[MTG] What’s in a Gush?

It looks innocent enough, but this little card is a format-warping powerhouse. Against the backdrop of that very morning’s non-update update to Magic’s ban/restricted lists, Vintage veteran Dr. Rich Shay argues eloquently for Gush’s restriction. Lend Rich your ear for a spell (heh), then read to review the subtly powerful synergies driving the Gush engine.

Rich is a competitive Magic player with a wealth of Vintage experience and tournament finishes under his belt. While co-commenting on Vintage Super League matches (a recurring source of quality commentary), he shares why he favors restricting Gush in Vintage decks to at most one copy. Ultimately, he believes the card is too good, leading the land-light cheap blue spell deck archetype and its mana denial/tax Workshop predators to dominate the Vintage format. Restricting Gush would both directly and indirectly improve the diversity of viable decks:

So how does Gush do so much work for the blue cantrip decks? It is usually cast mana-free thanks to its alternate cost of picking up two islands. Since you can only play one land on each turn, Gush’s alternate casting cost sets you back two turns of land drops. However, this drawback hides noteworthy caveats and upsides.

1. The return to hand is a cost and costs, unlike spells or abilities, do not use the stack. Altering the gamestate without using the stack is subtle and very powerful, as there is no window for the opponent to interfere. Several entries below show how just paying the cost of returning two islands is a situational upside, before even casting the zero mana spell, much less resolving it.
2. The “return two islands” cost does not immediately set one back on mana available this turn, as one can and should tap the islands before returning them…
3. …but it’s even better than that. Returning islands to hand allows you to replay one of them (if it’s your turn and you have not already played a land). Returning and replaying a (usually nonbasic) island lets you tap it twice in one turn to fix colors or generate additional mana (if you otherwise had no land to play). At 0 mana Gush guarantees you get use out of each turn’s land drop opportunity, where other draw spells must chance drawing into a land off the deck. This, combined with its and others’ card draw, is a major aspect enabling the land-light cheap spells archetypes.
4. Gush protects your islands from the activated abilities of Strip Mine and Wasteland, which otherwise prey on land-light decks. Notably, this protection cannot be breached by the opponent having a second Wasteland to use in response to your response, because Gush returns islands immediately as a cost rather than as the resolution of a spell or ability.
5. Later in the game, if one has more than enough lands, Gush’s alternate cost helps you reload in combination with a Brainstorm, giving you two unneeded islands to put on top of the library, ideally to shuffle away using a fetchland.
6. The extra cards help turn on Library of Alexandra. Library is often a dead topdeck later in the game, when handsizes are lower after trades. Returning two islands (2) and drawing to other cards (+2) with Gush (-1) nets +3 cards in hand, putting it on the same tier as Ancestral Recall for restocking towards Library activation’s needed seven. Actually, it’s better than Recall here, because It’s not vulnerable to Mental Misstep. And even if Gush is countered and so fails to draw the two cards from your library, it still nets +1 card in hand because the islands, as discussed above, are returned as part of the cost.
7. ‘Number of spells cast this turn’ matters. Even just free blank spells can be useful. Powerful cards such as Monastery Mentor, Mind’s Desire and Flusterstorm all reward you for just casting a spell, regardless of whether the spell even resolves.
8. Casting a free extra card generates delve mana. Whether or not Gush resolves, casting (at zero mana!) puts it in the graveyward so it can later be exiled to generate +1 mana when casting delve cards such as Dig Through Time and Treasure Cruise.
9. Still free when cast from the graveyard. A Jace, Vryn’s Prodigy already helps land-light decks find cards and fill their graveyards for delve. Once the Jace flips into Jace, Telepath Unbound, his -3 ability unlike more commonly printed flashback effects lets you cast Gush for its alternate cost.
10. It’s really good with Force of Will. Gush is a blue card, so it can be exiled for Force’s alternate cost. Gush is also a free card draw spell, so it can draw other blue cards to exile to Force and/or draw the Force itself. Both cost 5 mana, so later in the game when you are holding up five mana you have the option of playing (or bluffing) either or both hardcast Force or Gush.
11. OH YEAH AND IT DRAWS TWO CARDS at instant speed for zero mana. 1) through 10) are mostly upsides of Gush before it even resolves! When it does, it directly gives card advantage for free, drawing you in to more cheap spells that draw more cards, fuel delve, trigger Mentor, and progress the deck archetype’s gameplan.

Gush does a huge amount of work before it even resolves. Returning two islands to hand at any time is stronger than you might think. Doing so as a cost the opponent cannot interact with is unfair. Free spellcasts are themselves useful even if the spell does not resolve. Once in the graveyard, Gush is a great target for Jace, Telepath Unbound’s -3 or works as fuel for delving out a Dig Through Time. If Gush resolves, it draws more cards to feed your deck’s continual stream of spells. Later in the game, it enables Brainstorm and Library of Alexandria to reload your hand, or does double duty when you hold up hardcast Gush and Force. The card operates powerfully along many axes and is totally busted in land-light cheap blue spell archetypes.

As a parting gift, here’s a clip of work done by ‘the insulting Gush’ followed by a second a turn later for lethal: