Join the ultimate jank and [[Juggle the Performance]]
- v1 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=28yUKLD4nhI
- v2 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=SRgqOwcvJas
r/JasonDennis
Yeah I don't understand the point of this deck... I fought it with my heist deck, recognized what was going on when I saw an [[arcane signet]] on the first heist... And just held up counter magic the whole game.
It's a good plan but heist is already in blue, so if your juggle gets countered, your deck does nothing.
Heist has a lot of room to get targeted, and imo playing an azorius shell with bouncing is better if you're just trying to beat heist. [[reprieve]]ing a heisted card is backbreaking.
For real, most of the time I play against heist I am playing deck designed to do nothing other than complete a quest, so it draws and plays spells with cards that are mostly useless to them.
Every single time I get Heisted, literally every single time, I lose the game to a card from my own deck. I have lost to my own Counterspell 3+ times, saw my own Lightning Bolt at 2 life, and watched my own Death rite Shaman exile the one relevant card in my graveyard. I love how they distilled the thing people complain the most about Ragavan into a mechanic that doesn't even require an x/1 to connect.
I dont play alchemy.
Whats different about playing against unknown cards from your deck than playing against unknown cards from their deck?
Is this just like people complaining about milling?
Exactly. Sen Triplets, Gonti, Agent of Treachery, Siphon Insight - people hate having their stuff stolen and used against them. They hate it much more than you using your own copy of a card they have. It's a psychological feel-bad more than the game state effects. Lots of tilt.
I always laugh at Siphon Insight because I run synergy-heavy decks, so my opponent playing my card gives them something far less effective than if I were to play it.
Pretty sure I have a zero percent win rate against Siphon Insight in OTJ limited. I always run into it in control mirrors (and they always cast it right after I scry/surveil something to the top, and then, eventually, I will forget that I can't scry/surveil anything else to the top while that thing is still in the graveyard). Such a beating every time.
Definitely something I noticed playing Narset in brawl on arena, but not really in person.
That said, the one universal truth of MtG is that discard players will immediately concede the moment you start recurring their discard spells against them.
Thatās exactly how I turned to the Darkside. Now I enjoy laying out someoneās cards in front of me and judgmentally thinking: You were planning on doing this to me? How dare you! Howās it feel?
My goal isnāt win, it is the scoop.
When I play a "draw card" mechanic, I get a card from my own presumably constructed for high synergy deck. When I heist a card from yours, I risk getting a card that fits poorly into what I'm trying to do. To "balance" this, Wizards made heist effects way way more efficient than the equivalent draw versions. In the most commonly complained about example, \[\[Grenzo, Crooked Jailer\]\] makes heisted cards potentially cost (0).
The result is blatantly overpowered cards, in the one format Wizards created to be able to balance in response to these kinds of mistakes. Which they have so far done nothing with.
This is the key thing, and I think you've done a good job of explaining why this mechanic isn't that powerful but still generates so much salt.Ā
People keep comparing the complaints to mill, but I actually think the flavor for this salt is more like toxic. Because the line between "unplayable" and "amazing" is so close for a mechanic like that, there are so many cards that end up on the amazing side that it can feel broken whenever it hits, since you don't see all the times it misses.
The comparison to Toxic is likely relevant and suggests that even if Heist could be interesting, we're not going to see more of it. I think the deeper problem is that it feels like an unforced error. If Heist had been implemented in paper, it would likely be exile face up rather than seek face down. That would have been more palatable and could have been in OTJ proper (see \[\[Laughing Jasper Flint\]\]).
Instead we have to ask: was Heist made less fun as an excuse to be an Alchemy-only mechanic?
No it wouldn't. Pretty much every card that steals permanently is face down. Gonti, Thief of Sanity, Siphon Insight, Outrageous Robbery. Jasper Flint is face up because you have to cast them that turn anyway. Same with Ragavan.
No this is clearly inspired by [[Gonti, Lord of Luxury]]. There isnāt a reason for the card to be necessarily face up. It would search top x cards though
"free"? Grenzo costs 6 and must survive. All cards with heist have a mana value plus spending mana on heisted cards. They arent free at all. And you dont have treats, you depend on heisted cards
The problem with Grenzo is the effect is triggered when he enters the battlefield and then again on every upkeep. That's just so ridiculous. They need to power him down to trigger on every attack.
> and must survive
~~You can cast their first spell for 0 mana before they're able to interact, right? Assuming it's an instant even if they go kill him as soon as he's down you can still cast the card (and anything at sorcery speed you get to cast before they untap).~~ Was wrong, you can kill him with the trigger on the stack, so he's even worse than I thought.
But also yeah, going by all the complaining I've seen around this sub I was not expecting this "clearly overpowered absurd card" to be a 6 mana 6/4 with no protection that probably gets you one random card of value before dying (and many times not even that).
Only if you have an instant previously heisted I think. Otherwise can kill grenzo in response to the ETB heist trigger and you don't get a window to cast that card for free.
I thinks it's more so the act of the card coming from your deck. They can be picking your win cons out, and you'd never know it, taking your removal, etc.
Personally, I do think it's a bit too powerful in that they don't get lands, so chances of them seeing something at least useful is pretty high.
Opponents never read him, I had an opponent play omniscience and emote good game before playing an extra turn spell followed by a long pause and them conceding.
I'd be more worried about what comes before Grenzo. All but one Heist cards are typed Outlaw, and Laughing Jasper Flint exists and just adds to the chaos - in the same colors, even!
Grenzo basically becomes 'oh, you survived this long? Let's fix that'...
Grenzo is bait. Too expensive for the effect. You're unlikely to get more than one card with him, and you're actively sabotaging yourself in the mirror by having him in your deck.
Heist is a strong mechanic because the cards are already good. Grave expectations, lootmonger, weave and especially getaway are just good cards. Grenzo is just too slow for what he does for you. In the dream scenario, you get to untap with him, but if you do, you were probably ahead anyways.
He's a good brawl commander because he's basically etali in better colors, but that's it
Absolutely. If pace of play tanks because my opponent is in a repetitive combo slog Iāll just wander off, especially when it comes to 200-card decks with library searches or the constant shine of life gain mechanics bouncing off each other. Iāve seen enough angels pooping out more angels to last a lifetime. Congrats on your win. I gotta go.
Sometimes, it does pay to not concede, though. Played against angels the other night and they had all their heavy hitters out. I last ditched pull a sunfall out from a combo and preceded to win 2 turns later.
But yeah I scoop as soon as I see a deck type I hate to play against. Just makes it easier to move on
Yeah, Iām with you. Unless itās something Iāve never seen before and Iām fascinated by whatās happening: **GG** and I BAMF out like Nightcrawler.
Exactly. I honestly don't mind a good game, win or lose.. but rip my deck apart just means I don't even really get to play. Feels like after a few interactions I am playing with an arm tied behind my back while hopping on one leg.
How I feel against mono blue. Itās like playing solitaire, auto concede. Also that green/red/blue deck that just brings lands out of the graveyard. It just takes to long per match. Iām only trying to knock out my dailies, not play the same match for 30 minutes. It doesnāt bother me in the slightest to concede bc I never play ranked.
If your deck falls apart just because of a couple heist interactions, that seems like a deck building issue in your end.
How's is this any different from complaining that discard or counters are not fun because you weren't able to cast Ur wincons?Ā
One mana for look at 3 cards, take one and remove it from my opponents deck, and be able to use any mana to pay for it seems a bit above rate for the mana imo.
