What makes Glasses of Urza better than Telepathy is that you can guess what your opponent has and THEN check to see if you’re right. 😉 It’s a fun little subgame!
I wonder if Staff of the Storyteller is actually better than Baleful Strix in this deck? The former doesn't get recharged very often with so few ways to generate tokens, and the latter is much better defensively. Obviously the ceiling is higher if you draw and have time to play multiple staves but the consistency of Strix might be more valuable overall.
Mana is much easier for Staff. Big consideration in the Wasteland format. Also, with Telepathy, you can draw as late as possible, leaving your opponent with less information overall.
@@thekenjiness That's not what I said. If you draw a card, you give your opponent information. Glasses of Urza happens once per turn, but if the opponent has a Brainstorm effect, they can draw cards you don't know about. Using Staff to draw will tap your mana, and if the opponent has unknown cards, it's less powerful to use your mana early. With Telapathy, you never have to worry about unknown cards, so you can hold up mana for as long as possible, and not let them know what you're doing.
I was thinking similar, but I feel like Faerie Mastermind is the more appropriate replacement. In the theme of the deck, being able to know when an oppt is going to make a play that draws a card allows you to make better choices about holding up the Faerie vs doing something else with 2 mana.
Telepathy is cool, but I was a huge fan of seers vision when I was younger. The ability to cash it out for a thoughtseize and know that thoughtseize is taking a good card always seemed so good to me
I played a version of this at a GP probably 15 years ago now! It ran Peek, Vendillion Clique, Nevermore, etc... Anyway I would always make a (super annoying I'm sure) Peek-at-you! Like "Pikachu" sound when casting it. My opponents hated me, but they forgave me once they realized that I was basically an "auto-win" to get paired against.
I agree with EVERYTHING bosh said on the telepathy...BUT i will say i think the deck could have easily had the 3 endings main deck for the game 1 thoughtseize imo. but still telepathy, the experiment here, wasn't worth the slot. I'd LOVE to see another take on cabal arena rector at some point. Ugin and kaya were a legit duo. Cut the meddling mage, and telepathy Go back up on ending by 2, 4th staff, 1 main deck brazen borrower, and spend the last 2 slots on tokens makers...currency converter, wandering emperor, shark. Or go down the road of stoneforge mentioned int he deck tech. There's some spicy to this esper control shell rector win con
I do actually like telepathy in commander. its alot harder to hand read 99 card singleton, and it also makes your opponents better at interacting with each other. They don't even want to kill it because it feels bad to go down a card to remove a mostly symmetrical card
Telepathy is my guilty sin. Its a pet card that I love to just slot into any blue commander deck I have just because its only upside for me, and is uniquely frustrating for all of my opponents. Its not extremely good, but the psychological damage is always fun.
cool deck, I wonder if there is some land capable of sacrificing creatures that could fit in the deck's colors, could be useful. Also,... how about... peek?
worth noting at 36:24 when you were changing "please attack" that if they had, Rector would have just been exiled and you wouldn't have gotten the trigger... EDIT: I take it back at 37:34. Wouldn't have thought for sure that the Kaldra trigger of dealing damage to it would have exiled it before the "hit the graveyard" trigger of Rector happened, but I guess I was wrong!
In addition to being card disadvantage unless exploited, Telepathy has one of the weaknesses of Thoughtseize, in that it doesn’t affect the top of the opponent’s deck. Once a proactive opponent is out of cards, Telepathy doesn’t even give information. 😢 I’d be somewhat interested to see a combo or combo-control deck with four copies of Peek. I’ve thought about it in Infect, where the information might enable a riskier set of pump spells (sorcery speed Scale Up in particular). 🤔 Also wondering about Telepathy in a hatebears shell where you know whether to play Thalia or Spirit of the Labyrinth or jam Stoneforge, but the card disadvantage hits harder. Now that I’m thinking of hatebears, do you think Sanctum Prelate maybe should have been in here? 🤔
I think that revealing via portent or peek could also be cool? Probably worse than other cantrips though, unless you’re on something really weird like Lutri
Round 5 match 2 there was an option of surgical the brainstorm to force a shuffle and rip out brainstorms. Was there a reason to not or is it not a very good play? I’m just curious as it would have messed with them pretty aggressively.
