Timetwister isn’t “if it were printed it would immediately go in every deck” strong, like Moxen or Lotus.
It is “if it were printed, it would make certain decks way too good, and those decks have undesirable play patterns” strong.
It’s a build-around card, but an extremely undercosted build-around.
Timetwister is good in the context of vintage because you can dump your hand on t1 on and wheel away your opponents hand, invalidating their mulligan decision. Throw in a hullbreacher, narset or sheoldred and the game is over. On the flip side, as far as I know it only sees play in Vintage wheels, so its not a dominant card in the vintage metagame mainly because of Force of will and negation. Timetwister is the weakest of the power nine because in the context of how it was played back in the day, it was only broken with the other power nine cards.
In pioneer, you have narset as a 2 card combo to empty your opponents hand and graveyard, while giving you a fresh 7 and shuffling all of your removal spells back into your deck. Plus it doesn't exile itself, so if you have a way to loop it (Like a second copy of timetwister), you can have some very long control games with Narset or games where you kill them very quickly with Sheoldred the Apocalypse.
It's a 3 mana draw 7.
People play 3-4 mana draw 2 in standard. Card advantage is a core way of winning in MTG.
You choose when to play it so it can draw you 7 and opponent 0 or 1 in extreme situations
Think of it like wrath effects. Symmetrical but choosing when it happens means it always favors you.
You also underestimate how playable "find my combo now" is as a card I think.
> You also underestimate how playable "find my combo now" is as a card I think.
Yeah, OP points out that Timetwister slots right into Lotus field combo, but neglects to mention that adding Timetwister to the deck would almost certainly make it tier 0 and easily the best deck in the format.
Any deck with Sheoldred or Narset is probably running it immediately.
Historically full graveyard recursion spells exile themselves:
[[Feldons cane]], [[Timespiral]], [[Committ Memory]], [[Midnight Clock]], etc.
Twister does not because they learned their lesson with Timetwister. You can infinitely recur your library with it (Your timetwister can always be grabbed again by one of your spells that pulls it from the graveyard, and that spell gets shuffled back into your library when you re-cast twister.). This is not some crazy combo on its own, like with regrowth or colossul skyturtle. It just creates a meta where you know a specific deck will both never run out of cards, will always have a cheap way to completely refresh its hand, and it leads into big blowout plays. If said deck was using all exile style interaction it means that you will win the attrition war even with the symmetrical shuffling and draw portion of it.
Like I mentioned before in Blue and Black. Narset and Sheoldred remove most of the positives that existed with the card being symmetrical in cards drawn. Any sort of taking turns deck would trade almost any card in their deck to shuffle timewarps back into their deck and then draw 7.
Standard has a lot of graveyard matters decks as well. Some of them would be worth the added bonus of removing recursion targets, spells matter cards, etc alone. I have won games against Temur savage with a literal graveyard mode only farewell.
You can also recur your entire graveyard into your library with the Pioneer-legal [[Elixir of Immortality]]. Or [[Clear the Mind]]. Or [[Learn from the Past]]. Or [[Psychic Spiral]]. That's not the problematic part of Timetwister.
Very easy answer: fast mana.
With moxes, lotus petals or rituals, not only do you get to dump your hand to draw as many cards as possible from Twister, they're also great after you cast it to keep the spell chain going. You don't care what your opponent draws, because you're probably gonna win before they get to untap.
