#i only own snapcaster mages
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New “budget” Commander cards: March of the Machine Edition: Multicolor
Alright, this is gonna be a long one. For the sake of brevity (ah!) I'll only touch on multicolor cards that are at most two colors, since three+ color cards are much, much narrower in regards to which decks can even play them in the first place.
Also, a lot of these cards are legends. I will be discussing them as part of the 99, if you want to build dedicated commander decks around them, you can also do that, but then their evaluations can shift dramatically both from them being built around completely and consistently available.
As before, all the cards included here are $2 or less at time of writing.
Not quite a Young Pyromancer, but the extra flexibility of triggering others more or getting a 2 powered token can make the two worth it in spellslinger decks that aim bigger, either through cost reduction or a control strategy.
The home for this is obvious, though I'm including it to point out the fact its restrictions are separate for every single permanent you control, so proliferate effects or mass counter granting will grow this tramply friend very, very fast in counter decks.
Ramp for you and card draw for everyone, on an on-curve body. It might struggle to find homes due to the need to attack, but hey, it's a Parleying Pirate.
Sadly, this card works with Flash but not instants. Still, a great engine for any deck that's heavy on (primarily) flying creatures, be it birds, angels or sphinges.
That's a LOT of power, rewards for going both wide and tall, and can trigger immediately since it doesn't need to attack itself. This will make you very scary at the table as a curve topper.
Two artifact tokens for four power and toughness a turn that attack well, if you have the synergy or mana to take advantage of it, the new Glissa doesn't disappoint! Once again a bit different from her previous iterations, but that's fine!
While this is no Snapcaster Mage for competitive formats, in commander where efficiency is less central and you have multiple opponents, the flying 3/1 body and most importantly the ability to cast spells from any opponent's graveyard as well as your own makes this Faerie a very attractive candidate. Whether you need a wrath, a targeted removal, ramp, a regrowth, or maybe even something meaner like an extra turn spell or an overrun, you'll often get your pick and get access to effects outside your colors!
Immediate value, and a powerful back that gives you all the options in the world, some ramp, and is relatively easy to get to. If you have enough enchantments that the front side will reliably function, I don't think there's many decks that WOULDN'T at least be ok with running this.
A lot of value on that front side in commander that's essentially a 3-for-0 that fills graveyard. It's not too hard to flip into a reanimation spell from any graveyard, which makes this very interesting and self-fueling. However, be wary of filling other people's graveyard, I'd prefer this in a deck that already wants to be doing that.
Once again, the decks that want this are self-explanatory. If you have targets for the tutor, either in aura voltron or in a deck with a few Gods, and an heavy enough enchantment theme that the back is desirable, and access to both blue and white, this is a stellar pick for those specific decks.
How many things does your spell need to do? This removes three different permanent types at no card disadvantage (either you get to draw or a GIANT CREATURE), or can just be a surprise beater that's hard to block. There's no need for specific themes here, they can fit just fine anywhere if you want them to.
A Kithkin! Being able to blink any nonland every turn is actually quite a strong effect, though there will be extra hoops to jump through. The requirement to tap means you'll want your deck to have just that one more reason to play it, not just random blink decks. Ideally, to tap her the turn she comes down for some immediate value. She really, really likes vehicles, because then you can tap her down at instant-speed to get literally any nonland permanent out of the way of a targeted removal or board wipe, and she can even target herself for that! If you play her, I highly, highly, highly recommend vehicles with ETB abilities, for example Imposter Mech in specific, as a clone vehicle she can crew by herself AND that can get you any opponent's etb effects whenever you blink it itself.
Reanimating any nonland whenever you cast an artifact or legend, for free, is VERY abusable and powerful, even for just a turn. They will need specific decks, ones that have a stocked graveyard and either enough artifacts or legends to trigger them, but in those decks, they're a must-kill threat.
Commander's color identity rules don't make Pollux here a favor by requiring having a green-white deck. With that said, if your ramp, fixing or color balance is able to support the cost, I hear Wurmcoil Engine is a pretty nice magic the gathering card. Of course, in hydra tribal, even better, but also if you have a deck with clones, clones of the back of Polukranos here will see each other die to trigger multiple times for a geometric amount of hydras. And if the legend rule is active, they even come with a convenient way to die on arrival!
The mana cost is a bit rough on five, but the modularity is there. Flying and haste means you're getting immediate value and you'll have somewhere to connect, and the first strike means the last mode will add to the combat damage your non-first striking creatures will deal this turn, all with some extra options on there, and not even specifying combat damage if you want to have fun pinging after-combat. If you go wide in rakdos, I could see this acting as a surprise finisher that's still a very decent value piece before you're set up.
Merfolk Looter is still a decent card, it allows you to see more cards, avoiding non-games and providing you more option. Rona is better than that in so many ways it's not funny, so much so it's easy to get lost in the extra words on there. You don't need to be built around her with legends or pestilence effects for her to be a very solid option, just having a merfolk looter that prevents you from early attacks by being a 1/3 would legitimately be enough, but then you also get a late game threat and some extra free looting when you cast your commander.
For sacrifice outlets, you generally want them to not cost any mana and be available at instant-speed. None of that matters, because this turns every single sacrifice into a card draw, repeatedly, which, with the singular exception of Yawgmoth, a $15+ card from Modern Horizons that's not remotely fair, always costs at least two mana. And this can sacrifice artifacts too, which means all those treasures are fair game to turn into card draw! This is an incredibly powerful uncommon I would play in any rakdos aristocrats or treasure deck, budget or no budget, and so easy to overlook.
March of the Multitudes was a mythic that's still a very popular choice for token decks in its colors. Losing the instant-speed does hurt, but you get an extra bodies and your tokens hit twice as hard and can't be easily blocked. If you're planning on going wide in Boros, I think that's a no-brainer, even if you're not the convoke deck this came in.
Gnshhagghkkapphribbit.
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Let's build a Legacy Deck
I do a lot of thinking about magic; you've possibly realised that, since I post long diatribes about what the game means to me on a somewhat regular basis. However, I'm not really very... let's say creative in how I approach the game. I'm not looking to explore new ground, I'm mostly trying to be as good at this game as I possibly can be. I'm pretty competitive, but my motivation isn't really winning - it's more about improving.
Legacy is a beautiful format. Not just the cards themselves, but the complexity, diversity and unbelievable skill ceilings that you can strive to attain playing these cards. I always feel like there is so much more I can learn, so many things I can improve. The level of mastery that could be achieved with these cards is seemingly endless.
So it is only fitting that we start here:
Mercadian Masques is the best Brainstorm. Don't @ me.
Now, beyond that, it's actually not that easy to branch out too far. There is a very real, very challenging financial barrier to playing this amazing format (and indeed all non-rotating formats share this problem to some degree). I own a handful of blue duals, and that unlocks a certain subset of the format for me. I bought them over the course of a year or so, and they were much, much cheaper than they are now. I doubt I'll ever be able to justify buying more, and since I don't have the quantity of duals necessary for some decks, and I own zero Tropical Islands, that subset actually isn't that large. I also don't really own any of the cards to play non-brainstorm decks - no Death & Taxes, no Eldrazipost, no Lands, no Quinn the Eskimo (yup, that's a real deck name. Give it a google, its delightful).
So, I own Tundras. That means that in Legacy, I'm pretty much always playing Miracles. My collection supports that. But that isn't really where I think I wanna be right now
Beautiful.
Stoneblade has had a bit of a renaissance recently, putting up good finishes at a high level because someone recently decided "I think I should play Death's Shadow in Legacy" and almost won the Pro Tour. Decks that play white mana have a pretty solid answer to that, and Stoneblade's ability to switch strategies between defender and aggressor is really valuable. I loved Miracles with Sensei's Divining Top, but the deck was a problem, and without that card it can't always claim inevitably. You need to win the game somehow, and Batterskull is a pretty solid somehow. But it can't do it alone.
Here's the rest of the team.
Snapcaster Mage is a ridiculous magic card. There are a lot of good instants and sorceries, y'all. In a format like legacy, though, playing the full four copies can sometimes be a liability, especially if you don't have cards like Lightning Bolt that can let you convert excess mages into a noncommittal, one size fits all kinda spell. All the cards I have are pretty specialized, and Snapcaster Mage can be all of them. Absolutely wild. I hear Tiago Chan, the winner of the invitational that led to this card, became a professional wrestler.
Wild.
Jace, the Mind Sculptor set the gold standard for what a Planeswalker could be. It feels like a privilege to be able to play with this card sometimes. One thing that I find interesting, is that in my experience I am vastly more willing to +2 Jace as my main plan than others. I get that Brainstorming is awesome and all, but the elevator going up is pretty cool too. It doesn't create numerical advantage, but using Jace's fate seal can create a lot of qualitive advantage and also let's you use an ability that wins the game. I'm a fan.
Vendilion Clique, though, might just be one of my favourite magic cards. It does a whole lot of very cool things, the most important of which to me is create informational asymmetry. This game would be a lot easier if you knew all the cards your opponent had, and usually that means you have to play cards like Thoughtseize. But that card is gross. Also, don't sleep on using Clique to send one of your own cards away, especially if that card is an equipment that you can find with your stoneforge mystic.
Lastly, we have True-Name Nemesis. This card isn't always good, but when it is it's the best card in your deck. If creatures attacking or blocking matters in a game, there is no card that does either that is better for its cost than TNN. My copies are the only cards in my deck that are altered or signed, and I normally like having things be really consistent in my constructed decks, but you can see Zack Stella's beautiful signature. Can you blame me?
So that is how I'm going to win. How am I going to not lose?
Death's Shadow matches up so poorly against Swords to Plowshares, like damn. My pick for the most outrageous removal spell of all time, even with Assassin's Trophy coming down the pipeline, Swords to Plowshares solves so many problems. A lot of this post is just me gushing about these cards, and I understand that might not be the most engaging thing to read, but I really do just love so many of them.
The rest of these spells are broadly about patching holes up. One of the amazing things about Brainstorm is that you get to see a lot of cards each game, so having a few discrete answers to unusual problems can pay a lot of dividends. Council's Judgment and Enginnered Explosives can answer weird permanents that might otherwise beat me, and Supreme Verdict (though sometimes weird in a deck that wants to put creatures on the battlefield) will occasionally just bail you out. And while it might sound funny, it really is relevant that it is blue sometimes.
This is also the best counterspell art. Still don't @ me.
Force of Will is a bit of a weird card, because in a perfect world I wouldn't even want to play it. It is clunky, puts you down cards a lot of the time and is a massive hassle to play for retail. But also, sometimes Force is the only thing standing between you and rampant degeneracy. People play Belcher in this format! It is the glue that holds the format together.
And then we get to this, and I start to question if I actually know what I'm doing. Sometimes I make these really calculated choices, trying to eke out the smallest possible advantage. Other times I think to myself "yeah, that seems right" and this is one of those times. Flusterstorm is a really powerful, versatile piece of interaction that comes with inbuilt protection and scales throughout the turn. Great with Snapcaster Mage, but absolutely worthless some of the time. People play Chalice of the Void in this format!
