost spells in a 1% margin of error.

Omitting lands from the equation, we can make a pretty nifty chart to show what the breakdown of mana costs are in Legacy recently.

Interpreting these numbers isn't all that difficult once you know what you're looking for. Saying that the average deck is using 15.69 1-costed spells is suggesting that most decks are playing four 1-costedspells as four-ofs, but there are going to be decks that play zero and decks like Elves that play twenty-two. The number 15.69 or 16 gives you a number that is really close to U/B/g and U/W Landstill as well as G/W Aggro, Thopter Control, Painter, B/W/r, and Junk, so it isn't too much of a stretch of the imagination to see that the average number of 1cc spells a deck normally plays may be quite close to 15.69.

To help visualize these numbers, we can try imaging a Bant Aggro list.

16 1cc spells: 0.4 Swords to Plowshares, 4 Noble Hierarchs, 4 Ponders, 4 Brainstorms

9 2cc spells: 4 Tarmogoyfs, 3 Dazes, 2 Qasali Pridemages

5 3cc spells: 4 Knight of the Reliquary, 1 Vendilion Clique

2 Jace, the Mind Sculptors

4 Force of Wills

Not every deck is going to fit this mold perfectly, as it's an average, but I'm pretty sure I've played against this exact deck several times. There is another great way to look at this data, since it all comes from Top 8s:

In the Top 8, there will be on average 126 1cc spells (15.89, our number for the average per deck, multiplied by 8, the number of decks in a Top 8, but you knew that one) divided among all eight decks. If one of these decks is Merfolk, which plays nine or ten 1cc spells, one of these decks could also be Elves, which plays twenty-six 1cc spells. With smaller numbers, like we'll see later, we can start to make some more accurate predictions about the makeup of a Top 8.

What these numbers mean is that coming into a match with a full set of Mental Missteps, against a blind opponent, you're going to be able to counter roughly 45% of that deck's spells with Mental Misstep. However, as previously stated, only 8% of the spells being played are 1cc spells that are highly desirable to counter, cards that may have a big impact on the game—8% of the cards in a deck, meaning that each opponent is likely to have a exactly one full set of cards that you'll really want to counter with Mental Misstep, but twelve other spells that are not likely to be so sweet.

In the abstract, this is sort of helpful—to get an idea of the actual breakdown of a deck in Legacy—but it asks for an impossible suspension of belief: that all decks are represented equally among Top 8s. Gerrard Fabiano's B/W/r deck clearly does not make up the same amount of the metagame as Dredge or Merfolk. To account for this very real factor, I've done some math (placings in Top 8 divided by total decks in those Top 8s for the last two months) and assigned each deck a "weight" relative to what portion of Top 8s these decks finished in. This chart shows those weights:

I'm sure you'll find this data quite interesting in itself, seeing the overall strength of each deck right now, but we have a lot more to do with these numbers so you can take a closer look. Junk and Merfolk are the decks that have put the most copies into the Top 8, and, as a result, the numbers from those decks are going to matter the most for the purposes of refining our numbers to find a better representation of the average deck's curve. Decks like B/w/r and A. J. Sacher's U/G/R deck are going to matter quite a bit less, as they have only placed once.

Now that we have some numbers to help in the understanding that not all decks are created equal, we can apply these weights to the numbers that we just looked at to generate a new, more realistic look at the mana costs of successful decks over this period. Multiplying Merfolk's weight (10%) by its number of 1-drop spells (9) is going to give us its weighted contribution to the average cost of a deck in the current metagame—in this case, 0.9. This means that while Merfolk plays nine copies of 1cc spells, they only contribute 0.77 cards to the number of 1cc spells we can expect to see in an average deck. Every four cards is basically a playset, so if Merfolk made up 100% of the data we were looking at, every deck would play exactly nine 1-drops. This is exactly the method followed for this next chart, which will give us some numbers we can use to more accurately predict what to expect in a random deck.

Jumping right into the corresponding pie chart:

This data set is actually going to represent the numbers you'd expect to see in a Top 8. And a graph comparing the two data sets that we have now:

What this data shows is that decks centered around 2cc spells have been doing better than decks centered around any other cost. You can expect to see a full copy more of a 2cc in an opposing deck over any other card, and considering that the deck with 2cc spells are making up a heavier impact, that likely means this is a win condition. That's really only fair considering that not too many 1-drops are win conditions.

