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Jan 7, 2013 -- 3:12AM, Pseudolias wrote:

Frankly, I don't like Cipher, for one specific reason:  In a guild, or at least, colour combination that is one of the LEAST focused on creatures and attacking, you gave us a mechanic that requires dealing combat damage to work.  It feels insulting, that a spell and library focused guild needs to run creatures AND hit players with them to be able to have its mechanic actually do anything, aside from exile its spells.  Bah.

Jan 7, 2013 -- 3:23AM, Bulmunk wrote:

Cipher is terrible. :/ I would prefer the spells go into my graveyard so I can use snapcaster on them rather than well... Attack with snapcaster (prolly getting it killed) in order to use it again. UB has almost no focus on creatures. And unless something changes that in gatecrash I feel as if the point of playing that color combo was missed.

Cipher was made for U/B in Limited, which is all about (evasive) creatures.

Jan 7, 2013 -- 7:34AM, lungsoftheocean wrote:

My first reaction is disappointment. Disappointment that it isn't anywhere near as good as Glimpse the Unthinkable (goo.gl/JFlti). I was really hoping for a Dimir card that was as valuable and Glimpse, but it looks like we're (probably) out of luck.

I also don't understand how this card can be so much worse than Mind Funeral(goo.gl/4ehhJ). Mind Funeral was printed just a few short years ago at uncommon level and has a ton more value. Color me confused with Mind Grind. 

Rosewater says he likes the idea of building tension through "milling a random amount of cards." He says that he "liked the idea that each time you milled the opponent, there would be some drama." And while I agree that it was/is a lot of fun to hit an opponent with a Trepanation Blade (goo.gl/rj5VF), it has never exactly been a competitive mechanic.

Magic Players like to be able to count on the value of the cards they play. Especially cards with (X) costs. Sphinx's Revelation or Rakdos's Return, for instance, have some amount of chance involved with what you pay for them, but there is always an upside you can count on. Mind Grind has a lot more ambiguity involved. Magic has enough chance involved as it is, players like to be able to minimize chance as much as possible when deck building.

Lastly, lets consider how much you'd have to pay in order for Mind Grind to be at least as good as Mind Funeral or Glimpse the Unthinkable. Glimpse guarantees a mill of 10. In a deck playing 24 land, Mind Funeral drops an average of 9-10 cards before it hits it's forth land. That means that, in order for Mind Grind to have similar value, you'd have to pay six mana right out of the gate.   

Six. Mana. Compared to the two mana drop Glimpse or the three mana Funeral?

Color me confused. 

I might be missing something. Anyone think of a way Mind Grind could be better than I'm seeing at first glance?

Your statement is almost like comparing Blaze to Lightning Bolt .  X spells are not very good at low x values because, as you have pointed out, there are static cost cards that can do the same job for way less mana.  The value of X spells is that their value increases for every single mana you put in it.  For this card, the value increases greatly for each mana spent on X because each X represents a land that your opponent will no longer have and it removes everything in between.  Also the longer the game goes, the more mana your opponent has out means there are less lands in the deck.

You used X = 4 which is the exact same as mind funeral.  However, put on one or two extra mana and you can end up with a card that mills for nearly twice the amount depending on the concentration of lands.

And of course, this card is made for multiplayer as you have already acknowledged.