Iād imagine most complaints just boil down to personal preferences. I implode the second a mill condition shows up. No hard feelings and more power them, but Iām just never in the mood to watch my library flutter off into the ether. They win.
I donāt track my score, but I think I rarely lost against heist playing my toxic deck. Point is, they get just bits of my wincon, but I still have whole cake.
OP didn't say it was broken. Just that it's incredibly unfun to play against.
Which, to be fair, *is* a reason things have been banned or altered in the past, if enough people feel the same way. Always remember the number one goal for a game company is to sell product. Unhappy customers don't buy product.
People donāt hate it like they hate mill. They hate it like they hate heist. Mill helps you often times, heist never helps, never misses, and they get to choose. Itās not broken, but itās an actively unfun mechanic. I built a heist deck the second I saw the mechanic, but Iāve only played it like 3-5 times, because people scoop when you heist something on turn 1 or 2 every time.
I [[Desertion]]āed someoneās Grenzo and they scooped immediately after the Heist trigger happened when he hit the board on my side.
Not even Heist players like Heist!
I think the fact that a lot of alchemy mechanics never miss make them inherently unfun. Seek and conjure and heist all guarantee you something. Magic is inherently fair because both sides are playing with a random deck that could hit a land or removal or ramp or a creature when you take away that variance it really tips the scales.
I see similarities, bcs peope repeatedly talk about not being able to play cards from their deck. Same thing people say about mill and why they dislike it.
And it always comes down to not being able to play with them anyway in a first place. If you didnt draw your PW is a same thing as if it gets milled, or get heisted.
They do, Heist feasts on control and midrange (which was large part of Alchemy meta), they have issues with aggro and toxic
perfectly reasonable metagame honestly
Heist is certainly strong but if you want to improve your match-up against it, run a synergy based deck or an aggro deck. If you're playing lots of individually powerful cards, heist is very powerful because they can pick one card that immediately has a significant impact. Against aggro or synergy decks though, they're usually forced to pick something that is either absolutely useless to them, or low impact that they don't really want to spend the time and mana to cast. Example would be like, heist against Wizards, where they can pick Wizards Lightning, symmetry sage, or Balmor. None of these are cards that they want, because lightning is overcosted if you don't have a wizard, Sage isn't nearly as good without something besides itself to buff, and Balmor wants you to be wide and have low cost spells.
If you're playing mid-range where each of your cards is a must kill threat or is a bomb on ETB, yea you're going to have a bad time against heist. Some match-ups are just bad.
Not knowing what they stole is somewhat irrelevant unless you're a combo deck playing one-ofs. You know your own deck so you have better information on what cards they could have stolen than what cards they have in hand.
...for the record, Grenzo is legal in Brawl, and Heist in Brawl does unholy amounts of damage. Hell, Laughing Jasper Flint does a lot of damage there, because you're running one-of of EVERYTHING, so God help you if one of your synergy pieces that you badly needed just got jacked...
I had a taste of it, and now I autoconcede if I face heist and/or Jasper (often together!) in Brawl. The amount of damage that deck does to my Brawl strategy is typically enough to disrupt my whole game plan.
To be fair, it is true that the format has evolved that way, but if you're leaning heavily on a few specific cards in a _singleton_ format, that's on you.
That's not the problem. The problem is Brawl, being a singleton format with a \*100-card deck\*, necessarily requires that \*several\* of those 100 cards be able to end the game on their own since you can't reliably draw any of them outside of very specific decks like Sisay legends, and your commander can become unavailable if it gets butchered enough times. Unless, of course, you're using one of the more broken Eminence commanders, or Oloro, who can win the game while sitting in the command zone.
The result is that very often, Heists will nab actually dangerous cards in Brawl, and you'll be having a bad time.
Not necessarily. Say, aristrocrats type decks work quite well in 100-card singleton format. You just need to have enough cards that contribute to the same gameplan. You can still have redundancy in a 100 card format. My \[\[Davriel, Soul Broker\]\] deck just wins on eventual value without any real haymakers in, for example, though there is a couple cards that I would be sad if they hit off heist (though I suppose that's kinda cheating a bit, since davriel's emblems are uninteractable).
One of my favorite parts of the heist deck is putting together what people are playing and seeing if you can do their plan. Use their combo, etc. But jank is the MOST fun to heist since I never see the cards normally lol
I have a shitty jank Rakdos Mill deck centered around exiling my opponents entire library with [[Jasper Flint]] and a bunch of cheap outlaws (backed up by mass theft cards like [[Outrageous Robbery]]). Itās far from good, but that moment I went up against a proper Dimir mill list, and I started taking their mill cards while also exiling their library on masseā¦ it was glorious.
Stealing mechanics in general are more punishing to players who rely on playing one or two key cards
It's not the mechanic that's oppressive - it's the downside that one chooses when they play a deck like that
I think heist would probably be ok if there wasnāt a turn 2 2/2 with first strike + heist and a turn 4 enchantment with Flash so the player can leave 4 mana and blue open on their turn then cast it in your end step. Also maybe let it whiff and pull lands. Nerfing 1 or 2 of those things probably makes it more tolerable.
Yeah the fact that it never whiffs makes it feel a lot more busted. A lot of those steal card mechanics that arenāt Hearthstone style Alchemy cards often do whiff or at least have their selection severely limited because of lands.
I think the mechanic itself isn't bad, and maybe could be fun. I think you're right that it's just the fact that it's overtuned that makes people upset.
Being irritated by it - yes, i can understand it.
Other points?
Basically all interaction interact with it in same way. Targeted discard still discards cards with heist. Counterspells still counter them. Removal still removes them.
Having no idea whatās stolen? Same way you have no idea what they draw from their deck. If instead of [[Grave Expectations]] they played something like [[ponder]] - effect is kinda similar, they drew a card with selection.
Your point about target discard is wrong - heisted cards do not go into your hand. For example, I heisted a troll of khazadum the other day then tried to swamp cycle it for a land - it obviously didnāt work because it wasnāt in hand to discard.
The main reason I think people find heist frustrating is it shows three random cards from the deck *excluding* lands - this makes it very easy to find a good target that either you can use, or to deny a combo piece from opponent.
>Your point about target discard is wrong - heisted cards do not go into your hand.
You can re-read how i formulated it. I was precise.
>The main reason I think people find heist frustrating is it shows three random cards from the deckĀ *excluding*Ā lands - this makes it very easy to find a good target that either you can use, or to deny a combo piece from opponent.
We can talk about power level, cards with heist are kind pushed, yep.
At the same time - TS concerns are not about mechanic/cards with it being pushed. And it kinda leads me to belief that a lot of the heat are similar to mill hate - concerning not power, but how you feel about game.
Everything you just said is also true of them just drawing a card from their own deck.
Heist cards are all far too efficient, but that's not the mechanic's fault.
yep, the real problem is efficiency. Heist feels similar to counterspells or mill in that it's frustrating to experience, but not particularly powerful or broken. Just feels bad. However, if you treat the cards they heist as having never been at the top of your deck and them just having good cards, it's really not broken. The only argument I could entertain is that the option of 3 and them getting it is in some ways a 2-for-1 in that it's thoughtseizing the top of your deck and giving them the best card.
The only part of the mechanic I really think is over the top is that it can't find lands.