Immediately wondering if you should be running Path to Exile instead of StP or splitting 2 and 2 for the fact that you shut off your own removal fairly often
I was hoping you would surgical the brainstorm with cabal therapy still on the stack. Shuffle away their top cards they protected and peak at their hand before cabal therapy.
Is there anyway to do something similar to this in Modern? This feels like just the thing I want lantern prison to be basically absolutely loving the list
Glasses of Urza, unlike Telepathy, can be tutored by Urza' Saga! You could consider that a massive upside for Glasses as including Saga is a nice incentive.
I definitely can understand why telepathy is better, since it pitches to force and is an ongoing effect, but glasses can be tutored with saga, so you don't need to put as many copies into the deck.
If Telepathy also had a clause that read something like "You may look at the top X cards of your opponents library at any time", what would X have to be for Telepathy to be playable?
I feel like the staff of the story teller package is very clunky in this deck, it is a grindy plan while the rest of your deck is a lot of disruption with a combo kill which doesn't really synergize. I wonder if replacing it with a stoneforge package would be better, you stay in the same colors and it's another very compact "combo" package that threatens a quick win while meddling mage and cabal therapy can take care of interaction.
And dies to Pyroblast, Hydroblast, REB, and BEB. Such a high investment just to die to a series of 1 drops that a large number of the format is playing. Delver, 8 Cast, Painter, Breakfast, Shadow, some Lands builds, I could go on and on as o why Bolas is just bad.
Telepathy is legal in Modern and as someone that played Lantern Control for four years with many top 8s with the deck, I never wanted telepathy for the same reason you said in conclusion. It's investing a card just to see the hand. Lantern is a deck where the whole strategy is perfect information and Telepathy didn't make the cut because Thoughseize of IoK just did it better. Fun league, but I don't think we'll be seeing more Telepathy anywhere.
Telepathy pitches to Force and Saga being a colorless land is a real cost for an Esper deck and also Bosh talks about why Glasses are worse than Telepathy literally 2 minutes into the video
Thought experiment: If Telepathy also drew you a card, then would it be worth playing? If the answer is yes, what is the most mana that you would be willing to pay for this card?
U for an enchantment that drew on ETB without Telepathy's effect would already be powerful. But at 2 mana cantrip Telepathy is probably still not great.
@@liamsmith8518 this deck was bad and the telepathy was not the root issue. It makes more sense in a doomsday list. This deck could have swapped telepathy for the prismatic endings and had a similar outcome.
@@TheForbiddenDance tbh telepathy in a doomsday deck sounds even worse... Although yeah the deck wasn't great, it was built around synergizing with telepathy and even then he found himself cutting it cause it was such a dead draw (outside of pitching to force) I can see it being a very similar thing in a doomsday deck, mainly cause it wastes a turn and playing a telepathy doesn't make your opponents hand any different, if they had a force before the telepathy they'll have one after and you can't just wait out their countermagic because you're not playing anything for them to counter trying to be big brain, though seize and it's cousin's are way better than telepathy for that reason since they get a peek at opponent's hand and then actually get rid of the thing you'd be concerned about
2x staff feels bad. Play the full playset or not at all, IMHO. I think 3 mana Teferi would be a complete improvement, -being able cast targeted discard at instant speed and flash back cabal therapy seems huge in a deck where you know what interaction your opponent is working with.
I remember when i first discovered "telepathy" in 9th edition! I thought it was cool as fxk and would give me a huge boost.......until i used it and quickly realized it was shite and completely unnecessary. Good times.
44:49 Telepathy at its true best, pitching to Force TWICE in one game.
In Round 3 game 2, I'm guessing your opponent brought in leyline because they thought you were cephalid breakfast
Yep. Bosh played Esper fetches and Staff has become tech in Breakfast. It's a reasonable read that happened to work out.
What makes Glasses of Urza better than Telepathy is that you can guess what your opponent has and THEN check to see if you’re right. 😉 It’s a fun little subgame!
I like how you can use Glasses of Urza on yourself
Glasses of Urza is my favourite card from my Unlimited collection. Yes the duals are worth more, but Glasses of Urza is just funny to me.
This brew deserves so many more likes. Nice job bosh
Saw your tweet about this and can’t wait
I wonder if Staff of the Storyteller is actually better than Baleful Strix in this deck? The former doesn't get recharged very often with so few ways to generate tokens, and the latter is much better defensively. Obviously the ceiling is higher if you draw and have time to play multiple staves but the consistency of Strix might be more valuable overall.
