For a combo deck, I would much rather play preordain over ponder. Preordain can dig you deeper into the deck to get the card you are looking for sooner.
Posted By:
Pwnsaw
(11/20/2010 3:35:13 PM)
It has it's advantages over Ponder. Yes, Ponder looks at more cards, but this allows you to shuffle one card back.
Let's say you're running a combo deck, and you need two pieces of your combo in order to go off.
You Ponder and pull land, one piece, and another land. You can keep the piece, but now you've screwed yourself for two turns. You could also shuffle, but that means shuffling a combo piece away.
If you had used this instead, you could've kept the piece but gotten rid of the crap.
Both have advantages, so I have no idea which is the "better" card.
However, they are both very solid cards for most blue decks.
Posted By:
GruesomeGoo
(11/24/2010 9:09:31 PM)
They should just reprint Brainstorm and be done with it. I mean, they saw fit to reprint Lightning Bolt, didn't they?
Posted By:
Nagoragama
(2/20/2011 11:42:19 PM)
What´s the ruling if instead of scry and then draw, you skip the scry and just draw one card?
Posted By:
Balestra
(7/3/2011 11:15:52 AM)
Ehhhh, they're really close but I prefer Ponder. Both are a solid 4 though.
Posted By:
sincleanser
(8/18/2011 10:59:05 AM)
@Guntz - (top-rated comment currently)
Ponder is your favorite 1-drop draw card?
I guess players have already forgotten Brainstorm or Ancestral Recall...?
Posted By:
reapersaurus
(9/15/2011 1:06:16 PM)
If you hear any sobbing, it's me when I realized this is a year too old to help with the new Miracle mechanic
Posted By:
cardraptor6
(4/29/2012 11:23:56 AM)
why the front door is this banned? its a nice spell and all but banning seems a little bit.... harsh. #unban
Posted By:
ndrew68
(6/7/2012 6:43:21 PM)
I cast both this and Ponder. Who cares which is better, they're both good.I'd call them great, but Ancestral Recall and Brainstorm exist.
Posted By:
atemu1234
(6/11/2012 1:53:12 PM)
This card is banned because of consistency.
Do you like losing to splinter twin on turn four or five? I don't. If you can have eight copies of the two cards that makes up a two card win con and eight copies of a card that helps you find those pieces...what's left?
4-deceiver exarch
4-pestermite
4-splinter twin
4-Kiki-Jiki
4-ponder
4-preordain
24 cards, and you're left with 12 cards to fill holes and play defense until your combo can go off. That's just one example, I would love to have preordain in any of my decks these days. This was a very important tool in CawBlade. Looking at the standard meta at the time it wasn't irregular to see 32 copies in a top 8. Wizards wants variation in the meta game, and cards like this limit it. As much as I'd love it for Pyromancer's Ascension...I'll figure out something else to use. I like Thought Scour and Faithless Looting too.
Posted By:
MindAblaze
(7/3/2012 11:38:57 AM)