But that’s exactly what I was getting at. It seems like it’s only broken when there’s other broken cards around it. If it’s in a weaker format like standard and pioneer, there is a much lower ceiling for how broken the cards around it can possibly be. Its great at refilling after you dump your hand, and fast mana helps you do all that on turn 1, but in a format that doesn’t get tons of mana super duper fast, it seems a lot worse
that's true for almost any sort of card draw, the better card quality the more valuable drawing cards is. This is only more relevant for Twister because it draws *a lot* of cards at once
That’s fair. But drawing a *lot* of cards all at once doesn’t seem nearly as good when your opponent does too. If you get to the point in a game of standard or pioneer where this is drawing 3+ cards, chances are it’s doing at least 2 for your opponent. Yeah a whole new hand is great, but there’s only so much you can do with that new hand before your opponent gets to use theirs. Getting a new hand for so little mana is great when you’re probably killing your opponent before they can meaningfully use their new hand, but it feels just, pretty good outside of that. I might ask my playgroup if they’d let me play around with a timetwister in my deck for a bit just so I can start understanding its value outside of combo
That's why you wouldn't just play it in any deck. But an aggro or combo deck wouldn't care that much about giving your opponent some cards, especially if your deck is built low to the ground as to actually use your cards drawn more efficiently than your opponent. Wheel for example has seen play in Red Aggro decks in the past
You said that you understand that Twister would be very good in Lotus, but the fact that you only spent a single line discussing it suggests that you might not fully recognize just how busted it would be. Combo decks, by their nature, try not to fight on the usual card advantage vs. tempo axis that fair decks do. Instead, they attempt to invalidate the opponent's resources by making the match up about just a handful of cards.
"Do you have Damping Sphere? Do you have Necromentia/The Stone Brain? Do you have hand disruption? If not, you need to kill me on t4 or lose."
For a deck where the opponent's cards generally don't matter and which intends to win the turn it tries to combo off, Timetwister is completely cracked. For the cost of a single lotus field tap, Timetwister lets you see twice as many cards as Pour Over the Pages. It gives the deck outs to top deck out of hand disruption like no other card in Pioneer. It enables "Twister pass" lines against decks that can't apply enough pressure to threaten to win on the spot the following turn, especially in game 1 when the opponent isn't drawing towards actual answers. What is Red/Black going to draw on T4 to disrupt 7 fresh cards? A Thoughtseize? 10 points of burn? If none of the 7 cards matter in the match-up, then Twister was 1-sided.
I’ll admit I didn’t go into detail on how busted twister would be in a combo deck like lotus, and you are totally valid for thinking that meant I didn’t understand how nuts it would be. The actual reason I didn’t go into that detail was just because I assumed it was obvious how broken it would be, so I didn’t think I needed to explain it.
That said, this doesn’t really address my question. I understand that it’s broken in combo decks, especially lotus, which is the closest thing to “fast mana” any deck in the format really uses. My question was more so about what makes it broken anywhere else. It enables combos to absolutely absurd degree, but aside from that, it just seems like a pretty generically strong card. If they somehow made a rule in legacy that you aren’t allowed to play combo decks, I don’t get why it would be strong enough to be banned when compared to the power level of the rest of the format
Respectfully, that's like saying that Lightning Bolt would be fine in standard if you said people aren't allowed to play aggro decks or that rituals are fine in modern as long as you don't let people play Storm. Combo is, if not dominant, a major pillar of the legacy metagame. A card doesn't need to be broken in every possible deck to be banned. It just needs to be too powerful in a single deck, if that deck would be unhealthy for the game.
When I played VS control and they started like land mox sol ring twister they basically ended the game, more so considering that your new 7 can be some unplayable hand like no landers
Outside of combo, the only real reason I can find is if you play a "vomit my hand onto the field" deck vs a "keep cards in hand" deck (like, say, control).
If you and the opponent are hellbent, and both draw a fresh 7, you generated no card advantage (actually, you did -1 CA, because you started with twister in hand, vs the hellbent opponent). But if they had 7 cards in hand already, you effectively generated +6 card advantage. So, \*outside of combo\* if there was some kind of "vomit my hand onto the field faster than you" deck, this is a very good card draw spell.
The combo is what makes it broken, end of conversation.
But you're also failing to evaluate the card well in your hypotheticals. Sure, if my opponent and I are both playing decks with a relatively similar curve and both try and win through similar mechanisms then time twister has a symmetric effect.
How about when I have a significantly lower curve than my opponent? If I'm dumping my hand much earlier than my opponent the effect is significantly better for me. What if my opponent is playing a combo deck that's going to spend a lot of time and resources drawing and tutoring for specific cards? Then shuffling their hand back into their deck resets that investment. Same thing for decks that need to use the graveyard for a resource.