The idea that most 1-drops aren't normally win conditions really got me thinking: What are the roles of 1-drops in Legacy? If you're going to be playing Mental Misstep, you want it to be countering win conditions and cards of incredible value, considering that Mental Misstep's value is directly proportional to the frequency and potency of the cards it's being used to counter. So, I decided that I should probably also take a look at how each of these decks uses their 1-drops.

I broke the 1-drops down into seven categories, although there is some overlap.

Accel – These are cards that help the deck in question play more things more quickly. Cards included in this were AEther Vial, Noble Hierarch, and Dark Ritual, among others.

Cantrips – Cards that one-for-one while looking at other cards. Ponder, Preordain, and Brainstorm were obvious inclusions, but Sensei's Divining Top was also included

Removal – How many of these cards can be used to kill the opponent's creatures? Grim Lavamancer, Swords to Plowshares, Path to Exile, any burn spell, Ghastly Demise, and even Innocent Blood made the list here.

Disruption – Any card that aims to hinder the opponent's ability to win the game but isn't creature removal is here: Cursecatcher, Spell Pierce, Duress, and Thoughtseize. Ideally, Mental Misstep would be included here if it existed yet.

Creatures – Any creature in the 1cc range is included here even if it was already counted under another category, like Noble Hierarch or Grim Lavamancer.

Attackers – A subcategory of creatures; while almost any creature can attack you, these creatures are here only to be attacking you: Kird Ape, Wild Nacatl, Goblin Lackey, and Phyrexian Dreadnought are here. Creatures like Grim Lavamancer and Mother of Runes with primarily utility functions are not included.

Broken – My arbitrary category for the best cards to be countering. To fit the category, the card needed to be crucial to the strategy of the deck (Glimpse of Nature, Exploration, Manabond, AEther Vial), a part of a chain that you wouldn't be able to stop after that spell (Dark Ritual, Rite of Flame, Tinder Wall, Enlightened Tutor), a card that would end the game if unanswered promptly (Grindstone, Phyrexian Dreadnought, Nomads en-Kor, or any Dredge card), or that is capable of incredible utility (Mother of Runes, Goblin Welder). These are the spells you really want to be holding Mental Misstep for if you're in a match with them.

After I sorted everything, I then went through the same steps I did before, finding the expected number from an ideal, fantasy metagame and then applying the weighted values we found earlier. These are the results.

Because there is some overlap here, we can't say that we're expecting every deck to play eighteen (the sum of all of the weighted averages) 1cc spells; we've already established that we're expecting sixteen, and there are some cards that don't actually fall into any category, such as Chain of Vapor, Lava Spike, and Elephant Grass. Before I explain too much more, let's take a look at these numbers in a graph.

Now that we have some smaller numbers to work with, we can make much better predictions about the makeup of the metagame's 1-mana spells and thus what Mental Misstep will be able to do. The number 3.16 suggests that every deck is going to be playing about three 1-mana acceleration cards—but clearly, it doesn't make any sense to play three, so we can assume that they will nearly always play these cards in multiples of four. When we say that we can suggest that for every four decks, three of them will be playing a 1-drop that helps them play other spells, so of the Top 8, we can expect to see six decks playing four pieces of accel, three decks playing eight pieces, or numbers that are very close to that. Checking SCG: Boston's Top 8, we can start counting:

Prediction: 3.16 × 8 = 25.28

Merfolk – four accel pieces

Junk – one + Dryad Arbor via Green Sun's Zenith, so, about two

Elves – roughly ten (six Llanowar Elves, four Heritage Druid)

B/W/r – zero

Merfolk – four

U/G/R Natural Order – four, but Green Sun's Zenith is variable; we can count it as six (two Dryad Arbors available)

U/W/B TopNought – zero

R/U/G Nought – zero

Result = 26, which isn't too bad considering how heavily modified the Junk list was. I feel I can stand by these numbers after that. Now that I feel these numbers are sturdy, let's talk about why I went through all of this trouble (and I have a good feeling the trouble isn't over yet).