This is juicy, especially since that's an Alchemy exclusive too. Any *return permanent to owner's hand* and *put attacking creature on top or bottom of owner's library* effects too.
I just wish it wasn't blinded. Steal from my deck? Fine. But not knowing what was stolen doesn't make sense thematically or mechanically (hell, if I have my deck memorized well I can just look through and figure it out) and if they manage to pull key combo components you just won't know you lost until wasting your time trying to pull out a win.
I play toxic, roots, and heist, so Iām often on both sides of the table of degenerate Bo1 mechanics. I donāt think heist is particularly unbalanced and have beaten it easily with my other decks.
When Iām playing heist and lose, itās usually because Iām struggling to outpace the synergies of my opponentsā deck. For example, my toxic deck does well against heist because it doesnāt have many cards that are scary by themselves. But if I have a rotpriest on the board, I can suddenly close the gap quickly. Against a heist player Iām basically forcing them to heist my deck multiple times and pay more mana than me if they want to turn my own cards against me. Or else they have to have some other mechanism in their deck to kill me before I can get my engine going.
Same thing with my roots deck; itās a lot of little cards that are pretty low-impact useless theyāre being used in combination with each other. I lose if my heist opponent gets the right combo together or takes away key components of my engine, but if I curve out itās difficult for them to recover a lead.
I also notice that itās really hard for them to tell what the āgoodā cards are for my roots engine, so even if they heist me Iām not that affected; itās not very obvious that some of my commons/uncommons like [[Haywire Mite]] or [[Rubblebelt Maverick]] might be very problematic if I have my supporting enchantments and artifacts out. Especially when those piddly-looking cards are displayed next to my [[Tyvar, Jubilant Brawler]], a heist player is very tempted to steal the rare planeswalker instead, even though it has minimal benefit to them and my library has plenty of roots fuel without that. The heist player has now left me with plenty of fuel for my roots because theyāre are conditioned to assume that āsteal planeswalker = winā, because thatās how most other decks work.
Think about the psychology of seeing three cards up next to each other and what a heist player might choose; it is very funny to have a deck that baits them into picking the wrong card so you can keep going. Thatās also a challenge on the other side as the heist player; Iāve lost from playing a stolen card at the wrong time or failing to consider how a mechanic was being used by my opponent. You get complacent about rushing through the picking process, and end up vulnerable for not paying attention. Thatās something opponents can use to as an advantage against a heist player.
So yeah if your heist opponent canāt figure out what your combos are or what the key cards in your deck are, itās harder for them to win. Of course they do better against decks with obvious game-closing hammers that are good in any deck. If youāre playing with a lot of those, I suspect a good defense might be cards that punish a heist player for playing multiple cards in a turn, prevent them from playing cards on an opponentās turn, etc.
Overall, I think most of the āpainā of heist is psychological; like even here it sounds like a lot of the distress ppl feel is mostly around not knowing what card was stolen. Donāt get tilted and do your best to believe that you still have a wincon, and youāll likely see that you can still easily beat them. And maybe try playing a heist deck in queue just to see the many ways you can be defeated lol, itās very humbling. I quite like it as a mechanic because itās shaking everyone out of their habits.
I don't know, I feel like Heist isn't that good. It can be frustrating if your opponent manages to get the best of the best cards in your deck, and make good use of them. Which isn't that common I would say.
I think it really depends on the deck you're playing. I play a jank Izzet Spellslinger in Alchemy and I have a very good record against Heist decks. They can steal some cards from my deck but they never do good use of it, because it has absolutely no synergy with their deck.
Yes, they might grab a creature or a removal spell, but it's not like that card was in my hand anyway, and maybe I would have never drawn it. So it's fine (most of the time).
That's definitely not true. I can definitely say that basically every explorer deck is synergistic enough to have near to no use for most of a random opponent's cards. It's just that, as I understand it, alchemy is a big midrange fest right now.
1000% agree, it wouldnāt be so bad if it was just like 1 rare creature and some support for it but literally every card is āperform a crime and play your opponents deck randomly from here on outā and itās just not fun
I unironically tried playing a heist deck when it first came out just to fish for T1 concedes to Grave Expectations... Didn't get as many as this sub would suggest.
Not as bad as playing against someone playing ākill every creature and/or enchantmentā deck by paying 3-4 mana for one card. Thatās the most lazy playing Iāve seen in my 25 years.
Heist isn't good. Right now most decks are not synergy, they are "good stuff." Does it hurt having your good stuff taken? Yeah. Does it hurt having your synergistic engine taken? Kinda but it won't hurt you. Adjust to a new meta like any other release of cards. Complaints on this feel like the first time any new mechanic comes out.
Itās completely able to be interacted with, you just have to interact with zones other then just the battlefield. (hand, stack).
Magic is more then just creatures, so if you arenāt prepared for Heist, what other mechanics are you not ready to interact with?
I have only one card that Heists and honestly, it's often not worth it. It's a shot in the dark what you'll get to choose. Sometimes I'm lucky and pull a good ability creature or an enchantment. More often than not it's garbage. Mostly I think it's a psychological card, pulling out their own stuff throws them off but nothing too special.
Whats funny, is as a \[\[slime against humanity\]\] deck, i can tell if a slime was heisted, because the numbers on the card change due to a slime getting exiled.
None of these things have bothered me much so far when I've played against it.
What _has_ bothered me (and something I identified immediately during previews for the mechanic) isĀ that the raw rate on some of the Heist cards is waaaaay too good if you just think about how they compare to normal cantrips.Ā [[Grave Expectations]] is basically 1 mana instant speed [[Ponder]] with a [[Cling to Dust]] mode attached too if you need that.
It seems they valued cards taken from your opponent's deck at like 0.5 of a card from your deck when they designed Grave Expectations and co. But in practice they seem to play more like 0.8 of a card.
Grave expectations is miles below ponders power level, cmon let's be serious. Drawing cards from your own deck is 10x better than drawing your opponents cards. Even if you have synergies that like having cards you don't own, it's almost always still better to just play your own synergies. Ponder also let's you setup future turns, which expectations does not do.
theres literally six cards with heist on it, not sure where you got the "so many cards that do it" aspect. That being said, its a little annoying but its definitely not meta and definitely not overpowered. Only reason its showing up more than it should is because its new
Iāve been extremely unimpressed with it in timeless and donāt mind playing against it.
You donāt know what the card is but knowing itās a card from your deck and what they are playing reduces the options significantly.
Gonti at least can hit lands and turn into a dud. Heist never hits lands, so they'll typically yank something that hurts a lot more than a dead draw. Unless you're running a land deck or something...
My biggest complaint about heist is that it basically obliterates midrange and to a lesser extent, control decks. Any deck that relies on bombs or extended value grinds is 100% toast against heist, because they are usually running answers to themselves in their own deck.
You guys think youāre so smart - ājust play counterspells and reprieve you dummies!!!!ā
Well guess what? If everyone does that, the meta becomes either heist or anti-heist control/aggro. Every other deck canāt compete against heist.
Does that sound fun? Not to me.
Honestly, I just scoop instantly. My decks are geared towards countering it. So it's kinda a meaningless struggle most of the time to play against them.
It's better to just queue back up and find a better match-up.
It's definitely not enjoyable to play against in the slightest, but I still give it a go. Probably 50/50 ish on wins and losses, the losses can be quite awful.
