Card Review: Beseech the Mirror

The original Throne of Eldraine gave us [[Wishclaw Talisman]], a card that has turned out to be hugely impactful for how The EPIC Storm has been built ever since. Wilds of Eldraine, Magic‘s newest expansion has yet another busted tutor effect. Meet [[Beseech the Mirror]]:

Beseech the Mirror

Breaking the Mirror

Normally, breaking a mirror is seven years’ worth of bad luck. For us Storm Players, it is going to translate into game wins! [[Diabolic Tutor]] is the base rate for [[Beseech the Mirror]] and [[Diabolic Tutor]] is not a particularly powerful card in the Legacy context. What makes [[Beseech the Mirror]] interesting is the extra ability to kick or Bargain it. The card found with [[Beseech the Mirror]] can be cast for free by sacrificing an Artifact, Enchantment, or Token. A Bargained [[Beseech the Mirror]] that finds a card with mana value three or four is a better rate than using [[Demonic Tutor]] to find that card!

In order to consitently Bargain [[Beseech the Mirror]], there is a deckbuilding cost. We have to play a lot of Artifacts and Enchantments or a way to consistently produce tokens. Fortunately in Legacy, there are plenty of artifacts that a Storm player is already interested in playing! Extra copies of [[Mox Opal]] can now be converted to the Bargain cost along with the whole other cast of busted mana artifacts. Even recently, The EPIC Storm played with eight [[Mishra’s Bauble]] effects and [[Beseech the Mirror]] is an easy way to make those artifacts more useful on the combo turn. One of my favorite cards, [[Carpet of Flowers]] could be a perfect card to Bargain with after it makes its mana! Enabling [[Beseech the Mirror]] should not be a problem for anyone who wants to cast [[Tendrils of Agony]].

A Bargained [[Beseech the Mirror]] is clearly achievable and now it asks what to find with it. Many of the classic Storm spells have a mana value of four or less! [[Tendrils of Agony]], [[Empty the Warrens]], [[Galvanic Relay]], and if you’re an ANT player, [[Past in Flames]] are all easily cast, saving several mana on the combo turn. This lets Storm decks be faster and go off with fewer resources. One of the more interesting cards to find with [[Beseech the Mirror]] is simply another [[Beseech the Mirror]]. Finding more copies of itself creates easy tutor chain lines to a free, lethal [[Tendrils of Agony]]. The bottleneck in that case is having enough Artifacts to Bargain away, rather than just mana in traditional [[Infernal Tutor]] chains.

Not all of the Storm engines can be found and cast for free with [[Beseech the Mirror]]. [[Echo of Eons]], [[Mind’s Desire]], and the new to Magic Online [[Pair o’ Dice Lost]]. These are all powerful engines and two of them have been the core of the most recent versions of The EPIC Storm. Unfortunately, neither plays well with [[Beseech the Mirror]]. [[Echo of Eons]] almost requires [[Wishclaw Talisman]] to be the main deck tutor of choice because of how efficiently it can find [[Lion’s Eye Diamond]] or [[Echo of Eons]] to put that two card combo together. [[Beseech the Mirror]] costing four mana to find either card is a non-starter of a synergy. [[Mind’s Desire]] is a more interesting case. Bargain is an additional cost meaning that if [[Beseech the Mirror]] is cast without paying its mana cost, it can still be Bargained to continue a chain of free spells. While powerful, the reverse of finding [[Mind’s Desire]] through [[Beseech the Mirror]] is a whole ten mana. That is more than any other reasonable line and makes a [[Mind’s Desire]] weak to counterspells. Supporting both in deckbuilding is a challenge and is not the first engine to be tested with [[Beseech the Mirror]].