Spell Snare is hyper specialized, but it does a lot of things that Flusterstorm can't. There are a legion of incredibly powerful, diverse threats that exist at 2cmc in this format; Baleful Strix, Hymn to Tourach, Tarmogoyf, Sylvan Library, enemy Snapcaster Mage, Counterbalance, Exhume, Infernal Tutor, etc, etc. Snare stops them all cold, but only them.
Spell Pierce is the middle ground, the bridge between two entirely different points of view. It's kinda boring, but its pretty okay at standing in for both of the other's jobs. Spell Pierce never wins employee of the month, but I hope it knows I appreciate it.
One last spell in the main deck, and its Search for Azcanta.
X marks the Spot! I play with checklist cards almost exclusively for any DFC cards that I use, even if I'm 100% sure the sleeves I'm using are completely opaque. It is way better to be safe than sorry, and I also like not needing to actually take my card out of the sleeve to flip it when I can have the real card off to the side in an inner to place on the board when I need it.
Once, when I was playing two Azcanta in a standard deck, I asked my teammate if I should have two Azcanta sleeved, one flipped and one not, because I couldn't actually have two in the same state on the battlefield. They looked like they wanted to slap me.
After that is just lands, and you probably don't want to see that...
Who are we kidding, the lands in a legacy deck are beautiful
I'm really proud of my legacy manabase.
This is also one of those examples of those really calculated choices, optimising for the smallest possible advantages. It turns out that you're only allowed to play four Flooded Strand, and after that NONE of the fetches get both basic Island and basic Plains. Normally this means a couple of Scalding Tarns, or whatever other blue fetch you have a few copies of, but why not extract the tiniest, most infinitesimal fraction of an advantage. What if they Pithing Needle Scalding Tarn? What if they're monsters who cast Surgical Extractions on random targets to see if they getcha? Well you're not going to get me, because I have insulated myself by playing three different blue fetches and an Arid Mesa.
Otherwise, Karakas is a lovely tech land against any sort of reanimator strategy, while also unlocking all sorts of fun play patterns with Vendilion Clique. Wasteland is playing in a similar space, being a low investment singleton that can be really good in some matchups, but I don't know if I like it. I might play an extra basic over it, we'll see.
But wait, I hear you asking, why are you playing Volcanic Island. You don't have any red cards!
Entirely fair question.
All the way from the sideboard, red cards.
As you might have gathered, there are some pretty amazing blue cards in legacy. I'm not one to let people just get away with playing blue cards. It's a little weird to have a 2/1 split of red blast effects, but it's just one of those micro optimizations. Sometimes they'll have a meddling mage naming Pyroblast, you know? Also, on my wishlist is a black border red elemental blast of some description. My pyroblasts just look so much prettier.
Also I guess I lied about TNN being the only signed card I play. But again, just look at Franz Vohwinkel's signature. Impossible to turn it down.
The rest of the sideboard is pretty easy to break down. A Hydroblast, because we can't let people get away with playing red cards either. An extra Flusterstorm, because it's just a fantastic card that usually gets better after sideboard. People usually have pretty good spells in their decks, and stopping Flusterstorm from countering those spells can be pretty challenging. Disenchant is a pretty good hedge a lot of the time, for a similar reason. People tend to have some high impact enchantments or artifacts kicking around, so I usually want a cheap way to fight that available to me. Containment Priest and the two Surgical Extractions are a concession to the speed and power of reanimation strategies, that also happen to have some really good splash damage against other really powerful strategies. I kind of want to make room for a Rest in Peace, but for now these will serve. Monastery Mentor is just one of those cards that, in a post sideboard game where a lot of the removal is gone and Pyroblasts imperil the battlefield and stack, can take over a game with extreme speed and quickly end it. It could also be something like a Gideon, Ally of Zendikar, but there's value in dodging Spell Pierce.
So the only part of this that might be a bit weird is the Spell Queller, Counterbalance package. My thinking is, coming from Miracles, that Counterbalance is sometimes an exceedingly powerful card. And sometimes it's pretty janky. It's hard to truly cut it from the main deck there, because it helps enable so many of the soft synergies in the deck (revealing for Predict, making all the cantrips that much better, finding spots to crack fetch lands for extra value), even though the times that it's bad it is so bad. But here, I've almost got the same amount of cantripping and deck manipulation as I would in Miracles, but my main proactive gameplan is strong enough that I don't need them in my main deck. It's a perfect card to slide into the sideboard, where I can access it both as a value engine for blue pseudo-mirrors and a desperate tool to fight combo as well.
Spell Queller was a card I considered for Vendilion Clique's spot for a long time. They are approximately as vulnerable as each other in the context of the format, but eventually the inability to profitably play it for value proactively gave Clique the nod. But the other main three drop I play kept me thinking about it. When it matters, TNN is exceptional. But when it's bad, there's nothing you want less; True Name feels like such a brick if your opponent is doing something degenerate. It's an easy swap in those situations for this powerful reactive spirit. Like Mentor, dodging Flusterstorm and Spell Pierce is a huge deal in winning counter wars while also transitioning into an aggressive stance. So many important cards are vulnerable to being quelled, and I'm honestly quite excited to play with it.
So... there you have it. That's my legacy deck. It's not perfect, and I'm sure before too long I'll end up putting Terminus back in here and going back to Miracles. It's hard to change decks in Legacy, and not just because of the price. These cards really do feel special, like you're playing with important pieces in the history of a really great, really important game. I hope I get to keep playing Legacy for a long, long time.
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“Pioneer Needs”
Ok, so WotC is pushing a new non-rotating format with a ban list that only includes the fetchlands. So let's look back on the cards that dominated Standard and might be contenders to pick up if the format actually succeeds.
Disclaimer: I do not think this format is nessisarily going to even last, let alone be the next Modern, but might as well ponder about it. I probably also forgot some stuff, but this is partially to help speculate about some cards you might want to pick up fast in case they get bought out in the hype.
Collected Company: This card was everywhere during its life in standard. It is simply just so much advantage and can be slotted in to most creature-based decks. In its standard life cards like Reflector Mage Spell Queller and other impactful etb creatures made the resolution of this spell sometimes backbreaking. We have plenty of strong options available for both aggro and midrange to make use of this card. CoCo saw a lot of modern play as well and synergizes very well with tribal strategies. We have lots of options for that especially with many human or spirits from Shadows over Innistrad that form most of the core for the modern decks.
Jace, Vryn’s Prodigy: There was a time when 4 color decks were rampant because Jace was so good you would shove him into 3 color decks and alter the mana base just for him. Dark Bant, Wet Jund, or lots of other silly names for them were real decks. Snapcaster didn’t make the cut off, so Jace is possibly one of the best cheap value creatures that will be legal. He is strong in both Mid-Range and Control and some limited heavy Burn/Prowess Aggro. Though the lack of Delver of Secrets does hurt the prowess decks.
Search for Azcanta: This will probably be seen in a mix with Jace as another efficient card advantage engine for low investment. Its strong, not easy to interact with, and gains a steady stream of cards. It sees a bit of Modern and Legacy play, it's definitely good enough for this format. It’s a bit slow though, and competes with Jace who’s creature typing has some advantages with reanimation and things like CoCo.
Opt: It's going to be our standard 1 cost cantrip. Not much to really say here, it's going to help smooth out the draw of blue decks and fill graves fast which will probably be relevant.
Abrupt Decay/Assasin’s Trophy: We do not have an abundance of efficient removal to choose from, but for 2 cost removal these are bread and butter for any GB+ deck
Fatal Push: Black will be weighted heavily for its removal selection since there is no Path to Exile. This is probably going to be considered the best spot removal in the format against creatures.
Thoughtseize: Theros gave us this reprint, and it will be a big part of the meta. Thoughtseize makes it hard to rely on big spells like 4+ cost planeswalkers and allows black decks to strip games down to raw advantage and top decking. Its not the best against aggro, but Inquisition of Kozilek is not legal to split up the discard for less pain.
Kholagan’s Command: While more expensive this card is a lot of advantage. If artifacts such as things from Kaladesh become popular then it will have a big demand. Otherwise recycling creatures and having great utility might be enough to see play.
Siege Rhino: A big body and a decent life swing made this card oppressive in Standard. I’m not sure it really scales up to the level and speed of some newer strategies since a lot of new options to interact with 5 toughness have been added since it was in standard, but it is still a very solid creature.
Energy: This isn’t just one card but the whole archetype broke Standard and caused Kaladesh to be one of the blocks with the most bannings in its Standard. While its no Urza’s level of ridiculousness these cards will be legal. Aetherworks Marvel in particular can open up some degenerate cheat strategies with Eldrazi.
Emrakul, the Promised End: While the other Eldrazi were always a bit of a stretch to cast Emrakul reduces her mana cost and can be completely crippling to resolve. Not only a 13/13 with flying and trample but you get to completely ruin your opponent’s resources by taking over their turn. Run their threatening creatures into her, use removal on their own stuff, make their Planeswalkers turn on their owner. She can really make a mess if the format is slow enough that she can resolve.
Eidolon of the Great Revel, Monastery Swiftspear, Skewer the Critics, and all that Mono-Red: Burn will always exist in every format with 60 cards not named Vintage. We don’t have Lightning Bolt or Goblin Guide, but this format is weaker than Modern so the reduction in speed might not be too bad. Shock Lands are going to be hurting players off the start, and without Fetches multi-color decks will be less consistent. Burn or RDW could take an early lead in this format.
Liliana, the Last Hope: When a card sees consistent Modern and even Legacy play you can guess it will shine in weaker formats pretty safely. Lili is raw card advantage, removal for small creatures, and her ult is very hard to contend with and difficult to pull off. She could very easily be one of the planeswalkers that becomes the face of the format.
Teferi, Hero of Dominaria: While the 3-cost version of Teferi has started to replace the big guy, he is still a very powerful card that frustrated players until they were calling for bans. He is still probably one of the most impactful 5 drops that we have for control.
Elspeth, Sun’s Champion: Elspeth was the only win condition Azorius decks needed in Theros. Her plus makes it very hard to stop her without trample or flying and she can easily double as a wrath for bigger threats. She can easily overtake a game, though there is a lot of competition now for a control finisher.
The 3 cost WAR Planeswalkers: You see them in standard, you see them in Vintage. They will probably be in Frontier.
Deathrite Shaman: This card is banned in Modern and Legacy, it is the 1 cost Plneswalker who is also a mana elf. The downside is no fetches means it is not a consistent mana dork. That’s what really limited DRT and kept it out of Standard. It's certainly a powerful card, but this one really needs to see the shape of the format.
Field of Ruin: Every format needs their Strip Mine to punish greedy mana or press an advantage further when you have the board. Especially with no Fetches this card will see play, but just how much depends on how stretched the mana is. Shocks and Buddy lands or Fast Lands might be the mana of choice, and Basics might be pretty low in number. This could either be a slow Strip Mine, a utility land answer, or not good enough for the main based on how the decks are built.
Dig through Time and Treasure Cruise: Deathrite is banned almost everywhere, but these cards go far enough to be restricted in Vintage as well. Search for Azcanta and Jace VP can fuel these, they refill your hand after slinging a lot of spells. Longer control games can rely on these to simply bury their opponents in advantage. The lack of Fetches hurts these cards, but there are a lot of other enablers and even playing them “fairly” is good enough.
