Mind Reaver -
Creature - Human Wizard

Heroic - Whenever you cast a spell that targets ~, exile the top three cards of target player's library.

, Sacrifice ~: Counter target spell with the same name as a card exiled with ~.
2/1

Source: https://twitter.com/Wizards_MagicEU/sta ... 2832573440

Oh hey, Grimoire Thief is back.

That art... looks like he's thinking the person to death.


"I'm giving you cancer!"

Weird card. Sooooo much work for getting an effect out of him, and too many blue mana symbols. Doubt it'd be playable

Blue devotion will like this guy. Also he's a solid 2 drop that has the right kind of mill. He exiles instead of sends to the graveyard which I think helps a bit.

As the resident mill specialist™, let me tell you: this is not a mill card.

This guy seems more like a minesweeper. He clears out parts of your opponent's future potential, but not quickly like a mill-type, instead, he does so more thoroughly, sending it to exile rather than graveyard, and prepares to sacrifice himself to stop a future bomb of a type he's dealt with already. I think he could help make a blue heroic deck with control elements work.

These discussions remind me a lot of Grimoire Thief. That card ended up being totally unused as well, and it was in an era when control decks were very hot. I can't see a deck targeting this card consistently enough to make the counter-spell, the milling, or the body into something relevant.

Well, it's still a 2 power creature for 2 that has a heroic trigger that can aid an eventual counterspell and offers blue devotion.

The discussion about this card art is more interesting than this card will ever be.

So everyone gets to see the exiled cards?

Ew. Also, I was secretly hoping that this was the return of Mindshrieker... I miss it so much.

Yes. Unless a card specifies otherwise, exiled cards are exiled face-up.


This card is bad and it should feel bad. If it used Inspired rather than Heroic it would at least be a cool Grimoire Thief knock-off. As is it is just terrible.

Grimoire Thief is already bad so being a worse version of it is pretty pathetic. It's basically 2/1 no text for two in the rare slot of a set.

Oh wow, I didn't realize it was a rare. Yeah, this is _really bad_ for a rare. I could have accepted it as an uncommon, but as a rare...

It's for block blue devotion, and is a piker.

So every card goes in devotion? But without spells that target it also taking up space in Blue Devotion, the card is still dead. At it's VERY BEST, this card is a 5-mana, 2 card counter spell (2 to cast, 2 to activate, and at least a 1 mana targetting spell before hand). Grimoire Thief at least was 3 mana and 1 card to counter, and it was still a terrible card to try and use, and this is an order of magnitude worse.

And what does a "piker" win against in Standard? It's outclassed by literally every other creature being used in standard, so it'll never survive combat, and even dies to Electrickery. It's not just bad, it's terribad. The only situation I can think of wanting this card is with the new Ephara's Enlightenment, since it can then hold the fort while you mill their deck without having to attack - but is then reliant on a steady stream of creatures... which should just win you the game anyways. And by the time you've exiled enough cards to make this guy's counterspell relevant, he'll be big enough that sacrificing him will often be a worse choice than just letting the spell resolve.

He said block not standard.

This is actually nice. Again, y'all whiners.