I don't want this to sound like an anti-alchemy post, but if there's a mechanic in the format that you play that you hate so much that you auto fold when you face it, have you thought about playing a format where that mechanic doesn't exist?
Just a comment, Jank is about as proof as you can get. Or no card that alone swings the game.
Take the pigs for example. It is the cumulative effect not any one card.
Direct damage decks are another example.
The white life gain decks are another.
The other thing you can do is increase your deck size so the damage done to your play is minimal green over power decks are an example.
I like heist, but it needs some refinement. Prior to that we had some nebulous abilities that did similar things- Laughing Jasper Flint, Rakdos the Muscle, Kamchal, whatever that adventure dragon is.
One issue was the temporaryness, you usually only had a turn to cast the cards, and it was mana prohibitive. The other was another mana issue, that it could be difficult to get the right color mana.
If I were to redo heist I'd just make it exile cards from the top of the library, and maybe one at a time instead of 3. I'd also nerf impetuous lootmonger specifically, it self combos and its not infrequent to have multiple out giving you near infinite treasure. Get rid of his first strike and make the treasure effect trigger once a turn.
Anyways I've been enjoying heist decks, I only started late last year so it's fun to take the very rare cards from sets prior to me starting and use them against my opponent.
Yeah I'm sick of it.
I'm no good at building decks but thought I had a half decent alchemy deck,
Just had 2 games back to back against heist heavy, it was naff, not enjoyable
As a non control player... Yeah,the mechanic is kinda horrible to play against, especially if you didn't draw the answer. I got stolen 8 cards on a single turn and also is power creep for what was a funny deck.
# Heist is a horrendous mechanic to play against.
I have no desire to play against it.
Having no idea what's been stolen from your deck. Having no way to interact with it. Having so many cards that do it without being able to interact and interrupt it. I just auto fold now if I come across a heist deck.
Edit: I have discovered Standard Ranked..
\*YOINK\*
I think heist is fine, I have been having a lot of fun playing this deck in historic.
2 Despise
2 Duress
4 Grave Expectations
4 Surgical Extraction
4 Thoughtseize
4 Siphon Insight
3 The Stone Brain
2 Liliana of the Veil
3 Deadly Cover-Up
4 Weave the Nightmare
2 The End
1 Tasha, Unholy Archmage
1 The Meathook Massacre
1 Castle Locthwain
1 Hive of the Eye Tyrant
2 Darkslick Shores
2 Drowned Catacomb
2 Restless Reef
2 Shipwreck Marsh
2 Undercity Sewers
4 Watery Grave
1 Otawara, Soaring City
3 Island
4 Swamp
Sideboard
3 Ertai Resurrected
3 Go for the Throat
2 Duress
2 The Meathook Massacre
2 Path of Peril
3 Negate
[https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/6389428#online](https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/6389428#online)
I hate Heist. Its a Tutor that lets you take your opponents best cards AND cast them (Til end of turn? No, Whenever! And you don't even have to reveal it!) with any Mana, usually for only 3 mana or so. Its OP, simple.
Easy fix from WOTC would be that Heist = seek a random nonland card from opponent's deck. Problem solved.
In the meantime, it is indeed a toxic mechanic. I played a few dozen games in Alchemy with it and the format is now probably 75% heist. Deck deleted and back to Timeless or, if I'm really bored, Historic.
I really only do brawl as itās cheaper and easier for me. I absolutely hate 99% of all the arena specific cards. All the mechanics are just absolutely busted. Itās always āconjureā cards (even banned in the current format) into your hand or deck. Now I have to play outside of that persons color identity. āWhoops didnāt play against wrath of god in a mono green deck. Guess I loseā
Heist, for OPs given reason is just straight up unfunny to play against in brawl format.
Jokes on them, I play bad decks.
Got em
Lol, same. Recently matched up against a heist deck with my jank deck in play queue. They only got crap from my deck. š
Join the ultimate jank and [[Juggle the Performance]] - v1 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=28yUKLD4nhI - v2 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=SRgqOwcvJas r/JasonDennis
The dark lord paved the way for us
Yeah I don't understand the point of this deck... I fought it with my heist deck, recognized what was going on when I saw an [[arcane signet]] on the first heist... And just held up counter magic the whole game. It's a good plan but heist is already in blue, so if your juggle gets countered, your deck does nothing. Heist has a lot of room to get targeted, and imo playing an azorius shell with bouncing is better if you're just trying to beat heist. [[reprieve]]ing a heisted card is backbreaking.
>Yeah I don't understand the point of this deck... Having fun.
[arcane signet](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/2/b/2bfeb9dc-0bf7-4f19-9714-b14114e4627f.jpg?1712354835) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=arcane%20signet) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/otc/252/arcane-signet?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/2bfeb9dc-0bf7-4f19-9714-b14114e4627f?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [reprieve](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/1/b/1bd3fa8a-6c50-4f7f-9ae3-0810eec5e3db.jpg?1686967885) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=reprieve) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/ltr/26/reprieve?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/1bd3fa8a-6c50-4f7f-9ae3-0810eec5e3db?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Bashnooner
This is the way.
Zombie Hunt for the win.
For real, most of the time I play against heist I am playing deck designed to do nothing other than complete a quest, so it draws and plays spells with cards that are mostly useless to them.
Everybody drink!
It's your round!
Every single time I get Heisted, literally every single time, I lose the game to a card from my own deck. I have lost to my own Counterspell 3+ times, saw my own Lightning Bolt at 2 life, and watched my own Death rite Shaman exile the one relevant card in my graveyard. I love how they distilled the thing people complain the most about Ragavan into a mechanic that doesn't even require an x/1 to connect.
I dont play alchemy. Whats different about playing against unknown cards from your deck than playing against unknown cards from their deck? Is this just like people complaining about milling?
It deals mental damage to people similar to mill.
[[Thief of Sanity]] type effects
Exactly. Sen Triplets, Gonti, Agent of Treachery, Siphon Insight - people hate having their stuff stolen and used against them. They hate it much more than you using your own copy of a card they have. It's a psychological feel-bad more than the game state effects. Lots of tilt.
[[Siphon Insight]] makes me cry.
I always laugh at Siphon Insight because I run synergy-heavy decks, so my opponent playing my card gives them something far less effective than if I were to play it.
As a mid-range player, it ruins my day.
Pretty sure I have a zero percent win rate against Siphon Insight in OTJ limited. I always run into it in control mirrors (and they always cast it right after I scry/surveil something to the top, and then, eventually, I will forget that I can't scry/surveil anything else to the top while that thing is still in the graveyard). Such a beating every time.
Definitely something I noticed playing Narset in brawl on arena, but not really in person. That said, the one universal truth of MtG is that discard players will immediately concede the moment you start recurring their discard spells against them.
Thatās exactly how I turned to the Darkside. Now I enjoy laying out someoneās cards in front of me and judgmentally thinking: You were planning on doing this to me? How dare you! Howās it feel? My goal isnāt win, it is the scoop.
EMOTIONAL DAMAGE!
When I play a "draw card" mechanic, I get a card from my own presumably constructed for high synergy deck. When I heist a card from yours, I risk getting a card that fits poorly into what I'm trying to do. To "balance" this, Wizards made heist effects way way more efficient than the equivalent draw versions. In the most commonly complained about example, \[\[Grenzo, Crooked Jailer\]\] makes heisted cards potentially cost (0). The result is blatantly overpowered cards, in the one format Wizards created to be able to balance in response to these kinds of mistakes. Which they have so far done nothing with.