Monastery Mentor/Young Pyromancer: Less about speed and more about simply overwhelming opponents with each spell cast these cards can form the basis of a Jeskai tempo deck that can pressure other decks pretty hard.
Jeskai Ascendancy: This card is crazy, but not the easiest to use. We do not have the best cantrips, but we do have Opt. One thing that’s potentially scary though is Treasure Cruise and Faeburrow Elder both give this card big mana generation and pay offs. The new Bloomtender taps for 4 with an Ascendancy out and has the potential for a Storm-like deck that might even end with Jace, Wielder of Mysteries. Alternatively, it could make a deck similar to the Modern Combo with Emry and Mox Amber. It's not a straight forward guaranteed Frontier deck, but it's got potential.
Ugin, the Spirit Dragon: We do not have the overwhelming ramp like Tron, so Ugin might be just too slow. It’s a consideration for Control top end though. It is hard to fight a resolved Ugin.
Saheeli Rai: Copycat is a functioning deck in Modern that replaced the Splinter Twin decks of old. Though, its current iteration relies heavily on Arcum’s Astrolabe. Like Jeskai Ascendancy this combo has a lot of potential especially with limited interaction as there are not many good counterspells and removal is very limited outside of black. Not having the best removal yourself without straining your mana might be an issue for a more tempo oriented combo deck, but Copy Cat can win on turn 4 out of nowhere outracing aggro and can just play a patient game against a control deck.
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Origin of Entries
@arashisann - The Leaf Crown is a callback to Lorwyn and the elves, and a beautiful design. I think the wording can be shortened/minorly revised: “At the beginning of your upkeep, look at the top card of your library. If it shares a creature type with equipped creature, you may cast it without paying its mana cost.” Revealing is only necessary when a card is going from one hidden zone to another hidden zone, usually library to hand/exile. I like this card a lot. Not a huge fan of its GG activation, but considering the shift to colored artifacts, I may be in the wrong.
@greensunzenith - I had to look up where Blastwind Hellkite would have come from. Was it the Onslaught block? Regardless, this design. I like the idea of a blue/white deck being able to play this mono-red card, as well as red players being able to cast this from the hand as necessary. The bird tribal aspect is odd for me, but nothing is out of color. The more I think about it, the more I like this card. My only hesitation is the narrowness of bird tribal, and that’s from my own personal lack of experience. Nothing wrong with this card at all, really. Would this have been printed then? I doubt it, but stranger things have happened.
@i-am-the-one-who-wololoes - Earth Rummager is powerful. Giving things in your graveyard flashback is remarkably strong, all things considered, which is why I’m hesitant to see this as an uncommon. Snapcaster Mage is the most obvious comparison, although the lower cost, the flash, and the ability to hit instants is massively powerful compared to this. Getting the potential to double-Thoughtseize again with graveyard strategies is nasty. In general, three criticisms: at uncommon, this effect might be too powerful in competitive play. And I feel that the wording can be shortened, but I’m not 100% sure how. Thirdly, this card could have gone without flavor text, considering how crunched the abilities are. Still, what a concept. Stone Rain ahoy!
@mistershinyobject - I want to love Firemane Conscriptor. As it stands, I do! But it raises a massive red flag for me - or, well, a red and white flag. Does Boros get creature copying? I know mono-red does, and I know blue obviously does. Can this color combo get that? I simply don’t know, and it’s bothering me a lot. I think this card could play super well. I think this would be a windmill slam in any limited environment. I might have wanted it to be slightly more aggressive P/T wise, but that’s a minor quibble compared to the copying question. I’m not saying this card is bad, because it’s not at ALL. I’m just in a quandary. Someone call R&D, please?
@ozthearistocrat - Eye of Precognition has a good concept bogged down by some baggage. The XX cost on top of the mana cost looks clunky and plays even more so. For five mana, you get a rock that lets you Forecast at instant speed - the wording prevents it from being additional, which I feel was your intention. I would rather this card have been just a rock that let you Forecast instantly, without any other craziness. Also, this card doesn’t need legendary status - there’s no issue with having multiples of that at one time.
@reaperfromtheabyss - Nayan God Expedition feels fun! Couple of wording quibbles. The “of” in the first ability doesn’t need to be there, and the second ability should have “five” instead of 5, and read “Search your library for a creature card and put it onto the battlefield, then shuffle your library.” Boom, done. Power-wise, this feels like something that Standard players would love and Limited players would go nuts with before realizing that getting five 5-power creatures is HARD. I think in eternal formats there are easier ways to cheat out Emrakul, so it’s not broken there. Commander, too... Watch out, folks. Heh heh heh.
@revalista209 - I know that Worship the Infection should be six mana for how powerful this ability is, but I’m just so disappointed that is has to be. It’s not you, it’s infect. There’s nothing mechanically wrong with this card. Flavor-wise, well, I can see the argument for how “worship makes you more powerful,” but the process of worship feels like an action rather than an augmentation as Auras as supposed to be. What is the attached creature GETTING, rather than DOING? “Blessing of the Infection” could work for a name change, or something along those lines. Still, nothing mechanically wrong. Maybe five mana? Jeez, that still feels insanely good. I dunno.
@snugz - Kavu Exemplar is perfectly fine. Doesn’t cause any problems, feels appropriate, feels in-set, powerful enough for rare. It might not tickle my cockles, but there’s nothing that needs to be fixed. A windmill slam into a draft deck, and a windmill slam into the binder to sit until someone makes Kavu tribal.
@tmstage - Oh, I am so glad this card is last. Accordance of Angels is a blessing. I bring it up here because of its amazing abilities, and the latter question that the third ability brings: can Magic reference multiple cards of the same character? I am unsure but excited. The possibilities are staggering! Niv-Mizzet tribal! Triple Akroma madness! Now, the problem: “Archangel Avacyn.” The name doesn’t begin with Avacyn. You’d control the character, but the last ability wouldn’t trigger. Maybe ‘with “Avacyn” in its name’ for that last ability? But still, I don’t know if that’s something that Magic wants to do. It could work! It could totally work! I think that in terms of pushing the boundaries, this will most likely be seen in the future with Planeswalker card types. We’ve already seen things with “if you control a ______ Planeswalker, then ~.” LEgendary creatures don’t get the same treatment. Come one, like - “IF YOU CONTROL A CREATURE WITH DRAGONLORD IN ITS NAME, THEN ~” would be RADICAL.
Thank you all for your entries! New contest tomorrow.
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Legacy Deck Tech: Stoneblade
[you can see every deck tech here]
Hello & welcome to this weekly deck tech! This week we’re back into legacy for a deck that has been around for a while, even though it’s not as popular as it used to be: Stoneblade. If I’m not mistaken, the deck started with the original Zendikar block and has seen a few different iterations over the years, even modern has a version now, but the whole strategy has always been centered around a single, very powerful card. Let’s look into it right now.
Centerpiece
The deck is pretty much built around Stoneforge Mystic, because of how good her ability is. When she comes into play you search your library for an equipment and put it into your hand, then you can pay 2 and tap Mystic to put that equipment into play. This makes so that you can just play some 1-of equipments and still know that you can get them any time you want, which gives you more space to put in answers or other good cards in the deck. Basically the deck only plays 2 equipments, because they’re plenty to win you the game
1st Equipment
A pretty standard target, this card sees play across every format where it’s legal. Batterskull is just a powerhouse and if you can slam it into play for only 2cmc it becomes ridiculous. It can protect itself, it comes with a body, it has lifelink AND vigilance! Most of the time you’ll just want to play this and if it goes unanswered for a couple of turns you pretty much won the game.
2nd Equipment
You don’t know how strong Umezawa’s Jitte is until you had to play against it. Like, I’ve played legacy for a while and my local meta didn’t have any Jitte decks and I thought the card was probably overrated, it didn’t seem THAT strong; but then I went to a GP and had to play against this monstrosity and OH GOD is it strong, like I really think it’s stronger than Batterskull by a mile and I’m glad I don’t play legacy anymore cuz I know I won’t be seeing this on my opponent’s battlefield and that makes me happy.
The Equipment Carrier
I really love True-Name Nemesis for a few reasons, one of which is that I used to play Innocent Blood-effects in my legacy deck which stomps this card; another reason is that this card is otherwise ridiculously strong! For god sake it has protection from a player! Put one of your equipments on this and you’re assured to win from there.
Flashy Faerie
Any excuse to play Vendilion Clique is fine by me, this card is just really fun. You get a 3/1 flying at instant speed and you can mess with your opponent’s hand, or even get rid of a useless card in your own hand for a redraw. It also carries your equipment fairly well with it’s evasion and can surprise your opponent because of flash, so that’s a plus!
Flashy Wizard
For the same reason as Clique, Snapcaster Mage is pretty good since it has flash, it can get your opponent by surprise and carry an equipment for the win. Obviously the main appeal though is that you can flashback one of your instant or sorcery (which we’ll cover in a minute) which is really good, I mean, this card is massively played in multiple formats so yeah...
Cantrips
It’s legacy, you gotta play cantrips! Between Brainstorm & Ponder you’ve got plenty to keep your hand healthy, especially with Snapcaster making those into more value. Mix those with fetch lands and you can shuffle away any useless cards and get some redraws.
Removal
For the removal package you have to run Council’s Judgment & Swords to Plowshare for the only reason that they’re the best removal spells of the format, at least in white. They get the job done and can deal with any threat you may face.
Answers
I mean, I don’t need to explain this right? Force of Will is a staple of the format and you pretty much NEED to play this if you’re in blue. Also, nowadays most decks run a couple of Flusterstorm because of the current meta, but it’s not a must, depending on what your meta looks like.
Value Engine
Good old Jace the Mind Sculptor rounding up the deck with some sweet sweet value. This card generates SO MUCH card advantage it’s insane, it needs to be dealt with RIGHT AWAY or it’s going to win you the game by itself. You don’t plan on using his ultimate though, just the first 3 abilities are good enough to win games so stick to those.
Wrap-Up
That’s it for this deck tech! I hope you enjoyed this as much as I did! The deck is pretty fun to play, though kind of expensive, and is really solid. You can’t really go wrong with it, it has fairly good match-ups all around. Anyways, if I missed anything please let me know. I’ll see you all next week for a pauper deck tech!
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If snapcaster mage gives force of will flashback, can I still pay the alternate cost to cast force of will?
No.
Snapcaster Mage gives the spell it targets Flashback, which is an alternate cost that allows it to be cast from the graveyard. Since that’s the only way to cast Force of Will from your graveyard, you have to choose that alternate cost as you cast it. A spell can only be cast for one alternate cost and so you can’t choose to cast it with Force of Will’s own alternate cost instead.
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The I.C.L. (Izzet Control League)
@goblin-enthusiast requested this a week or two ago and I’ve been thinking about this deck a lot. Mainly wondering what I was going to do with the ‘Wrath’ slot as it feels like a must-have with all the token/aggro decks floating around right now. It seemed like every wrath was white or black. I then realized I was an absolute buffoon and a ‘wrath’ had been there all along, I had just forgotten it existed as it never really made it out of Ixalan limited. Until now. Fiery Cannonade is exactly the card this deck wanted and I think the list looks pretty spicy. Since you didn’t give me an exact $$ number, I went with 40$ as I wanted to include Azor’s Gateway and Mission Briefing because they’re super neat. They are definitely replaceable and you are welcome to hit me up if you are looking to drop the price down, as without them this list is only 15$.
