The Ins and Outs of Mirage of Nightmare
Written by Jason Grabber-Meyer
Mirage of Nightmare is, in the minds of many duelists, a flavour card. It's the kind of card where if it works for you, great, but if it doesn't, that's just sort of too bad and you move on. In my mind that's true: for some reason it seems like some people just have an innate ability to get a lot of beneficial use out of Mirage, while others consistently get screwed over by it, watching their Raigeki, Pot of Greed, Graceful Charity, and other staples hit the discard while they're powerless to prevent it.
That's part of the beauty of Yu-Gi-Oh: some things work for some people, and some things don't.
But, before you write off Mirage of Nightmare as not being for you, there might be some important rulings and techniques revolving around it that you might not be aware of. If you absolutely adore Mirage of Nightmare you likely know most of the tricks and loopholes involving it, but there might be some interesting tidbits for you too, so read on. In addition, you'll often bump into duelists who don't fully understand rulings involving playing against Mirage of Nightmare, so we'll recap some timing issues in order to help you deal with such duelists and help them understand things a bit better than they may have before.
First off, there's a general misconception amongst many duelists that "Mirage of Nightmare sucks unless you get the Mystical Space Typhoon combo". While MST is an integral part of abusing Mirage of Nightmare, there are a lot of other combos or just flat out clever tricks that are highly important to understand. First though, for those who are really new to Mirage let's establish the basic MST combo.
One of the most beneficial ways to use Mirage of Nightmare is to combo it with something that can destroy it at an opportune time. From the time you draw your extra cards in your opponent's standby phase, to the point at which you're forced to resolve Mirage's effect in your standby phase, the destruction of Mirage of Nightmare is going to gain you card advantage. If Mirage doesn't stick around until it resolves on your turn you don't discard cards for its effect, so if you can Mystical Space Typhoon it on your opponent's turn or before its resolution during your standby phase (ie, in your draw phase) you can gain some serious card advantage. This is the "Mirage combo" which basically everybody knows. It can also be done with any effect similar to Mystical Space Typhoon - for instance, Raigeki Break.
Ok, so no surprises there. Let's look at some of the other rulings that function to the benefit of a player controlling Mirage of Nightmare.
Sinister Serpent can be sent from the graveyard to your hand as many times during your standby phase as you like. This is significant because in a single standby phase you can choose to resolve the effect of a Sinister Serpent in your graveyard, return it to your hand, then resolve Mirage of Nightmare's discard effect, discard Sinister Serpent (if it happens to be discarded in the random discard), and then resolve the Serpent's effect again to return it to your hand. In short, instead of discarding something you got into your hand as a result of Mirage of Nightmare's effect, you're discarding Serpent, but then getting it back anyways. You're gaining an extra card's worth of hand advantage.
The result is that if you summon or set Sinister Serpent every turn while you have Mirage of Nightmare in play and your opponent destroys it, he or she runs the risk of quickly giving you more cards than they can handle. If your opponent realizes this then it might deter them from attacking. If they don't realize this fact, and do attack, then you're effectively gaining two cards per turn instead of just the one that you'd normally get in your draw phase. It's a win-win situation.
Another effective use of Mirage of Nightmare is comboing it with a spell-negating effect like that of Imperial Order. So long as Mirage of Nightmare is being negated by an effect, you don't have to discard for it in your standby phase. What this means is that you can draw four cards for Mirage's effect during your opponent's standby phase, activate Imperial Order any time before Mirage must resolve (for instance, on the opponent's turn or on your own draw phase), and potentially keep the four cards you drew.
During a standby phase in which Mirage of Nightmare and Imperial Order are both active on the field, you'll have two mandatory effects looking to resolve: Imperial Order's mandatory cost of 700 LP, and the discard effect of Mirage of Nightmare. Because you decide the order in which mandatory effects in your standby phase resolve, you can decide to resolve Mirage of Nightmare's effect first. It is then negated by Imperial Order, and you discard nothing. You will then have to resolve Imperial Order's effect, and will choose whether or not you wish to pay to keep it on the field. If you opt not to do so then Imperial Order will be destroyed, but at this point you've already resolved Mirage of Nightmare's effect for this turn and it can not resolve again in this particular standby phase - just as if you had destroyed Mirage, you get to keep the cards you drew as a result of its effect.
