Pointed Discussion

this card is rebonculous...

Nice made up word, bro. The artwork rules too.

This card is simply incredible.

REBONCULOUS...lol great man ...just great..my friend would agree with you...the last 3 games we played i twisted him for 5 on like turn 3

I think "rebonculous" is the only word rebonculous enough to describe the rebonculousness of this card.

They should reprint this. With no Dark Ritual, Mind Twist is merely broken.

"Rebonculous". Yeah, that's about right :P

PFFFT HAHAHA WHAT

OH WOW

One of the Best Ever...

I love this card. It is so evil.

I'm going against the trend and saying it's not that good. Duress or Thoughtseize get one card for one mana and you get to see your opponent's hand (possibly on turn 1). Hymn to Tourach gets two cards for two mana. Mind Twist may be able to sometimes get more cards, but it's always less efficient.

@gainsbanding; Forcing your opponent to topdeck while you still have 5 or 6 cards in hand is very cruel. This card does just that, while duress and thoughtseize are always 1for1 barring if your opponent decides to Force of Will to protect a card.
It's the same with burn, lets compare Shock to Fireball. More options cost a little more mana. For Fireball to equal shock it costs 3, and to equal bolt it costs 4. Braingeyser vs Council of the Soratami is a similar beast. Mind twist is very efficient for an X spell once you look at it that way.

... Once again, this proves that there is nothing better than simple cards that are sick and broken.

I can't Believe I just read someone saying Duress is even close to better.... Do you realize that in like 1995 this card dominated so badly that the DCI banned it in Type 1? Yea, Type 1, where you can have all those super awesome cards.... Mind Twist back in 1995 and 1996 was so bad that entire games came down to who got their Mind Twist off first.

The first card the DCI EVER Restricted to one per deck was Time Walk, and at the time, you could still have 4 Ancestral Recalls and so on, and then after a while, they added more cards to it. But Mind Twist flat out Dominated. They actually banned it in Type 1 for a long time because the whole card advantage thing, which today is almost common sense, was nothing more than a theory back then. The first Type 1 Tournament I went to had a lot of Mind Twist, but not very many people really understood cared advantage yet because it was still just a theory back then.

Then, someone realized that trading off ONE card in your deck, for up to 7 or 8 cards in your opponent's (Mind Twist for their whole hand) was one great way to gain advantage. Heh, even now, try this:

Turn one, lay out a Swamp, and then like 3 or 4 Dark Rituals, and Mind Twist your opponent for all 7 cards. See if they can even TRY to come back from that. Amazing how times have changed.

Amazing card, but I run three with the required Dark Rituals, and I've never had to do it for more than 3-they just don't have the cards by that point. I'd rather Ritual for a first turn hymn to Tourach and then Duress than save it up for a super 'your whole hand dies' spell. It's redundant in a decent discard deck.

Redonculous.

Pure black, pure evil, pure broken, pure powerfull,..

Being able to plow an entire players hand using one card is ridiculous.Very sick and broken!!!!

THE most brutal black card. With dark ritual, just try coming back after being twisted for 3 on turn 2.

I didn't know that this card even existed.
Holy crap.
Random discard is crazy, and a flexible forced random discard that's good at any value of X is pretty crazy, for its versatility, and for its ease of use.
This card would be pretty messed up if the discard was chosen instead of random, this is just excessive.

Super broken. This card got way out of hand back around the time Revised edition was out. Anybody doubting its effectiveness, consider this. Back then, cards like Dark Ritual, Sol Ring, the Moxes and Black Lotus were legal and fairly common (considering the number of MtG players). Therefore, it was pretty common for somebody to empty his/her opponent's hand within the first few turns. Sick !

Definitely rebonculous.
Rebonculous: advb, to have a simple concept yet be so utterly insane as to be incomprehensible.

@SlackWareWolf: If you spend four dark rituals and a mind twist to empty their hand, you're left with a swamp and one card in your hand. That's a nice situation if you had the first turn and they're relying completely on topdecking lands and cheap cards, but so are you, basically. I would try to come back from that...

