Malicious Advice MTG Card

Mana cost
Converted mana cost	2
Rarity	Common
Type	Instant
Released	2001-02-05
Set symbol
Set name	Planeshift
Set code	PLS
Number	114
Frame	1997
Layout	Normal
Border	Black
Illustred by	Glen Angus

Key Takeaways

Gain flexibility and upper hand by untapping lands or artifacts to maintain resource and card advantage.
Instant speed plays disrupt opponents, offering tactical surprise and a competitive edge.
Requires careful deck-building with color commitment and resource management balancing its power level.

Text of card

Tap X target artifacts, creatures, and/or lands. You lose X life.

"Rule through fear, Darigaaz. Only if the dragons feel terror will they truly be your servants." —Tevesh Szat

Card Pros

Card Advantage: Malicious Advice offers a strategic edge, permitting you to untap any number of lands and artifacts. This flexibility can translate to replenishing your resources, allowing you to cast more spells or activate abilities, thereby maintaining or increasing your card advantage on the field.

Resource Acceleration: By untapping your lands or artifacts during your opponent’s turn, Malicious Advice essentially speeds up your gameplay by giving you access to more mana. This boost in resource acceleration can be pivotal in casting high-cost spells sooner than expected.

Instant Speed: The power of instant speed spells cannot be overstated in MTG. Malicious Advice can be utilized at the end of your opponent’s turn, keeping your mana free for counterspells or other interactions during their turn. It’s this instantaneity that provides a tactical advantage, making it a surprise element that can disrupt your opponent’s plans.

Card Cons

Discard Requirement: Malicious Advice requires players to discard a card, which can deplete valuable hand resources, particularly in situations where card advantage is crucial to maintaining board control or when you’re already behind.

Specific Mana Cost: The casting cost includes both black and blue mana, demanding a commitment to a dual-color deck and potentially limiting its inclusion to only those players who can reliably produce both types of mana.

Comparatively High Mana Cost: With a starting cost and an additional sum required to tap each additional artifact, creature, or land, Malicious Advice can be mana-intensive. This high mana cost can delay other important plays, reducing the pace and efficiency of your game compared to lower-cost alternatives that offer similar utility.

Reasons to Include Malicious Advice in Your Collection

Versatility: Malicious Advice offers a unique advantage by allowing players to tap out an opponent’s lands or key permanents. This can be highly useful in a range of deck strategies, from control to tempo, where timing is everything.

Combo Potential: When paired with cards that profit from tap abilities or your opponent’s untapped cards, Malicious Advice can serve as a critical piece to initiate or complete a game-changing combination.

Meta-Relevance: In environments where opponents rely heavily on complex mana bases and vital artifacts, Malicious Advice can disrupt their game plan effectively, giving you an upper hand. As metas evolve, the ability to hinder opponent strategies remains a timeless asset.

How to beat

Malicious Advice is an interesting card that can catch players off guard within Magic: The Gathering. This card allows a player to tap X target artifacts, creatures, or lands and control the flow of the game by disrupting the opponent’s resources. The twist is that the effect comes with a price of one black and one blue mana for each target.

Approaching this card, the key is to manage your resources wisely. If you’re up against Malicious Advice, consider diversifying your assets on the board to minimize the impact of the card’s ability. Keep an eye out for the possibility of instant-speed interaction, which this card permits, and plan your turns to maintain mana for reactive plays or to advance your board state with untargetable or hexproof entities.

Tactically, while Malicious Advice can be a bump in the road, it’s not insurmountable. Careful play, maintaining a variety of threats, and prioritizing permanents that can’t be easily targeted, or that have haste, so they can still swing in before being tapped down, are all good methods for mitigating the power of this control spell.

Cards like Malicious Advice

Malicious Advice is a unique spell that allows players to tap any number of untapped artifacts, creatures, or lands they control to force an opponent to do the same with their permanents. Its nearest comparison is Exhaustion, which prevents a player’s permanents from untapping during their next untap step. While Malicious Advice requires resources to tap your opponent’s permanents, Exhaustion impacts their next turn with no resources demanded on your part, affecting all their untapped cards.

Conversely, Early Frost is another similar spell, demanding less mana but affecting only three target lands. The strategic advantage of Malicious Advice is the scalability, making it versatile for either light disruption or a massive tap-out of the opponent’s board if you have plenty of resources. Then there’s Sleep, which taps all creatures an opponent controls and ensures they won’t untap during their next untap step—a fitting parallel for crowd control in creature-heavy matches.

In weighing the tactical uses of Malicious Advice alongside its counterparts, it’s evident that this spell can be a potent tool in Magic. Its flexibility in the late game for extensive tapping can be game-defining, making it a formidable inclusion in decks looking to control the pace of the battlefield.

Cards similar to Malicious Advice by color, type and mana cost

Where to buy

If you're looking to purchase Malicious Advice MTG card by a specific set like Planeshift, there are several reliable options to consider. One of the primary sources is your local game store, where you can often find booster packs, individual cards, and preconstructed decks from current and some past sets. They often offer the added benefit of a community where you can trade with other players.

For a broader inventory, particularly of older sets, online marketplaces like TCGPlayer, Card Kingdom and Card Market offer extensive selections and allow you to search for cards from specific sets. Larger e-commerce platforms like eBay and Amazon also have listings from various sellers, which can be a good place to look for sealed product and rare finds.

Additionally, Magic’s official site often has a store locator and retailer lists for finding Wizards of the Coast licensed products. Remember to check for authenticity and the condition of the cards when purchasing, especially from individual sellers on larger marketplaces.

Below is a list of some store websites where you can buy the Malicious Advice and other MTG cards: