Name a card, any card. Your opponents are now locked out of that
card Meddling Mage-style, and you get a
two-mana-off coupon for that card. Sound good?
Think about it for a little while, and you'll realize that for both
halves of this card to be relevant, you have to
name a card that is in both your deck and your
opponent's deck. It also has to have at least
two colorless mana in its cost-- it won't help
you cast New Prahv Guildmage at all. So name a
card... but not just any card.
To maximize the Council's clout, you need to be running it in a
mirror match, against another Azorious deck.
That means it's effectively sideboard material.
Otherwise, when you cast the Council, you pretty
much have to choose whether to Meddle or
minimize mana. As a Meddler, it's not amazing--
it comes down turn four. Time enough for you to
see what your opponent's up to and make an
educated guess what you don't want him playing,
but also time enough that he may have already
played it. It makes a decent enough blocker
against an aggro deck, to be sure, but aggro
strategies are among the most
Meddling-resilient, as they don't hinge their
plans on a specific card. As a mana coupon, it
still hits the board too late, unless the card
you're trying to get a discount on is
prohibitively expensive without a Council
mandate.
In Limited, I'd only run it if I had somehow snagged three or more
copies of something of dubious value, like
Armored Transport. Or if I'd somehow cornered
the market on Cluestones. Otherwise, it's
sideboard material. Oddly specific sideboard
material.
I do so love this "late-block hoser" style of
design. Not even because of the impact on the
metagame, mind you, but because it's getting
closer and closer to calling out individual
cards by name. I suppose Council of the Absolute
isn't going to be addressing Sphinx's Revelation
100% of the time, but it'll be doing so enough
to raise hard questions for deck designers (and,
for that matter, for R&D). I complain, but the
fact is that almost every guild has an X spell,
so regardless of which color or colors you may
be splashing in your Azorius deck, you can get a
significant advantage from this card.
Welcome back readers todays card of the day is
a sideboard card through and through. In control
mirror matches naming Sphinx’s Revelation with
this card could provide a potent discount on
yours and prevent the opponent from casting a
game altering spell. In standard I foresee this
card seeing a limited amount of sideboard play
as it allows a player to surgically pinpoint a
card appearing in both decks that provides a
powerful but limited sideboard tool. In other
competitive formats modern, legacy and vintage I
don’t see this card making much of a splash
outside of narrow circumstances. In casual and
multiplayer this card is near worthless due to
the unlikely event you and an opponent have the
same cards in your decks and you need to lower
the casting cost of the aforementioned card.
Otherwise its an overpriced Meddling Mage that
has a bit more defense which doesn’t warrant its
inclusion in the majority of decks.. In limited
the chances of this card having an effect are
neglible but the solid body could be worthwhile
but unexciting also stopping opponent’s bomb
cards is not irrelevant. Overall an extremely
narrow card tailor-made for the sideboard and
not as impressive as cards in a similar vein.
Today's card of the day is Council of the
Absolute which is a four mana White and Blue 2/4
that has you name a card that isn't a creature
or land which then can't be played by opponents
and costs two less mana for you to cast. In an
Azorius, Bant, or Esper deck this can shut down
an opponent's key card or boost your own, but it
really shines in a mirror match making it at
least a sidedeck choice for many metagames. The
prevention effect is versatile enough for
maindecking, barring the one-shot benefit it'd
give in Commander, and is very likely to see
play across formats.
In Limited the chances of the effect working
on more than one card in either deck is fairly
slim, which weakens it dramatically and in a
similar vein to Commander. Alongside a card that
sees your opponent's hand or as an accelerator
to a card in your hand it has some value, but as
a mythic is doesn't compare to most other rares.
Not being able to target creatures is crippling
in the first game of a match and calling out the
opponent's bomb from game one is a gamble at
best. It is probably worth playing in an Azorius
build for Sealed, though first picking it in
Booster depends on what else is in the pack.