I remember when my friend played this card against me 15 years ago. I really wanted to punch him.

I only ever got to max this out with 3 Dark Rituals on turn 1 once. It was worth it. I can't believe I sold mine.

If someone dropped a swamp, 3 rituals and a mind twist on T1, your opponent would have 1 random card left verses your 2 in hand plus the land you have out. A very sick advantage and much more feasible then the 4 ritual situation. Its still possible to come back for your poor opponent depending on his deck and how lucky he is with top decking lands, still that would be nasty.

1 swamp 2 rituals and mind twist is more realistic. You would leave your opponent with 3 random cards in hand and you would have 3 plus your land. This is also a nice deal, even more so if you have an extra land sitting in your hand. Those 4 cards could very well be 1 or 2 important lands that will completely screw them, and you are guaranteed not to loose one of your lands, a huge card advantage.

This completely shines without dark rituals. It can fit into any deck that runs swamps. You don't have to run discard, just slap this in their as a big smasher if you got any splash of black. T4 if you hit all your land drops you could nuke 3 random cards, and these cards have a good chance of being important things. There lands will be out and there hand smaller, and you hit their important cards that they were holding. I believe this is the best way to use Mind Twist.

Cast it for the first time ever in my Mimeoplasm EDH deck. It definitely does feel satisfying to 7-for-1 someone.

I looked up 'rebonculus' on Google, and found this:

Mind Sculpt XUB
Instant Mythic Rare
Target player draws X cards.
Target player discards X cards.
Target player punches you in the face.

Darth Jace is a dick :p

My main reason for running Mental Misstep in EDH.

I like to remove at least three cards from my opponents hand with this card, that way I get rid of more cards than if I'd played a hymn to tourach.

Rakdos's Return
XBR
Sorcery
Rakdos's Return deals X damage to target opponent. That player discards X cards.

Or as i like to call it, Mind Twist's Return. Well almost...

Return to Ravnica looks like one broken set haha

This is the spell Liliana Vess only wishes she knew.

Mind Twist
Sorcery
Target player punches you in the goddamn mouth.

So its like a Braingeyser in reverse, except better.

Yea, its good.

So for one more cmc than Braingeyser, and an alternate color'd mana, you can get Sphinx's Relevation. Which is epic, and uber popular.
For one less than Sphinx's Relevation, you can get Rakdos's Return, which isn't played as much as Sphinx's Relevation.
Rakdos's Return costs 1 more than this, just like Sphinx's Relevation costs 1 more than braingeyser. And both come with an additional effect... only Rackdos's Return is burn, which is generally more beneficial than healing.
While it is true that Rakdos's Return lets them pick what to discard, and isn't an instant, none of this makes a big difference when you are discarding their entire hand (or burning them to death, for that matter). There is only three possible explanations:
1: Rakdos's Return is vastly, and I mean VASTLY underrated.
2: This card is uber overrated, and probably would be balanced if it either cost {B} more or if it wasn't random.
3: The multi-color nature of Rakdos's Return, especially in the color {R}, weakens it drastically.

Personally, I find the first explanation the most believable.

There are decks that don't sit back waiting for what you want to do.

Comparing this with Hymn to Tourach you will notice that in terms of card advantage you need 1 more land to match Hymn's effect and double the lands to overcome it. Hymn have a huge tempo advantage compared to this card!

You can't easily get Rakdos's Return to go off on the first turn with enough mana to discard your opponent's entire hand, so comparing the two isn't fair.

You could conceivably play 4 Dark Rituals and exile a Simian Spirit Guide to discard your opponent's seven cards, but every one less dark ritual is two cards they keep.

Swamp (1B) -> Dark Ritual (3B) -> Simian Spirit Guide (3B1R) -> Rakdos's Return (X=2) has them discarding only two cards, which means you've traded 3 for 2. Every additional Dark Ritual increases X by 2, increasing the tradeoff to 4 for 4, then 5 for 6, then 6 for 8.

