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Pojo's Magic The Gathering
Card of the Day


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Mindslaver 
Mirrodin Rare


Reviewed September 29, 2003

Ratings are based on a 1 to 5 scale
1 being the worst.  3 ... average.  
5 is the highest rating

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Chris
Gerhardt

Mindslaver seems to be a card that can inspire some interesting questions. Late the other evening, Scott and I discussed the following:  You play Mindslaver. You activate it and target your opponent, Fred. On Fred's turn, you play his Wild Mongrel. You then discard Fred's Guerrilla Tactics to his Mongrel. Since Guerrilla Tactics reads:

"When a spell or ability an opponent controls causes you to discard Guerrilla Tactics from your hand, Guerrilla Tactics deals 4 damage to target player or creature."

Since Mindslaver is causing you to "control" your opponent's turn, and since you caused the Tactics to be discarded, then can you decide to do 4 damage to Fred's dome with Tactics?

And then there are other issues not addressed in the card text.  Since you control your opponent's decisions, can you decide to concede the game for them? (The answer is no, by the way...)  And so on...

But on to playability.  At face value Mindslaver would seem too expensive to make a tournament constructed deck.  However, it is my contention that this card will prove too tempting to the Blue freaks out there. Its control nature screams, "BREAK ME!!!!" and they will head it's call if at all possible.  If there is a way to make this work, someone is going to find it. It may not be pretty, but...

In limited, this is one of those high casting cost  cards that can turn the tide of a game.  Since the limited format has the propensity for long, drawn out games and/or creature standoffs, you should always consider cards that can have a high impact even if they will cost you in terms of mana.  Forcing your opponent's weenies to go on a suicide attack, wasting their board activated abilities, blowing their in-hand instant and sorcery resources, tapping them out for their next turn...that should turn the direction of the game enough to either finish them off the next turn or at least cripple them enough to lead to a win for you eventually.

Constructed: TBD but for now, 2
Casual: 4 for fun value
Limited: 4
Current Price: $8

And "Thank You!" to all of you who visited our new Website last week and took the time to send in your comments and suggestions!  We really appreciate it, and always welcome constructive criticism. We are on a constant search for ways to make the site more user friendly, and sometimes you guys come up with some really great suggestions! Feel free to stop in anytime and drop us an email with your ideas! ScottAndChris@ShuffleAndCutGames.com

 


Judge Bill

I would have to award this card "The most UnFun Card" of Mirrodin. At least, that's what it will feel like if it is played against you. To solve any rules questions about this card, pretend that the person who activated Mindslaver is the controller of a "robot" for the turn that it was activated, that robot being the person who had the Mindslaver activated against him.
 
Fortunately or not, it's legendary. This means that there can be only one copy on the table. It costs a total of 10 mana to use, so by the time it's activated, the only deck you are going to affect is a control deck, and they can just counter this. I see this getting no real play in constructed.
 
In limited, it seems like a borderline card to me. If you know they have it, you'll make sure to play around it as best you can. So I only see this as semi-effective in limited, and probably the 23rd card in a weaker deck.
 
Constructed: 1.5
Limited: 2.25
 

 

 

 

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