The Card

The Basics

We've seen mechanics like Nostalgic Dreams before. Much like the spells to which I'm going to compare it (Recall and Holistic Wisdom), given the investment of one card (the Nostalgic Dreams itself), this spell allows you to improve your hand by trading any number of additional cards you are holding with the same number of cards in your graveyard. Remember, this is not a cantrip like Gaea's Blessing; Nostalgic Dreams does not inherently replace itself each time you play it, so you will generally come up one card behind when you cast this spell. If you choose to play with it, either plan to recover the loss of card economy somehow (probably via a third part card advantage engine), or at least justify it by improving the quality of your hand (think "Careful Study").

The Comparisons

Recall:

Is Nostalgic Dreams a Recall with a lower, and green, mana cost?

There are a couple of key differences between Nostalgic Dreams and the original. First of all, Recall has some vastly superior aspects in the comparison: Because both the cards returned to hand and the cards discarded via Recall are selected upon resolution, that card has more "bluff" to it, and presents a more difficult decision for either permission decks or opponents with instant speed graveyard manipulation. In the same position, a player using Nostalgic Dreams will be in a more precarious position should his graveyard targets be removed; even worse, if Nostalgic Dreams draws a permission response, its caster will also lose the cards that he has discarded to cast it. In the case of Recall the additional cards discarded are not part of the cost, and are not lost if Counterspell rears its ugly head.

Once upon a time, players like Eric Taylor ran multiple Recalls in u-w control, focusing on the synergy between that card, Foil, Nether Spirit and exterior card drawing (Accumulated Knowledge and Fact or Fiction). With Nether Spirit, Foil's three-card cost was essentially lowered to two (the third card, Nether Spirit, paid for itself). Should two Nether Spirits be locked in the graveyard, rescuing one of them via Recall would return the investment by putting the other into play. At the same time, a one-card Recall for Counterspell (pitching Nether Spirit) would similarly return the investment, making the trade an even Recall for Counterspell, rather than Recall + one card for Counterspell.

The addition of third party card advantage engines buoys the Investment of Recall in another way. At some point, you may have plenty of cards, and won't care about losing one in order to vastly improve the overall quality of your hand. Drawing up to eight and then trading a few lands for some Counterspells was a common play.

Obviously, Nostalgic Dreams can be used in much the same way as Recall for improving hand quality, and has about the same raw synergy with card drawing. But even more than Recall, which includes a cost-prohibitive pair of Xs in its own, Nostalgic Dreams's low mana cost makes it even better than the original when combined with cards like Nether Spirit. The raw number of cards traded between hand and graveyard is limited not by how much mana you want to spend on your own turn, but by how many cards you really want to discard. Look back at Taylor's u-w deck, and the tricks it played 1-2 Nether Spirit at a time to buoy invested cards; now imagine a format like Extended, where you can play a full compliment of Krovikan Horror and Squee, Goblin Nabob. In the right deck, Nostalgic Dreams can easily double your hand size at the cost of only 2 mana.

Holistic Wisdom:

A recent addition from Odyssey that has made some splash in Constructed is Holistic Wisdom. John Shuler made Day 2 of two different Grand Prix with this card, and won a PTQ with his version of the Holistic Wisdom deck; Brian Davis scored a Top 16 at GP-Las Vegas with a slightly different version. In practice, Holistic Wisdom is an extremely powerful card when combined with an exterior card advantage mechanism; players of the instant-based Extended deck use Intuition and Accumulated Knowledge to set up a Trick-reminiscent card drawing engine, and then use the Wisdom to Accumulate three or more cards, turn after turn.

The main drawbacks of Holistic Wisdom are its mana cost (how do I consistently get in a base blue deck?) and the fact that any deck based on Holistic Wisdom has to focus specifically on one kind of card (instants have seen the most experimentation here). Like Holistic Wisdom, Nostalgic Dreams has both a mana cost and requires the investment of an additional card. While Nostalgic Dreams does not allow turn-after-turn recursion possibilities, it has three distinct advantages over Holistic Wisdom.

Versatility of Target:Nostalgic Dreams does not discriminate by card type. While players have already sought to overcome the inherent drawbacks of a invested graveyard recursion spell, Nostalgic Dreams presents another viable option, but with no "all instants" addition to the price tag.

