Hearthstone Player Rates EXPENSIVE Magic Cards w/ CovertGoBlue

I have once held an unsleeved Timetwister in my ungloved hand and had to explain what it was to a person during a trade. That was cool.

I think mask is basically "you can pretend you didn't spend the mana you spent on this creature"

Illusionary Mask has the clause "which you still have to spend". This means the X you pay has to be able to cast the creature. So if you had an ornithopter, you could pay 0 and activate this and put it in play face down. If you had a serra angel, you could activate it for 5 and as long as two of your mana was white it would work. Or activate it for 8 to bluff something else.

Chaos Orb... I only know it, because of The Binding of Isaac, as that is one of the cards you can find and it instakills absolutely everything it touches, including bosses xD
Seriously, YuGiOh has some wild effects ... but this? Sorry, but this is something I could never imagine being done by YuGiOh ... throwing a card on the board and it gets rid of everything it touches? xD That's just wild xD
Dice rolls, coin flips and rock-paper-scissors is one thing ... but card flipping? xD
I wouldn't even know, how that card would be coded in a Magic videogame or simulator xD

The point of Illusionary Mask is to hide what creature you are actually playing.
It's a mindgame card.

As part of X you still have to pay the mana cost of the creature, not CMC.
But you may pay more than X to cast the creature.
This means you can cast a bear but make it look like it's Kozilek.
You can also cast the bear for its mana cost and just have it be face down.
You have to keep track of the mana amount and type spent on the ability and if, when the creature is shown, the amount is wrong according to the ability, you have cast the creature illegaly and are penalized for it as applicable.

Bro looks like adin ross and courage combined

Powerfull 9

You asked about Illusionary Mask and I have some answers. Let's say you have a creature like Birds of Paradise (costs a single Green mana) in your hand. When you activate the mask to put the birds down, you have to pay 1 or more for X on the mask; one of which must be green. If you pay 0, then you can only play creature spells that cost 0 or X (like Shifting Wall whose mana cost is literally just X). However if you drop a creature with X, that X is 0 (since you're activating the mask for 0 mana). You cannot pay 0 mana and put a creature down that costs more than 0.

You can pay more mana to try to hide what you're putting down with the mask, but it's not necessary as long as you're paying the printed mana cost of the creature you're dropping. What happens is since it's a 2/2 with no other abilities, there are effects that say enter the battlefield on creatures will not happen if you use the mask to cast them. This is especially relevant for Phyrexian Dreadnought (which is a 12/12 with trample for 1 colorless mana) since that's probably the best creature you can drop with illusionary mask early. It has a really negative enters the battlefield ability that says you have to sacrifice creatures with a total power of 12 or more or sacrifice the dreadnought.

If you pay 1 with illusionary mask, and you put a dreadnought face down, you're putting down a 2/2. Not a phyrexian dreadnought. So the enters the battlefield ability doesn't happen. Once that 2/2 becomes tapped, takes damage, or deals damage then it flips over. With phyrexian dreadnought, it's already on the battlefield when you flip it over, it's enters the battlefield trigger doesn't happen. So you get all the upside and none of the downsides with that creature specifically.

Illusionary Mask never had tournament play because by the time creatures were good enough (like phyrexian dreadnought being printed in 1996) there wasn't a reason to pay this card. Arguably there still isn't since the only relevant format you can play this in is commander and, prohibitive price aside, there really aren't enough creatures out there to really abuse this card in a meaningful way.

Having said that I did play against a casual deck that had these and dreadnoughts. The deck had 4 dreadnoughts, 4 illusionary masks, 1 shivan dragon (which back in the early days was the most iconic creature), the relevant power 9, I think regrowth, demonic tutor, counterspell, balance, and swords to plowshares were in there. Probably had dark ritual and mana drain in there too. It's kinda hard to remember because this was 20 years ago easily but I remember a lot of the cards were beta (including the power). It was powerful and fast with the right opening hand, but it was susceptible to force of will (which is a free counterspell that is basically the glue that holds the legacy format together).

Long story short, people played it casually but not much. It wasn't in tournaments, and in commander it's not very useful unless you want it for just pure fun factor. Very niche but very cool card that eventually spawned the mechanic Morph exactly 10 years after it was printed in Alpha. I've always liked it and phyrexian dreadnought specifically.