Finding a Place for Mental Misstep

Mental Misstep is only as good as the cards you're countering with it, if you're able to counter any. There are some cards that almost any deck is going to want to counter: Glimpse of Nature, Dark Ritual, High Tide, and other combo cards, but some decks are going to be far more concerned about AEther Vial or Goblin Guide than if the opponent has Swords to Plowshares or Lightning Bolt. This breakdown of the 1-drops in Legacy adds a lot of useful content to consider in this decision. By breaking these cards down by type, we were able then identify what Mental Misstep is most likely to be countering. Now, let's apply this to specific decks and see what we get out of it. To accomplish this, we're going to try to identify which strategies gain the most by using Mental Misstep to counter that type of card, and we'll even then break it down by card to some degree.

Accel – To start off, we're going to break down the frequency of common accel cards we're seeing. Lucky I have another data set to show this.

Here you can see the frequency at which you're likely to see both AEther Vial and a Ritual effect, the most dangerous types of acceleration in the format. You're going to see one Vial-based deck and one Ritual-based deck for every two decks you see playing with the more fair mana accelerators, such as Noble Hierarch and Llanowar Elves. Of note here: Vial is likely to be cast on turn one if available, but decks that play Rite of Flame and Dark Ritual effects aren't as likely to slap them down on turn one, especially if they are dependent on that mana resolving, which most likely isn't true, so you'll still need to weather the disruption they throw your way. But it does well against roughly two out of every deck in a Top 8.

AEther Vial – Certainly, the allure of countering a Vial is one of the big draws to Mental Misstep; the decks that gain the most from countering Vial are decks working on a tempo strategy, decks that are looking at denying resources, control decks without lock pieces, aggro decks without aggressive removal suites, and some of the other decks playing Vial. In my opinion, that means this is relevant to Junk, Team America, Merfolk, Goblins, NO Bant, G/W Natural Order, Landstill, Bant Aggro, Affinity, and Canadian Thresh. We're looking at just about one Vial deck every Top 8.

Ritual effects – Essentially, every deck wants to counter fast mana if it's going to end the game; we're also looking at about one of these in every Top 8.

Other mana sources – The more fair types of mana are only important to heavy mana-denial strategies. There are few decks that are really this concerned with stunting long-term mana development. Only decks with heavy mana-denial plans are going to be primarily concerned with these cards, and most of the time, even those decks will find themselves holding Misstep for a better card. Far more commonly, we're seeing almost double the number of these over the other two kinds of mana.

Take-away – Acceleration is one of the most common and likely the most potent use of 1-drops that happens in Legacy. As long as that stands, decks that didn't have great ways to stop acceleration of other decks are the decks that have the most to gain from Mental Misstep, if they want that power. It's a fine choice considering it's bit broader than Mindbreak Trap to fight combo, supplements a suite of existing countermagic, and being reactive means you only need to use it when you know they have a problem card.

Cantrips – By a large margin, the most common use of 1-mana spells in Legacy is to make a deck more consistent, as displayed by numbers in this category. I won't really do a breakdown of this, because I feel that there are four instances in which a player will use Mental Misstep to counter a cantrip, and feel that is a better use of this space than breaking those cards down and explaining it in that way.

1. The player is taking a gamble and countering the first available spell, hoping that the opponent kept a very weak hand and this buys time. This lends itself best to tempo decks, but really boils down to more of a player choice than an angle a deck attacks from.
2. The opponent is top-decking, and Mental Misstep is used to counter a draw spell to press the advantage. Any deck in a winning position is happy to make this trade.
3. Attempting to avoid being locked out by Counterbalance, a player Mental Missteps a Sensei's Divining Top or Brainstorm. Again, tempo decks that are threatened by Counterbalance are best able to take advantage of this, but even a combo deck may be interested.
4. The opposing deck features very little in the way of deck manipulation and the opponent is playing a lot of blanks or needs to find a very specific card to battle you. Some combo decks and most control decks will get value from this play countering opposing Tops from a rock player, but that is about the limit of this play.

Take-away – While this is the commonest use of these spells, it is seldom the most problematic, as other than Brainstorm, these cards are seldom able to generate any form of card advantage. No deck is looking to one-for-one a spell that is never guaranteed to generate results. Countering these spells with any other spell is generally a risky play, and I imagine that most players will follow suit, waiting to generate more value by countering a better spell with Mental Misstep.

