Distended Mindbender is a card that was just recently printed in the latest set of Magic the Gathering, Eldritch Moon. It features a new mechanic called emerge. Emerge lets you sacrifice a creature to cast a spell for its emerge cost minus the CMC* of the sacrificed creature. In the case of Distended Mindbender it is an 8 drop with an emerge cost of 5BB, when you cast Distended Mindbender target opponent reveals their hand and you choose a nonland card with CMC of 3 or less and a nonland card with CMC 4 or greater and they discard them.
This card is fantastic! I wasn’t too sure about it at first considering the emerge cost seems kind of high and the card itself cost 8 generic mana on its own but having been able to play it for myself, I can safely say the card lives up to the hype. Being able to cast it on turn four seems bad but that control over your opponent is very, very much worth it. Seeing their hand and making them lose their best cards at this point gives you an excellent advantage on top of being able to play around the cards you didn’t make them discard earlier and all of this attached to a 5/5 is just fabulous.
I predict this will see a ton of standard play in green/black and black/white control shells, maybe blue? We’ll have to wait and see this coming Pro-Tour! In modern, I could see it in a mid-range control shell maybe in the blue/black Ashiok Nightmare Weaver rogue deck. Emerging into a creature that gives you value like Desperate Sentry is the cherry on top of this already amazing card that gives me very high hopes for it.
-Moe