Mana is much easier for Staff. Big consideration in the Wasteland format. Also, with Telepathy, you can draw as late as possible, leaving your opponent with less information overall.
@@JohnFromAccounting Telepathy is "*opponents* play with their hands revealed," so they won't know what you draw no matter when you draw it
Yeah but what about the mirror?
@@thekenjiness That's not what I said. If you draw a card, you give your opponent information. Glasses of Urza happens once per turn, but if the opponent has a Brainstorm effect, they can draw cards you don't know about. Using Staff to draw will tap your mana, and if the opponent has unknown cards, it's less powerful to use your mana early. With Telapathy, you never have to worry about unknown cards, so you can hold up mana for as long as possible, and not let them know what you're doing.
I was thinking similar, but I feel like Faerie Mastermind is the more appropriate replacement. In the theme of the deck, being able to know when an oppt is going to make a play that draws a card allows you to make better choices about holding up the Faerie vs doing something else with 2 mana.
Telepathy is cool, but I was a huge fan of seers vision when I was younger. The ability to cash it out for a thoughtseize and know that thoughtseize is taking a good card always seemed so good to me
Amazing showcase - loved watching every one of these games!
this was interesting, I wasn't sure if it was worth a card, thanks for playing it out
we do a little meddling
A tad bit of tomfoolery
Your offering has been accepted. Great googa mooga woke up my wife. This was a absolute blast to watch. 10/10
I had telepathy in ever blue deck for a while. It's also one of the best examples of the Tolarian 'look.'
Super happy to see this. Thanks!
46:50 Great, now I want to find a way to make Serenity indestructible... Maybe I can animate it and Daring Fleshbonder...
1:04:56 This is the important meta knowledge I tune in for.
I will never get tired of T1 Telepathy -> T2 Meddling Mage. Thanks for the video.
I love these more philosophical approaches to deck building. Philosophy of Fire in a future video, maybe?
I played a version of this at a GP probably 15 years ago now! It ran Peek, Vendillion Clique, Nevermore, etc... Anyway I would always make a (super annoying I'm sure) Peek-at-you! Like "Pikachu" sound when casting it.
My opponents hated me, but they forgave me once they realized that I was basically an "auto-win" to get paired against.
Heck, 15 years ago that might have been a great strategy.
I agree with EVERYTHING bosh said on the telepathy...BUT i will say i think the deck could have easily had the 3 endings main deck for the game 1 thoughtseize imo. but still telepathy, the experiment here, wasn't worth the slot.
I'd LOVE to see another take on cabal arena rector at some point. Ugin and kaya were a legit duo. Cut the meddling mage, and telepathy
Go back up on ending by 2, 4th staff, 1 main deck brazen borrower, and spend the last 2 slots on tokens makers...currency converter, wandering emperor, shark.
Or go down the road of stoneforge mentioned int he deck tech. There's some spicy to this esper control shell rector win con
I do actually like telepathy in commander. its alot harder to hand read 99 card singleton, and it also makes your opponents better at interacting with each other. They don't even want to kill it because it feels bad to go down a card to remove a mostly symmetrical card
playing telepathy gets you lynched immediately in our tables 😂 everyone hates it with a passion
Im going to complain if i have to make room on the table for my hand lol
The triple lord of atlantis. I had a good cackle on that.
Telepathy is my guilty sin. Its a pet card that I love to just slot into any blue commander deck I have just because its only upside for me, and is uniquely frustrating for all of my opponents. Its not extremely good, but the psychological damage is always fun.
cool deck, I wonder if there is some land capable of sacrificing creatures that could fit in the deck's colors, could be useful. Also,... how about... peek?
worth noting at 36:24 when you were changing "please attack" that if they had, Rector would have just been exiled and you wouldn't have gotten the trigger...
EDIT: I take it back at 37:34. Wouldn't have thought for sure that the Kaldra trigger of dealing damage to it would have exiled it before the "hit the graveyard" trigger of Rector happened, but I guess I was wrong!
Yeah if it’s already dead then that trigger doesn’t do anything.
