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| Where There's a Will, There's a Way. - by Dangerlinto
On Feb 13th, the Magic Online Championship Series will give out to qualified participants the be all and end all of overpowered and just plain unfair cards - Yawgmoth's Will. This card is so ridiculously powerful that for years uncounted, it has dominated the Vintage seen, perhaps up until WoTC errated Time Vault (again) and made it the central focus of nearly every deck. For a time, Will was considered so central to Vintage that Stephen Menedian actually called for it's banning. Well, Classic doesn't have to worry about Time Vault (yet) and Will is not and will not be banned, just restricted, so it's about time we started discussing what kind of effect Yawgmoth's Will has on the game. It is important to understand that while the text of Yawgmoth's Will reads "until end of turn, you may play cards in your graveyard" it's power is actually better described as essentially "Draw your graveyard". While not technically true – it depends largely on the contents of your graveyard providing you the means to play all those cards – it is essentially true. At the cost of just About now if you haven't before had the experience of playing against Yawgmoth's Will, you might be thinking: "it's just a another broken graveyard strategy – I'll just bring in my graveyard hate". That would be a terrible mistake to make. Take the following decklist as an example Ad Nauseum Tendrils (ANT) –
Is this a deck you would generally bring in graveyard hate for? Why would you? The only cards that have anything to do with the graveyard are Cabal Ritual and the single Yawgmoth's Will. In the past, this deck has cared very little for the contents of it's graveyard – it's more concerned with getting a boatload of mana acceleration into it's hand via Ad Nauseam. Yawgmoth's Will, however, changes the dynamic of this deck drastically. If you bring in graveyard hate to battle the deck, it will simply ignore its graveyard and win via the normal Ad Nauseam path. If you don't, it now has an alternative path to winning. Consider the following play:
Now, that was just 5 cards. Not a God hand of 7 cards. You don't have to draw 20 cards with Ad Nauseam to win. You didn't even have to have a restricted card in your hand. You didn't put yourself perilously close to losing to a Lightning Bolt. And that's just a very simple example of how well Yawgmoth's Will performs. It's not called YawgWin for nothing. Let's stay on the topic of this deck for a while. In the past, various other decks would defeat ANT through regular means. I'm not talking about sideboarding in Meddling Mage or Gaddock Teeg or some strategy designed specifically to beat storm decks. Much like dredge, you can always bring in something – but ANT was more difficult to play because you could simply lose to maindeck strategies. For example, if you couldn't get a turn 1 win, and you went 2nd, by that time RDW could possibly throw 13 points of damage at you – leaving you with just 7 life of cards to draw from Ad Nauseam. Not a lot, really. Pox decks hammering your hand with targeted discard and then Hymn to Tourach and essentially turn your hand into mush make getting to 5 mana very difficult beyond the first turn. And it's no good trying to recover from having Ritual, Petal, LED Internal Tutor for Ad Nauseam countered, because after that you just don't have the cards to recover from getting your dome smashed in by Goyfs. Yawgmoth's Will changes that dynamic. Now there is a method to storm out without putting yourself in the red zone. Now the opponent has to worry about the cards in your graveyard as well as your hand. And now the control player has to hold even more control and less win conditions to battle the instant recovery Will provides. It is simply too easy to find Yawgmoth's Will in this format, and too easy to abuse to even consider playing decks that don't take appropriate measures to protect themselves. Playing a storm deck isn't the only method to abusing Yawgmoth's Will. Let's take a look at a card like Intuition. With a Yawgmoth's Will in hand, an end-of-turn Intuition now reads "Tutor 3 cards and you get to play one of them twice" - which is crazy. Gifts Ungiven suddenly becomes "draw 6 cards". Or, if you don't have a Yawgmoth's Will in hand, you could instead get a Gifts pile of Yawgmoth's Will, Tinker, Recoup, Mana Crypt (In Vintage you'd put in Lotus) and no matter what the opponent gives you, you are going to be Tinkering out your Mana Crypt for a win condition. Another deck using Oath works like this in Vintage, and could possibly be adapted to Classic. Krosan Oath – A Vintage Deck
