Sets [ORI] Magic Origins Spoilers

Eric Chan

Hyalopterous Lemure
Staff member
I'm actually nearly 100% certain that you don't have to "do" anything to support Sphinx's Tutelage. Most of us run enough incidental card draw in our cubes that the amount of time it would take to mill someone out would be lower than we'd think. Even simple cantrips - Preordain, Baleful Strix, Wall of Omens, Repeal - guarantee that you'll mill your opponent for at least four cards on your turn, counting your draw step. Combine that with the high gold density of the typical Riptide list, letting the if clause on Tutelage trigger at a higher rate than it would in limited, and we might be looking at one of the best, not-broken-for-forty-cards, pure mill spells ever printed.
 
Just don't explicitly look to support it and it should be fine. It's easy to break in a 40 card format. I'd like incidental synergies to pop up with this, not a person going all-in on the plan. This is way better as an additional means of winning a game, not as the primary win-con. If you have to sculpt the win somehow by holding back a Brainstorm or picking and choosing when to Think Twice, I think that's fine. Way better than just hurr durr mill 10.
 

FlowerSunRain

Contributor
I was wrong about Tutelage. It isn't comparable to Jace Memory Adept, its comparable to True Name Nemesis. Except, in some ways, its actually worse.

Both cards basically say the same thing: Target opponent loses in Z turns unless they find a narrow answer to this card.

With True Name Nemesis, Z is determined by their life and other cards you and your opponent play that change life. Its basically a normal game of Magic, but with an unblockable hard to remove creature.

With Tutelage, Z is determined by how something completely different. Most mill effects only care about the opponent's library. The mill effects themselves have basically no utility and are only sped up by other mill effects or letting the opponent draw more cards (which carries a distinct disadvantage). Tutelage scales off of your card draws, which sounds interesting. I thought it was awesome to have a mill card that worked on cards you are already playing. The problem is, since the cards that make it work faster are cards that are providing you tons of utility and are attacking the opponent at an angle most decks are unable to interact with, you basically have a 3 mana card that reduces the game to a removal check/race. But in this race you can dedicate 100% of your resources to slowing down your opponent, because Tutelage is going to kill your opponent while you do stuff you were going to do anyway. Having this in play adds to your brainstorms the line "Your opponent dies two turns sooner" at the end of the card.

If Tutelage gets removed or you draw it when you need to effect the board, it is probably worthless, which makes the card extremely swingy. True Name Nemesis can push through the last 6 or block if needed.

All of this might be acceptable if Tutelage is tuned correctly, but it seems a bit fast for 40 card formats, even if we pretend the "same color" text didn't exist.

After playing it, I am no longer a fan.
 
If Tutelage gets removed or you draw it when you need to effect the board, it is probably worthless, which makes the card extremely swingy.


This is my problem with mill strategies in general. They all have this problem. Either you have a critical mass to win (or at least threaten) via decking, or you don't and it's all just pointless. I'm also not convinced this is a fun mini-game. And it honestly feels sort of poisony.

While I've been testing self-mill/dredge as a strategy (which works really well and is fun to pilot), my attempts to take it into a mill-the-opponent route proved sort of bogus. Not that I didn't get it to work - I was able to do it a couple times - but other times it fizzled and I just wasted time dedicating resources to the strategy. When it worked, it felt pretty un-interactive too. What exactly does my opponent do to an increasing confusion followed by a flashbcked increasing confusion? Barring a counter, he can't block it, gain life to offset... he just loses (or he has enough cards and increasing confusion does NOTHING). Tutelage being an enchantment makes it a removal check of sorts (as you stated), so while it might be better than increasing confusion, I'm not convinced. At least with Hedron Crab my opponent can kill it, but that card is better for self-mill anyway.

I really liked the idea of adding mill as a win con, but I'm not longer feeling it personally.
 

Grillo_Parlante

Contributor
This is kind of how I imagine a tutelage deck looking:

UB mill from CubeTutor.com











Sphinx's Control from CubeTutor.com











Really just a pure control deck, and the idea of having that is kind of exciting. Maybe its ultimatly better to run symmetrical draw effects with answers, but I don't know--just because an effect is powerful dosen't mean we should necessarily run away from it. There is a real danger in being reactionary to powerful cards that challenge a format and the way drafters approach a meta.

An established, polished cube is much like an eternal format, and textual shifts tend to occur slowly, either with the removal of cards or the introduction of cards, and the introduction of new impactful blood can breath some much needed freshness into a format. In some instances, this can carry emotional consequences, as a paradigm shift can be a net loss for adherents of a certain deck, archetype, or playstyle, who than end up crying foul as the decision results in a giant "feel bad" for them. I don't think this necessarly means the designer should hold back, lest their format become stale, and they should put some faith in the ability of their drafters to rise to the challenge, and transition the cube to a new state.