In the Extended Holistic Wisdom deck, players were forced to work their green-heavy recursion spell into an essentially blue instant deck. This made tuning the deck's mana problematic at best, and exacerbated the "how do I get consistently get " problem. Because Nostalgic Dreams doesn't care about card type, it not only eases up on what kinds of spells a designer has in his palette, it makes colored mana decisions easier as well. While Holistic Wisdom demanded to have a deck built wholly around it, Nostalgic Dreams can also be used to enhance the card selection options of an existing archetype.

Lower Overall Mana Cost: While Holistic Wisdom requires not only a slightly heftier initial cost, each additional use requires 2 mana. As we've seen with Recall, Nostalgic Dreams can exchange a lot of cards with the tapping of just 2 mana.

Interaction with Graveyard Mechanics: While Holistic Wisdom requires the cards from hand to be removed from game - meaning, among other things, that they cannot themselves be later returned to hand - Nostalgic Dreams has no such drawback. In fact, it has a synergistic interaction with many of the Odyssey block graveyard mechanics.

Obviously Nostalgic Dreams is a very different card, in practice, than Holistic Wisdom, although it has a similar effect and a number of potential upsides when compared with that spell. Given the fact that Holistic Wisdom has already been put to good use in Extended instant decks and Standard Domain builds, designers should have a number of incentives to implement this new variation.

The Interactions

When we talk about recovering the required investment of a card like Nostalgic Dreams, the Odyssey block answers that potential problem with its signature mechanics. Beyond the fact that you will be putting multiple cards into your discard pile, the friendly team of flashback, madness, and threshold can actually reward you for doing so...

Flashback is an obvious way to utilize Nostalgic Dream. Imagine trading Flametongue Kavu for a pair of the opponent's cards, and then pitching a Call of the Herd to get it back... you will not only have your best card back in hand, but access to a 3/3 threat even after your primary resources have been spent.

Madness, the largely unexplored new mechanic, seems tailor-made for Nostalgic Dreams. Much like the Extended example of Krovikan Horror and Squee, Goblin Nabob, Madness cards like Obsessive Search and Basking Rootwalla will make casting even a large Nostalgic Dreams an extremely low-risk investment. Though drawing extra cards with Obsessive Search will increase the effective mana cost of Nostalgic Dreams, Standard and Odyssey Block are generally slower formats than Extended; you can't expect to pull off the same kind of stunts with fewer sets, or at least not as cheaply.

More subtle than its contemporaries, Odyssey's other major mechanic benefits from Nostalgic Dreams as well. While we've focused mostly on Constructed with this analysis, Nostalgic Dreams allows you to maximize your early picks in draft, while simultaneously bringing you one spell closer to that seven card threshold.

The Verdict

Nostalgic Dreams should see both Limited and Constructed play. I think that its advantages over Holistic Wisdom in terms of card type will make it a nice addition to some base g-r decks, allowing for strong reactions between Beast Attack, Call of the Herd, and Flametongue Kavu. Its speed may outmode Holistic Wisdom in Standard Domain decks, already rich in green mana.

In draft, I don't expect it to be an extremely early pick, but Nostalgic Dreams will definitely maximize any deck's removal capabilities, allowing late-game lands to be exchanged for Flame Bursts or Patriarch's Desires. In a format where the graveyard and early tempo have so much importance, it will allow a player to recover that expensive bomb he may sacrificed early to keep around his Patrol Hound or Wild Mongrel, and it will definitely have positive interactions with conditional game-breakers like Roar of the Wurm.

On the subject of Roar of the Wurm ("Mise Roar", actually), drafting Nostalgic Dreams reminds me of something Billy Jensen once told me about laying down a Silverglade Elemental with a Counterspell in the grip:

"Dealing with a tree is hard enough to do the first time," he said. "Good luck doing it twice."

Mike has been a leading voice in the game's strategy for as long as there has been a Magic Internet. He is the former editor of The Magic Dojo and a sometime Pro player. Michael J. Flores: Deckade, is a compilation of Mike's first ten years of strategy and theory (i.e. before he joined magicthegathering.com), and is available at http://www.top8magic.com.

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