Sorcery Speed
3x Crackling Drake
1x Niv-Mizzet, Parun
3x Azor's Gateway
1x Fight with Fire
Instant Speed
4x Sinister Sabotage
4x Syncopate
2x Blink of an Eye
4x Chemister's Insight
3x Expansion // Explosion
2x Fiery Cannonade
3x Lightning Strike
2x Mission Briefing
3x Shock
Lands
13x Island
4x Izzet Guildgate
8x Mountain
I figure I’ll dive right into the win cons. Crackling Drake should always be a real threat with a fast clock whenever we get around to casting it. Replacing itself means it getting killed isn’t a huge deal, and they almost certainly need to be killing it. Explosion is such a rad card, and the fact that the Expansion half is also relevant before we get to the later game means it doesn’t just sit in our hand as a dead card. Which is a huge deal. It can copy non-enchantment removal, draw spells, counters, etc. Explosion is also the biggest reason for the inclusion of Azor’s Gateway, as once we flip Gateway our Explosion should be able to wrap up most games. Having a looting engine like Gateway that is such a strong early game play for a deck like this could probably warrant it’s inclusion anyways, but the fact that it makes Explosion ridiculous and doesn’t negatively affect our Drake at all is just a win-win. Niv-Mizzet is a very powerful card, and can quickly take a game away. A kicked Fight with Fire can also easily be enough to close a game out or wipe an opposing board, and is phenomenal for killing most any single creature we need to kill without being kicked, even ones Lava Coil would miss like Aurelia and Lyra.
Syncopate is extremely flexible, and that’s one of the reason’s for its inclusion as a playset in this meta-less void that is deck design. This could easily be a 2-2 split with Essence Scatter as you're more likely in most metas to need a 2 mana guaranteed creature counter game one. Things like that play a huge role in building a control deck, but if you’re unsure like I am right now; a card like this is perfect and you can let your sideboard fill in those gaps while hedging for anything that might come your way. Lightning Strike and Shock fill the role as cheap interaction in the early game to keep creatures off your back and as ways to close out games later on. While Mission Briefing is no Snapcaster Mage, it is definitely more than powerful enough to warrant inclusion in a control deck like this. With 26 other Instant/Sorcery spells, it turns your graveyard into a second hand. Having access to a resource pool that size in the mid to late game is extremely powerful. At the very worst this card can possibly be it’s letting you dig two cards deeper to help you find an out, and that is not nothing.
I’m going to give a special shout out to Fiery Cannonade as it completely hoses end of turn March of the Multitudes as it is instant speed. ;D There’s also only a very small handful of pirates out there seeing play, but keep your eyes out just in case.
I feel like the main issue this deck is going to have is that it has a pretty greedy mana-base. It will be very difficult to do some things the deck would like to be able to do if it needs to, like Turn 5 Mission Briefing a Sinister Sabotage for example. It isn’t a huge deal with the cards like Niv-Mizzet and Crackling Drake as we aren’t always going to be wanting to cast them on curve without any counter backup, but it is also likely we will be unable to cast them on curve if the situation arises where it could be our best(or only) play. But fixing that with 4x Steam Vents and 4x Sulfur Falls more than triples the price of deck so forget that noise, it’ll not be a big issue the majority of the time. I’m also a little sad I couldn’t include Ionize as I love it and want to give it a home, but its impact on the deck’s power level is simply not worth its price point.
The sideboard should probably be some combination of Fight with Fire and Essence Scatter for midrange, Negates, another copy of Niv-Mizzet, and Banefire for control mirrors, and maybe another Fiery Cannonade or two and the rest of the play sets of Shock/Lightning Strike for the token/aggro decks.
If you have a deck request of your own, let us know here!
-G
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Lands at Legacy Champs
I had a great time at my first eternal weekend this year, where I brought Lands to the event. You can find my decklist (and some commentary) here. I wanted to add on a full tournament report as well, written for people who have no experience beyond knowing the basics of the game.
This will be fairly lengthy, so I’m gonna put a read more.
I’m going to assume you’ve looked at the list and read the description. That way, you have some basic idea of what I’m playing. I’ll link cards the first time (for convenience), plus if it’s been a while since it’s been referenced.
That said, let’s get into the event!
Round 1: I played against Czech Pile, which is a base blue-black deck that touches on red and green for a few other powerful cards, such as Leovold, Abrupt Decay, and Kolaghan’s Command. Unfortunately for them, while their deck is packed with powerful spells, their manabase is rather fragile. They don’t have much ability to play around repeated Wastelands, especially not recurring ones, since their lands are mostly fetchlands (like Misty Rainforest) and the original duals (such as Underground Sea, which can be fetched with the aforementioned rainforest since it is an island), with few basic lands. As a result, your primary gameplan is to reduce their manabase to nothing before killing them with whatever method is easiest.
I unfortunately don’t have notes from game 1 of this match, but I did win it after executing the game plan said above. He can’t stick a threat, and soon he can’t cast threats or answers. A Marit Lage soon ended him.
Game 2 was one of the most sickening kick-in-the-junk games I’ve played in a while. He lost the previous game, so he went first, and lead with a Misty Rainforest. I cracked my own fetchland for a Taiga, cast Mox Diamond, and followed that up with Sylan Library. My opponent cracked his fetchland for a Tropical Island, then cast Brainstorm during my end step. He then untapped, cracked a fetchland for an Underground Sea, and cast Abrupt Decay to kill my library, since an active library isn’t something that he can compete with.
I then untapped and played Stage into Choke. My opponent’s lands stayed tapped. He didn’t play a land on turn 3. I had a Dark Depths to follow up. He missed his next land drop. I made a 20/20 on his end step, then attacked him for lethal. He then revealed his hand, which contained two copies of Diabolic Edict (sacrifice does get around indestructible) and a copy of Ensnaring Bridge, none of which were castable.
Round 2: I played against mono-red prison. This deck is dedicated to playing Blood Moon (and its little brother, Magus of the Moon) as soon as possible, sometimes as early as turn 1. It also plays Chalice of the Void to lock out large chunks of cards. I faced Chalice on 1 on my opponent’s turn 1, and while I was able to delay the blood moon for a few turns, I wasn’t able to stop it. I have no way of beating that particular combination in my maindeck, so I lost.
I do bring in 3 copies of Krosan Grip after sideboard, but even those weren’t enough. I got quickly run over by a Goblin Rabblemaster after getting hit by an early moon. I wasn’t expecting to win this matchup. It happens. 1-1.
Round 3: I played against a sweet blue-black control deck that splashed green for Sylvan Library and Abrupt Decay. It wanted to hide behind powerful planeswalkers, such as Jace, the Mind Sculptor and Liliana of the Veil, but also played Sinkhole and Smallpox to disrupt the opponent’s mana. Unfortunately, his mana is more vulnerable than mine, so I was able to do to him what he wanted to do to me. It was closer than the decks would suggest, but I still came out with a win in two games. 2-1 so far.
Round 4: I played against one of the champions of the archetype I was playing, Jody Kieth. However, he was playing 12-post, a deck dedicated to using Cloudpost to generate lots of mana, using Vesuva to copy it and Glimmerpost for even more Loci. This mana then gets funnelled into casting gigantic spells, such as Ulamog.
I wish I took more notes on this matchup, because it was very intense and very challenging, but unfortunately I can’t say more than that this was a close win in three games. We talked quite a bit after the match and he gave me some tips and discussed what the correct way to build the deck was. 3-1.
Then wizards’ event running program crashed, and we had about an hour between the end of the 50 minute round timer and the start of round 5.
Round 5: I played against mono-red burn. This is a deck that focuses on killing you as quickly as possible with fast creatures and Lightning Bolts to the face. This is one of my better matchups, since they can’t beat a Glacial Chasm lock and have no answers to a fast Marit Lage. They mulliganned on the play in game 1, and managed to get me down to 8 before dying a painful death to a giant squid.
In game 2, I opened on Forest, Crop Rotation, Depths, Stage, Wasteland, Ghost Quarter, Tranquil Thicket. While that hand has next to no disruption, it does put a 20/20 into play on turn 3 (after crop rotation for Ancient Tomb), and that should be enough. I then drew Manabond and put it into play on turn 1 instead. 4-1
Round 6: I played against Sneak and Show, a deck dedicated to using Sneak Attack and Show and Tell to put Griselbrand and Emrakul into play. I have a bad matchup here, because they’re a fast combo deck with a manabase that dodges Wasteland. My only real hope is that they help me put a lage into play. I can’t really beat Sneak Attack, but Karakas can help me win.
I lost game 1 to a turn 2 Show and Tell into Emrakul off Ancient Tomb. No Karakas or crop rotation to get me out of it. In game 2, my opponent put Grislebrand into play, but I made a Marit Lage on the same end step, forced him to block, and then killed him with the squid. In game 3, I never really got off the ground, and he had another early grislebrand. 4-2.
Round 7: I played against Blue-white Miracles, a controlling deck with a lot of 1-mana deck manipulation spells, like Brainstorm, Ponder, and Portent. The things to worry about are Swords on your Marit Lage token and maindeck Back to Basics. While this does give you a lot of life, it doesn’t stop the last ability of Jace, the Mind Sculptor from killing you. This is a fairly accurate description of how game 1 went. He was attacking me with a pair of Snapcaster Mages, and started using the +2 of jace to filter my draws. I had to do something, so I tried making a Marit Lage, which did stop me from dying to the mages, but it got Swords’d and I died to a Jace ultimate soon after.
However, this matchup changes greatly after sideboard. I have Choke, Krosan Grip to deal with his back to basics and Counterbalance, and even a couple Tireless Trackers to pressure Jaces and require him to use removal on things that aren’t Marit Lage.
In game 2, I managed to resolve a pair of early chokes, so he couldn’t really get out from under them. I then made a Marit Lage, but it got Swords’d. My gameplan then shifted to casting Punishing Fire repeatedly at my opponent’s face, using Grove to get it back. While he did have a pair of copies of back to basics, I had a pair of Grips to deal with them.
In game 3, he managed to get down a quick back to basics again. However, I got down a Marit Lage, which once again decided to take up farming. Luckily, my list is designed to be able to win through back to basics: I have two basic forests, which is enough to dredge Life from the Loam, cast loam to get back stage and depths, then replay stage, next turn replay depths and make a token end of turn. Even miracles struggles dealing with a 20/20 every other turn, and while he did manage to remove the first, my second got there. I’m not supposed to win that matchup, and I’m definitely not supposed to win when all seven of my sideboard cards are in the bottom 10 cards of my library. Got there anyway through a resolved hate card. 5-2 and feeling amazing.
Round 8: I faced Eldrazi-post, a deck that uses the lands mentioned in round 4, but is only colorless rather than playing green. It instead chooses to pair them with Ancient Tomb and City of Traitors to power out threats like Thought-knot Seer and Reality Smasher. It also plays artifact disruption, such as Chalice of the Void and Sorcerous Spyglass. This matchup is close to even. While I can sometimes blow up all of their lands, sometimes they just run me over. Additionally, they tend to bring in both Leyline of the Void (which stops Loam) and Ensnaring Bridge (which stops Marit Lage).