I wish he would have included Sol Ring after the last card, after Black Lotus and the Moxes, Rarran would be so far off :D

Chaos Orb Story: Plays Chaos Orb > rips up Chaos Orb in 20 little pices > throws the snippets on the table > wipes the opponents board > opponent baffeled > crowed baffeld > judges baffeld > wins game

So sleeving your cards would protect them from chaos orb because it would not be able to touch them?

Zak Dolan had a Chaos Orb in his 1994 World Championship winning deck, so it saw at least some competitive viability, contrary to what is said.

illusory mask was the origin of facedown cards.
X has to be part of the total mana cost.
Say you have a 5 mana spell, you can pay 2 to play it as a 2/2. Then pay 3 to flip if you want.
Though mostly you want to pay 1 mana, get it in play, and then cast a spell that exiles it and then returns it to play. So you can get big creatures for 1 mana.

Ancestral recall was one of the original three for one cards that was part of the original game design. It's sad it's no longer part of the standard starter set.

The Post Malone Lotus is not just signed, it was a signed "artist proof" Black Lotus. Absolutely insane card.

Illusionary mask, Think about it like "Morph". But instead of paying 3 to get a 2/2, you pay X to get a facedown card whose morph cost is its actual cost, plus you can say I pay 2b1c to summon a Royal Assasin when it's actually a Benalish hero, f you don't do damage it's everything yo wanted t to be. Lets say I pay 2 and put a Serra angel facedown. I can't deal or take damage with her if I can't pay her 2w3c cost. Cyclopean tomb 1 word, Swampwalk!!!.aculay

The idea behind the Illusionary Mask is that you cast a creature using the normal amount of mana, and then pay ANY amount of mana to use the mask in order to play it face down. For example, if you cast a creature that costs 1 blue mana, you could then pay 4 ADDITIONAL mana into the mask when you play it and make your opponent THINK you just played a creature with a 5 mana casting cost. There's no way for them to know what you actually cast, and they might play a powerful spell to eliminate the creature, only to find out it was a mostly harmless 1/1. It's all for the mind games.

Realistically though, if you didn't care about the mind games, you just used zero mana and still played all creatures face down, which in and of itself is very good.

Wasn't the lotus Post Malone bought an artist proof?

I just realized that nowhere on Lich it says something like "You do not loose the game by loosing all your life." So are you not technically dead the second you play it?

I would definitely turn islands into swamps with Cyclopean Tomb.

Lich was used with mirror universe.

How on earth the "power of 3" got released is beyond me, all 1 mana, all instant (card type) and orders of magnitude apart in power

2 is so powerful a deck with only one in them can win by just drawing it (blue/black)
2 is balanced and have always seen play in new sets (green/red)
and white is so bad it isn't worth the paper it's printed on

Plains (white) Healing Salve, Target player gains 3 life / Prevent the next 3 damage that would be dealt to any target this turn.
Forest (green) Giant Growth, Target creature gets +3/+3 until end of turn.
Mountain (red) Lightning Bolt, Lightning Bolt deals 3 damage to any target.
Swamp (black) Dark Ritual, Add 3 Black mana to your mana pool.
Island (blue) Ancestral Recall, Target player draws three cards.

To the judge- "His chaos orb is in a sleeve so technically its not touching my card"

for the mask im pretty sure when u pay for the cost of the creature, you can activate the arifact and pay any extra amount of mana so your opponent doesnt know what the cost of the mysterious creature is

@Rarran To answer your question as to what happens with Illusionary mask? Well you have cheated. You must be able to pay some of the total cost (and also be able to pay the full cost) gatherer says: "Both the amount and types of mana you spend on Variable Colorless are taken into account while you're choosing a creature card from your hand. For example, if you spent UU on X , you can choose a creature card with mana cost UU , 1U, 2, or U/W U/W or U, among other possibilities, but not one that costs 2U or one that costs G." This is what makes the card kinda unworkable, because you don't know if your opponent has played the card correctly without breaking the game state. This card, along with forcefield, chaos orb, and word of command were not included in revised due to the effect not really working well within in the rules. Their high price tag is because they are unlimited only.

