Read the Bones, Night's Whisper, Sign in Blood, or Painful Truths

[WizardSpartan]

So I've been building decks that include black and like including 1 or 2 generically good draw spells.

I've realized that black has a lot of very good options for cheap draw spells, and just picking one for a deck is difficult.

How do we rate the various cheap black draw spells?

[Slyvester12]

From your list:
1. Night's Whisper - cheap at 1B, best value.
2. Sign in Blood - same as Nights Whisper, but more restrictive at BB.
3. Read the Bones - not great at 2B, but still draw two.
4. Painful Truths - for the same cost as Read the Bones, this has a crazily restrictive cost to outperform it, and otherwise is strictly worse.

All in all, I only ever run the first two, and usually if I lack better card advantage options.

[Aetherium Slinky]

I run all four. I can usually fix the colours for Sign in Blood and Painful Truths so it's not that bad of a restriction. I would say Night's Whisper is the best closely followed by Read the Bones due to it's sheer digging power. You get to see four cards into your deck if you bottom the first two. May I note that Painful Truths is a cantrip at its worst and a Divination at two colours. Divination isn't something we play often but it's still card advantage so I wouldn't complain if for some reason I wasn't able to hit the colours.

[paulusdeboself]

Sign in blood can be better in decks with underworld dreams or as a finisher because you can force your opponent to draw. That flexibility can be what wins you the game.and the two black isn't thst hard for two color decks anyway.

[twotontimmy]

If it's just mono-black, I personally always run night's whisper, sign in blood, and read the bones.

Higher CMC draws that would contain some value would be syphon mind, hoarder's greed (luck based), damnable pact, and even underworld connections can keep you flushed with cards.

[crimsonking]

I don't think any of those spells are good in EDH.
I've tried Night's Whisper and Painful Truths in my Marchesa deck, but only because I ran Doomsday, and even then I realized there were better options.
I've tried Read the Bones in my Grenzo deck (it had Doomsday too) but I swapped it out very soon.
Normally, you either want a steady draw engine (Dark Confidant, Phyrexian Arena, Mindblade Render, Grim Haruspex etc.) or a huge draw spell (Necropotence, Ad Nauseam, Disciple of Bolas, Syphon Mind etc.).
In the end, my opinion is that they don't make much sense unless you're playing a competitive combo deck, but even then you have better options.

[Aetherium Slinky]

I disagree. I think burst spells are the way to go in EDH. Depends on how long the game drags on for but drawing two now is better than waiting several turns to draw the same amount of cards. At least I've found these cards super useful compared to Phyrexian Arena or Dark Confidant. Value engines are a different story because there's a possibility that you draw several cards per turn - Grim Haruspex being a brilliant example of that. Grim Haruspex is also instant speed so it's got that going for it.

Phyrexian Arena and Underworld Connections draw you a card per turn unless you've got something weird going on. For Phyrexian Arena the math against Night's Whisper is as follows: one turn to replace itself, one turn to draw a card. Night's Whisper achieves the same thing but in a single turn with no wait time. Engines like that eat a lot of removal so I'm not a huge fan of them.

[CleanBelwas]

I'm of the opinion that burst draw spells and draw engines aren't really directly comparable. They each have their upsides and downsides.

There have definitely been games where I've played a Phyrexian Arena on turn three and the steady influx of additional cards it has given me throughout the game has made the difference between me winning and losing.

There are probably an equal number of games where I've drawn Arena late game and wished it was a burst "draw two" spell instead.

Ultimately I think it comes down to your meta and the kinds of games you usually play. If your group likes to play long battle cruiser style games that regularly go past turn 10 or so, the engines are great. If your games tend to be a little faster and more active, then burst spells are good. Both styles and strategies are good in the right place and bad in the wrong place. You just have to be able to tell which is which.

As for these specific burst spells, they're all good. My favourites are Sign in Blood and Read the Bones, but that's because I play a lot of mono black or heavy black decks.
Sign in Blood being able to target any player is occasionally relevant so if you can handle the double black cost it's worth it over Night's Whisper. Read the bones can dig you a little deeper which I personally feel is worth the extra mana over whisper too. That said, I'll still gladly run whisper too, but for me personally I'd include the others first.

Painful Truths is probably the one I'm least hot for. Still decent enough if you're in 3 colours and one of them isn't blue though.

[Aetherium Slinky]

...I play Painful Truths in my Esper decks. It's fantastic value. I think it's an underrated/underplayed card. Ok - it's sorcery speed so that hurts but other than that hitting the colours isn't hard. Blue doesn't get rates like that.

[WizardSpartan]

I'm of the opinion that burst draw spells and draw engines aren't really directly comparable. They each have their upsides and downsides.

There have definitely been games where I've played a Phyrexian Arena on turn three and the steady influx of additional cards it has given me throughout the game has made the difference between me winning and losing.