In game 1, they got an early start and cast Chalice with 2 counters. This stops my loam recursion and my punishing fires. However, I managed to stall with a Glacial Chasm for a while, while a looming force presented itself on the other side of the board. My opponent misplayed by tapping their Ancient Tomb to charge their Walking Ballista, bringing them from 21 life to 19. Additionally, they didn’t prioritize getting Endbringer into play. He finally cast it, but this was also the turn that I drew Crop Rotation to get Dark Depths, which put a 20/20 into play on his end step, which flew over his team for the win.
In game 2, I got run over by a pair of thought-knot seers, one of which took the Drop of Honey I sideboarded in. It happens.
In game 3, I managed to get a Molten Vortex down early, but had to give him a few life off Grove plus his own Glimmerpost. Once again, he got Endbringer on the same turn that I got Marit Lage, but I got an attack in, bringing him to 3, and finished him off with Loam+Vortex. 6-2.
Round 9: I’m playing against Grixis Delver, a blue-black-red deck designed to stick a threat (such as Delver of Secrets or Young Pyromancer), then counter your spells and deny your mana to stop you from stopping them in time. I completely punted game 1 by running a Crop Rotation into a Spell Pierce that he revealed to transform his delver. I could have played Ancient Tomb on the previous turn, but didn’t because it’s not a standard maindeck inclusion and I wanted to try getting a surprise Marit Lage. I then got run over in game 2 by a strong delver draw to my mediocre one. 6-3.
That was the end of that day’s tournament. Sunday would have the last two rounds of swiss for the legacy event, then the top 8 of the vintage tournament, then the top 8 of legacy tournament.
Round 10: I played against blue-white stoneblade. It’s a similar deck to Miracles, but it trades the more reactive/slow cards, such as Terminus, Counterbalance, and Entreat the Angels, for more proactive cards like Stoneforge and True-name Nemesis. This list was also running maindeck Back to Basics, so it plays similarly to the miracles matchup before, but with them having more pressure but not the counterbalance-jace combination to lock out Life from the Loam recursion (repeatedly put a card with converted mana cost 2 back).
Game 1 goes about the same as game 1 of miracles in round 7. They are on blue-white, start getting basic lands, eventually play back to basics. They apply some pressure with a threat (this time, it’s a true-name instead of a snapcaster), start ticking up a Jace, I make a Marit Lage, they swords it, and I can’t make a second before Jace kills me. Same old, same old. Once again, however, I get to bring in a lot of cards to deal with his threats and present my own backbreakers.
In game 2, he was forced to keep a hand with his only lands being Arid Mesa and Plains. He needed to use his library manipulation to draw into a third land to cast his back to basics, but that meant he had to get Tundra, which left him vulnerable to my Wasteland. While he did find an island, he was stuck on those two lands for a while. I made one Marit Lage; he had it take up farming. I made a second; he died.
In game 3, he played not one, but two copies of Rest in Peace, which shuts off Loam and Punishing Fire. I make a Marit Lage, hoping that will be enough, but he Plows it, forcing me to try again. In the process, I also manage to use Crop Rotation to deny myself green mana, so everything in my hand isn’t castable. we both draw a card and pass with no play for a few turns in a row. I play a Taiga, which turns on the three (!) Krosan Grips I have in hand. He taps out for a back to basics, but I turn my Ancient Tomb into a Thespian Stage with a Crop Rotation, then make another marit lage and kill him with it. 7-3, and holy hell I just won through three active hate enchantments.
In the 11th and final round, I played against burn (this being the only repeat deck I’ve faced the whole event). I easily win game 1 by making an early Marit Lage. However, in game 2, he has an Alpine Moon out of the sideboard, which he uses to name Thespian’s Stage. I can no longer make a marit lage that way, so I have to stall with Glacial Ghasm in order to win with Molten Vortex or Punishing Fire. Unfortunately, I put my one copy of Vortex (the faster kill) into the graveyard by dredging Loam, and I have no way of getting it back. I then take forever to find a Grove to start recurring Fire. All the while, my opponent is whiffing on an instant-speed burn spell to kill me while I don’t have a chasm (between my upkeep and main phase). Eventually, however, they find it and I die.
In game 3, I keep Taiga, Gamble, Exploration, two copies of Dark Depths, Wasteland, Rishadan Port while going first. I keep this hand, figuring that I’m not beating Alpine Moon with a six card hand anyway and this has a good chance of turn-3 Marit Lage (I can either draw crop rotation or stage in my first draw step to get it on turn 2, or if I don’t, I can gamble for stage and hope to not discard that particular one of my 5 cards, and if I do discard it, I can always hope to draw it or a crop rotation soon after anyway). In total, I have over an 84.9% chance to get a marit lage by turn 3. However, I landed in that 15% of universes where I don’t draw stage or rotation and my gamble hit the one in five chance of discarding stage. I putter around for the few turns it takes him to kill me. I did slightly mess up; I should have held the Wasteland I played on turn 1 after leading with Taiga into Exploration. While this does win me the games where I draw stage/rotation and he draws alpine moon on turn 2 exactly, it also removes an extra card from my hand. Had I held onto the wasteland instead of playing it on turn 1, I would have had 6 cards in hand instead of 5 when discarding to gamble, which could have been the difference between winning and losing. Variance will sometimes get you though.
Overall, I finished 7-4. I’m happy with my performance, other than the punt in round 9. I had played magic from 9:30 to 7 before that, though, so take that how you will.
The event was a lot of fun. I’ll definitely do it again next year.
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League Night 9-15-18
The update on points. 16 People is a lot for me to keep track of and write everything that happens so for now I’m mainly doing just the points and keeping note of the Commanders played.
One of the games Jonathan sent me the play by play. It was a VERY long game for them so probably the most interesting one.
Game 1
Baker - Selesnya - Selvala,
Jonathan - Saheeli
Joe - Lazav
Jesse - Arcades
Baker started the game not with a bang but with a whimper when he played Winter Orb on turn three or four. He had a solid board state, gearing up for elvish tap-untap shenanigans but made a crucial error in not playing a basic forest.
He had non-basic green mana available but needed a forest specifically to be able to untap it with one of his elves and then use Wirewood Lodge to do it all again.
Saheeli is instant-heavy so I didn’t mind drawing for turn and then passing. Being able to conserve my mana this way, I was able to launch a few crucial counterspells at Baker to ensure that his slowly building board state didn’t get out of hand in such a restrictive environment.
A slow trickle of mana rocks and cheap draw spells like Brainstorm enabled me to fund my counterspell war against the board.
Jesse (Arcades) got the ball rolling eventually and started drawing a mass of cards by playing walls. Before too long he was swinging hard for Baker and Joe and it didn’t look good for anyone until I was able to use Hour of Devastation to soften things up a bit.
At last, Jesse nukes the orb with Reclamation Sage and then the race began. I played Pact of Negation to save our hides, then Pact from the graveyard via Snapcaster Mage again a turn or two later, I had no issue with mana at this point. Things were getting heated as Joe came online and began controlling the board with additional levies of counterspells and mill.
Tragedy strikes for Jesse as Joe is able to tuck a wall on the bottom of Jesse’s library which Joe immediately names with Tunnel Vision. Insult to injury was added as the realization set in that Baker had a Rest In Peace on the field and Jesse’s entire library is exiled. Not long after this Baker gets milled some and then scoops to his own Rest In Peace as all of his good pieces had been counterspelled into exile or board wiped into oblivion.
Joe and I come to an arrangement and as I had no way to end the game and was broke of counters at this point, he ends the game one or two turns later.
Game 2
Jonathan - Saheeli
Joe - Lazav
Charles - Inala
Steven - Karametra
Joe and Steven have a life-long MTG rivalry and it was fun to watch them bicker at each other like old ladies from time-to-time.
Steven had a real hard time drawing lands for the first half of the game which, I’m sure, none of us were sorry about. Everyone else seemed to be on-point for the most part and the game developed rather quickly in the beginning.
At one point early on Saheeli had come out, made a Servo and then died, I’m not exactly sure if the turn number but it helped set me up for what happened next. Saheeli was able to come out for a second time and gift me with a second new Servo friend who, with the help of a few other artifacts, let me play Nezahal, Primal Tide one turn later which the other players had a pretty big issue with.
Joe copied Nezahal with a Clever Impersonator and the two dinosaurs and Saheeli remained on the board for the rest of the game. Steven never really developed much of a board state. He piddled around a little and made some clever moves but all-in-all this was the slowest that I’d ever seen him play. He did get a Rest In Peace on the board which Joe was not happy about but it didn’t do much to hinder him. I don’t remember much about the mid-game, it kind of stalled for a while and though Joe and myself were drawing a ton from dinosaurs, and Steven from enchantments, we never really got off the ground. Slow combat was pinging away at everyone and eventually Joe got the upper-hand.
The last round of the game was interesting as it all played out rather quickly. After the game, Steven pointed out that I had a way of getting Psychosis Crawler onto the field from graveyard and that I may could have won that way. I only had 5 or 6 cards in hand though and instead I used Incendiary Command to wheel. Joe had next to twenty cards in his hand and I knew I was on my way out so I wanted to cause as much chaos as I could on the way out. Joe didn’t like this and challenged me with a Dimir counterspell that you can stop if the opponent discards their hand. I took the challenge and dumped my hand then passed. Incendiary Command lets you draw the number of cards in hand and I was at zero.
I pass to Charles. Charles went out first, he double casted Dire Fleet Ravager putting us all in our teens and then scooped. Joe nuked me into oblivion with some kind of combo involving a Duskmantle Guildmage and Phenax which I was super-proud of being an ex-Dimir player myself. Steven went down with a dull-wet thud and Joe took the glory road as we all took the post-game wall of shame.
POINTS:
Joseph - 10 Points
Patrick - 10 Points
Rachel - 9 Points
Steven - 9 Points
Billy - 9 Points
Taco - 8 Points
Kevin - 8 Points
Mike - 8 Points
Artie - 8 Points
Jon - 7 Points
Jonathan - 7 Points
Jesse - 6 Points
Ricky - 6 Points
Charles - 6 Points
Dustin - 5 Points
Baker - 3 Points (one game)
OVERALL POINTS:
Patrick - 83 Points
Steven - 83 Points
Rachel - 82 Points
Billy - 79 Points
Dustin - 78 Points
Jonathan - 77 Points
Mike - 66 Points
Kevin - 65 Points
Ricky - 60 Points
Taco - 60 Points
Artie - 60 Points
Charles - 49 Points
Justin (Sliver Bro) - 40 Points
Amy - 39 Points (Bye Week)
Jesse - 37 Points
Jon - 30 Points
James - 27 Points
Jack - 24 Points
Baker - 25 Points
Nick - 21 Points
Dominic - 17 Points
Logan - 16 Points
Joseph - 10 Points (Welcome to the League)
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A month ago, I competed in the Magic: the Gathering Pro Tour 25th Anniversary. It was my first pro tour, first time in America too. Related to that, it might be my last pro tour, because my team and I did not do very well.
I’m not saying that to complain or anything. We did our absolute best, but we weren’t going into this as professional magic players; we spiked a Team Grand Prix together. We got really lucky, and we tried our hearts out to do that, but that didn’t hold through for the big day. We made mistakes, and I don’t know if we prepared as well as we could have. I played in our Legacy seat, and I played the deck I had for it even though I knew deep down that it probably wasn’t the right choice. Its been a long time since Miracles was top dog of that format.