Removal – In the highly combocentric metagame we've been seeing recently, resulting in the decline of Zoo and some other more “fair” decks, we're seeing a lot fewer 1-mana removal spells than the format is normally accustomed to having. Removal is an important number to break down, because not every deck is as concerned with the same removal suite, so let's get into it:

At this point, in the interest of space, I figure you'll believe I really did the math (which I did), and I can show just the end result.

Swords to Plowshares – Still the best and still the most played. The decks that are most concerned with Plow are the decks playing right around twelve creatures or fewer, such as Bant aggro decks like New Horizons, Team America, Junk, and many decks playing Phyrexian Dreadnought. Vial decks are somewhat interested in this card, but are generally playing a very high threat ratio, so it's certainly possible to work around. The numbers suggest we're still seeing two decks with Plow per Top 8 despite the fact that new removal cards are giving it a run for its money, and that creature strategies are making up less and less of the metagame.

Path to Exile – Path generally represents a far more aggressive, creature-based strategy, which is clearly not very popular at the moment. Path represents a problem to Merfolk and Goblins; as it's normally coming from Zoo, it also is bad for decks packing Dark Confidant. We only see a deck packing a full set of Path to Exile penetrate the Top 8 every blue moon or so, but in control and aggro-control decks, it can often be used to supplement the number of Swords.

Lightning Bolt – Normally relegated to aggro decks, we've been seeing Lightning Bolt fill a control role in many decks recently. Because Lightning Bolt can't kill everything, it's really only of value for decks like Elves, Affinity, Merfolk, Goblins, and other Weenie plans to counter to save a guy, but it also kills Dark Confidant, so Junk and B/U/g decks have a vested interest in the card. The numbers predict that about 75% of Top 8s will feature a deck with Bolts at its disposal, but that's nowhere near as common as we see with Swords to Plowshares.

Ghastly Demise – This card was seeing a lot of play for quite some time, but now has mostly been replaced with a breakdown of Doom Blade, Go for the Throat, Snuff Out, and off-color removal spells. No one plays this anymore, and so no one should really be concerned with it; it wasn't very good to begin with.

Grim Lavamancer – Grim Lavamancer has been showing up a lot recently to try to give Blue decks a fighting chance against Merfolk, but of course can be seen in burn decks and even Zoo to get in the last few points of damage. Merfolk, Goblins, and Affinity are the decks primarily concerned with Grim Lavamancer. The predictors for Grim Lavamancer are a bit more difficult, as it's often a card we see less as a full set, but even still, we certainly see less than a full set in a given Top 8, so likely every Top 16 will have a deck using Grim Lavamancer.

Take-away – Decks like New Horizons and Team America, which traditionally play eight to eleven creatures, are going to have a new option available to them that addresses the historically problematic Swords to Plowshares. However, each of those decks is going to be pressed with how to fit it into the seventy-five, something that I'm sure most everyone will be eager to see work itself out.

Disruption – An answer for an answer has seldom been a great choice to add to a deck; however, since Mental Misstep is able to splash over into other categories as well, it's an added benefit that sometimes it's going to be able to counter opposing disruption spells. Because it's such a complicated issue, I'm sure it's possible to break it down. I believe that for the most part, the only time a deck is likely to use Mental Misstep to protect a card in hand from Thoughtseize, a fetch land from Stifle, or a threat from Spell Snare or opposing Mental Misstep is when that player is already quite far behind, and I'm skeptical at this card's ability to swing that tide one way or the other. There is a small chance that there are combo decks such as a Dark Depths–based deck or even High Tide that will want access to it, as it addresses very specific problems for those decks. I expect that those and most other combo decks are going to need stronger tools if they're going to compete. Other combo decks really aren't looking for cards that are so narrow and likely to leave you struggling to go hell-bent for Infernal Tutor.

Take-away – Trading a Mental Misstep for a Thoughtseize is going to happen a lot, but it is seldom going to feel good; depending on using Misstep to force through an important card isn't a great plan because it's reactive and only hits a very small number of problematic cards like Spell Pierce and Spell Snare. As far as countering an opposing Mental Misstep, I keep hearing about it, but I've yet to see the deck that really wants to be doing that.