Gaea’s Will

Wizards of the Coast has liked to create these callback cards in Modern Horizons sets where they print an old spell that is clearly too powerful, but give it Suspend and no mana cost so it can not be cast. [[Gaea’s Will]] calls back to the banned [[Yawgmoth’s Will]]. Suspend 4 has turned out to be too long and the timing of when a Suspend card is cast does not play well with how a normal Storm deck wants to play the game. [[Beseech the Mirror]] skips all of this and puts [[Gaea’s Will]] directly onto the stack. Even if a card has no mana cost, it can still be cast without paying its mana cost. With [[Beseech the Mirror]], Legacy has a functional [[Yawgmoth’s Will]] again!

[[Past in Flames]] is often cited as the red [[Yawgmoth’s Will]], but had a clear downside. It can not replay some of the best mana-producing cards in the format: [[Lion’s Eye Diamond]] and [[Lotus Petal]]. The EPIC Storm also plays several other artifacts that normally do not go to the graveyard: [[Mox Opal]] and [[Chrome Mox]]. The Bargain mechanic puts these extra moxen into the graveyard to be later recast by [[Gaea’s Will]]. When doing a [[Gaea’s Will]] loop, it is generally best to sacrifice as many permanents as possible to increase Storm count and mana post [[Gaea’s Will]].

Counterplay

[[Beseech the Mirror]] and [[Gaea’s Will]] are fast, low-resource engines that The EPIC Storm wants to take advantage of. These cards open up the deck to more interaction than it is used to, however. [[Surgical Extraction]], [[Endurance]], [[Bojuka Bog]], and other forms of graveyard hate are obvious interaction points for [[Gaea’s Will]]. Playing around these can be hard, but knowing what opponents are commonly playing should help solve this. There are also a couple of plan B’s that a [[Beseech the Mirror]] deck could play. [[Ad Nauseam]], [[Galvanic Relay]], and [[Urza’s Saga]] are the most likely to play the best with [[Beseech the Mirror]].

[[Teferi, Time Raveler]] is the other card that blocks [[Beseech the Mirror]]. Similar to [[Dreadhorde Arcanist]], a Bargained [[Beseech the Mirror]] casts the found spell during the resolution of [[Beseech the Mirror]], which is not at sorcery speed. [[Teferi, Time Raveler]] being a lock piece against the free cast effect is an annoying lock piece. [[Beseech the Mirror]] can still be cast in [[Diabolic Tutor]] mode, but it is not ideal.

Tricks

[[Beseech the Mirror]] is a tricky card. Knowing exactly how it works is important not to lose games. Because the card is cast as part of the resolution, if you find a Storm spell with it, the Storm count is locked in as part of the [[Beseech the Mirror]] chain. To avoid this being awkward, cast every necessary spell before [[Beseech the Mirror]]. There is a window to activate abilities and cast spells before the Bargained spell resolves if you hold priority. If you have a [[Lion’s Eye Diamond]] in play, you do not have to sacrifice it until [[Gaea’s Will]] is on the stack in order to replay the [[Lion’s Eye Diamond]]. This lets you keep extra artifacts around if the [[Beseech the Mirror]] is countered.

Building a Mirror

[[Beseech the Mirror]] asks for a shell that contains a lot of artifacts. Fortunately, The EPIC Storm already does that! Before the unbanning of [[Mind’s Desire]], TES was a deck designed to maximize [[Galvanic Relay]] and did so through playing eight bauble effects. These are great in a deck that wants lots of fodder for Bargain. [[Galvanic Relay]] plays so well into this plan and solves one of the problems with [[Beseech the Mirror]]. Four initial mana for a tutor is a lot and [[Dark Ritual]] is the best way to get to four mana. [[Lion’s Eye Diamond]] does not make initial mana, but off of a [[Galvanic Relay]], it does! There is a slight tension that [[Galvanic Relay]] may exile the [[Gaea’s Will]], but even if it does, the [[Galvanic Relay]] is probably enough to win the game. [[Galvanic Relay]] sets up multiple artifacts to chain [[Beseech the Mirror]]s together into the lethal [[Tendrils of Agony]].

This leads into The EPIC Storm’s first draft of [[Beseech the Mirror]] TES:

Decklist