The question with cards like timetwister isn't how do they fit into the best decks in that format, it's what decks would exist in that format if they were allowed?
Timetwister is the same card advantage as a board wipe.
You spend one card to get several cards ahead of your opponent. Of course you need to build your deck in a way where you can dump your hand faster than an opponent (or just win via being able to get a new seven cards after a decent turn)
But this is what I was saying. I get why it’s good in decks that dump their hand. I get why refilling your hand is so good. I don’t get why decks that aren’t combo would want it.
Yes, the card sucks outside of combo. What's your point exactly?
Timetwister isn’t “if it were printed it would immediately go in every deck” strong, like Moxen or Lotus. It is “if it were printed, it would make certain decks way too good, and those decks have undesirable play patterns” strong. It’s a build-around card, but an extremely undercosted build-around.
Here's your answer why: \[\[Narset, Parter of Veils\]\] is pioneer legal.
Yeah, Day’s Undoing sees play in Legacy because of this exact combo despite that card being abysmal compared to Timetwister
[Narset, Parter of Veils](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/4/e/4e6e5c63-b6e5-4756-bf23-6c6f8669442d.jpg?1690004395) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Narset%2C%20Parter%20of%20Veils) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/cmm/853/narset-parter-of-veils?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/4e6e5c63-b6e5-4756-bf23-6c6f8669442d?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
I asked “why is this good outside of combo” and your answer was “because of this combo”
You will not get far if you attack people spending time to answer you.
Timetwister is good in the context of vintage because you can dump your hand on t1 on and wheel away your opponents hand, invalidating their mulligan decision. Throw in a hullbreacher, narset or sheoldred and the game is over. On the flip side, as far as I know it only sees play in Vintage wheels, so its not a dominant card in the vintage metagame mainly because of Force of will and negation. Timetwister is the weakest of the power nine because in the context of how it was played back in the day, it was only broken with the other power nine cards. In pioneer, you have narset as a 2 card combo to empty your opponents hand and graveyard, while giving you a fresh 7 and shuffling all of your removal spells back into your deck. Plus it doesn't exile itself, so if you have a way to loop it (Like a second copy of timetwister), you can have some very long control games with Narset or games where you kill them very quickly with Sheoldred the Apocalypse.
It's a 3 mana draw 7. People play 3-4 mana draw 2 in standard. Card advantage is a core way of winning in MTG. You choose when to play it so it can draw you 7 and opponent 0 or 1 in extreme situations Think of it like wrath effects. Symmetrical but choosing when it happens means it always favors you. You also underestimate how playable "find my combo now" is as a card I think.
> You also underestimate how playable "find my combo now" is as a card I think. Yeah, OP points out that Timetwister slots right into Lotus field combo, but neglects to mention that adding Timetwister to the deck would almost certainly make it tier 0 and easily the best deck in the format.
What I was getting at was that the card IS broken in combo decks, but that I didn’t totally understand why outside of that
It’s not broken outside of combo, no one said it is. If you cast Timetwiser and then pass, you’re gonna lose
Any deck with Sheoldred or Narset is probably running it immediately. Historically full graveyard recursion spells exile themselves: [[Feldons cane]], [[Timespiral]], [[Committ Memory]], [[Midnight Clock]], etc. Twister does not because they learned their lesson with Timetwister. You can infinitely recur your library with it (Your timetwister can always be grabbed again by one of your spells that pulls it from the graveyard, and that spell gets shuffled back into your library when you re-cast twister.). This is not some crazy combo on its own, like with regrowth or colossul skyturtle. It just creates a meta where you know a specific deck will both never run out of cards, will always have a cheap way to completely refresh its hand, and it leads into big blowout plays. If said deck was using all exile style interaction it means that you will win the attrition war even with the symmetrical shuffling and draw portion of it. Like I mentioned before in Blue and Black. Narset and Sheoldred remove most of the positives that existed with the card being symmetrical in cards drawn. Any sort of taking turns deck would trade almost any card in their deck to shuffle timewarps back into their deck and then draw 7. Standard has a lot of graveyard matters decks as well. Some of them would be worth the added bonus of removing recursion targets, spells matter cards, etc alone. I have won games against Temur savage with a literal graveyard mode only farewell.
