Seizing Your Thoughts and Your Money

So with last weekend’s Prerelease (which I did not attend) people are finally able to hold actual Lorwyn cards in their actual hands. And almost a week before, the entire set was spoiled on MtG Salvation, so you really could have been testing with proxied cards long before that.

There are some exciting cards in Lorwyn, even for Vintage, which usually gets only three or four “playables” per set and a handful of other garbage that people test anyway. Aside from the few Fish-worthy cards (Sower of Temptation and Spellstutter Sprite head that list), which, let’s face it, nobody really cares about but me, there are three cards that are possible headline makers: Thoughtseize, Thorn of Amethyst, and Gaddock Teeg, all of which I will deal with somewhat separately.

Thoughtseize
B
Sorcery
Target player reveals his or her hand. You choose a non-land card from it. That player discards that card.

Thoughtseize is the new Duress, and it has two unique new things going for it. First, it can hit creatures as well as spells, so you can nuke some pesky Fish player’s Meddling Mage before it ever even considers thinking about seeing play (not to mention the Quirion Dryad or Psychatog you obviously couldn’t deal with otherwise).

Second, it says “target player,” which means that you can put combo pieces in your own graveyard if need be (like a Worldgorger Dragon or Golgari Grave-Troll, for example). Of course “target player” also means that it can be Misdirected, and Misdirection is a pretty popular card right now.

The drawback is that it costs two life whenever it resolves. That might seem innocuous enough, but it’s actually quite a hit. Vintage right now is very creature-oriented (strangely enough), which means that instead of losing all your life at one time you lose it in little chunks. Essentially, instead of having plenty of breathing space to crack fetchlands, Fastbond extra lands into play, get free cards from Bob, or Vampiric and Grim Tutor with relative impunity, using Thoughtseize you can pretty easily stick yourself in a low life hole that ends up being your grave.

We’ll have to see, but I don’t think Thoughtseize becomes quite as universal as it was hyped to be on the message boards.

My big problem with Thoughtseize is that it’s a rare.

Since even with its arguably minimal drawbacks it’s an insanely solid card, it immediately attained chase-rare status and was being presold on eBay and at Star City for around $20.

Ugh. That’s a swift kick in my back left pocket, and probably yours too if that also happens to be where you keep your wallet.

I can’t understand, though, why Thoughtseize isn’t uncommon. It compares easily with Duress and Cabal Therapy, which are both uncommons, and it’s not an especially flashy effect that generally merits rare status.

Uncommon just seems to be the right rarity for solid, staple cards that get played in tournaments up and down the formats. Imagine if Remand had been a rare, or Watchwolf, or Sudden Shock. None of those is an amazing card that belongs in every deck, but they’re all cards that you’ll want to have four of, just in case you want to play a deck that needs them. At $3 or even $5 a pop you can afford to do that. If they were rare and $20 each, you might not even want to, regardless of whether you’re able to or not.

It’s the same for Thoughtseize. The card isn’t even strictly better than Duress or Cabal Therapy, but it’s a strong option that is clearly better in some cases. I want to have four to play in those cases, but spending $80 on a playset seems ridiculous.

A lot of people said that this is Wizards of the Coast’s plan to sell more Lorwyn. Maybe Wizards has a “chase rare policy” of sorts, wherein they set up certain cards that they know will be hot-hot-hot to entice more people to buy packs.

I can’t see this as being true.

Stores might buy more cases to open, to get singles to sell, but I doubt it would be significantly more than they would open regularly. The players that buy packs rather than singles are generally casual players and younger players known as noobs, and Thoughtseize is a fairly small and nuanced effect for a rare. I just can’t see many table gamers or nooblets getting excited about a 1-for-1 trade on a card your opponent hasn’t even played yet.

Oh well, it doesn’t matter anyway. Wizards released Thoughtseize as a rare, so a rare it will be. It will probably also keep a relatively high cost, especially if it makes playing black better and more popular in Block, Standard, and Extended. My hope is that Thoughtseize won’t be $20 forever, but there’s not much I can do about that anyway.

Except proxy them.

Vintage is so cool.