Creatures – Overwhelmingly, the creatures that we see in this part of the curve are utility creatures such as Mother of Runes, Grim Lavamancer, and Noble Hierarch, which make up nearly 80% of all the creatures we see here. As covered before, there are certainly decks that want to answer Grim Lavamancer, but Mother of Runes is generally only working if her controller is way ahead in the game. Regardless, Mother of Runes can be one of the most frustrating cards to play against and is a major annoyance, so it's likely that there are going to be people who are happy to trade 2 life and a card to get the opponent's Mom out of there.

By far, the least common use of these cards is to try to actively kill the opponent, shown by the low number of attackers. Taking out potential threats is one of the best uses of Mental Misstep, but that is what the fewest people are trying to do with cards in this slot. For the most part, aggro-control and control decks gain the most from countering aggressive creatures, but Merfolk also isn't happy to see many of them. This all changes if that creature is Goblin Lackey, which most decks are looking to avoid taking a hit from, as that could easily end the game.

Take-away – If you're looking to stop most of the utility creatures that don't pose an actual threat to most decks in the format, Mental Misstep is a great tool; however, if you're looking to use it to stop a swarm of incoming guys, sadly the metagame just isn't too friendly to that sort of plan at the moment, and you're often going to be left waiting for something better, but it just won't come.

The broken cards – Breaking this section down is difficult; not only is the list entirely arbitrary, but so many of these cards are specific to a certain deck (Glimpse of Nature, Reanimate, Phyrexian Dreadnought) or have already been covered to some degree (AEther Vial, Dark Ritual). The numbers established in the last section are the most important (2.28 or roughly every other deck having a great target). Despite this, I want to share the bar graph for this section:

Most of these numbers we've seen displayed already, but this time I added in a value to show how weak the Counterbalance lock is being represented and performing. Dredge is the big factor weighing up the "Other" section, but decks like Elves have also been doing well recently. These numbers won't sync up with the previous ones due to including some deck's copies of Top for this example, but the relative weakness of Counterbalance being represented here is clearly why it wasn't considered for this section previously.

Vial is considered here due to the assumption that Blue-based aggro-control decks are going to be the first decks looking at playing Mental Misstep, and they are the decks that struggle the most with Vial.

Take-away – The 2.28 cards per deck is still the minimum number of the cards you're really going to want to be countering from the average deck. I'd love to give a pie chart to represent the factors accurately, but because there is so much splash in card roles, it isn't really possible. The problem is that every other descriptor shows more cards being played than the broken ones; there is more accel overall than broken accel, more removal, more disruption, and, most of all, more creatures that aren't vital to any game plan, which means that you'll nearly always need to battle through other cards and then still have your MMS ready for this kind of card, if it's even there.

Making Room for Mental Misstep

Because Mental Misstep doesn't do anything new that other cards haven't done before, we can surmise that it allows no new decks to be built, which means that it can only go into existing decks.

This means you must take a card out of an existing deck and replace it with Mental Misstep.

Now, simply because every deck can find a situation in which this card is valuable does not mean that every deck should be playing four copies. If this were the case, every deck would already be playing four Street Wraiths and would soon be playing four Gitaxian Probes, as every deck wants to have a 6% better chance of drawing exactly the card it needs from the start of the game. You want to play it in the deck that is going to be gaining the most value from being able to use it—likely an aggro-control deck that is already playing Blue so it can supplement Mental Misstep with Force of Will and perhaps another counter for redundancy. Playing Blue also means that you're less likely to be stuck with a dead card if you're playing against Aggro Loam or Stax, since you can Brainstorm it away or pitch it to Force of Will. This deck would really like another answer to Vial and is looking for added protection from removal. I described both of these decks earlier, and I think these are Team America (both the real thing and the U/B/g decks with Dark Confidant and Jace) and Bant Aggro.