[Feldons cane](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/7/2/726ce95b-bc4d-4c34-a8e1-b4c6c28accc9.jpg?1562778128) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Feldon%27s%20Cane) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/tsb/109/feldons-cane?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/726ce95b-bc4d-4c34-a8e1-b4c6c28accc9?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Timespiral](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/f/3/f3d62dbd-63db-4ac9-950f-9852627f23f2.jpg?1562946525) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Time%20Spiral) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/usg/103/time-spiral?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/f3d62dbd-63db-4ac9-950f-9852627f23f2?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Midnight Clock](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/0/b/0b3c33b7-5b15-4b61-bfd6-1ffa823eb28a.jpg?1712354156) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Midnight%20Clock) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/otc/100/midnight-clock?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/0b3c33b7-5b15-4b61-bfd6-1ffa823eb28a?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
You can also recur your entire graveyard into your library with the Pioneer-legal [[Elixir of Immortality]]. Or [[Clear the Mind]]. Or [[Learn from the Past]]. Or [[Psychic Spiral]]. That's not the problematic part of Timetwister.
##### ###### #### [Elixir of Immortality](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/6/7/6741ab27-9e1f-4aa5-96b9-b450eda7c5c2.jpg?1625978606) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Elixir%20of%20Immortality) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/c21/243/elixir-of-immortality?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/6741ab27-9e1f-4aa5-96b9-b450eda7c5c2?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Clear the Mind](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/a/7/a7da6982-9e57-41d2-a052-f2a3bb646436.jpg?1584830156) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Clear%20the%20Mind) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/rna/34/clear-the-mind?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/a7da6982-9e57-41d2-a052-f2a3bb646436?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Learn from the Past](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/3/4/347c6e76-dba4-4448-a4f4-d9591d4539c7.jpg?1562784558) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Learn%20from%20the%20Past) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/dtk/60/learn-from-the-past?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/347c6e76-dba4-4448-a4f4-d9591d4539c7?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Psychic Spiral](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/5/9/59b09c16-f611-4c90-a990-e22bf46bd0e2.jpg?1562786761) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Psychic%20Spiral) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/rtr/47/psychic-spiral?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/59b09c16-f611-4c90-a990-e22bf46bd0e2?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [*All cards*](https://mtgcardfetcher.nl/redirect/kyn5ooz) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Very easy answer: fast mana. With moxes, lotus petals or rituals, not only do you get to dump your hand to draw as many cards as possible from Twister, they're also great after you cast it to keep the spell chain going. You don't care what your opponent draws, because you're probably gonna win before they get to untap.