Imperial Order will of course be Forbidden in the near future in some venues, but even at tournaments where the Forbidden list will be in place you can still negate Mirage of Nightmare at convenient times - Spell Canceller, for instance, could be special summoned to the field with Call of the Haunted in your draw phase and then destroyed before your opponent's standby phase to basically achieve the same effect: it just takes a bit more effort.
In general, destroying, negating, or comboing with recursive cards like Sinister Serpent or Night Assailant are highly effective ways to abuse Mirage of Nightmare. Understand too though that drawing and discarding just one or two cards per turn with Mirage of Nightmare is going to help you reliably draw into cards you want without requiring a combo - you do run a risk of discarding the cards you're looking for, but by carefully measuring the number of cards you're drawing and discarding per turn you can manipulate the odds in your own favour. Even if you're just drawing and discarding one card per turn due to Mirage's effect, you've essentially doubled the rate at which you're peeling through your deck while incurring only a 40% chance that either of the two new cards you've acquired since your last end phase will be discarded.
Remember too that more than just Mystical Space Typhoon can be used in your draw phase before Mirage requires you to discard. Using a quickplay spell from your hand in your draw phase before discarding for Mirage is going to increase the chance of the other cards in your hand being discarded, but in some cases that can be well worth the sacrifice. If you badly need a defense you can activate Scapegoat. If you really don't want to possibly lose what's in your hand, you can Reload it and protect those cards by sending them back to your deck. If you're playing a Machine deck you can use Limiter Removal before Mirage has a chance to be discarded - these little tricks can be game breakers.
Lastly, Mirage of Nightmare can sometimes provide a nice protective wall. If you just drew three or four cards from its effect, your opponent is often going to be reluctant to activate Heavy Storm, Harpie's Feather Duster, or Giant Trunade because you'll end up keeping the cards you drew. This can be a great way to protect an important face down spell or trap.
Occasionally you may duel someone who doesn't completely understand how timing and priority work in the standby phase. If you control Imperial Order and Mirage of Nightmare in your own standby phase you can choose the order in which the effects resolve. However if your opponent controls Imperial Order and you control Mirage of Nightmare in your opponent's standby phase, the opponent can not opt to resolve your Mirage of Nightmare before refusing to pay for Imperial Order. The scenario would instead break down as follows:
Player 1: It is Player 1's turn. Player 1 controls a face up Imperial Order.
Player 2: Player 2 controls a face up Mirage of Nightmare.
Player 1: Controls priority. Not wanting to resolve Imperial Order's effect before negating Mirage of Nightmare, he passes priority to Player 2.
Player 2: Does not want to resolve Mirage of Nightmare's effect when it would be negated, so he passes priority back to Player 1.
At this point, both players have passed priority once. Priority now belongs to Player 1 again, and Player 1 must resolve a mandatory effect. In this case, that means Imperial Order must be paid for or destroyed.
Player 1: Refuses to pay for Imperial Order.
Player 2: Must now resolve his mandatory effect, the effect of Mirage of Nightmare. Player 2 draws cards until he has four in his hand.
If you're ever in the shoes of Player 2 it's important that you understand how the scenario works. Many players in the position of Player 1 will think they can choose when to resolve all mandatory effects in their own standby phase, and thus believe they can negate the effect of a Mirage of Nightmare controlled by an opponent. This is not true, because Player 1 can only choose when mandatory effects under his control resolve - he can not choose the order in which effects controlled by the opponent resolve. Make sure you understand this ruling so you don't get hosed out of your Mirage of Nightmare draw.
So, those are some of the intricacies of Mirage of Nightmare, with supporting rulings. If you've never really tried Mirage of Nightmare in a deck before, definitely give it a shot: there's a lot more to it than just the MST combo!