In addition to being card disadvantage unless exploited, Telepathy has one of the weaknesses of Thoughtseize, in that it doesn’t affect the top of the opponent’s deck. Once a proactive opponent is out of cards, Telepathy doesn’t even give information. 😢
I’d be somewhat interested to see a combo or combo-control deck with four copies of Peek. I’ve thought about it in Infect, where the information might enable a riskier set of pump spells (sorcery speed Scale Up in particular). 🤔
Also wondering about Telepathy in a hatebears shell where you know whether to play Thalia or Spirit of the Labyrinth or jam Stoneforge, but the card disadvantage hits harder.
Now that I’m thinking of hatebears, do you think Sanctum Prelate maybe should have been in here? 🤔
Sanctum Prelate that can't name 1 kinda sucks
I think that revealing via portent or peek could also be cool? Probably worse than other cantrips though, unless you’re on something really weird like Lutri
10am Mon-Fri is my favorite time
Round 5 match 2 there was an option of surgical the brainstorm to force a shuffle and rip out brainstorms. Was there a reason to not or is it not a very good play? I’m just curious as it would have messed with them pretty aggressively.
That poor merfolk opponent must have taken some serious psychic damage. True-name trading with a 1/1 token, 3 for 1 cabal therapy...
I just about spit out my coffee when I saw Telepathy in the title
Immediately wondering if you should be running Path to Exile instead of StP or splitting 2 and 2 for the fact that you shut off your own removal fairly often
At the end of the first round, you could have gotten 1 more draw step if you didn't crack the fetch.
1:28:43 isn't it worth surgical extractioning the brainatorm to know what's in their hand before your therapy resolves?
I was hoping you would surgical the brainstorm with cabal therapy still on the stack. Shuffle away their top cards they protected and peak at their hand before cabal therapy.
Missed the Tower to sac for BB in your mana base isn't it worth to have at least on in there for chalice on 1?
the flavor text of telepathy is just perfect
Counterpoint in favor of glasses of urza: it can be tutored by urza’s saga. AND! Saga would trigger staff of the storyteller.
I know goyf isnt really a thing anymore but I couldn’t resist buying a NM FS playset for €60 a mounth ago. Still love the card.
Is there anyway to do something similar to this in Modern? This feels like just the thing I want lantern prison to be basically absolutely loving the list
Glasses of Urza, unlike Telepathy, can be tutored by Urza' Saga! You could consider that a massive upside for Glasses as including Saga is a nice incentive.
Urza's Saga can also support Staff a lot better.
How often is glasses going to be your best tutor target? And what saga deck even wants this effect?
The original build was with Saga and Glasses to tutor it. It was just still way worse than telepathy.
I'm afraid the sagas make the mana awkward in this type of color intensive esper deck. Maybe that's one of the reasons telepathy is better
Was your merfolk op on a classic brainstorm no fetch land deck
I definitely can understand why telepathy is better, since it pitches to force and is an ongoing effect, but glasses can be tutored with saga, so you don't need to put as many copies into the deck.
Urzas saga charges staff too. Could be a fun brew
I swear everytime there's something janky or weird happening I've seen it in a Wayne deck lol
Wayne had great taste in jank!
I don’t care how suboptimal it is, I love Telepathy working in this deck. Especially with the Cabal Therapy + Rector combo
59:30 INSANE!
What do you think about stern scolding, and when it comes out would you make a legacy deck with it
I remember a wise man once said "Strong players always have Telepathy in play." ;)
This deck looks fun as heck.
Cool deck and nice video.
1:18:00 you should have named "Damn"
If Telepathy also had a clause that read something like "You may look at the top X cards of your opponents library at any time", what would X have to be for Telepathy to be playable?
I think it would have to at least be 3 so your opponent couldn't hide anything off a Ponder.
I'm sure I'm late, but I think in Game 3 your opp thought you're a weird brew of Cephalid Breakfast, hence the leyline.
I feel like the staff of the story teller package is very clunky in this deck, it is a grindy plan while the rest of your deck is a lot of disruption with a combo kill which doesn't really synergize.
I wonder if replacing it with a stoneforge package would be better, you stay in the same colors and it's another very compact "combo" package that threatens a quick win while meddling mage and cabal therapy can take care of interaction.
Cabal therapy on 3 lord of Atlantis 👌
Love me some Arena Rector content
I like Nicol Bolas more than Kaya, and it pitches to FoW :)
And dies to Pyroblast, Hydroblast, REB, and BEB. Such a high investment just to die to a series of 1 drops that a large number of the format is playing. Delver, 8 Cast, Painter, Breakfast, Shadow, some Lands builds, I could go on and on as o why Bolas is just bad.