"Chris Van Meter's Team America"

• Creatures (9)
• 4 Tarmogoyf
• 4 Tombstalker
• 1 Kira, Great Glass-Spinner

• Planeswalkers (2)
• 2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor

• Spells (27)
• 1 Snuff Out
• 2 Go for the Throat
• 3 Daze
• 3 Stifle
• 4 Brainstorm
• 4 Force of Will
• 4 Hymn to Tourach
• 4 Ponder
• 2 Engineered Explosives

• Lands (22)
• 1 Bayou
• 2 Tropical Island
• 3 Verdant Catacombs
• 4 Misty Rainforest
• 4 Polluted Delta
• 4 Underground Sea
• 4 Wasteland

Buy This Deck

"Bant by Joel Ferris"

• Creatures (18)
• 3 Knight of the Reliquary
• 3 Rhox War Monk
• 4 Noble Hierarch
• 4 Qasali Pridemage
• 4 Tarmogoyf

• Spells (23)
• 3 Spell Pierce
• 4 Brainstorm
• 4 Daze
• 4 Force of Will
• 4 Swords to Plowshares
• 1 Green Sun's Zenith
• 3 Ponder

• Lands (19)
• 1 Forest
• 1 Plains
• 1 Flooded Strand
• 1 Misty Rainforest
• 1 Savannah
• 3 Tropical Island
• 3 Tundra
• 4 Wasteland
• 4 Windswept Heath

Buy This Deck

Most people who are looking to fit this card into a deck are replacing Thoughtseize, Spell Pierce, or Daze. Where do you think it fits best?

For me, the big issue with Mental Misstep is that you're going to need to identify a card in your deck that Mental Misstep is nearly always better than, and I have a really hard time justifying it even though others are certain of the strength of this card.

Mental Misstep is fine and does some things very well, but others very poorly. Thoughtseize isn't the perfect card, but it's at least able to answer threats. Although Spell Pierce falls short there, it's incredibly powerful at reaching the midgame and still disrupting. Both Spell Pierce and Daze lose value over the course of the game, and Thoughtseize will as well in most situations.

Evaluating Misstep for the long game is a bit trickier, because while it's still able to counter 1-drops at any point in the game, players will cast fewer of them as the game goes on—especially if winning. Because of this, there is a lot of pressure to use a Mental Misstep early, because you can't judge very well when your next opportunity is going to be—sort of like how the first spell you counter with Spell Snare is normally the first relevant spell you can, because you never know when or if the next one will come. Unlike Spell Snare, there is no mana cost, and so the opportunity cost is so small that you can always afford to tap out if you must; you're always going to spend the same mana to counter the opponent's spell that he used to cast it.

What about Non-Blue Decks?

I think I differ from most people when I say I can't really see where a non-Blue deck wants this card in the main. As we've established before, you really have to put it in the deck and hope it works; you're not going to have the same tools of manipulation that a Blue deck will, and even if you're splashing a Blue dual, you'll often find yourself paying precious life points when you have ample mana otherwise.

While Junk is a deck that fits my criteria other than being Blue, it's difficult to think of where you'd fit it in; most lists that don't run Blue are rather tight, and Junk is no exception. Replacing Thoughtseize in Team America isn't great, because the deck wants to be able to answer all sorts of potential problems, not just the 1-drops, and has synergy with both Hymn to Tourach and Gerrard's Verdict. Goblins has the flex slots but really isn't struggling against too many 1-drops, and even if it were, you're taking out threats for conditional, nontribal answers.

Zoo is a great example that has been pretty hotly debated on The Source. Jack Elgin, whom I normally find to be a somewhat reasonable person in this regard, argues that because Zoo is primarily concerned with the early game, it is much more interested in playing Mental Misstep than most other decks. While it's true that Zoo is quite interested in the early game, I disagree that the cards that Zoo is really losing to are the 1-drops, unless it's from a combo deck. Zoo is struggling to beat the card advantage from decks like Junk and Team America, and then can't overcome an opposing Goyf, and the Natural Order decks have finally reached a point where they're able to race Zoo again. Zoo's folding to Dredge, like a lot of decks are, and even a formerly easy match like Affinity has been complicated with the addition of Etched Champion and Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas. It's true that Zoo is disproportionally concerned with the early game, but I fail to see the list of 1-drops that Zoo is wanting to counter being very long, as you would be forced to reduce consistency to make it happen.

If you're going to take a card out of Zoo and replace it with Mental Misstep, it has to be a card that actively supports the Zoo game plan, and the card you're replacing it with isn't a sure thing. This problem is repeated with most other non-Blue decks we're looking at: burn, which has actually done better than Zoo over this period, Enchantress, G/W aggro, G/W Natural Order, Dredge, Lands, and so on. Decks that aren't descendants of Landstill, Storm, or Threshold don't have the same flexibility that Ponder and Brainstorm grant them, and as a result, either have incredibly rigid lists packed with redundancy or aren't viable at all. The best I think these decks are going to be able to do is to eventually accommodate Mental Misstep is as a niche sideboard slot.

