Courtesy of Wizards of the Coast (WotC), take a look at the latest twist on Fact or Fiction and similar cards coming in Murders at Karlov Manor — Intrude on the Mind!
Blue spells letting a player or opponent split a number of cards and then choose one to go to hand have been fan-favorites dating back to 2000 with Fact or Fiction from Invasion and 2004 with Gifts Ungiven from Champions of Kamigawa. Multiple riffs on these types of cards have been printed and some even showed up in competitive decks. The mini-game of splitting piles even showed up on Jace, Architect of Thought – an absolute powerhouse planeswalker in Standard and a recent variant based on domain appeared in Dominaria United with Sphinx of Clear Skies.
Intrude on the Mind pushes this type of spell a bit further, netting cards and an evasive creature token at instant-speed for five mana.
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With Intrude on the Mind, the caster separates the five cards into two piles and lets an opponent choose the pile that goes to the caster’s hand. The other pile goes to the graveyard and the caster gets to create a 0/0 colorless Thopter artifact creature token with flying and a +1/+1 counter on it for each card put in the graveyard from Intrude on the Mind.
Control decks tend to get a lot of value from having win conditions attached to spells they would already want to play, so Intrude on the mind could be a key spell for control decks going forward in Standard. Of course, filling the graveyard is also nice when effects like descend from The Lost Caverns of Ixalan exist in the format.
Murders at Karlov Manor is set to release on February 9. View our official preview gallery here.