[MCD] Recurring Suspend Cards

[Mookie]

I recently picked up a copy of Venture Forth, and I'm curious whether people have been playing it or the other recent recurring suspend cards, Inspiring Refrain and Rousing Refrain. Do your games last long enough for you to play the cards multiple times? Are you playing them in a specific style of deck that synergizes with them? How do you feel about the incremental burst of resources compared to something more consistent?

...if you squint, Inspiring Refrain looks pretty close to a Phyrexian Arena that draws 2/3 of a card every turn, but can't be stopped by enchantment removal. On the other hand, blue also has a lot of other card draw options. Rousing Refrain is a more unique effect, but lining it up with the times that you actually want to cast a big spell can be tricky. I hope that Venture Forth will be good in the deck I'm planning to put it in (Tasigur), but that's also a slow and grindy control deck that expects to get multiple casts from it.

Also: three cards point to a pattern, so I wouldn't be surprised if we saw a white and black version of this effect sometime in the future. Maybe a recurring Zombify in black, or a Disenchant in white? Food for thought.

[void_nothing]

The original cycle of these are all well, well overcosted (at least for the hardcast mode) but Chronomantic Escape is potentially worth a look and has a great name. I like Inspiring Refrain because it's always useful, not overly variable, and can often come in clutch.

[PrimevalCommander]

Too slow for my tastes. Grossly overcosted on the first casting, regardless of repeatable value. The ramp is the closest you could get me to play, but I'd rather play one that ramps 2 basics, or searches for ANY land instead of a randomized land off the top.

A removal spell would be the closest you could get me to play, but it'd have to cost 4 mana, and no more, otherwise I'm out again. That would mean I could remove an early game threat without feeling bad about using it so early. Sorcery is fine depending on how flexible it is. Based on these others it would still be a hard sell, as it would probably read like a sorcery terminate for 4 or 5 mana that suspends, and that would not get me very excited unless I'm playing pretty low power with really LONG games.

[Ruiner]

I've enjoyed Rousing Refrain in my Jaxis, the Troublemaker deck. Every few turns getting a big burst of mana is pretty sweet. I don't know that I'd run it in anything besides a mono red deck though for the most part unless I was running a lot of X spells.

[Jemolk]

Always been a big fan of the recursive suspend cards, including the originals from Future Sight. They're slow, but I'm fine with slow, and they provide continual, hard-to-disrupt value, which provides considerable inevitability. Love that. Of them all, Rousing Refrain is probably the least reliable of the ones I've played. Cyclical Evolution is pretty bad, but other than that and the slight unreliability problem of Rousing Refrain, they've never been anything but awesome for me. Even Arc Blade and Festering March have done quite well by me.

They also go very well with anything that provides extra upkeeps, like Paradox Haze and Sphinx of the Second Sun.

[Sinis]

I've seen Reality Strobe played, but I can't say I've ever been impressed, even though it irritatingly hurts my favourite kinds of decks. Strobe also suffers from 'sacrifice your target in response', whereby it fizzles and probably never returns. A friend and I occasionally talk about playing Rousing Refrain, but I have yet to see it in either his or my decks.

Chronomantic Escape has cutesy combos with it, where you can skip an infinite number of turns using something Grand Abolisher + Lethal Vapors, but this isn't likely to win you a game because of deck shufflers, or things like Approach of the Second Sun.

Venture Forth seems bad. A Sakura-Tribe Elder that needs to wait 3 turns is not my idea of greatness. It may see play in Keruga piles, because it gives you a turn 2 play, and even though between (good) suspend cards, Adventure typed cards, and cards with Channel there are more of them than ever, some people want that density to make it work.

Realistically, I think these don't 'hit' frequently enough to be worthwhile. Games often don't last long enough to see them resolve more than twice, and the effects on them are just too janky to permit. For example, for Inspiring Refrain to be 'worth it', it basically needs to resolve twice. If it resolves once off the back of its 2U suspend cost, it's worse than Divination. If it resolves twice, it's... still worse than Painful Truths, Read the Bones, etc. If you pay full price, it's like you should have just had Opportunity.

I can make an exception for Chronomantic Escape, since you can suspend it, and then when it drops, you can play planeswalkers or do some sort of other shenanigans wait, no, creatures can still attack your walkers. I guess you can go all out on attacks with impunity on the 'escaped' turn? That's not nothing, but it's not exactly earthshattering.

I can make an exception for Rousing Refrain. The effect is powerful enough that suspending it on turn 2 and then planning for some big turn may work out for you. It also could be worth its 3RR cost; there are plenty of games where that's still mana-positive, and then there's the looming threat in the future that it could get you more value. More than anything, I think Rousing Refrain's result is highly variable and could do something really powerful, whereas the other cards have very low ceilings. Like Keruga, it also might get squeezed into something running Obosh, the Preypiercer as a companion, since it gives you a turn 2 play without violating your deck restrictions. (and you will virtually always have a sink for the mana you gain out of it, with the Companion rule cost, or the either of them's 5 mana value as well).

If I were already playing a lot of upkeep mojo (Shrines?) and playing Paradox Haze and Sphinx of the Second Sun, I might consider these more. But, probably not. Maybe if I were also playing a lot of extra turn effects? But, this sounds like a deck no one would enjoy.

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Ok, bottom line, Venture Forth in decks with Keruga (maybe), Rousing Refrain in decks with Keruga, Obosh. Maybe decks with extra turns/upkeeps.

[Treamayne]

Versions of my Jeskai Prowess deck have used Clockspinning with Reality Strobe and Chronomantic Escape (not to mention Memory Crystal if I can make it stick); but then I'm not *just* getting the suspend value more frequently - I'm getting Prowess triggers and spell copy effects. . .

[Mookie]

Thanks for the feedback, all! I'm going to be testing out Venture Forth, and will keep an eye out for any decks that can particularly synergize with Inspiring Refrain, but probably won't end up keeping them in any but the slowest of decks. That said, they do seem like fun options if you're in the mood for some durdling.

[hyalopterouslemur]

Not a fan per se, just the "too slow" aspect. Oh, they're good in a slow meta, but that's about it. Not even my many Stax decks run them.

Oh, in other news, still waiting on that white Delay, WotC. ⌛