Looking to the Future

When Mental Misstep is legal, people are going to be playing it; that isn't a point that many people are debating. People will play Mental Misstep simply for the reason that people want to be playing the new cards and as a result will be feeling out the card's versatility and power in the field. Assuming for a moment that I'm wrong and the nightmare scenario happens—the format is thrown into disarray by Mental Misstep—what is the outcome?

1. The format slows down as the only consistent way to play around Mental Misstep; people will raise the curve of decks, play more threats, and play more removal.
2. The price of Blue duals rises even higher. Even though you don't need to be playing Blue to play Mental Misstep, you clearly don't always want to pay 2 life when you could so easily avoid that. If Mental Misstep is the new Tarmogoyf, we'll see people splashing into Blue who otherwise normally wouldn't just to run it more efficiently, just as we saw people doing with Tarmogoyf.
3. Storm Combo and Dredge will see a lot less play; the tools that the decks that were moderate had against these decks were fairly strong, but now that arsenal has been added to with what can sometimes be axillary copies of Force of Will for the purposes of stopping nonsense from happening before you get a turn.
4. Emrakul will do a lot more attacking. If you're going to slow down your combo deck, you're not going to want to play fair just because you can't do it on turn one. We'll see a lot more Natural Orders resolving and probably a good deal more Show and Tells, Eurekas, and perhaps even Hypergenesis.
5. We see more Loam decks come to town. Most Life from the Loam engines operate without 1-mana spells, and so we may see decks like Eternal Garden, Lands.dec, and Aggro Loam come back in a big way, but I'm skeptical that Countryside Crusher will ever be good again.
6. Merfolk is the best deck. The decks that are losing to Merfolk already aren't so much losing to AEther Vial as they are losing to Lord of Atlantis and an endless swarm of guys. If every other deck in the format slows down, Merfolk will be happy to keep exactly the same curve, still punish bad draws, and produce just enough disruption to deal 20 damage—maybe only 18 if you Mental Misstep their Vial.
7. No one really remembers that I was wrong, and that's fine.

Super Bonus Zone!

This is the breakdown for the Top 16 of the last five Star City Games events. Every deck on this list has placed at least twice with the rogue decks omitted.

And of course I made a chart for you to look at, too.

As with the rest of the numbers, this is not only an interesting look at the 1-drops in Legacy, but also doubles as a look at the makeup of the metagame. Do with it what you will.

And because I have this too:

This little graph displays the chances of drawing Mental Misstep at one, two, three, and four copies on a draw of four to seven cards. This is then done again for the chances of drawing this or Force of Will to help conceptualize the chances of stopping an absurd turn-one play. The chances of your opponent opening on a Vial are going to follow exactly the same progression, and that means the chances of countering your opponent's Vial on turn one with a Mental Misstep is, at best, 16%. Just so you know.

Closing

For me, the summary is that I don't think that this is really a card that you cram into every deck. The card addresses a lot of problems that some decks, mostly Blue, have had historically. In what instances is Mental Misstep strictly better than Daze, Spell Pierce, Thoughtseize, or a card that has long been a mainstay of a non-Blue deck? When we look at the applications of the card for decks that don't have access to Blue mana, the value of the card looks really sketchy to me—Blue decks are allowed to play conditional spells, as they're far less likely to be stuck in hand due to Brainstorm and now even Jace acting as secondary copies of the spell.

Mental Misstep is a great card, but I don't know if it's exactly a format-defining card. I'm skeptical, and I wanted to go through and see what the card does and doesn't do, examining where Mental Misstep can go, and see if it really answers the problems that potential decks are looking to address. It's been a long journey, but if you stayed the course with me, thanks for reading along. Over the course of researching this article and testing, I learned some things I liked about Mental Misstep. I hope that some of these numbers are going to help others make the best decision—whether playing Mental Misstep is the right call for the deck you're intending to play, or not.

~ Christopher Walton in the real world

im00pi at gmail dot com

Master Shake on The Source

@EmperorTopDeck on Twitter