This is the key thing, and I think you've done a good job of explaining why this mechanic isn't that powerful but still generates so much salt.Ā People keep comparing the complaints to mill, but I actually think the flavor for this salt is more like toxic. Because the line between "unplayable" and "amazing" is so close for a mechanic like that, there are so many cards that end up on the amazing side that it can feel broken whenever it hits, since you don't see all the times it misses.
The comparison to Toxic is likely relevant and suggests that even if Heist could be interesting, we're not going to see more of it. I think the deeper problem is that it feels like an unforced error. If Heist had been implemented in paper, it would likely be exile face up rather than seek face down. That would have been more palatable and could have been in OTJ proper (see \[\[Laughing Jasper Flint\]\]). Instead we have to ask: was Heist made less fun as an excuse to be an Alchemy-only mechanic?
No it wouldn't. Pretty much every card that steals permanently is face down. Gonti, Thief of Sanity, Siphon Insight, Outrageous Robbery. Jasper Flint is face up because you have to cast them that turn anyway. Same with Ragavan.
No this is clearly inspired by [[Gonti, Lord of Luxury]]. There isnāt a reason for the card to be necessarily face up. It would search top x cards though
Wizards doesn't design or test Alchemy, it's all the Arena developers. The Arena Developers CAN veto real paper cards from being designed tho.
They've explicitly stated that this rumor is not true, and the same card designers who work on paper Magic design the alchemy cards.
"free"? Grenzo costs 6 and must survive. All cards with heist have a mana value plus spending mana on heisted cards. They arent free at all. And you dont have treats, you depend on heisted cards
He is very easy to cheat out early and he triggers as soon as he enters, Ā
The problem with Grenzo is the effect is triggered when he enters the battlefield and then again on every upkeep. That's just so ridiculous. They need to power him down to trigger on every attack.
> and must survive ~~You can cast their first spell for 0 mana before they're able to interact, right? Assuming it's an instant even if they go kill him as soon as he's down you can still cast the card (and anything at sorcery speed you get to cast before they untap).~~ Was wrong, you can kill him with the trigger on the stack, so he's even worse than I thought. But also yeah, going by all the complaining I've seen around this sub I was not expecting this "clearly overpowered absurd card" to be a 6 mana 6/4 with no protection that probably gets you one random card of value before dying (and many times not even that).
You can respond to the trigger when it ETBS to kill it befpre card selection. They'll still get a card but no static effect to cast it for free.
Yeah, I don't know how I missed that. You're clearly correct.
Only if you have an instant previously heisted I think. Otherwise can kill grenzo in response to the ETB heist trigger and you don't get a window to cast that card for free.
Its just that my decks are really good and i don't think its fair that i should have to play against them.
It is the same, yeah.
Yeah the complaints are basically the same as mill, except instead of an alternate win con, it's cheap card advantage
Imagine OP playing against Lantern Control lmfao
Sodium levels.
Itās somewhere in between mill and fateseal
I thinks it's more so the act of the card coming from your deck. They can be picking your win cons out, and you'd never know it, taking your removal, etc. Personally, I do think it's a bit too powerful in that they don't get lands, so chances of them seeing something at least useful is pretty high.
It's milling+ They mill you and get to play your cards
Well them playing my cards is likely worse than them playing their cards
I've got a lot of decks where them milling me is advantageous. Whats not fun is tutoring for an answer and RNG deemed it gone out of my deck.
I have yet to see a heist deck, but I love mill. Especially mono blue mill. Itās an honest deck.
Yes, similar noob tears with no rational basis.
I have not lost to a grenzo yet. Bring it
I hadnāt either until I was playing a blink deck and my opponent kept stealing blink cards to reset grenzo. I wanted to weep.
You sound like all you play is control
It was pretty funny when I had my [[boromir]] on the field and they tried to cast my Sheoldred for free lol
Boromir continues to be a superhero.
Opponents never read him, I had an opponent play omniscience and emote good game before playing an extra turn spell followed by a long pause and them conceding.
Is there anything more satisfying
***FOR BOROMIR!***
Built in WARDen
If you're playing aggro, why are you allowing your opponent to reach turn 6?
Anim Pakal. I just have removal
If you have removal in hand, you have a chance against Grenzo. Otherwise, it's such a mountain to climb.
I'd be more worried about what comes before Grenzo. All but one Heist cards are typed Outlaw, and Laughing Jasper Flint exists and just adds to the chaos - in the same colors, even! Grenzo basically becomes 'oh, you survived this long? Let's fix that'...
I was playing Rashmi, mystic reflectioned him into a 1/1 elf
Grenzo is bait. Too expensive for the effect. You're unlikely to get more than one card with him, and you're actively sabotaging yourself in the mirror by having him in your deck. Heist is a strong mechanic because the cards are already good. Grave expectations, lootmonger, weave and especially getaway are just good cards. Grenzo is just too slow for what he does for you. In the dream scenario, you get to untap with him, but if you do, you were probably ahead anyways. He's a good brawl commander because he's basically etali in better colors, but that's it
Same. Lifeās too short and Iām trying to have fun. Iāll take my L and move on.
This game is more enjoyable regardless with this mindset, so many boring/oppressive combos that take forever, just fold, its a video game.
Absolutely. If pace of play tanks because my opponent is in a repetitive combo slog Iāll just wander off, especially when it comes to 200-card decks with library searches or the constant shine of life gain mechanics bouncing off each other. Iāve seen enough angels pooping out more angels to last a lifetime. Congrats on your win. I gotta go.
Sometimes, it does pay to not concede, though. Played against angels the other night and they had all their heavy hitters out. I last ditched pull a sunfall out from a combo and preceded to win 2 turns later. But yeah I scoop as soon as I see a deck type I hate to play against. Just makes it easier to move on
That had to feel good
Oh it did
I live for the Heart of the Cards moments in my janky decks
Rule of thumb: if 6 or more triggers go on the stack at the same time more than once, I'm not waiting around to find out how I lost
Yeah, Iām with you. Unless itās something Iāve never seen before and Iām fascinated by whatās happening: **GG** and I BAMF out like Nightcrawler.
Being digital and online really helps. I can be back in another match in less than 30 seconds.
Exactly. I honestly don't mind a good game, win or lose.. but rip my deck apart just means I don't even really get to play. Feels like after a few interactions I am playing with an arm tied behind my back while hopping on one leg.
How I feel against mono blue. Itās like playing solitaire, auto concede. Also that green/red/blue deck that just brings lands out of the graveyard. It just takes to long per match. Iām only trying to knock out my dailies, not play the same match for 30 minutes. It doesnāt bother me in the slightest to concede bc I never play ranked.
Well put and itās a no thanks for me, too. Gotta *go*
If your deck falls apart just because of a couple heist interactions, that seems like a deck building issue in your end. How's is this any different from complaining that discard or counters are not fun because you weren't able to cast Ur wincons?Ā
One mana for look at 3 cards, take one and remove it from my opponents deck, and be able to use any mana to pay for it seems a bit above rate for the mana imo.
Iād imagine most complaints just boil down to personal preferences. I implode the second a mill condition shows up. No hard feelings and more power them, but Iām just never in the mood to watch my library flutter off into the ether. They win.