I’ve thought about the Pro Tour a lot since it happened, even though the MtG world has moved on from it. But it was awesome to be there, it was awesome to take part and it doesn’t matter that we didn’t do well or that maybe it’d be better to spend my time and energy on something else, because that’s the dream, isn’t it? Ever since I watched Yugioh before school in the mornings, I’ve wanted to play card games on the world stage. I’ve wanted to be the King of Games, and even though I’m playing the wrong card game to really have that world out for me, it still feels like it counts.
I’m still deciding what to do with this blog, if anything. I’m thinking, over the next few days, that I’ll talk about what I did at the Pro Tour a little bit, then more importantly what I’m doing to get back there. Its hard to do that here in Australia (how the bloody ‘ell are yah, mates?), because there are so few opportunities to qualify - two Grand Prix, one Regional Pro Tour Qualifier, a few more if I’m willing to get on a plane. Online RPTQs, but I don’t have a MODO account so that’ll be a bit of a barrier to qualifying for those right now. Scraping together a lot more Pro Points.
But there’ll probably be some other stuff, too, a bit less heavy. There’s a lot of stuff to talk about on this here hellsite, after all.
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C17 Commander Set Review
For each new set, I write an article discussing the new legendary creatures and the nonlegendary cards that I think will be relevant in Commander.
In this set review, I’ll be using two five-point rating scales to evaluate the nonlegendary cards, one that measures how many decks a card is playable in (we’ll call that “spread”), and one that measures how powerful it is in those decks (”power”). Here’s a brief rundown of what each rank on the two scales means:
Spread
1: This card is effective in one or two decks, but no more (ex: The Gitrog Monster).
2: This card is effective in one deck archetype (ex: self-mill decks).
3: A lot of decks will be able to use this card effectively (ex: decks with graveyard interactions).
4: This card is effective in most decks in this color.
5: Every deck in this color is able to use this card effectively.
Power
1: This card is always going to be on the chopping block.
2: This card is unlikely to consistently perform well.
3: This card provides good utility but is not a powerhouse.
4: This card is good enough to push you ahead of your opponents.
5: This card has a huge impact on the game.
The Commanders of C17
In this section, I’ll be analyzing the new legendary creatures, offering some ideas for decks build around them, and discussing their potential for inclusion in the 99 of other decks.
Balan’s main advantage over similar Voltron commanders is its ability to save mana on equip costs, which allows you to run powerful equipment that would otherwise be prohibitively expensive to use. Balan can also make use of Lightning Greaves more effectively than most other Voltron commanders since it doesn’t have to take them off to equip other weapons.
In the maindeck:
Spread: 1
Power: 1
There aren’t a whole lot of decks that run a lot of equipment and would rather put them on Balan than on their commander. Even Nazahn would rather spread them around than let Balan hog them all.
Having to attack with him is a little bit of a hassle, but the raw power he offers in exchange seems well worth it. Extra turn effects are one of the best things you can rebound with his ability, and you can use the extra time to find spell recursion and get more Commander damage on your opponents.
In the maindeck:
Spread: 2
Power: 3
I could imagine abusing his rebound ability in a spell-heavy UW deck that includes extra turn effects. His counterspell protection could also be useful for your haymaker spells.
Great for breaking symmetry on effects that make everyone skip their draws or for negating the downside of stuff like Necropotence or Null Profusion. You can also double up on the trigger with stuff like Paradox Haze or Strionic Resonator.
In the maindeck:
Spread: 4
Power: 2
It’s not like Tomorrow ever made a huge splash in the maindeck, so I doubt this version of Taigam will see a lot of play.
I’ve heard speculation that he’ll be a powerhouse in Duel Commander, since his ability appears to be scaled for multiplayer and gets much stronger when you only have one opponent and the life totals are lower.
In multiplayer, Arahbo is a bit awkward. He encourages you to go tall by making a single creature huge, which is at cross purposes with a lot of the Cat token generation and Cat anthems.
Another tricky problem for an Arahbo deck is managing the number of Cats so that you’ll draw one early every game (thus getting the maximum usage out of his Eminence trigger) while trying to keep up the average card quality. Cats have not been a prominent creature type on most planes, so there haven’t been as many opportunities for WotC to print good creatures that happen to be Cats as there have been for Dragons or Wizards (Vamps haven’t been quite as lucky since they share the honor of being Black’s characteristic race with Zombies). As a result, tribal Cats has to relax its standards a little to make a critical mass, and effects that I wouldn’t otherwise be happy about running get to make it through the door.
Sample deck
In the maindeck:
Spread: 1
Power: 1
Arahbo is only good in tribal Cats, and I can’t imagine why a tribal Cat deck would choose another commander over him.
While Arahbo encourages you to go tall, Mirri operates at the other end of the aggro spectrum, supporting wider strategies by preventing your opponents from blocking the majority of your clowder. I think she’s much less powerful than Arahbo, but I’m glad there exists an in-tribe option for Cat tribal decks whose strategy aligns more closely with the type’s strengths.
In the maindeck:
Spread: 3
Power: 1
Seems like she could fit in a range of non-Voltron aggressive decks, but she really only seems worthwhile if you can guarantee that she’ll always have haste; telegraphing what you’re going to do with her while she recovers from summoning sickness sounds super lame.
Searching out equipment (and essentially having free equip costs) encourages a Voltron playstyle, but Nazahn is more expensive than most Voltron commanders, he doesn’t have haste, and his evasion ability is weak. Fortunately, he does have a few things going for him: 7 power is a great number for a Voltron commander, indestructibility is one of the best protection abilities you could ask for, and Nazahn has both of these things while he carries his Hammer. Plus, costing 6 means you’ll probably have enough time to set up a workaround for Nazahn’s lack of haste by the time you cast him.
In the maindeck:
Spread: 1
Power: 1
In the maindeck, this does a really poor imitation of Stoneforge Mystic.
Even setting aside the combo potential (Bloodline Necromancer and Ashnod’s Altar/Phyrexian Altar/whatever, or doubling up on Trophy Mage to get both Rings of Brighthearth and Basalt Monolith, or turning Wanderwine Prophets into a Russian nesting doll for infinite turns, or any relevant Champion and Ashnod’s Altar), this card seems really busted. There are just a ton of god damn Wizards that can generate cards off of her ability, and paying one mana for the privilege seems like a bargain.
Sample deck
In the maindeck:
Spread: 1
Power: 1
Her activated ability sucks super hard. Please don’t run her if she’s not gonna be your commander.
Competitive Commander circles have been looking for a commander for the Grixis Storm deck for a while, unhappily making do with Jeleva in the meantime. A 4-mana Snapcaster Mage in the Command Zone is a huge improvement over Jeleva, giving the deck a little added reach.
Sample list (not mine)
In the maindeck:
Spread: 3
Power: 3
She’s fragile and I hate exiling my own cards, but she does get back a good spell every turn if your deck has a strong suite of instants/sorceries to choose from.
Another comboriffic commander from the Wizard deck. The best thing you can do with him is to exile Mirror-Mad Phantasm, flip your library into your graveyard, and reanimate Lab Maniac with a Dread Return.
Less, uh, aggressive uses for Mairsil include getting Razaketh at a steep discount, building a machine gun with untappers and creatures that tap to destroy/exile/steal stuff, drawing tons of cards, populating your prison more quickly, etc. Also, this might be the first Commander deck to ever run Whip Sergeant.
In the maindeck:
Spread: 1
Power: 1
His needs are so specific that any deck that can use him effectively should probably be running him as the commander.
Well, I think haste granters are important for most commanders that have attack triggers, and Wasitora’s attack trigger is strong enough that I’d consider Strionic Resonator. Once you have a critical mass of haste granters, then running Breath of Fury is basically free and can give you some combo potential (infinite damage to anyone who doesn’t have creatures).
As far as Dragon tribal effects go, Crux of Fate and Crucible of Fire are obviously sweet. Utvara Hellkite and Atarka, World Render are pretty expensive, but the payoff seems worth it when you’ve got a litter of kittens to benefit from their effect. Kolaghan, Storm’s Fury is basically another copy of Shared Animosity (which you should also be running), and Dragon Broodmother generates an absurd amount of Dragon tokens. Coat of Arms exists, but be aware that it won’t be at its best in this deck because of the slow rate of token production (Animosity got a pass for being cheaper and one-sided). I’m skeptical of Scourge of Valkas in most Dragon decks (since the high CMC of most Dragons makes it difficult to get a lot of them on the board), but Wasitora’s token generation makes me think it could be good here. I’m not in love with Dragonspeaker Shaman since being a creature is a liability for these types of effects and I don’t think this deck has enough Dragons to justify running this over something sensible like Coalition Relic, Worn Powerstone, or Cultivate.
In the maindeck:
Spread: 1
Power: 2
As one of the very few repeatable Dragon token generators, Wasitora should easily find a home in the Dragon decks that contain her color identity.
As far as Eminence commanders go, he’s more fair than Inalla but still very powerful. Vampires have an absurd number of lords (plus Edgar himself), so token generation is extremely strong in this deck, allowing each lord to generate much more damage than it would be able to if you were limited to physical cards. The utility of tokens is so high, in fact, that it’s worth it to run 1- and 2-cost Vampires that would normally be too weak to see play in Commander because they serve as in-tribe Raise the Alarms to ensure you’ll quickly build an army during the early turns of the game, maximizing your damage output when Edgar or one of your other lords hits the table.
Sample list
In the maindeck:
Spread: 1
Power: 2
He’s only playable in a 3+ color Vampire deck. Like most of the other Eminence commanders, he begs the question: why would you run him in the maindeck in a tribal list and miss out on the Eminence bonus?
Honestly, I do not understand why this card exists. As a lifegain commander, she looks pitiful next to Karlov, who comes at a fraction of Licia’s price and, y’know, actually rewards you for gaining life. As a Mardu Voltron commander, it’s hard not to compare her to Zurgo Helmsmasher, who doesn’t require you to jump through any hoops to cast him for a reasonable cost, has haste, and makes all your board wipes asymmetrical. Unless you’re trying to build a Roman theme deck, I don’t think there’s a deck that needs her for which another commander wouldn’t be more useful. But hey, let me know if you think of something.
In the maindeck:
Spread: 1
Power: 1
Don’t do it.
Super flavorful, but I don’t think he’s especially good. Even if you can sometimes get your opponents to be more liberal with their removal, you’re still giving away a lot of free cards to other players (which is disgusting). Secret tech: Bounty Hunter.
In the maindeck:
Spread: 3
Power: 1
You’re in Black, so you’ve got much better ways to draw cards in whatever spot removal-heavy Mardu deck you’d want to put him in.
O-Kagachi is pretty bland and reactive. Your opponents have a lot of control over whether his ability will trigger and O-Kagachi doesn’t provide a lot of direction for a deck, so any list build around him will probably devolve into WUBRG Goodstuff. I suppose you could use him as the commander for 5-color Spirits, but it’s not like he would actually synergize with such a deck beyond triggering Spiritcraft stuff when you cast him.
