Magic the GatheringSo...every once in a while I do this mental exercise to figure out how much the power 9 would cost if reprinted today just with different mana costs. Specifically, they must be tournament-viable at the new costs, but not overpowered to the point of banning.
Ancestral Recall (+4 mana)
This one is fairly easy, because it has basically already been done.
sup. There was definitely a time when I wondered if 5 mana would be too powerful--because they were shying away from making instant-speed card drawing at all, and cards like
Inspiration had been very powerful in the past to the point that they won't reprint them. But...then Jace's Ingenuity got printed, and was...not bad, but not dominant.
Time Walk (+3 mana)
Done. Not a whole lot to say about this one. It saw tournament play, did some decent things, but was not dominant. Add even one more mana (see
Walk of the Aeons) and it's trash.
Moxes (+2 mana)
Ok, there's no exact parallel for these (which is a little surprising) but there is...
Mind Stone (Trades coloured mana for the ability to draw a card later when you don't need extra mana).
Diamond cycle (Same idea, except comes into play tapped, and was not considered all that good).
Prismatic Lens (Same idea, except can produce mana of any colour, but at an extra cost)
Talisman Cycle (Same idea, except it's an ice age pain land instead of a basic land)
Signet cycle (Same idea, except can't immediately tap for mana on turn 2, but can immediately tap for mana any turn after that...and produces two colours).
So...yeah, for all that they've never explicitly been done (which is weird), 2 mana seems like it would be correct.
Black Lotus (+3 mana)
Ok, so this one is kinda tricky. The current status of ritual type effects is that...they're not doing them. They belong to red now, but red gets like...
Pyretic Ritual, which is actually too weak to get played (and thus would not pass my qualification test). But at the same time, an artifact that did the same thing but significantly better for 2 mana would not be kosher. Ok, so 2 mana's out.
So...what about 3 mana? You put 3 mana in one turn, and get 3 mana out the next turn? Well...there are some parallels for that.
Pentad Prism is a similar idea, but with 2 mana stored, and 2 mana received.
Coalition Relic is a 3 mana card that can produce 2 mana of any colour the turn after you play it (and keep on producing mana after that). So...I -think- 3 would be acceptable. Another strong argument for 3 is
Lotus Bloom, which if you suspend it on the first turn, can be cracked for mana on the fourth turn. Note that 3 mana would probably make it decently powerful (Pentad Prism is pretty powerful too). But that's ok, we want it to be a tournament-playable card, right?
As for higher costs...there really aren't good parallels at 4 mana (maybe
Everflowing Chalice kicked twice?) At 5 mana
Gilded Lotus exists (and was pretty much ignored).
I have one voice in my head suggesting it might be overpowered at 3 mana, and another voice saying that at 3 mana it's actually almost certainly worse than Lotus Bloom, the same way
Ancestral Vision turned out to be better than
Concentrate. Shows up on about the same turn, but you end up paying less mana for it. So...probably balanced at 3.
Timetwister (+0 mana???)
So...............................this one is going to be the hardest, and is the real reason I started thinking about these again. A couple of years ago, they printed
Time Reversal, which theoretically should answer my question for me, right? Well...wrong, turns out Time Reversal sucks. In two years of being legal, it hasn't shown up in a single tournament top 8 that I can find.
So...here's the thing about Time Reversal. There's this little card called
Tidings which is...not necessarily the best 5-mana draw spell ever printed, but it's serviceable, and tends to show up in tournaments. So...for a 5 mana sorcery, that's the water mark you want to hit: equivalent of draw 4 cards. Or: end up +3 cards from where you started. In order to do this with Time Reversal, you need one of the following scenarios:
Your Hand: 1 card ......... Opponent's Hand: 4 cards
Your Hand: 2 cards ....... Opponent's Hand: 5 cards
Your Hand: 3 cards ....... Opponent's Hand: 6 cards
Your Hand: 4 cards ....... Opponent's Hand: 7 cards
So...you're relying on your opponent to have 4+ cards left in hand when you hit five mana (which, for a typical deck, is probably somewhere in the range of turn 5-7). Which means if they play a land every turn, then they've cast an average of one spell every two turns. Most decks just don't play like that. And the few that do are probably going to counterspell you anyway.
And to add a little bit more fuel to the fire, they just revealed this card:
Reforge the Soul which is a wheel of fortune that costs 5 most of the time, but can occasionally cost 2.
Now, let's disregard for the moment the part where "Timetwister is power 9 and Wheel of Fortune is not because Timetwister is blue and blue is the best colour!" That doesn't really hold water anymore. These days, the colours are pretty similar power, which means a card that does better when you can empty your hand is better in a colour that likes to empty its hand quickly (see: red). Furthermore, the average blue deck runs cards like
Ponder and
Impulse which means that...even if said blue deck has the exact same number of cards in hand as its opponent, the average card quality in the blue hand would be better, so making both players toss their hand and redraw would generally be disadvantageous to the blue mage.
But can I really argue for 4 with a straight face? I mean, isn't this the lesson taught to us by
Diminishing Returns that draw 7s are just plain powerful? I mean, that card still gets played in Legacy (type 1.5 for the old school in the audience). But...here's the thing--that card gets powered off of dark ritual type effects; where if you draw 7, you can turn those 7 into mana right away. That's not really possible anymore.
Ok, so 4 mana comparisons, I guess the card to look at would be
Concentrate. You'd need two fewer cards in hand, say, 2 cards in your hand, 4 cards in your opponents hand, but that sounds doable on turn 4. Doable, but doesn't sound like "Pfft, blue decks would do that all the time", so you'd need a specialized deck. This card still definitely won't be touched by the traditional blue control deck. Maybe a combo or aggro deck with blue in it (and there's a fair few of those lately).
But I'm still not thrilled by it; I'm struggling to think of an existing deck that actually runs it (part of the problem there being that flashback is back, and quite important to blue right now, so blue doesn't want to shuffle its own graveyard away). Well...what about 3 mana then? Yes, I know that's the original cost; bear with me. The relevant comparison here would be....
I guess Divination? Div's definitely on the weak end. Thing is, to match div's +1 card advantage, you'd really only need one less card in hand than your opponent, which is very easy to achieve. You can often pull off -1 or -2 cards in hand just by being first player; never mind the other variables. And if you pull off -2 or more, then it's a huge swing for the cost (+2 total card advantage).
Ok, 3 CMC is maybe too inexpensive I guess. Back to 4 CMC I suppose. Would 4 CMC get played at all? Hmm...I could maybe see it in certain kinds of decks; nothing current because of how much blue wants to keep its graveyard for flashback, but in a year or so sure. Alternatively, would 3 CMC be completely busted and banworthy? Well...
Compulsive Research was never anywhere close to getting banned, and would be pretty close to "draw 3 cards" sometimes, and went into every kind of deck.
Jace Beleren is basically draw 3 cards, never even close to being banned.
Jace's Archivist is literally a timetwister style ability, repeatable, on a 3 mana creature, in standard, and has seen absolutely no play, and is dirt cheap.
Huh, ok. I'm leaning back into the "maybe 3CMC is ok" camp. Let's just quickly rule out 2CMC.
Night's Whisper is a very, very good card used in just about every deck type. Matching the card advantage from it is pretty trivial (have 1 less card in hand than your opponent) and significantly outperforming it is common. Yep, definitely no 2CMC.
But 3CMC I'm not sure; would be curious to see. Probably make it cost more specific mana (1UU or UUU) just because of the whole "Doesn't benefit typical blue decks" (but would significantly benefit, say, a red burn deck that's just splashing for a quick hand refill).