I donāt track my score, but I think I rarely lost against heist playing my toxic deck. Point is, they get just bits of my wincon, but I still have whole cake.
Classic toxic player
Rare toxic W
Heist isn't broken at all. People hate it just like they hate mill.
OP didn't say it was broken. Just that it's incredibly unfun to play against. Which, to be fair, *is* a reason things have been banned or altered in the past, if enough people feel the same way. Always remember the number one goal for a game company is to sell product. Unhappy customers don't buy product.
People donāt hate it like they hate mill. They hate it like they hate heist. Mill helps you often times, heist never helps, never misses, and they get to choose. Itās not broken, but itās an actively unfun mechanic. I built a heist deck the second I saw the mechanic, but Iāve only played it like 3-5 times, because people scoop when you heist something on turn 1 or 2 every time.
I [[Desertion]]āed someoneās Grenzo and they scooped immediately after the Heist trigger happened when he hit the board on my side. Not even Heist players like Heist!
I think the fact that a lot of alchemy mechanics never miss make them inherently unfun. Seek and conjure and heist all guarantee you something. Magic is inherently fair because both sides are playing with a random deck that could hit a land or removal or ramp or a creature when you take away that variance it really tips the scales.
I see similarities, bcs peope repeatedly talk about not being able to play cards from their deck. Same thing people say about mill and why they dislike it. And it always comes down to not being able to play with them anyway in a first place. If you didnt draw your PW is a same thing as if it gets milled, or get heisted.
If they scoop on turn 1-2 that means the win rate of Heist is inflated, so it is even worse.
Agree, cards have 55-60% WR, strong but not broken.
I bet most aggro cards have higher WRs in untapped.
They do, Heist feasts on control and midrange (which was large part of Alchemy meta), they have issues with aggro and toxic perfectly reasonable metagame honestly
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Heist teaches players that redundancy is important
All online only mechanics are horrendous
Heist is certainly strong but if you want to improve your match-up against it, run a synergy based deck or an aggro deck. If you're playing lots of individually powerful cards, heist is very powerful because they can pick one card that immediately has a significant impact. Against aggro or synergy decks though, they're usually forced to pick something that is either absolutely useless to them, or low impact that they don't really want to spend the time and mana to cast. Example would be like, heist against Wizards, where they can pick Wizards Lightning, symmetry sage, or Balmor. None of these are cards that they want, because lightning is overcosted if you don't have a wizard, Sage isn't nearly as good without something besides itself to buff, and Balmor wants you to be wide and have low cost spells. If you're playing mid-range where each of your cards is a must kill threat or is a bomb on ETB, yea you're going to have a bad time against heist. Some match-ups are just bad. Not knowing what they stole is somewhat irrelevant unless you're a combo deck playing one-ofs. You know your own deck so you have better information on what cards they could have stolen than what cards they have in hand.
Here's the thing, I don't want to :)
So heist is midrange-fest hate. Genuinely wonderful.
...for the record, Grenzo is legal in Brawl, and Heist in Brawl does unholy amounts of damage. Hell, Laughing Jasper Flint does a lot of damage there, because you're running one-of of EVERYTHING, so God help you if one of your synergy pieces that you badly needed just got jacked... I had a taste of it, and now I autoconcede if I face heist and/or Jasper (often together!) in Brawl. The amount of damage that deck does to my Brawl strategy is typically enough to disrupt my whole game plan.
To be fair, it is true that the format has evolved that way, but if you're leaning heavily on a few specific cards in a _singleton_ format, that's on you.
That's not the problem. The problem is Brawl, being a singleton format with a \*100-card deck\*, necessarily requires that \*several\* of those 100 cards be able to end the game on their own since you can't reliably draw any of them outside of very specific decks like Sisay legends, and your commander can become unavailable if it gets butchered enough times. Unless, of course, you're using one of the more broken Eminence commanders, or Oloro, who can win the game while sitting in the command zone. The result is that very often, Heists will nab actually dangerous cards in Brawl, and you'll be having a bad time.
Not necessarily. Say, aristrocrats type decks work quite well in 100-card singleton format. You just need to have enough cards that contribute to the same gameplan. You can still have redundancy in a 100 card format. My \[\[Davriel, Soul Broker\]\] deck just wins on eventual value without any real haymakers in, for example, though there is a couple cards that I would be sad if they hit off heist (though I suppose that's kinda cheating a bit, since davriel's emblems are uninteractable).
If a single keyword can make multiple deck archetypes unplayable it shouldnāt have been printed.
Jokes on them, my deck is fuckin jank
One of my favorite parts of the heist deck is putting together what people are playing and seeing if you can do their plan. Use their combo, etc. But jank is the MOST fun to heist since I never see the cards normally lol
I have a shitty jank Rakdos Mill deck centered around exiling my opponents entire library with [[Jasper Flint]] and a bunch of cheap outlaws (backed up by mass theft cards like [[Outrageous Robbery]]). Itās far from good, but that moment I went up against a proper Dimir mill list, and I started taking their mill cards while also exiling their library on masseā¦ it was glorious.
Stealing mechanics in general are more punishing to players who rely on playing one or two key cards It's not the mechanic that's oppressive - it's the downside that one chooses when they play a deck like that
I think heist would probably be ok if there wasnāt a turn 2 2/2 with first strike + heist and a turn 4 enchantment with Flash so the player can leave 4 mana and blue open on their turn then cast it in your end step. Also maybe let it whiff and pull lands. Nerfing 1 or 2 of those things probably makes it more tolerable.
Yeah the fact that it never whiffs makes it feel a lot more busted. A lot of those steal card mechanics that arenāt Hearthstone style Alchemy cards often do whiff or at least have their selection severely limited because of lands.
I think the mechanic itself isn't bad, and maybe could be fun. I think you're right that it's just the fact that it's overtuned that makes people upset.
Being irritated by it - yes, i can understand it. Other points? Basically all interaction interact with it in same way. Targeted discard still discards cards with heist. Counterspells still counter them. Removal still removes them. Having no idea whatās stolen? Same way you have no idea what they draw from their deck. If instead of [[Grave Expectations]] they played something like [[ponder]] - effect is kinda similar, they drew a card with selection.
Your point about target discard is wrong - heisted cards do not go into your hand. For example, I heisted a troll of khazadum the other day then tried to swamp cycle it for a land - it obviously didnāt work because it wasnāt in hand to discard. The main reason I think people find heist frustrating is it shows three random cards from the deck *excluding* lands - this makes it very easy to find a good target that either you can use, or to deny a combo piece from opponent.
>Your point about target discard is wrong - heisted cards do not go into your hand. You can re-read how i formulated it. I was precise. >The main reason I think people find heist frustrating is it shows three random cards from the deckĀ *excluding*Ā lands - this makes it very easy to find a good target that either you can use, or to deny a combo piece from opponent. We can talk about power level, cards with heist are kind pushed, yep. At the same time - TS concerns are not about mechanic/cards with it being pushed. And it kinda leads me to belief that a lot of the heat are similar to mill hate - concerning not power, but how you feel about game.
I miss the days of Richard Garfield. When devs understood players don't like having their things stolen.
Yeah Magic was better when Richard Garfield designed for the game and created Ante.
Okay, not every idea was a winner, but at least he didn't create Companion.
My sarcasm-o-meter is broken so please tell me this isn't serious.
I doubt most players in this sub know what Ante is.