Seems weird for us to not play at least 1 Phyrexian Tower in this deck.
Obligatory algorithmic contribution
Those meddling kids!
This is really somerhing special 😅
Brian, you going to gen con?
Negative :(
Bosh BLIND calls 3 Lord of Atlantis in OP hand…whoa…
Round 3 game 3 is so funny I almost peed myself
seems like if you're playing telepathy you really gotta pikula your battles...
Clearly Urza's Glassed are better cause you can get them off of Urza's Saga ... can't think of a better card to tutor with Saga
Telepathy is legal in Modern and as someone that played Lantern Control for four years with many top 8s with the deck, I never wanted telepathy for the same reason you said in conclusion. It's investing a card just to see the hand. Lantern is a deck where the whole strategy is perfect information and Telepathy didn't make the cut because Thoughseize of IoK just did it better. Fun league, but I don't think we'll be seeing more Telepathy anywhere.
Why not use glasses of urza + saga? Its turorable so less of a 'waste'
Telepathy pitches to Force and Saga being a colorless land is a real cost for an Esper deck and also Bosh talks about why Glasses are worse than Telepathy literally 2 minutes into the video
@@rekenner To be fair, I think Glasses + Saga would be better overall if this were a deck that could accommodate Saga
@@rekenner I get the telepathy being a better card I'm saying in a different brew altogether.
@@rekenner I think a Staff + Saga deck would be a stronger shell.
round 5 the OP forgot he had daze to counter the surgical? 1:31:44
Hello!
Hello!
Telepathy is definitely better, but maybe you are losing some of your vision (;
Can't start my morning with bosh
Why not?
59:20 CALL THE POLICE!!!
Something to note is I don't think Kaldra can be blocked by rector since Kaldra exiles any creature it deals damage to
I want to say if kaldra does enough damage to kill the creature, the creature dies before the kaldra ability can exile it
@@johndoriansmith that is correct. the exile trigger only does anything if the creature survives combat with kaldra
Was there a spot I did something different? I was playing to "Rector blanks Kaldra" at all times.
@@johndoriansmith Oh okay. That's really good to know lol
100% of games won with Turn 1 telepathy. Just saying :)
Glasses of Urza can be tutored by Urza’s Saga tho, big brain??? And doesn’t get exiled by Ugin
Thought experiment: If Telepathy also drew you a card, then would it be worth playing? If the answer is yes, what is the most mana that you would be willing to pay for this card?
U for an enchantment that drew on ETB without Telepathy's effect would already be powerful. But at 2 mana cantrip Telepathy is probably still not great.
Yes, cantrip telepathy would be good on U. I think it would be barely playable on 1U, and back to terrible at anything worse than that.
every time i look at a magic format with telepathy legal i dont understand why it is played so infrequently
I hope you understand after watching this video
@@liamsmith8518 this deck was bad and the telepathy was not the root issue. It makes more sense in a doomsday list. This deck could have swapped telepathy for the prismatic endings and had a similar outcome.
@@TheForbiddenDance tbh telepathy in a doomsday deck sounds even worse... Although yeah the deck wasn't great, it was built around synergizing with telepathy and even then he found himself cutting it cause it was such a dead draw (outside of pitching to force) I can see it being a very similar thing in a doomsday deck, mainly cause it wastes a turn and playing a telepathy doesn't make your opponents hand any different, if they had a force before the telepathy they'll have one after and you can't just wait out their countermagic because you're not playing anything for them to counter trying to be big brain, though seize and it's cousin's are way better than telepathy for that reason since they get a peek at opponent's hand and then actually get rid of the thing you'd be concerned about
@@liamsmith8518 I guess when everyone basically knows everyone elses decks after 1-2 cards the Internet gave everyone telepathy for free
@@liamsmith8518 I know gitaxian probe is a free spell and cantrips but it's a similar effect and banned for a reason
2x staff feels bad. Play the full playset or not at all, IMHO. I think 3 mana Teferi would be a complete improvement, -being able cast targeted discard at instant speed and flash back cabal therapy seems huge in a deck where you know what interaction your opponent is working with.
I remember when i first discovered "telepathy" in 9th edition! I thought it was cool as fxk and would give me a huge boost.......until i used it and quickly realized it was shite and completely unnecessary. Good times.
I just realized tour avatar is Bosh, Iron golem. Neat.