Written by Jason Grabber-Meyer
Mirage of Nightmare is, in the minds of many duelists, a flavour card. It's the kind of card where if it works for you, great, but if it doesn't, that's just sort of too bad and you move on. In my mind that's true: for some reason it seems like some people just have an innate ability to get a lot of beneficial use out of Mirage, while others consistently get screwed over by it, watching their Raigeki, Pot of Greed, Graceful Charity, and other staples hit the discard while they're powerless to prevent it.
That's part of the beauty of Yu-Gi-Oh: some things work for some people, and some things don't.
But, before you write off Mirage of Nightmare as not being for you, there might be some important rulings and techniques revolving around it that you might not be aware of. If you absolutely adore Mirage of Nightmare you likely know most of the tricks and loopholes involving it, but there might be some interesting tidbits for you too, so read on. In addition, you'll often bump into duelists who don't fully understand rulings involving playing against Mirage of Nightmare, so we'll recap some timing issues in order to help you deal with such duelists and help them understand things a bit better than they may have before.
First off, there's a general misconception amongst many duelists that "Mirage of Nightmare sucks unless you get the Mystical Space Typhoon combo". While MST is an integral part of abusing Mirage of Nightmare, there are a lot of other combos or just flat out clever tricks that are highly important to understand. First though, for those who are really new to Mirage let's establish the basic MST combo.
One of the most beneficial ways to use Mirage of Nightmare is to combo it with something that can destroy it at an opportune time. From the time you draw your extra cards in your opponent's standby phase, to the point at which you're forced to resolve Mirage's effect in your standby phase, the destruction of Mirage of Nightmare is going to gain you card advantage. If Mirage doesn't stick around until it resolves on your turn you don't discard cards for its effect, so if you can Mystical Space Typhoon it on your opponent's turn or before its resolution during your standby phase (ie, in your draw phase) you can gain some serious card advantage. This is the "Mirage combo" which basically everybody knows. It can also be done with any effect similar to Mystical Space Typhoon - for instance, Raigeki Break.
Ok, so no surprises there. Let's look at some of the other rulings that function to the benefit of a player controlling Mirage of Nightmare.
Sinister Serpent can be sent from the graveyard to your hand as many times during your standby phase as you like. This is significant because in a single standby phase you can choose to resolve the effect of a Sinister Serpent in your graveyard, return it to your hand, then resolve Mirage of Nightmare's discard effect, discard Sinister Serpent (if it happens to be discarded in the random discard), and then resolve the Serpent's effect again to return it to your hand. In short, instead of discarding something you got into your hand as a result of Mirage of Nightmare's effect, you're discarding Serpent, but then getting it back anyways. You're gaining an extra card's worth of hand advantage.
The result is that if you summon or set Sinister Serpent every turn while you have Mirage of Nightmare in play and your opponent destroys it, he or she runs the risk of quickly giving you more cards than they can handle. If your opponent realizes this then it might deter them from attacking. If they don't realize this fact, and do attack, then you're effectively gaining two cards per turn instead of just the one that you'd normally get in your draw phase. It's a win-win situation.
Another effective use of Mirage of Nightmare is comboing it with a spell-negating effect like that of Imperial Order. So long as Mirage of Nightmare is being negated by an effect, you don't have to discard for it in your standby phase. What this means is that you can draw four cards for Mirage's effect during your opponent's standby phase, activate Imperial Order any time before Mirage must resolve (for instance, on the opponent's turn or on your own draw phase), and potentially keep the four cards you drew.
During a standby phase in which Mirage of Nightmare and Imperial Order are both active on the field, you'll have two mandatory effects looking to resolve: Imperial Order's mandatory cost of 700 LP, and the discard effect of Mirage of Nightmare. Because you decide the order in which mandatory effects in your standby phase resolve, you can decide to resolve Mirage of Nightmare's effect first. It is then negated by Imperial Order, and you discard nothing. You will then have to resolve Imperial Order's effect, and will choose whether or not you wish to pay to keep it on the field. If you opt not to do so then Imperial Order will be destroyed, but at this point you've already resolved Mirage of Nightmare's effect for this turn and it can not resolve again in this particular standby phase - just as if you had destroyed Mirage, you get to keep the cards you drew as a result of its effect.