With Mind Twist, you take out the 1R cost and thus gain 1 card advantage. That's 2 for 2, then 3 for 4, then 4 for 6, then 5 for 8. That's one less card (simian) you need in your opening hand, and hitting a Mind Twist, Swamp, 2x Dark Ritual opening isn't that unlikely, which means you're nabbing 4 random cards for 3 of your cards. That's a brutal card advantage.

Probably the most accurate artwork depiction of what happens when casting it on your opponent ever in the history of magic. When you get hit by this turn 2 with a dark ritual or some other mana accel... yeah, thats how you feel

@TheKazu

You make a few good points but also miss a few key points. First, we're going to compare Braingeyser to Sphinx's Revelation:

Braingeyser costs less to cast, which is a plus. This means one more card... which is nice. Sphinx's Revelation is both an instant and gains you life. The lifegain is mostly incidental, but having it cast as an instant in control is so absolutely key that it makes the card what it is. Sphinx's Revelation is amazing because you untap, draw, play your land and pass the turn knowing that if they do something mean you will counter it. If they don't, you gain some life and draw some cards. It allows control to be responsive when it needs to be instead of rolling out the red carpet for the opponent to do whatever they would like to do. A second incidental bonus coming along with being an instant is that you can go above 7 cards in hand from it without worrying about wasting the precious card advantage (due to end of turn discard). So, all in all, I would rather have Sphinx's Revelation than Braingeyser, even though both are definitely amazing.

Rakdos's Return, on the other hand, is still a sorcery (for good reason) and actually loses functionality by making it non-random (also for good reason). Lastly, the one card difference does make a huge difference here because we're talking about discard as opposed to draw. The difference between your opponent being at one card and zero cards is enormous. In one scenario, they can do something and in the other you have complete board control. Compare this with drawing, where the difference between 7 and 8 cards in hand really isn't that big - you will be playing things with your mana and they will probably be pretty good.

This card is just terrifying. I can imagine:

T1: Swamp, Dark Ritual, Dark Ritual, Mind twist for 4.

After that, your opponent has effectively lost. There is really no coming back from effectively mulliganning to 3.

Yup number #1 discard card ever even if you did not use a mana source you tap 1 swamp and 3 generic that is 3 cards at random. my friend honestly thinks inquisition of kosilek is better. but honestly you know id rather they took one card of their choice out of my hand than MY WHOLE HAND GONE!!!. 1 CARD SHOULD NEVER BE AS BAD AS ALL OF EM. one more thing this card can go in ANY MULTI COLOR DECK THAT HAS BLACK!!!! GREAT XD

Calling random discard brutal is an understatement, even without mana acceleration this card is 5/5 easy.

When Legacy was created, its banned list automatically included anything that was banned or restricted in Vintage. The logic was that anything to powerful for Vintage would be to powerful for Legacy. At that time, Mind Twist was banned in Vintage because of how powerful it was in conjunction with easy mana cards like Sol Ring, Mana Crypt, and the various Mox. Back in 2007, WotC decided to make Mind Twist completely unbanned and unrestricted in Vintage. In the 6 years that Mind Twist has been completely legal in Vintage, decks with Mind Twist have only made top 8 tournament appearances a total of 6 times. I therefore believe it's time to remove Mind Twist from the Legacy banned list.

The game has changed a lot since Mind Twist was banned almost 2 decades ago.

There are other good discard spells now. Part of the reason Mind Twist was so ubiquitous was because there just weren't a lot of good discard spells. No Thoughtseize, no Inquisition of Kozilek, no Duress, no Raven's Crime, no Gerrard's Verdict. If you wanted to attack your opponent's hand, the only good choices were Hymn to Tourach and Mind Twist.

Discard is also not as good now because there is more graveyard interaction (flashback, threshold, dredge) and anti-discard tech (Leyline of Sanctity, Loxodon Smiter, Daze.) Yes, Mind Twist was banned in Legacy before Daze was even printed.