Don't feel bad Blue. I sold a Jet for $100 too

god this dude on the right is so annoying

Back in the late '90s, after I got my first job, I bought a full set of the beta power 9. I sold them all to buy warhammer 40k. D'oh.

Fun story of Chaos Orb. One person did use it in competitive play. They ripped up the card and flipped it creating a 3 cost colorless boardwipe. It was ruled legal to do this.

I think the best part of this for me is the points where someone explains why an effect would be ridiculous in their preferred card game, because it shows how the different games function in how they value certain actions. Some actions are almost universally good, like getting to take an extra turn, but other things are much weaker just because of the context of the game and the meta.

so what mask does is you cast it face down once it recive damage you have to pay the rest of the cost for example lets say you use this card to cast a ulamong you can pay lets say five than next turn you attack with the face down or your opponet bolts ulamong than you pay the other 5 mana and than it flips face up other wise it just stays on the face down or at least this is how my and my old play group used to play with this card dont know if it was right but back than i feel like this is how most people played it

No mention of the chaos confetti story when talking about chaos orb? For those that don't know, there was a player that decided to tear up their chaos orb during a tournament and threw it at their opponent's side of the field, destroying more cards then when intact.

I just sold my Raging River a few months ago to cover a medical bill, still miss it

Bro just keeps calling it powerful 9 despite clearly hearing Power Nine many, many times over.

You should have brought up the story of the player who during a tournament, tore it into many little pieces to cover as many of his opponents cards as possible.

To use illusionary mask, follow these simple steps:
1. Choose a creatuee card in your hand
2. Pay its cost, and any extra you want to pay to hide the exact cost you paid from your opponent
3. Put the creature in play face down
4. Wait for something to happen to it (damage, targeting, tapping, etc), at which point you turn it face up.

This is useful because the creature doesn't enter play as itself, so paying 1 mana into the mask lets you put a 12/12 phyrexian dreadnought into play without triggering its detrimental trigger on entry

Illusionary Mask says "which you still have to spend". So you are still spending the true casting cost of the creature. So yeah...

3 mana crystals innervate.....that's kinda what Black Lotus was, except it was even more versatile than that.

We could use more land destruction in magic. Ramp is becoming too dominant. Its not healthy for the game for someone to be able play only spells that cost 5+ in a competitive deck.

I've been in and out of magic since it started. I havent played let alone purchased any cards in about 5 years. Do miss playing but the costs anymore let alone to get to some place to play is consuming especially since i work third shifts. People call me nuts since my favorite set is Homelands. I tell people to check the cards, how they are balanced amongst one another, and to play a draft and limited with only them and then get back to me.

The funny thing is that the cheapest Chaos orb is actually the best being an oversized promo card.

mask is very simple. you can pay the cost of the create or more as you said. ........... the reason they mention 0 is it could be a 0 casting cost creature. ............... the point is to hide what your playing. but for example if you play a 3 cost. you could pay 3, 4,5,6,,etcc..... for it............ beyond hiding what your playing. it also is in essence a mana fixer. as your paying colorless for it.

Illusionary mask says you still have to pay the true cost of the card, just that you can also allocate more mana if you wish to disguise the cards cost. It says you can pay 0 because in that case you won't have disguised the true cost of the card but you will have disguised the card for 0 mana.

The One Ring doesn't count that is some marketing bs.

when you flip the card, it's been cast. the reason you would pay X mana especially in current game is for synergy with X mana cost archetype (edit: and phyrexian dreadnaught and other etb). in the original release, the intent might have been for it to mind-game opponents by paying any amount of mana to kind of "flex" what the creature identity is. so if you pay a lot of mana, the assumption would be a weak creature or if you pay no mana, it's a powerful creature etc.

I think raging river could go into a goblin agro commander deck. I could see the "half of your creatures can't block" effect being useful with large numbers of small creatures.

You seem to misunderstand Word of Command. They have to be able to play it, not unable to play it. Meaning they have to have a blue mana up to cast the ancestral recall. Which means they probably can also counter it.

Illusionary Mask: The mana paid for X has to include the casting cost of the creature. If you set X to 0 and it's not an ornithopter then that's an illegal cast and a judge decides your fate.