Pointed Discussion

Eh. It has its tricks, certainly, but is much less versatile than the rest of the cycle. Although I guess it's fair that in a cycle which triggers off card drawing, the blue one is the weakest...

You want to use this in a deck with a lot of CiP effects. The opposition has to make do with a tempo delay. You get to reuse a CiP...

Had this been in Time Spiral's shifts, I'm confident it'd be at least somewhat frequent in Blink decks.

Likes to be used with stuff like Frog Tongue. Then you can use the cantrip effect of the tongue on the winds, and bounce the tongue with the winds effect. Then do it again, as much as you got mana. It basically results into "2: each other player returns a permanent to his or her hand".

Really a great fun card as Skyknight said if you're going to trick around with cip/etb effect.

Sisay's Ingenuity does by the way about the same as Frog Tongue and can be used in a mono-blue deck.

Words of Waste can also be used with Azorius Aethermage if you want to spash your deck with white. The great downside when only using the Mage is that that you'll have to find other permanents you want to return, yet her ability is more usable in general in such decks.
You'll effectively get:
": The next time you would draw a card this turn, each player returns X permanents he or she controls to its owner's hand instead."

But of course when using both the Mage and Sisay's Ingenuity/Frog Tongue this will work really nicely.

that art is so silly i can hardly stand it.

I am very staggered to see how many people can't grasp the power of this card. If you play an enchantress deck you'd know that for every 1cc enchantment you return to your hand, such as Wild Growth, it's another chance for you to draw another 3+ cards, which would activate yet again this and/or other Words. If you have Exploration in play, every land you return (after tap) would be another chance to add extra mana into your pool.

Given the right calculation, you can return opponent's entire board back to his/her hand and still able to put all your permanents back into play. Tradewind Rider controls the board just fine, so can Words of Wind.

4/5 in the hand of capable players.

definitely not the weakest. this card is about control.

Whenever I'm thinking about the "Words of W" cycle, my instinct is to say "The next time you would draw a card, draw a card instead". And then I remember that's ridiculous and that this is its actual effect.

I have a playset of this and have slowly been working on a pile to mesh this into.

Some juicy synergy comes in the form Thalakos Seer, Dance of Many, Triskelion and even Declaration of Naught. Who woulda thought? 4.5/5 in my opinion.

hmmm i was wondering what the blue word card was gonna be, next time you would draw a card, we are going on a trip to the box factory.... dam tv, ruining my imagination

This + Warped Devotion + Geth's Grimoire = at the beginning of your upkeep pay X: return X permanents to their owner's hands

(At the beginning of your upkeep, you activate words of wind; when you would draw your card for the turn, you instead bounce something to an opponent's hand; warped devotion makes them discard it; Geth's grimoire allows you to draw another card; activate words of wind and repeat as many times as desired)

See also: Geth's Grimoire + Words of Waste

Or, just because you can:

Words of Wind, Geth's Grimoire, Warped Devotion, Sangromancer and Sanguine Bond = at the beginning of your upkeep, pay x: return x permanent's to target opponent's hand; that player discards x cards and loses 3x life. you gain 3x life.

In case you were wondering how paper beats rock...

I can't wait to reset the board in Azami except oops, I don't have to discard and everyone else does.

EDIT: Now this card is doing unspeakable things in Patron of the Moon EDH.

Does fun things in a momir vig edh. Intruder alarm, Citanul hierophants, elvish visionary. Everyone bounce your stuff.

Currently testing this in my Damia, Sage of Stone EDH Stax deck. It's performed to varying degrees of success.

By itself on a naked board, it reads - each player returns a land to his/her hand, except I skip a draw and no one else does. I would not run it for this narrow effect alone, but it's still the kind of tax effect that a Stax deck wants to have.

Playing it as I do alongside Exploration, Azusa, Lost but Seeking and Oracle of Mul-Daya, I return a land to hand and make a land drop that I otherwise would've missed. I can also sometimes return a token, in the same way I'm often saccing them to Smokestack and Braids. This negates the bounce effect for me, though it still costs that draw.

Other times I will have out something like a Bloodghast or a Reassembling Skeleton and a discard like Stronghold Rats, Liliana of the Veil, etc. I can bounce this card to hand and hold for the discard effect, negating both the discard and the bounce while inflicting them on opponents.

Trinket Mage and Mulldrifter combine well also. Trinket Mage allows obvious abuses, while Mulldrifter gives you a sorcery with automatic buyback that says "3U: Each opponent returns a permanent to hand, draw a card". Elvish Visionary allows the same thing, though I don't run it. At any rate, this is obviously an effect that any Stax deck with the mana would love to have.

Adding Damia is where this card gets really broken. Activating it a full seven times is basically a mana-intensive Sunder that affects the more developed players the least, which nearly always includes me. It's a Sunder that affects opposing creature boards as well, since you can just activate it 5 or 6 times each turn according to how much mana you're able to keep on the board. Seeing as you're the one who built the deck and prepared for the effect, you're able to simply bounce irrelevant tokens, Exploration/Azusa out those bounced lands, or otherwise just play out your low cc beaters while everyone else is holding their Primeval Titans and Consecrated Sphixes without the mana to cast them, the very connundrum that Stax decks are designed to create.

Works well in a deck built around Black Vise. Just need some extra draws, and something to offer for the "double edge", like a 0 CMC permanent you can cast back straight away.

Try Sensei's Divining Top, great synergy. Maybe add the high tide engine, or the locus lands for heavy mana to clear their board. Great control, great advantage; allowing for dual and multiplayer win conditions. Even a long drawn out decker scheme could easily be set up. 5 for sure...

I think I'm going to run this with Azorius Aethermage, Stormfront Riders, and some Ninjas.

Maybe even Escape Routes

This + Semblance Anvil + Ichor Wellspring
or,
This + Riddlesmith + any cmc artifact.

Your opponent won't keep up for long.

And if your worried about cheap red instants getting through, lock them out with Trinisphere after you bounce their entire board.

Activate WoWind during your upkeep to bounce your opponents only land and one of yours.
Replay the land.
Repeat each turn.
Your opponent either scoops or dies of boredom before he draws out.

@Mephastopheles,
Don't forget that Unlike the other WoW cards, this affects each player. So does Warped Devotion.
So every time you activate WoWind, you're returning a permanent to your hand and discarding a card as well.

This can be all sorts of awesome.

Words of Wind +
Frozen Æther
Stasis
Archivist (or any other repeateble draw card)

At the end of opponent's turn tap Archivist for the draw and pay (1) for the bounce. Return Stasis to your hand, and replay it during your turn. Æther makes everything from then on that your opponent plays come in tapped, and since Stasis is only in play during their untap, you still get an utap every turn. Maybe throw in an Icy Manipulator just to be cruel. Just make sure you have (1) untapped during opponent's turn.

Cloud of Faeries seems abusable with this. If you have high-tide it's as much mana as you have card draw, powering out your combo deck. I may have to try this..

Abundant growth, Frog tongue, or Sisay's Ingenuity and you have yourself 2: opponent bounces a permanent

I would rather put it in with Baleful Strix. The extra 1 to bounce is worth the fact that baleful is actually useful by itself.

Fun 4/5!

Lol @ the rules text. "before drawing these cards, I'd like to say a few things. _@#, $% * $*%. OK I'll use the first word I said, then the last, then the middle.

Really annoying with Dreamborn Muse.