In the abstract, this should actually be a
pretty scary deterrent against opponents playing
spells, in the tradition of Standstill. Most
people select cards for their decks that do bad
things to opponents and they wouldn't want
turned against them. Of course, one of the
things that made Standstill so scary is its low
cost, and against a lot of decks Mind's Dilation
risks being too late to be relevant. In
practice, about 40% of an opponent's deck is
going to be land and thus ineligible, and
there's no guarantee that anything that is
eligible will be entirely relevant to the
current situation. I still think this card can
do some interesting things, though - it just
needs a deck designed to exploit it, whether
that involves complicated ways to rearrange the
top of your opponent's library or simply the
good old-fashioned Time Ebb.
At seven mana, Mind’s Dilation is one of those
awkward “casual/EDH” cards that struggles to do
anything outside of that format. The effect is
pretty powerful, though, and it creates a lot of
fun potential lines; since the effect fires
before their spell resolves, they could exile a
counterspell to their own spell. It’s also
an each turn effect, not limited to either their
turn or your turn.
It’s high reward on occasion, but also
potentially a whiff. And at seven mana without
an impact on the board, you’re only going to get
this to do anything in a slow multiplayer
game…this isn't great in Limited, as this
probably drops after their big bomb, and this
does nothing to stop a cute and cuddly hydra
from bashing your face in.