The concerns about Dark Ritual, Dark Ritual, Mind Twist are ridiculous. First of all, there is only a 2.5% chance of getting double Dark Ritual and Mind Twist in your opening 7. Additionally, DR DR Mind Twist is far less scary than DR DR Ad Naseum. Also, you are using up nearly as many cards as you are forcing your opponent to discard and it is hugely risky given the prevalence of Daze, Spell Pierce, Flusterstorm (and even Force of Will). One counterspell can make a 3 for 4 in your favor into a 3 for 1 in your opponent's favor.

There is really only one scenario in which Mind Twist MIGHT be to powerful, and that is in Terrezet decks.
Turn 1: Ancient Tomb or City of Traitors + Dimir Signet or Talisman of Dominance.
Turn 2: Ancient Tomb or City of Traitors + Mindtwist for 4.

"It's redundant in a discard deck"

Please tell me I didn't just read that.

Please.

Also, Winston Churchill, you're wrong. Rakdos's Return costs 1 more, and that 1 mana is in a different colour. Basically, casting it is more awkward. However, more importantly, I think you're missing the main reason it's so good. ''random''.

Easy 5/5

Unbelievably broken vintage-era mistake of a card. I almost never play 1-on-1 commander games because of this card. With high consistently, this card can discard entire hands on turn 2 or 3 due to the inordinate amount of broken colorless acceleration available in commander.

Lets just look at a brief MTG timeline:
1993-magic is invented. Mind Twist is printed for the first time
1996-Mind Twist is BANNED in type 1. Black Lotus? thats fine. moxes? fine too. Time Walk.. Timetwister..Demonic Tutor..Sol Ring, Berserk, Braingeyser, Ancestral Recall ...all those things are fine. Mind Twist? too powerful to be allowed even 1 in your deck. In fact, its only the second card to be banned for power reasons. before this card was banned the entire banned list consisted of ante cards, dexterity cards, Shahrazad, and Time Vault. Time Vault got unbanned that same year, but not Mind Twist. According to this timeline:
http://wiki.mtgsalvation.com/article/Timeline_of_DCI_bans_and_restrictions
it seems that Mind Twist was the last non-ante card to ever be banned in Type 1 (Vintage) decks.
The above paragraph alone says volumes about how powerful Mind Twist really is.
I was upset about it, my deck went from 4 mind twists to 0 in the blink of an eye, and I don't care what anyone says Hymn to Tourach is a lousy substitute.
2000-Cooler heads finally prevail and Mind Twist is moved from banned to restricted, to take it's place among some of the most powerful cards in the game. Even though i wanted to play with 4 of them again, I had to agree, the restricted list was the right place for it
I got out of playing magic for a few years and when i came back to the game, i found out that mind twist had been removed from the restricted list.
I was super excited and it felt like a nice welcome back to put my deck back together the way it was in 95, but im still dumbfounded as to how they decided it was a reasonably powered card.
With the amount of fast artifact mana, Dark Ritual, Channel, and tons of other cards available in a Vintage deck, its totally reasonable for a black deck to get 4 or 5 mana on the first turn. Loosing 3 or 4 cards before you even draw is a tough opening to recover from.
Black and Blue have always been a popular color combination and when you add Mana Drain to Mind Twist, Im hitting you for 4 or 5 RANDOM cards on my second or third turn.
Clearly the best discard card ever printed.
Hymn to Tourach: Seriously? I tried for almost 10 years to make decks work with the Hymn as well as they worked with the Twist. It just didnt work out. I understand Mind Twist takes 1 more mana to get 2 cards out of your hand. First of all, I would never use a Mind Twist to have you dump 2 cards (unless you only had 2 cards in your hand or I have 3 Mind Twists in mine). I have my Hypnotic Specters to take care of a card or 2. Once Im able to get 3 or more cards, im happy to pull the trigger. 3 feels like half your hand, and 4 or 5 on the second turn could easily be your whole hand.
I think the only reason its been unrestricted is because of how many newer cards let you interact with your graveyard, so all the cards I Twist from you aren't really as gone as they used to be.
Even still, when you're randomly discarding multiple cards, quite possibly multiple times per game, theres a really good chance that your Yawgmoth’s Will, or whatever winds up in your graveyard before you get a chance to cast it.
Probably my favorite card to see in my hand in the early game.