Take Inventory is such a nonbo with a counter deck, I can't even deal. You'd be better served cutting them for basically any other draw spell, even Artificer's Epiphany.

Thanks!

Oath of Lily has been quite good, but that has more to do with the decks I've been running into rather than the quality of the card. I've seen a ton of creature based aggro (mono-white, UW Humans, UW Spirits, Bant, Mono-Green Wolves [one of my three losses, kept a four land hand and died turn eight with four lands and two 5CM sweepers... variance sucks sometimes], BR Madness, etc). I don't play the deck as a genuine draw-go control deck. I want to drop a walker as soon as I'm reasonably confident it can survive until my next turn, then sort of play protect the queen with all my permission and sweepers. Oath is very, very good at protecting Walkers. One particularly brutal curve I've had a couple times is T3 Oath, T4 Languish, T5 Ob or Big Jace, profit.

Divinevert, I appreciate the feedback! However, if I'm truthful, I'm pretty darn sure I'm right and you're wrong on Take Inventory. It only costs two mana, and it adds a bit of velocity early and a lot of inevitability later in the game. Further, because of the number of sweepers I'm running, it's often no big deal to tap out for a turn (I'll often play Avacyn or Linvala as soon as I can get decent value for them), counting on being able to clean up a mess later if needed. Further, there's a huge difference between 2 CMC and 3 CMC with your cantrips. One helps you find a third land, one doesn't. If you play 3 Artificer's Epiphany in a game, you'll have spent 3 cards and 9 mana to draw 3 cards. If you play 3 Take Inventory, you'll have spent 3 cards and 6 mana to draw 6 cards. One of these is better than the other one . Now, that's just addressing your "worse than any other draw spell" comment. I fully concede that Comparative Analysis may be better!

Different strokes, but let me create what I believe is a common scenario:

Turn 3, you're on the draw. You play your third land. Your hand is: Island, Swamp, Take Inventory, Gideon, Sorin.

What's your play?

I'm having a bit of troubling understanding this scenario, tbh. If I'm on turn 3 on the draw, I should have drawn a total of 10 cards, including the opening seven. Here, only eight of those are accounted for. If I'm playing aggro, maybe I played Blessed Alliance on turn 2, or I could have played Jace out on turn 2 and had it killed I suppose, but that still leaves one card unaccounted for. I almost certainly would have played Take Inventory on turn 2 if I'd had it, so presumably it was my draw for the turn, or I found it with Telling Time, or I already played another Take Inventory on turn two. Do I have my colors fixed for Gideon next turn? Does my opponent have a board presence? Are they likely to be playing permission, flash creatures, or evasive creatures? How much do I suspect they've got a turn 4 Planeswalker (quite a bit I suppose, if they have shown green mana and don't have a board presence after their third turn)?

If I strongly suspect they have a planeswalker, I suppose I'll just pass the turn and bluff permission (assuming I've got double blue for the threat to be credible). Other than that, I play Take Inventory. A smart opponent will play something useful into open blue mana, and will gain a tempo advantage over me if I bluff instead of playing my spell. Tapping out lets them play their best four drop, which isn't ideal. If they play out four power worth of attackers or greater, then I probably can't safely play out Gideon, and have to plan to dig for a sweeper as quickly as possible, with the back-up plan of using Sorin to gain back some life and remove their most dangerous attacker to buy time. So a lot there depends on what I hit with Take Inventory and my Turn 4 draw step.

However, this is a bit of a slanted scenario. I have personally won a lot of games because of the card advantage I've gotten off of Take Inventory, and even at instant speed, three mana is an awful lot to play for card selection rather than card advantage. I'm running ten 3 CMC cards already, and if I switched out take inventory for Artificer's Epiphany, I'd have a lot of situations where I had no play on turn two, then want to actually cast an answer on turn three, leaving Epiphany stuck in my hand at least until turn 4, by which point I've lost a fair bit velocity already. It really is useful to be able to use your second turn rather than waste it.

He's leading you on, he's not actually running Epiphany, he's running Comparative analysis. Inspiration worst case, often instant speed divination t5/t6.

Also, WB

Do people still play inspiration?? I know they do haha.

It's not a big trick. I'm saying that playing take inventory in that type of scenario stops you from removing EOT or bluffing removal or counters.

You already have Gideon and Sorin, missing a T3 bluff is hardly the end of the world. In your scenario, Telling Time is dead because everything you would like to dig for is already in your hand.

BRB grabbing a counter to hand and another to the top.

You're about to tap out for Gideon. Poor choices.

BRB playing Gideon turn 7

Why? The scenario you presented doesn't even have an opponent.

That makes them twice as unpredictable.

2x0=?

Exactly. They're a question mark.

Plural into singular. Doesn't work unless you have some kind of "They're a bunch of idiots" type of construction to make the semantics line up.

If we're riffing, semantics is a vibe killer imo

I had a vibe? Anyway, GG, WP, thread derail over.

No knockout so we're going to have to go to the judges.... i gotta give the win to Divine here.

Well played to you both.

Thanks you! Good to be back . Don't know how long I'll stay around, as I'm pretty into Hex also and don't have enough time to properly play both, but I do want to get a list together that I'm happy with for the Steam Showdown.

I know that the other lists are running Comparative Analysis, and that's a good card too. It may well be better. But I've got a TCG heuristic that when deciding between two cards, the cheaper one is generally the way to go. The earliest you're casting Analysis is turn four, and I'm more concerned about the games where I'm stuck on two or three lands on turn four. Generally, Land Flood or Land Screw are how the deck loses unless playing well built aggro or mill, and early cantrips are one of the few ways to help the latter without increasing the risk of the former.