I don't know if this card is ultimately going to be too good, but I do suspect that its powerful enough to force people to change the way they draft, and to spawn a new archetype. That is exciting; and I think makes it worth considering, as it would be fun seeing people trying to break the new toy, going deep into pure control, or watching other players trying to out meta it.

That being said, you also don't want to overly condense a format, by making it where people ignore the metagame and just brute force their way to victory, and there is some danger of that from this card. The decks I posted above are built as almost pure answer decks, looking to extend out the game and exhauste an opponent. Most of the interactivity comes from matching meta answers with meta threats, and as long as the deck is doing that, its fine. Tutalage functions there as a supercharger to its basic game plan. However, if it gets to the point where it becomes turbo mill, than the deck is just ignoring the metagame, forcefully asserting its will, and condensing the format in a manner thats unfun. It should not be played in that instance.

Its main weakness in many cubes is that its approaching those metas on an axis they are poorly prepared to address: enchantment and graveyard. There just is not much in the way of strategic foils for a basic turbo mill strategy to encounter, which is why it runs the risk of not interacting meaningful with the metagame. Possible metagame relationships include opposing strategies that want to fill up the yard, ample enchantment defense, and decks that want to self-mill anyways as a means to win.
 

FlowerSunRain

Contributor
I both times I played it on turn 3, I killed on the draw step following my turn 6. I did this by tapping three mana for a card I didn't need to protect, then playing to survive. I didn't even need to survive for that long.

I'm just thinking that a three drop control finisher probably shouldn't be faster then a six drop. I like the idea, but I think its overtuned.
 

FlowerSunRain

Contributor
This was what I ran. Neither of the turn 6 mill wins involved Hedron Crab, all of the mill came off of Sphinx's Tutelage. The deck went 1-2.

Mill Out control








 

CML

Contributor
Thanks to all the posts describing its baleful effect on the game, I've been convinced to try Sphinx's Tutelage

I also think Nephalia Drownyard is the most fun land in the ULD

I would never be caught dead milling my opponent in a Constructed tournament
 

Jason Waddell

Administrator
Staff member
Combine that with the high gold density of the typical Riptide list, letting the if clause on Tutelage trigger at a higher rate than it would in limited

I don't know if this is true when you account for our cube decks having more colors played on average.
 
I just played Sphinx's Tutelage in Origins draft in a U/B deck. I only saw it twice in the 3 matches that I played (on the play, T3), but it lead to wins each time. Neither time was it especially stupid. You'd be surprised by how often it whiffs and only mills two. It changed the game for me from being a U/B tempo deck trying to force through little bits of damage and assembling a board to simply trying to stall long enough to mill them out with it. Double Voidmage and Anchor to the Aether helped a lot. I barely won both times, but it was super fun when I did. I definitely want to play another deck with Tutelage in Origins draft, so dope.

It's busted if you combo it with a Brainstorm or something, but I'm pretty fine with that provided that it doesn't happen all that often. Like, Tutelage is stupid as the centerpiece of a strategy if you can reasonably cast it on curve and build around it. If it's just there without any explicit support, I think it's just fine. It was cool generating extra triggers off Jhessian Thief or trading up a guy with Infernal Scarring attached. It really should just be an alt-win con where the deck can function without it; where you find incidental synergies (Infernal Scarring turned on Tutelage and Blightcaster for me) to the most out of it.
 

Grillo_Parlante

Contributor
omg, thats one of my favorite cards. The promo version looks sweet too

$_35.JPG
 

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
I was wrong about Tutelage. It isn't comparable to Jace Memory Adept, its comparable to True Name Nemesis. Except, in some ways, its actually worse.
To be fair, Tutelage can't switch gears and defend when you're losing the race. I still think TNN is a bit worse tbh, as it does impact the board, unlike Tutelage.
 
Decided to try Cuneo's UR tutelage deck and it mills 60 card decks out in like 2-3 turns with the likes of Tormenting Voice and Jace loots. I'm not saying don't try it, but I'm a bit wary of stapling Glimpse the Unthinkable to Brainstorm/Treasure Cruise/Harmonize in 40 card land.
 

Dom Harvey

Contributor
I'm willing to believe that it's very powerful in an unfun way, but when the only piece of evidence so far is a deck that is basically perfect for maximizing Tutelage and still went 1-2 I would hold off on the TNN comparisons.
 
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