In the maindeck:
Spread: 1
Power: 2
I’m pretty sure 5-color decks have more powerful things to do than play slow, reactive cards like this one.
Some incredibly goofy Ramos combos do exist, but for the most part, I think this is just a WUBRG goodstuff deck, AKA the most poisonous deck in the format.
In the maindeck:
Spread: 1
Power: 1
Again, if you’re in 5C, you’ve got better stuff to do.
Unlike the other Eminence commanders, his other ability is much stronger than his Eminence trigger, which makes me sad that he costs so much mana. I think WotC could have easily shaved two mana off of his cost without making him unfair, especially when you consider that the prohibitive power of the Commander tax scales exponentially with the base cost of your commander.
It’s not too hard to imagine how to build an Ur-Dragon list; Gatherer searches for every card that is a Dragon and every card that mentions Dragons would be a good place to start. Potential tech for the deck includes Fist of Suns (makes it much easier to cast your commander), Bloom Tender, Kaalia of the Vast, Temur Ascendancy, Frontier Siege, and Gravitational Shift.
Sample list (kind of unwieldy but extremely dragon-y)
In the maindeck:
Spread: 1
Power: 3
Like Utvara Hellkite, the Ur-Dragon offers a solid payoff for a dragon tribal deck if you can afford (or circumvent) his absurdly high mana cost.
The Maindeck Cards
Spread: 2
Power: 2
This card is much worse than Notion Thief and these effects have diminishing returns, so you would only consider it for decks without Black/Blue. The card draw is also pretty unreliable so WUx, WBx, and WGx decks would probably skip it for the better card draw in those colors. The stats aren’t great for an aggressive deck, either, so I would only consider him in Cat tribal.
Spread: 1
Power: 1
Maybe you could curse yourself in a Karlov deck? Otherwise, dumpster zone.
Spread: 5
Power: 2
Setting aside Magical Christmas Land fantasies of extremely kind opponents, this seems worse than comparable effects like Hour of Revelation and Planar Cleansing, which will eliminate threats more reliably for about the same price.
Spread: 2
Power: 2
It’s very mana intensive to make your tribal deck slowly indestructible and there’s huge potential for blowouts if your opponents have enchantment removal. Very cute in tribal Spirits with the Myojins.
Spread: 1
Power: 2
Spot removal will never be as much of a threat to nontoken aggro decks as mass removal, so the indifference to board wipes makes this version of Karmic Justice pretty inferior to the original.
Spread: 2
Power: 1
Nonblack blink decks don’t have access to a lot of ETB triggers that kill things, so that’s the most likely place to find this guy outside of a Cat deck.
Spread: 2
Power: 2
It’s tempting to use it to break the symmetry on board wipes but that doesn’t really set it apart from stuff like Heroic Intervention or Rootborn Defenses. I also think most of the combo uses we’ve seen are a little too cute to be viable.
Spread: 3
Power: 1
Blue has access to plenty of card draw that doesn’t benefit your opponents, so why run this?
Spread: 2
Power: 4
Seems super powerful in Wizard tribal; it’s basically a repeatable Cyclonic Rift.
Spread: 3
Power: 3
Great in any sort of Blue deck with a tribal theme or a lot of token generation. Note that it can become a one-card combo in The Locust God to help you draw your deck, provided you have a way to interrupt the loop (or a way to go out in a blaze of glory) somewhere in your deck.
Spread: 1
Power: 1
Casting it is basically telegraphing that you’re planning on Storming off next turn, letting your opponents know in advance to either kill it immediately or otherwise disrupt what you’re about to do. Has a bit more utility in Inalla, since she can create a hasty token, but that seems suboptimal since you’re probably better off playing Kess in Storm.
Spread: 2
Power: 3
Seems a little anemic in tribal Vampires, since I think the best Edgar Markov lists will have a pretty low curve and you won’t save a lot of mana by reanimating his weenies. In tribal Wizards, however, it’s quite good: there are plenty of ETB Wizards to get you additional value and even outside the combo scenario, you can use Inalla to copy him, get back two Wizards, then copy them to double up on each of their abilities.
Spread: 1
Power: 1
I get that it’s trying to make the Dragon deck more resistant to removal, but this is not good as a threat and it’s not good as a Bloodghast so I don’t know how you’re supposed to use it.
Spread: 3
Power: 2
I would like to test with it, but I suspect that giving away Zombies could be acceptable if your deck is set up to use the ones you get more effectively than your opponents are; I’m thinking Attrition/Grave Pact decks or Graveborn Muse/Undead Warchief decks.
Spread: 4
Power: 4
This card is hard to block for non-token decks, so it’s likely to hit an opponent every turn. Unfortunate that it doesn’t use the “you may spend mana as though it were mana of any type to cast it” text that is common on these effects these days, so your ability to benefit from the cards you exile is dependent on how closely your color identity aligns with your opponents’ and whether their cards synergize with your deck’s overall strategy. Still, it’ll probably net you around 0.5 cards/turn.
Spread: 3
Power: 2
Seems a little too expensive for what it provides, especially compared to the asymmetrical board wipes that are already available in Black. Actually, a better point of comparison might be the fact that most White decks don’t run Mass Calcify.
Spread: 2
Power: 3
Only worthwhile in Vampire tribal and decks with Vampire commanders, but it seems like a sweet effect in those lists. Black rarely gets creature stealing and not being Aura-based is a huge bonus.
Spread: 1
Power: 3
Based on Noxious Gearhulk’s failure to make any waves in this format, I don’t think this goes into most decks. In Vampire lists, however, this thing is a champ.
Spread: 2
Power: 3
Sac outlet-based reanimator decks (think Chainer) will be very excited to run this card. A little dubious everywhere else.
Spread: 3
Power: 1
The Voltron decks that are most interested in this effect can do a lot better; Hall of the Bandit Lord, Lightning Greaves, and even Fervor/Hammer of Purphoros are all cheaper and less fragile than Stewart here.
Spread: 1
Power: 1
Direct damage to players is super weak in a 40-life format with multiple opponents; it’s gotta be on the level of Heartless Hidetsugu to be worth your time.
Spread: 1
Power: 1
Might be worth running in Breya or Slobad to help fuel their abilities.
Spread: 1
Power: 1
There are more permanent ways to ensure that other players don’t attack you; this effect doesn’t seem like it’s worth a card.
Spread: 3
Power: 2
It’s a neat spell recursion effect (that thankfully sends spells back to the graveyard so they can be reused by other spell recursion effects), but I suspect that it’s too slow to be any good; you have to wait a whole turn cycle just to be able to Sins of the Past something. Waiting additional turns beyond that to collect ingredients just seems like you’re begging for it to be hit with spot removal.
Spread: 3
Power: 3
Seems great in Red token decks like Purphoros, Krenko, Zada, etc.
Spread: 1
Power: 2
MaRo’s been hinting that we’ll get more Red Polymorph effects in the future. If we eventually hit a critical mass, Shifting Shadow could help find Blightsteel in an otherwise creatureless deck. Until that happens, I’m not sure there is a home for it. Is indestructible.dec a thing?
Spread: 1
Power: 1
I don’t know what power-to-cost ratio serves as the threshold between the Commander-playable French Vanillas and the unplayables, but I know it’s a lot closer to Serra Ascendant and Malignus than it is to this mess.
Spread: 1
Power: 1
Most decks won’t be able to really take advantage of untapping during opponents’ turns, so it's much more symmetrical than the other curses in the set. It also requires heavy investment in non-land ramp sources to be useful, so that further limits its applications. I think Yeva (with lots of Elves) is in the best position to use it, but most decks should pass on the effect.
Spread: 1
Power: 2
The flavor is cute, but as far as anthems go, it’s not great. You don’t have a ton of control over when the Rats die and the very earliest you could trigger it is during the end step of the turn you cast it– after you already attacked for the turn.
Spread: 3
Power: 3
If you have enough dudes on the board to make this spell good, you could just spend one more mana and win the game with Craterhoof (or two more mana if you Green Sun’s Zenith/Tooth and Nail/activate Survival/etc. to find said Craterhoof).
Spread: 1
Power: 3
If it’s just going to be a Conclave Naturalists in your deck, then don’t bother running it. In a Cat deck, however, it’s an Aura Shards with a free trigger and is therefore dope as hell.
Spread: 4
Power: 3
I like this effect a lot less than Soul’s Majesty-type cards. If it’s late enough in the game that you’ve already got five mana and a huge creature on the board, more mana will probably be less useful than more cards.
Spread: 1
Power: 2
I like this in Zedruu as a way to give away multiple copies of your most heinous permanents. Note that the tokens don’t count for her upkeep trigger, though.
Spread: 3
Power: 3
I like this as something Voltron decks can do with additional mana, but it could also be useful in Breya or the Nalaars as something to throw on Thopters that will generate additional artifact sacrifice fodder.
Spread: 3
Power: 2
Seems mostly better than Darksteel Plate, provided you don’t plan on moving it around too much.
Spread: 3
Power: 3
I like it much more as an intentional way to get value using sac outlets than as an insurance policy against removal. Note that your commander won’t get cards off of it if you send them to the Command Zone.
Spread: 3
Power: 2
I’m not in love with this card because both abilities come at a worse rate than you'd normally get at this price. The cost reduction effect is clearly worse than Urza’s Incubator and mostly worse than similarly-costed mana rocks like Worn Powerstone and Coalition Relic, while the Bloodline Shaman ability will only net you a card 25-30% of the time, which compares poorly to most repeatable card draw effects. The fact that this card does both of these things forces me to be a little more generous than I would be if I were rating them in isolation, but I’m not very optimistic about this card’s utility.
Spread 1
Power 1
Flavor win if you’ve got a Bear deck.
Saving some mana on Mirage Mirror to significantly limit the targets makes it much weaker (and it’s not like Mirage Mirror was that great in the first place).
Spread: 4
Power: 2
Provides mana fixing and free scrying even if your commander is the only creature of its type. In a dedicated tribal deck, the value of this card goes way, way up.
Wrapping Up
Let me know if you’ve think I’ve neglected to mention an interesting use for one of these cards or if you think I’ve misjudged something! Thanks for reading!
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Tap 1R, Abrade your guy?
Standard has been a bit of a drag for a long time. Kaladesh and Amonkhet have defined that constructed environment in a bunch of different ways; we’ve all watched in horror as card after card received standard bannings, scratched our heads in confusion as the lifespan of a standard set fluctuated drastically and sighed in dismay as the top 8 shows the same cast of overly dominant characters. All I can say is that I’m relieved that they’ll be leaving us soon.
I don’t always try to play Standard competitively, because non-rotating formats typically appeal to me more and the upkeep of a Standard deck is typically quite expensive in a way that is challenging to recoup. During this last Standard format, I tried to get involved with what seemed like a very safe buy; Ramunap Red. It had proven its power, keeping up with the dominant Temur Energy, and it seemed like it would be more insulated from bannings than the problematic Energy engine. It seemed like I made the right call, but amusingly I don’t think I’ve actually taken any of those red cards to an actual tournament the entire time I’ve owned them. The reason? One of my teammates has insisted on borrowing those cards to play Standard with, and I’ve been too nice to say no.