This combo wants to put almost everything in it's graveyard, and then play Krosan Reclamation and Flash of Insight to get Yawgmoth's Will which essentially becomes "draw your library", which then goes on to easily Tendrils for the win. And don't be fooled by the combo lists. Yawgmoth's Will is not just a combo engine that let's you play with your graveyard. It works just fine a one shot pseudo-card draw if what you really want is in your graveyard. In other words, if you are playing So if Yawgmoth's Will is that good, what does that mean to the meta? Well, I think what first will happen is a tendency toward tutoring will grow. Up until now, tutors have sort of sat in the background in terms of their power level in classic – many of the tutors that are restricted in Vintage remain unrestricted in Classic – notably Mystical Tutor. The availability of even a single Yawgmoth's Will forces those cards into the foreground, because the synergy of tutors and Yawgmoth's Will is significant. Being able to tutor Yawgmoth's Will and then being able to use that SAME tutor to go and get your win conditions present's an insane amount of synergy. Decks that can't take advantage of Yawgmoth's Will will have to either already have that synergy (Like say, dredge) or will probably fall by the wayside. That doesn't mean every deck will have to be a Combo deck like the ones above. Far from it. Decks utilizing active control measures can just as easily take advantage of the same synergy. Land, Dark Ritual, Duress, Hymn To Tourach is a fine play in many cases. Playing Demonic tutor on turn 2 and then getting to do it all over again for free is much better. (Sadly, such a deck would probably lose to a resolved Will on the opponent's side since generally they have no reactive control to handle the opponent regaining every cards they lost). As more fast mana becomes available, this effect will be even more pronounced . The only saving grace against those who'd rather not play a Will-enabled deck is that with a casting cost of Long – by Stephen Menendian, circa 2003
This deck went so busted on the scene once Tendrils of Agony was released it sent three cards to the restricted pile, Lion's Eye Diamond and Burning Wish and Chrome Mox (which was later removed - and wasn't really ever used in this deck). At the time, Burning Wish was able to retrieve Yawgmoth's Will from what is now the exiled zone, as it was once synonymous with "outside the game". Nowadays, that play is no longer possible and while Burning Wish is still a powerful piece, it's no longer so versatile as it used to be. Lion's Eye Diamond remains as potent as ever.
I'm also of the opinion that Storm decks are already powerful enough that anything that can so easily get Yawgmoth's Will ought to also be restricted, even if it's synergy with Will after it's resolved isn't as strong as, say, Demonic Tutor. The only unrestricted card that fits this bill is Mystical Tutor, which for a single |
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, Yawgmoth's Will's potential is unrivaled. 
, classic is still bereft of Sol Ring and Black Lotus to slightly ease the cost of the card. Unfortunately there is very little precedent in eternal formats with access to Yawgmoth's Will as well as 4x Lotus Petal., which remains unrestricted. Getting to replay your Lotus Petals for free is incredible. However, there is precedent with respect to Yawgmoth's Will and it's interaction with Lion's Eye Diamond.
puts Yawgmoth's Will right on top of your deck – which depending on your opponent is often better than putting it in your hand where it is much more susceptible to active control elements. I know some people will hmm and haw at the thought of restricting Mystical Tutor. I'm aware there are a certain faction of people who would rather the format prove a card or combo is broken before it's restricted – and I think there is a certain value in that way of thinking, but it certainly hasn't stopped WoTC and the DCI from restricting in the past. Look no further than Demonic Tutor and the FTV exiled cards as pre-emptive restrictions to show they certainly feel they know what cards are to be placed on the list. I'll happily admit that Mystical Tutor is on the fence here. Personally, I'd be happy to leave it unrestricted, but because long-term it seems likely that Mystical Tutor will get restricted anyway, it doesn't seem to be to much of a problem if indeed they jumped the gun. Say, then, that I wouldn't be at all surprised to see it restricted soon.