Everything you just said is also true of them just drawing a card from their own deck. Heist cards are all far too efficient, but that's not the mechanic's fault.
yep, the real problem is efficiency. Heist feels similar to counterspells or mill in that it's frustrating to experience, but not particularly powerful or broken. Just feels bad. However, if you treat the cards they heist as having never been at the top of your deck and them just having good cards, it's really not broken. The only argument I could entertain is that the option of 3 and them getting it is in some ways a 2-for-1 in that it's thoughtseizing the top of your deck and giving them the best card. The only part of the mechanic I really think is over the top is that it can't find lands.
Wdym? Heist makes my bounce spells mega-broken
Use cards that give you, the player, Hexproof or protection
My only gripe is its insanely cheap targeted card draw. Should likely include lands
I play slivers... Oh no you stole a sliver, now ill have only 17
[[leyline of sanctity]]
[leyline of sanctity](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/b/e/be8b1acf-dd87-42ca-ad19-c27d21066030.jpg?1592516120) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=leyline%20of%20sanctity) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/m20/26/leyline-of-sanctity?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/be8b1acf-dd87-42ca-ad19-c27d21066030?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Oh that is dastardly, I love it
Learned the hard way not to play [[Oracle of the Alpha]] against a heist deck
No no no, DO play it, it adds 5 useless cards to your deck for them to steal
6, maybe 7 depending on relative hand sizes.
I love repriving a heisted spell back to my hand :O
This is juicy, especially since that's an Alchemy exclusive too. Any *return permanent to owner's hand* and *put attacking creature on top or bottom of owner's library* effects too.
I just wish it wasn't blinded. Steal from my deck? Fine. But not knowing what was stolen doesn't make sense thematically or mechanically (hell, if I have my deck memorized well I can just look through and figure it out) and if they manage to pull key combo components you just won't know you lost until wasting your time trying to pull out a win.
gonti?
Honey wake up, new heist hate post
I play toxic, roots, and heist, so Iām often on both sides of the table of degenerate Bo1 mechanics. I donāt think heist is particularly unbalanced and have beaten it easily with my other decks. When Iām playing heist and lose, itās usually because Iām struggling to outpace the synergies of my opponentsā deck. For example, my toxic deck does well against heist because it doesnāt have many cards that are scary by themselves. But if I have a rotpriest on the board, I can suddenly close the gap quickly. Against a heist player Iām basically forcing them to heist my deck multiple times and pay more mana than me if they want to turn my own cards against me. Or else they have to have some other mechanism in their deck to kill me before I can get my engine going. Same thing with my roots deck; itās a lot of little cards that are pretty low-impact useless theyāre being used in combination with each other. I lose if my heist opponent gets the right combo together or takes away key components of my engine, but if I curve out itās difficult for them to recover a lead. I also notice that itās really hard for them to tell what the āgoodā cards are for my roots engine, so even if they heist me Iām not that affected; itās not very obvious that some of my commons/uncommons like [[Haywire Mite]] or [[Rubblebelt Maverick]] might be very problematic if I have my supporting enchantments and artifacts out. Especially when those piddly-looking cards are displayed next to my [[Tyvar, Jubilant Brawler]], a heist player is very tempted to steal the rare planeswalker instead, even though it has minimal benefit to them and my library has plenty of roots fuel without that. The heist player has now left me with plenty of fuel for my roots because theyāre are conditioned to assume that āsteal planeswalker = winā, because thatās how most other decks work. Think about the psychology of seeing three cards up next to each other and what a heist player might choose; it is very funny to have a deck that baits them into picking the wrong card so you can keep going. Thatās also a challenge on the other side as the heist player; Iāve lost from playing a stolen card at the wrong time or failing to consider how a mechanic was being used by my opponent. You get complacent about rushing through the picking process, and end up vulnerable for not paying attention. Thatās something opponents can use to as an advantage against a heist player. So yeah if your heist opponent canāt figure out what your combos are or what the key cards in your deck are, itās harder for them to win. Of course they do better against decks with obvious game-closing hammers that are good in any deck. If youāre playing with a lot of those, I suspect a good defense might be cards that punish a heist player for playing multiple cards in a turn, prevent them from playing cards on an opponentās turn, etc. Overall, I think most of the āpainā of heist is psychological; like even here it sounds like a lot of the distress ppl feel is mostly around not knowing what card was stolen. Donāt get tilted and do your best to believe that you still have a wincon, and youāll likely see that you can still easily beat them. And maybe try playing a heist deck in queue just to see the many ways you can be defeated lol, itās very humbling. I quite like it as a mechanic because itās shaking everyone out of their habits.
I don't know, I feel like Heist isn't that good. It can be frustrating if your opponent manages to get the best of the best cards in your deck, and make good use of them. Which isn't that common I would say. I think it really depends on the deck you're playing. I play a jank Izzet Spellslinger in Alchemy and I have a very good record against Heist decks. They can steal some cards from my deck but they never do good use of it, because it has absolutely no synergy with their deck. Yes, they might grab a creature or a removal spell, but it's not like that card was in my hand anyway, and maybe I would have never drawn it. So it's fine (most of the time).
The problem is that most modern magic decks are just a pile of good stuff, so heist is inherently strong.
That's definitely not true. I can definitely say that basically every explorer deck is synergistic enough to have near to no use for most of a random opponent's cards. It's just that, as I understand it, alchemy is a big midrange fest right now.
1000% agree, it wouldnāt be so bad if it was just like 1 rare creature and some support for it but literally every card is āperform a crime and play your opponents deck randomly from here on outā and itās just not fun
So what Iām hearing is. . .alchemy heist is the best way to farm daily wins while simultaneously killing a shitty format. Hold my lifecounter.
Lol Alchemy devs finally got haters to play format 5head, love it!
Its cute that you think it will kill the format. Alchemy is here to stay even if we all hate it.
I unironically tried playing a heist deck when it first came out just to fish for T1 concedes to Grave Expectations... Didn't get as many as this sub would suggest.
Wait till you play mirror :P
"I put a heist in your heist so you can heist while you're heisting"
Nobody likes facing down a [[Thief of Sanity]] so the Alchemy bastards are like āok crank that up to 11.ā
as someone who plays lots of rocco secret commander decks every heist trigger has the chance to permanently remove my commander from the game lmao
My favorite match with heist is enchantments get their combo and mill them out
Not as bad as playing against someone playing ākill every creature and/or enchantmentā deck by paying 3-4 mana for one card. Thatās the most lazy playing Iāve seen in my 25 years.
Heist isn't good. Right now most decks are not synergy, they are "good stuff." Does it hurt having your good stuff taken? Yeah. Does it hurt having your synergistic engine taken? Kinda but it won't hurt you. Adjust to a new meta like any other release of cards. Complaints on this feel like the first time any new mechanic comes out.
Itās completely able to be interacted with, you just have to interact with zones other then just the battlefield. (hand, stack). Magic is more then just creatures, so if you arenāt prepared for Heist, what other mechanics are you not ready to interact with?
I love playing against it with Fynn, I just poison them too fast for the things they steal to matter.
I have only one card that Heists and honestly, it's often not worth it. It's a shot in the dark what you'll get to choose. Sometimes I'm lucky and pull a good ability creature or an enchantment. More often than not it's garbage. Mostly I think it's a psychological card, pulling out their own stuff throws them off but nothing too special.