Imperial Order will of course be Forbidden in the near future in some venues, but even at tournaments where the Forbidden list will be in place you can still negate Mirage of Nightmare at convenient times - Spell Canceller, for instance, could be special summoned to the field with Call of the Haunted in your draw phase and then destroyed before your opponent's standby phase to basically achieve the same effect: it just takes a bit more effort.
In general, destroying, negating, or comboing with recursive cards like Sinister Serpent or Night Assailant are highly effective ways to abuse Mirage of Nightmare. Understand too though that drawing and discarding just one or two cards per turn with Mirage of Nightmare is going to help you reliably draw into cards you want without requiring a combo - you do run a risk of discarding the cards you're looking for, but by carefully measuring the number of cards you're drawing and discarding per turn you can manipulate the odds in your own favour. Even if you're just drawing and discarding one card per turn due to Mirage's effect, you've essentially doubled the rate at which you're peeling through your deck while incurring only a 40% chance that either of the two new cards you've acquired since your last end phase will be discarded.
Remember too that more than just Mystical Space Typhoon can be used in your draw phase before Mirage requires you to discard. Using a quickplay spell from your hand in your draw phase before discarding for Mirage is going to increase the chance of the other cards in your hand being discarded, but in some cases that can be well worth the sacrifice. If you badly need a defense you can activate Scapegoat. If you really don't want to possibly lose what's in your hand, you can Reload it and protect those cards by sending them back to your deck. If you're playing a Machine deck you can use Limiter Removal before Mirage has a chance to be discarded - these little tricks can be game breakers.
Lastly, Mirage of Nightmare can sometimes provide a nice protective wall. If you just drew three or four cards from its effect, your opponent is often going to be reluctant to activate Heavy Storm, Harpie's Feather Duster, or Giant Trunade because you'll end up keeping the cards you drew. This can be a great way to protect an important face down spell or trap.
Occasionally you may duel someone who doesn't completely understand how timing and priority work in the standby phase. If you control Imperial Order and Mirage of Nightmare in your own standby phase you can choose the order in which the effects resolve. However if your opponent controls Imperial Order and you control Mirage of Nightmare in your opponent's standby phase, the opponent can not opt to resolve your Mirage of Nightmare before refusing to pay for Imperial Order. The scenario would instead break down as follows:
Player 1: It is Player 1's turn. Player 1 controls a face up Imperial Order.
Player 2: Player 2 controls a face up Mirage of Nightmare.
Player 1: Controls priority. Not wanting to resolve Imperial Order's effect before negating Mirage of Nightmare, he passes priority to Player 2.
Player 2: Does not want to resolve Mirage of Nightmare's effect when it would be negated, so he passes priority back to Player 1.
At this point, both players have passed priority once. Priority now belongs to Player 1 again, and Player 1 must resolve a mandatory effect. In this case, that means Imperial Order must be paid for or destroyed.
Player 1: Refuses to pay for Imperial Order.
Player 2: Must now resolve his mandatory effect, the effect of Mirage of Nightmare. Player 2 draws cards until he has four in his hand.
If you're ever in the shoes of Player 2 it's important that you understand how the scenario works. Many players in the position of Player 1 will think they can choose when to resolve all mandatory effects in their own standby phase, and thus believe they can negate the effect of a Mirage of Nightmare controlled by an opponent. This is not true, because Player 1 can only choose when mandatory effects under his control resolve - he can not choose the order in which effects controlled by the opponent resolve. Make sure you understand this ruling so you don't get hosed out of your Mirage of Nightmare draw.
So, those are some of the intricacies of Mirage of Nightmare, with supporting rulings. If you've never really tried Mirage of Nightmare in a deck before, definitely give it a shot: there's a lot more to it than just the MST combo!