Mind's Desire

Premodern-legal editions of Mind's Desire — old-border printings plus any period-appropriate foil promos (Arena/Judge, through Scourge). Hover to preview an edition on the card; click to select it.

Scourge

2003·scgrare

Selected

Old-border editions + pre-Scourge promo foils (Arena/Judge). Modern-frame reprints (8th Edition onward) exist but are not period-appropriate printings.

Why It's Banned

Mind's Desire reads "shuffle your library, then play the top X cards for free," where X is your storm count, making it a one-card explosion that converts a turn of cheap rituals and cantrips into a cascade of free spells. In Premodern's ritual-rich pool (Dark Ritual, Cabal Ritual, Lion's Eye Diamond, Lotus Petal), a single resolved copy snowballs into more lands, more accelerants, and ultimately a lethal or game-locking payoff faster than any fair deck can interact. It rewards solitaire combo turns over the back-and-forth, interactive play the format is built to protect, so it sits at the heart of the storm ban package.

Printed in Scourge in 2003 as one of the marquee payoffs of the Storm mechanic, it was so dominant in Type 1/Vintage that it was restricted there within days of release. Premodern, the community format (created by Martin Berlin in 2012) drawing on that same 1995-2003 pool, has had it on the ban list from the format's foundation as a premier storm enabler.

Trivia & Lore

• Mind's Desire is one of the fastest-restricted cards in Magic history: released in Scourge on May 26, 2003, it was restricted in Vintage (then Type 1) by the June 1, 2003 DCI announcement, effective July 1 -- only days after release. It is the only card whose restriction took effect the very first day it was legal in DCI-sanctioned play. The same announcement also banned it in Type 1.5, the predecessor to Legacy.
• The June 2003 restriction announcement justified the ban by noting that with four copies of Mind's Desire, a player 'would be able to play every card in his or her deck on the same turn without too much difficulty.'
• Mind's Desire stayed banned in Legacy for roughly two decades and was unbanned on August 7, 2023 -- the same announcement that unbanned Preordain in Modern. Wizards cited that creatures and planeswalkers had grown stronger and that multiple cycles of free spells had made storm harder to abuse, so combo players could 'also get the same level of new content and strength.'
• Mind's Desire was the payoff of the Vintage combo deck known as Long.dec / TPS ('The Perfect Storm'), which abused Lion's Eye Diamond, Burning Wish and Yawgmoth's Will. The original Storm build is credited to Mike Krzywicki; the 'Long' name stuck because ex-Pro Tour player Mike Long evangelized the deck, even though he did not design the first versions. The deck's power got both Lion's Eye Diamond and Burning Wish restricted.
• Storm -- the mechanic that makes Mind's Desire degenerate -- debuted in Scourge (2003) and was created by Brian Tinsman. Mark Rosewater later judged it so broken that it became the namesake of R&D's 'Storm Scale' (where 10 is least likely to return to Standard), and it has effectively been retired from Standard-legal sets.
• The original Scourge printing of Mind's Desire (set SCG #41, rare) was illustrated by Ron Spencer.
• Mind's Desire has been reprinted with new art across several premium products: Vintage Masters (2014, #80), From the Vault: Lore (2016, #8, art by Adam Paquette), Commander 2021 (#123), and the English Strixhaven Mystical Archive (2021, #17, showcase art by Minttu Hynninen). The Japanese Mystical Archive printing (#80) uses an entirely different alternate artwork by the artist Yaya.
• A rules subtlety: Mind's Desire says you 'may play' each exiled card, which lets you play a land for free -- but the storm copies it generates are put directly onto the stack rather than cast, so those copies do NOT add to the storm count of a later spell like Tendrils of Agony or Brain Freeze. (Cards you actually cast off Mind's Desire do count.)

Critical Rulings