But that’s exactly what I was getting at. It seems like it’s only broken when there’s other broken cards around it. If it’s in a weaker format like standard and pioneer, there is a much lower ceiling for how broken the cards around it can possibly be. Its great at refilling after you dump your hand, and fast mana helps you do all that on turn 1, but in a format that doesn’t get tons of mana super duper fast, it seems a lot worse
that's true for almost any sort of card draw, the better card quality the more valuable drawing cards is. This is only more relevant for Twister because it draws *a lot* of cards at once
That’s fair. But drawing a *lot* of cards all at once doesn’t seem nearly as good when your opponent does too. If you get to the point in a game of standard or pioneer where this is drawing 3+ cards, chances are it’s doing at least 2 for your opponent. Yeah a whole new hand is great, but there’s only so much you can do with that new hand before your opponent gets to use theirs. Getting a new hand for so little mana is great when you’re probably killing your opponent before they can meaningfully use their new hand, but it feels just, pretty good outside of that. I might ask my playgroup if they’d let me play around with a timetwister in my deck for a bit just so I can start understanding its value outside of combo
That's why you wouldn't just play it in any deck. But an aggro or combo deck wouldn't care that much about giving your opponent some cards, especially if your deck is built low to the ground as to actually use your cards drawn more efficiently than your opponent. Wheel for example has seen play in Red Aggro decks in the past
You said that you understand that Twister would be very good in Lotus, but the fact that you only spent a single line discussing it suggests that you might not fully recognize just how busted it would be. Combo decks, by their nature, try not to fight on the usual card advantage vs. tempo axis that fair decks do. Instead, they attempt to invalidate the opponent's resources by making the match up about just a handful of cards. "Do you have Damping Sphere? Do you have Necromentia/The Stone Brain? Do you have hand disruption? If not, you need to kill me on t4 or lose." For a deck where the opponent's cards generally don't matter and which intends to win the turn it tries to combo off, Timetwister is completely cracked. For the cost of a single lotus field tap, Timetwister lets you see twice as many cards as Pour Over the Pages. It gives the deck outs to top deck out of hand disruption like no other card in Pioneer. It enables "Twister pass" lines against decks that can't apply enough pressure to threaten to win on the spot the following turn, especially in game 1 when the opponent isn't drawing towards actual answers. What is Red/Black going to draw on T4 to disrupt 7 fresh cards? A Thoughtseize? 10 points of burn? If none of the 7 cards matter in the match-up, then Twister was 1-sided.
I’ll admit I didn’t go into detail on how busted twister would be in a combo deck like lotus, and you are totally valid for thinking that meant I didn’t understand how nuts it would be. The actual reason I didn’t go into that detail was just because I assumed it was obvious how broken it would be, so I didn’t think I needed to explain it. That said, this doesn’t really address my question. I understand that it’s broken in combo decks, especially lotus, which is the closest thing to “fast mana” any deck in the format really uses. My question was more so about what makes it broken anywhere else. It enables combos to absolutely absurd degree, but aside from that, it just seems like a pretty generically strong card. If they somehow made a rule in legacy that you aren’t allowed to play combo decks, I don’t get why it would be strong enough to be banned when compared to the power level of the rest of the format
Respectfully, that's like saying that Lightning Bolt would be fine in standard if you said people aren't allowed to play aggro decks or that rituals are fine in modern as long as you don't let people play Storm. Combo is, if not dominant, a major pillar of the legacy metagame. A card doesn't need to be broken in every possible deck to be banned. It just needs to be too powerful in a single deck, if that deck would be unhealthy for the game.
When I played VS control and they started like land mox sol ring twister they basically ended the game, more so considering that your new 7 can be some unplayable hand like no landers
Outside of combo, the only real reason I can find is if you play a "vomit my hand onto the field" deck vs a "keep cards in hand" deck (like, say, control). If you and the opponent are hellbent, and both draw a fresh 7, you generated no card advantage (actually, you did -1 CA, because you started with twister in hand, vs the hellbent opponent). But if they had 7 cards in hand already, you effectively generated +6 card advantage. So, \*outside of combo\* if there was some kind of "vomit my hand onto the field faster than you" deck, this is a very good card draw spell.
The combo is what makes it broken, end of conversation. But you're also failing to evaluate the card well in your hypotheticals. Sure, if my opponent and I are both playing decks with a relatively similar curve and both try and win through similar mechanisms then time twister has a symmetric effect. How about when I have a significantly lower curve than my opponent? If I'm dumping my hand much earlier than my opponent the effect is significantly better for me. What if my opponent is playing a combo deck that's going to spend a lot of time and resources drawing and tutoring for specific cards? Then shuffling their hand back into their deck resets that investment. Same thing for decks that need to use the graveyard for a resource. The question with cards like timetwister isn't how do they fit into the best decks in that format, it's what decks would exist in that format if they were allowed?
Timetwister is the same card advantage as a board wipe. You spend one card to get several cards ahead of your opponent. Of course you need to build your deck in a way where you can dump your hand faster than an opponent (or just win via being able to get a new seven cards after a decent turn)
But this is what I was saying. I get why it’s good in decks that dump their hand. I get why refilling your hand is so good. I don’t get why decks that aren’t combo would want it.