But now, at the beginning of the Guilds of Ravnica spoiler season, I’m pretty excited to be signing up for a Standard tournament after rotation. I started playing MtG the week before the release of Dragon’s Maze, so its exciting to go back to Ravnica. We haven’t been shown too many big ticket cards yet, but I think the odds are good that this is the one I’ll be casting most often:
Sinister Sabotage obviously calls back to Dissolve, as far as similar Cancels go, and I have some great memories casting that card. Scry 1 allowed the control decks of that format to play very consistently, using their answers to sculpt their gameplan while disrupting the opponent’s. Sinister Sabotage does the exact same thing, with Surveil perhaps being even stronger in context by filling the graveyard for Search for Azcanta, getting soft card advantage with the new Jump-Start cards or helping to enable any pushed Raise Deads, Reanimates or Recursive Graveyard Synergies (in a set with the Golgari, Dimir and Izzet guilds, I’m expecting a few of those boxes to be ticked).
But mostly, I just really like casting Cancels. You may have gathered that I like tapping islands on my opponent’s turn, and I especially like doing that when its not quite optimal. Since my main goal is to get back to the Pro Tour, sometimes its important to play what gives me the best chance to win - but the premier level events that are available for me here in Australia are pretty sparse; in November, GRN Sealed at GP Melbourne. Modern at PPTQs. Not much Standard on the Horizon, so it might be that I get to play as many Cancels as I like.
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If an Archive Trap in your graveyard gains flashback, and an opponent has searched their library this then I assume you cannot pay 0 to cast it. Is that correct?
No. Snapcaster Mage's ability gives Archive Trap a flashback cost equal to its mana cost, 3UU in this case, and that's the cost you have to pay to cast it from your graveyard. Both Archive Trap's own ability and flashback give it different alternate costs, but only flashback allows you to cast it from your graveyard. When you cast a spell, you can only ever pay one alternate cost for it, and so you have to pay the flashback cost here since that's what's allowing you to cast Archive Trap from the graveyard in the first place.
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If my opponant searched a library this turn and I archive trap in responce, could i then use snap caster to flashback said trap for 0?
Unfortunately, you can't pay 0 to cast Archive Trap from your graveyard here. Snapcaster Mage gives Archive Trap a flashback cost equal to its mana cost, so Archive Trap's flashback cost is 3UU and that's the cost you have to pay to cast it from your graveyard. Flashback is the only thing allowing you to cast Archive Trap from your graveyard, and so if you want to do so, you have to pay its flashback cost. You can only pay one alternate cost for a spell, so the 0 alternate cost from Archive Trap's own ability loses out. (Note that you would be able to cast Archive Trap for off of an effect like Jace, Telepath Unbound's -3 ability since that ability just gives you permission to cast the spell from the graveyard without imposing an alternate cost.)
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My Friend: So what are you playing in modern at our locals next week? I’m planning to play Grixis Death’s Shadow.
Me: Oh, I’m playing the same deck just clunkier and worse!
I really like Modern. Its probably my favourite format, and its by far the format I have the best results in. I put in a lot of time playtesting, researching, theorycrafting and otherwise actively thinking about Modern. Now if I only I could convince myself to not play garbage...
The first deck I built, well, actually the third deck I built but the first two don’t count (the first was at the time fringe strategy Living End, which I was informed was very cheap to build and would allow me to start playing in events - true statements, at the time - and the second was a modern port of the standard deck The Aristocrats: Act 2, which didn’t work out so well) was a Grixis Control deck that aspired to win using Cruel Ultimatum. See, when Modern was described to me, part of the sell was that it was a non-rotating format (so you could buy the cards for your deck and play it forever) with decades worth of Magic’s card pool available (so there was lots of options). I’m not sure if that information had sent me looking, or if I’d found it independently, but all that I could think about was this video.
That was what I wanted to do in Magic.
As time went on, in became increasingly clear to me that while Modern was a format where many cards were legal, in actuality the cards you were allowed to play with were a much smaller subset. There has been a lot of brutally efficient and powerful spells printed in Magic’s lifespan, and in a format where you can pick from the cream of that crop 7 CMC sorceries are a tough sell. With great sadness, I eventually put the Cruel Ultimatums away, and my control decks became a lot more small ball. Cheaper, less romantic card advantage filled the gaps - I’ve played a lot of Think Twice in my time. Kolaghan’s Command is a little sexier than that, but it still doesn’t compare...
It hasn’t always been Grixis Control specifically (I’ve had a lot of success with Jeskai Control too, and not very much success with Blue/Black Control), but the combination of Snapcaster Mage and around a dozen removal spells has been my weapon of choice for many years. Nowadays, a lot of voices in the community say that the best deck is UW Control with a pile of Planeswalkers and Terminus and I don’t know if I agree with them. A few weeks back, we had two PPTQs locally, one day after another, and since I hadn’t had the opportunity to play much Magic I bowed to that wisdom and gave UW Control a shot. It felt powerful, sure, but I couldn’t not start the game by drawing a Terminus if you paid me. It was clunky as hell, it felt like if I just hammered away and put a Planeswalker on the battlefield, it would vomit up enough material that I’d eventually win. That didn’t feel right to me; part of what I’d always liked about my Snapcaster Mage + “your creature is dead now” piles was that I had a lot of room to tweak my deck to make it better against the room I expected, and not just in sideboarding. Cards like Electrolyze, Dreadbore, Countersquall, Ashiok, Kalitas, Devour Flesh - the list goes on. Weird, sometimes-powerful-but-usually-not spells that would help solve problems. I felt a lot of ownership over my decks this way.
I played Grixis Control for the second PPTQ, and some of the opponent’s I faced were on Infect, Affinity and Elves - I felt unbeatable, on top of the world. If that’s what your local store is like, I cannot recommend Grixis Control enough. But I also faced Rakdos Bridgevine, where I didn’t have a chance, Tron, where it felt like I didn’t have a chance but I somehow managed to sneak a win anyway, and UW Control.
They put a Planeswalker onto the battlefield, where it vomitted up enough material and they eventually won. Oh well.
Basically, what I’m saying is that I hope one day I’ll find a format where casting Cruel Ultimatum is good...
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The deck that I played at Pro Tour 25th Anniversary was UWr Miracles. I could’ve done better, but I had a lot of history behind that choice.
I know, with reasonable certainty, when I played my first game of the Legacy format. I didn’t know that much about Legacy, in fact I’d only just started playing magic a few months earlier, but the players at my local store wanted to drum up support for Legacy, Vintage and our home grown Australian 7pt Highlander (its pretty cool; I’ll tell you about it sometime). To do this, they decided to run an Eternal Format league that would pay out its prizes in staples for those formats, cards like Force of Will, fetchlands, etc. At the time, the original dual lands weren’t quite as prohibitively expensive as they are now, so those were on the table as well if you did well enough. Even though I wasn’t that invested yet, I really liked playing MtG and these players were allowing any number of Proxies for this unsanctioned casual league, and it like a really cool way to try out these formats and maybe make some progress on a magic collection.
So, like I said, I didn’t know much about Legacy. I did a bit of research, and understood a few things pretty readily - the most important one was that people liked casting Brainstorm.
A week or two before this league, the set Born of the Gods had been released and with it a card that was particularly good against Brainstorm; Spirit of the Labyrinth. If they try to Brainstorm with the Spirit in play, they loose between 2-3 cards in their hand, and that sounded great to me. But no one was going to just cast a Brainstorm into my Spirit of the Labyrinth, so I needed to figure out a way to get it onto the battlefield unexpectedly. My answer to that question was AEther Vial.
So what’s the natural pairing of AEther Vial and Spirit of the Labyrinth? Maybe Mother of Runes, Thalia and the rest of the Death and Taxes gang? I’m pretty sure I knew about that deck, because it was definitely around, but for some reason that wasn’t where my mind went. Instead, I decided that I wanted to play the best 2CMC creatures I could to get the most out of my AEther Vials, and since I’d be casting my creatures through it, I also needed some great spells to spend my mana on.
I ended up with a pretty amazing cast of creatures - Tarmogoyf, Stoneforge Mystic, Dark Confidant and Spirit of the Labyrinth, with Deathrite Shaman and Knight of the Reliquary playing outside the Vial. Along with that, I was slinging some pretty great spells in Hymn to Tourach, Abrupt Decay and Thoughtseize. It was a pretty sweet pile, and in retrospect I think its pretty funny that my brew of choice was some weird Dark Maverick variant based on the type of Magic I’d go on to pretty exclusively play afterwards. I didn’t do too well with it, but it lit a fire under me - I’d played against a lot of different decks in this legacy league, and so I started reading articles about legacy decks, watching coverage videos and trawling through page after page of forums so that I could be better prepared next time. That was how I came across a video of Joe Lossett playing Miracles. I saw him dismantling his opponents with clever interactions and sequences, escaping from certain doom by cleverly cantripping into answers or locking them out with weird Karakas-based sequences. That was what I wanted to do in Legacy.
Fast forward a year and I’d saved up, traded for and won pieces for the deck that I wanted to play. I took it to the biggest Legacy event of the year organised by the local community, at the capital cities annual gaming convention (CanCon, its pretty cool).
I did okay.
I played Legacy whenever I could after that, and I kept up with reading, watching, researching. I loved the format, I loved playing my deck and I loved casting Brainstorm. That part of my assessment had definitely been correct.
Eventually, Sensei’s Divining Top’s crimes finally caught up to it. During my time with the deck, the rest of the world started to realise that Miracles might have been the best strategy the whole time. It weathered Treasure Cruise and Dig Through Time unflinchingly, and came out the stronger. It was winning all the time, and inexperienced players were slowing down tournaments because of how many complicated manual actions the deck would take every single turn. Something needed to be done, but it still made me sad to see Top go.
I kept playing Miracles, but not as often, not as joyfully. You needed to work a lot harder, and you were never as secure when you started to pull ahead. I was never going to be happy registering Portent, either. But I still liked Legacy, for the most part.
When we were preparing for the Pro Tour, it was decided almost without any discussion that I’d be playing Legacy. I was the only one on my team that really liked playing it, and I was by far the most knowledgeable about it. We tested other decks, and there were times that we said to ourselves that Death and Taxes, or Moon Stompy or whatever else would give us the best matchups against what we thought the Pro Tour field would be. But I always knew that, if I pushed for it, they’d defer to my judgment that Miracles would be the best call for me to play. I was quietly confident that my skill, experience and knowledge would make up for the deck not quite being powerful enough, or fluid enough. When it came to the day of registering our decklists, the Wednesday before the PT itself, I knew that I would be registering Miracles.
We looked at competitive league results on MODO, and I saw the Grixis Control decks that were going 5-0 and understood that I’d be at a major disadvantage facing them. I still knew I’d be registering Miracles.
We looked at my 75, and I knew that it wasn’t completely tuned - I was still playing some cards that I knew were weak, my sideboard wasn’t that good. But I still knew that I was going to register Miracles.
I wanted to do well at the Pro Tour, I wanted to win... but apparently, doing it with my deck was more important. I can’t even say that I’ve learned from that, because I just went to a weekend of PPTQs with a deck that I know wasn’t the best choice, wasn’t even the best choice easily available to me, but it was mine.
I guess that’s just the type of magic I want to play. I’ve always been competitive, I’ve always wanted to do well. But I’ve always had a bit of a chip on my shoulder about doing it on my own terms.
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