There are probably an equal number of games where I've drawn Arena late game and wished it was a burst "draw two" spell instead.

Ultimately I think it comes down to your meta and the kinds of games you usually play. If your group likes to play long battle cruiser style games that regularly go past turn 10 or so, the engines are great. If your games tend to be a little faster and more active, then burst spells are good. Both styles and strategies are good in the right place and bad in the wrong place. You just have to be able to tell which is which.

As for these specific burst spells, they're all good. My favourites are Sign in Blood and Read the Bones, but that's because I play a lot of mono black or heavy black decks.
Sign in Blood being able to target any player is occasionally relevant so if you can handle the double black cost it's worth it over Night's Whisper. Read the bones can dig you a little deeper which I personally feel is worth the extra mana over whisper too. That said, I'll still gladly run whisper too, but for me personally I'd include the others first.

Painful Truths is probably the one I'm least hot for. Still decent enough if you're in 3 colours and one of them isn't blue though.

This pretty much sums up my takeaway from the responses on this discussion.

I like having immediate draw like the spells we are talking about and having draw engines because they fulfill separate roles. To me, immediate draw is good in "emergencies" when you need a land, removal spell, etc. because their cost efficiency is so high. They're good for getting you set up with the cards you need and you don't need to jump through any hoops to use these spells.

Engines are good to keep you going and allow you to further your boardstate without being susceptible to a wipe. If you aren't already set up with whatever gameplan your deck employs already running, it's likely that the draw engine will either do nothing or do very little (Phyrexian Arena is the exception, but that card is just nuts in so many ways). They're win more cards.

I think that after what I've seen, I like Read the Bones the most (in multicolor decks). I think that it's very dependent on the curve of your deck, as if you have a bunch of 3 drops, Night's Whisper/Sign in Blood might be better so you don't have another 3 drop and Read the Bones stuck in your hand, but otherwise, I like it better. You basically pay an additional mana of any color to scry 2, which I think is worth.

I see what you're saying about Sign in Blood, but I include draw spells like these for situations where things aren't going according to plan, whether that means I'm not drawing enough lands/the right type of lands or I'm being hated out and am running low on cards. If my mana isn't right, then I just might not have the double black mana necessary to cast Sign in Blood, which defeats the reason why I included it in the first place.

Painful Truths can definitely be good, but I'm still of the opinion that quick draw spells are good at bailing you out of awkward situations and if you have 3 colors to get full value out of Painful Truths, then you aren't desperate for it. If you only have 2, it's worse than all the other spells we've mentioned. If you are including it because you have a really good mana base & can consistently hit 3+ colors and want a 3 mana draw 3 spell at any point in the game, then I think it can easily be one of the best if not the best of the 4 we've talked about.

[Morganator 2.0]

Blue doesn't get rates like that.

Windfall, Rhystic Study, Timetwister, Mystic Remora, Fact or Fiction, Treasure Cruise, Dig Through Time.

Off the top of my head.

[Aetherium Slinky]

Blue doesn't get rates like that.

Windfall, Rhystic Study, Timetwister, Mystic Remora, Fact or Fiction, Treasure Cruise, Dig Through Time.

Off the top of my head.

Windfall and Timetwister are wheels. That's a little unfair comparison.

Rhystic and Remora are draw engines much like Phyrexian Arena.

Fact or Fiction is 4 mana for 2 or 3 cards.

I give you Treasure Cruise and Dig Through Time.

[CleanBelwas]

Don't get me wrong, I definitely don't think Painful Truths is bad, even in blue.

For me though, I just feel that blue has such a wide array of versatile options that it can probably find something better for almost all of its strategies.

If you're spell slinging, or doing graveyard stuff, or playing control, or whatever, blue probably has a better spell that facilitates its game plan a little better than generically good "draw three lose three", and that's best case scenario for Truths. Life is a resource, but paying three life when you don't need to might not always be worth the trade off. With all the blue draw spells in the history of magic, there's probably something for three mana that either plays better in to your plan or is an instant or whatever.

[crimsonking]

I agree that cards having an immediate impact on the game are generally better.
I just think that 2 mana to go up 1 card, or 3 mana to go up 2 is not that much of a deal.
I'd rather play Brainstorm, Ponder, Preordain etc. even Faithless Looting is better to me.
If you're restrained to black, remember that for the same mana you have plenty of tutors...

[Dumb Luck]

So my Yargle deck runs Sign in Blood, Read the Bones and Night's Whisper. They're all fairly mana and money efficient. The other one I run that hasn't been mentioned yet in thread is Ambition's Cost, but I'm wondering (given what I have read so far) if that card is a little too much manawise for what I get. I used to have more cards towards the upper end of the mana curve for these type of cards (like Ancient Craving) but I've started to cycle them out for tutors (Diabolic Tutor, Inventors Fair and Mastermind's Acquisition so far, but I may also look at Wishclaw Talisman).