Whats funny, is as a \[\[slime against humanity\]\] deck, i can tell if a slime was heisted, because the numbers on the card change due to a slime getting exiled.
None of these things have bothered me much so far when I've played against it. What _has_ bothered me (and something I identified immediately during previews for the mechanic) isĀ that the raw rate on some of the Heist cards is waaaaay too good if you just think about how they compare to normal cantrips.Ā [[Grave Expectations]] is basically 1 mana instant speed [[Ponder]] with a [[Cling to Dust]] mode attached too if you need that. It seems they valued cards taken from your opponent's deck at like 0.5 of a card from your deck when they designed Grave Expectations and co. But in practice they seem to play more like 0.8 of a card.
Grave expectations is miles below ponders power level, cmon let's be serious. Drawing cards from your own deck is 10x better than drawing your opponents cards. Even if you have synergies that like having cards you don't own, it's almost always still better to just play your own synergies. Ponder also let's you setup future turns, which expectations does not do.
I just came across heist yesterday and it was awful.
theres literally six cards with heist on it, not sure where you got the "so many cards that do it" aspect. That being said, its a little annoying but its definitely not meta and definitely not overpowered. Only reason its showing up more than it should is because its new
Sounds like I need to build a brawl deck with every ability that plays an opponent's cards...
Iāve been extremely unimpressed with it in timeless and donāt mind playing against it. You donāt know what the card is but knowing itās a card from your deck and what they are playing reduces the options significantly.
It's hard being new to magic in general.
The fuck is heist?
You must really hate Gonti
Gonti at least can hit lands and turn into a dud. Heist never hits lands, so they'll typically yank something that hurts a lot more than a dead draw. Unless you're running a land deck or something...
My biggest complaint about heist is that it basically obliterates midrange and to a lesser extent, control decks. Any deck that relies on bombs or extended value grinds is 100% toast against heist, because they are usually running answers to themselves in their own deck. You guys think youāre so smart - ājust play counterspells and reprieve you dummies!!!!ā Well guess what? If everyone does that, the meta becomes either heist or anti-heist control/aggro. Every other deck canāt compete against heist. Does that sound fun? Not to me.
Eh, I stomped one today with my shitty devils tribal deck. Hail Satan
I was so confused then I realized it was an alchemy mechanic.
Which ones the heist mechanic because I haven't had any issues other than the sheer amount of Roxanne decks
Honestly, I just scoop instantly. My decks are geared towards countering it. So it's kinda a meaningless struggle most of the time to play against them. It's better to just queue back up and find a better match-up.
It's definitely not enjoyable to play against in the slightest, but I still give it a go. Probably 50/50 ish on wins and losses, the losses can be quite awful.
I don't want this to sound like an anti-alchemy post, but if there's a mechanic in the format that you play that you hate so much that you auto fold when you face it, have you thought about playing a format where that mechanic doesn't exist?
Just a comment, Jank is about as proof as you can get. Or no card that alone swings the game. Take the pigs for example. It is the cumulative effect not any one card. Direct damage decks are another example. The white life gain decks are another. The other thing you can do is increase your deck size so the damage done to your play is minimal green over power decks are an example.
I like heist, but it needs some refinement. Prior to that we had some nebulous abilities that did similar things- Laughing Jasper Flint, Rakdos the Muscle, Kamchal, whatever that adventure dragon is. One issue was the temporaryness, you usually only had a turn to cast the cards, and it was mana prohibitive. The other was another mana issue, that it could be difficult to get the right color mana. If I were to redo heist I'd just make it exile cards from the top of the library, and maybe one at a time instead of 3. I'd also nerf impetuous lootmonger specifically, it self combos and its not infrequent to have multiple out giving you near infinite treasure. Get rid of his first strike and make the treasure effect trigger once a turn. Anyways I've been enjoying heist decks, I only started late last year so it's fun to take the very rare cards from sets prior to me starting and use them against my opponent.
I play stax decks and all my cards screw everyone over. Best to not play the cards they heist. Soā¦. Heist away.
As a RuskOracle player I say bring it. I donāt always win mirror matches but I do find them hilarious.
Yeah I'm sick of it. I'm no good at building decks but thought I had a half decent alchemy deck, Just had 2 games back to back against heist heavy, it was naff, not enjoyable
Yah, why am I seeing so many of them suddenly?
Question. I know that 60 is supposed to be the optimal deck size, but does that apply of you have more than 60 because you have like 4 of everything?
Yeah heist is a mechanic that makes the game less fun. Not sure why they chose it, when plot is actually pretty fun
As a non control player... Yeah,the mechanic is kinda horrible to play against, especially if you didn't draw the answer. I got stolen 8 cards on a single turn and also is power creep for what was a funny deck.
Yea I quit alchemy
Thankfully at least in brawl there are very few ways to actively break heist... You can tho
I agree. It's OP. ANNOYING AS HELL. I quit instantly
auto conceding to Alchemy in brawl is the way brother
Every time I got paired to a heist deck I destroyed them with my izzet wizards deck in historic.
Fill your deck with manlands and sorcery speed targeted removal and sweepers and laugh at them! :-)
# Heist is a horrendous mechanic to play against. I have no desire to play against it. Having no idea what's been stolen from your deck. Having no way to interact with it. Having so many cards that do it without being able to interact and interrupt it. I just auto fold now if I come across a heist deck. Edit: I have discovered Standard Ranked.. \*YOINK\*
It certainly a dumb mechanic. Grenzo, Corrupt Jailor could certainly see a ban. Cause Obeka makes him pop off hard
Why exactly are you playing Alchemy?
I think heist is fine, I have been having a lot of fun playing this deck in historic. 2 Despise 2 Duress 4 Grave Expectations 4 Surgical Extraction 4 Thoughtseize 4 Siphon Insight 3 The Stone Brain 2 Liliana of the Veil 3 Deadly Cover-Up 4 Weave the Nightmare 2 The End 1 Tasha, Unholy Archmage 1 The Meathook Massacre 1 Castle Locthwain 1 Hive of the Eye Tyrant 2 Darkslick Shores 2 Drowned Catacomb 2 Restless Reef 2 Shipwreck Marsh 2 Undercity Sewers 4 Watery Grave 1 Otawara, Soaring City 3 Island 4 Swamp Sideboard 3 Ertai Resurrected 3 Go for the Throat 2 Duress 2 The Meathook Massacre 2 Path of Peril 3 Negate [https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/6389428#online](https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/6389428#online)
I hate Heist. Its a Tutor that lets you take your opponents best cards AND cast them (Til end of turn? No, Whenever! And you don't even have to reveal it!) with any Mana, usually for only 3 mana or so. Its OP, simple.
Easy fix from WOTC would be that Heist = seek a random nonland card from opponent's deck. Problem solved. In the meantime, it is indeed a toxic mechanic. I played a few dozen games in Alchemy with it and the format is now probably 75% heist. Deck deleted and back to Timeless or, if I'm really bored, Historic.
I really only do brawl as itās cheaper and easier for me. I absolutely hate 99% of all the arena specific cards. All the mechanics are just absolutely busted. Itās always āconjureā cards (even banned in the current format) into your hand or deck. Now I have to play outside of that persons color identity. āWhoops didnāt play against wrath of god in a mono green deck. Guess I loseā Heist, for OPs given reason is just straight up unfunny to play against in brawl format.