MTG Salvation

I did a post eliciting suggestion for a similar theme. Check out the thread I started.

Gotta have old school Nicol Bolas as the commander.

I don't mind losing to a bunch of card but these are the ones that make me groan when they resolve:

Mind Over Matter

Deadeye Navigator

Seedborn Muse

Palinchron

I don't really see anyone slam these cards down excitedly. Anyone who cast them do so kinda sheepishly with an apologetic expression as. These cards kinda lead to those drawn out wins which are agonizing to sit through.

Gaddock Teeg

I hate seeing teeg but I gotta admit that punishing decks greedy decks is pretty sweet.

I do like ID Crisis as a release valve to cripple a player who seem to be getting out of hand.

I play it in my Wydwen deck where I'm casting cheap spells on my turn or instants on everyone elses'.

It's been phenomenal with top. Surprise blocks, a little life and not drawing a land when you need a spell has been great. Getting to flash in a Maze of Ith has been sweet too. Definitely gives me the life and lands I need in this U/B deck.

I loved the card so much I tried jamming it into other decks with less than stellar results. In my other decks I'm seeking to use up all my mana every turn and it sits there.

It's not an autoinclude for sure but test it out.

Someone (lets call him Mr MonoB) online always does this:



-Player 1 ramps a ton. Play a bunch of stuff. Card drawer on the board. Becomes a threat.
-Mr MonoB, misses land drops. Barely any cards in hand.
-Player 3, 4 desperately trying to either keep up or contain player 1.
-Mr MonoB rips Pox off the top. He plays it. Player 1 wins.

OR

-Mr MonoB rips Mindslicer. Blocks with it. Player 1 wins.

Druidic Satchel. So GOOD!

From experience if you do drank and play:

Double sleeve your sheet. Suckin Tecate out of a card sleeve to avoid water dmging your cards is pretty classless.

Are you tired of winning this way?

If so take out the narrowest part of the combo. So I would take out Mind Over Matter in your MOM/Bell combo. Or take out Palinchron, Trike, Pestermites and Exarchs.

See if you can win with sick tricks and combat.

Challenge yo self.

Sensei's Divining Top and Druidic Satchel. Ahhhhh yeah!

It looks cool but is fiddling with it easier than just scribbling your life total on the back of a chinese food menu?

Try powering down. If you're jamming top and mana crypt into any deck I'd swang at you too.

I used to have the same problem until I started building decks out of sweet cards that I was abandoning because there's a better alternative.

Consecrated Sphinx? NAH! Sphinx of Magosi. Now there's a fun one. When you start a game let people know you wanna try out your new powered deck for the lulz and you won't get hated on.

If you haven't tried dipping into more suboptimal cards give it a shot. It's a lot of fun.

Wanna power down the group?

Here's what my store owner did. He powered down his decks then hyped them. He showed us he could win with commander dmg with Vizzedrix as his general (Vizz isn't legendary but who in their right mind wouldn't mind the temporary errata). He uses bad cards and wins and showed us that politics and playing well matter. Also there's some swag-style points for powering down.

Who can't win Time Stretch on turn 7? Yawn, seen it.

But who can win with terrible draft chaff? Pose that challenge and make it seem fun. The playgroup at the store allows any broken stuff you want but if you win with it you get no props or social rewards for doing so. Everyone just shuffles up and talks about other things because the "broken win" just isn't impressive. People want to validation for their wins and they don't get it here. So they silently change their decks to include less powerful cards so when they play again next time and win with jank they finally get the validation they were looking for. You don't have to change the rules, instead change the incentives.

I don't understand the Mouth of Ronom over Raging Ravine reasoning here. Ravine is just a solid card, a way to sink mana and do something on your turn when you're out of gas, fixes your colors albeit in a color that doesn't suffer from fixing. Survives wraths, swings for 4 which is not shabby at all, benefits from creature enhancements and can be equipped, has +1/+1 counters to play with. Seems sweet.

Mouth's applications have been kind of narrow and is not repeatable unless you have a way to recur it, necessitates snow-lands. There's too many things that need to go right to make Mouth sweet unlike Ravine which is probably always relevant. Mouth is definitely fancier when you get it going but is it better than Ravine? I don't think so.

Druid Satchel

Combine with top, rack, brainstorm. The land ability is like explore on a stick!

If you're just playing with your friends do whatever you want. If something is too broken then you as a group will find ways to deal with it or ban it in your group. Why do you need an authority figure to dictate the exact rules you should play by? 90% of people don't play Monopoly the correct way either even though the Park Bros. have a defined set of rules.

You're all a bunch of big boys and big girls. You'll end up doing what's best for your group. Have some faith in yourselves.

Yeah they aren't the best counters but they're so cheap that it is worth it. Cheap answers are way better than you think. You don't always have to milk super value out of every card and having an efficient answer is good enough sometimes better. Having to leave open two instead of three gives you alot of options.

So try it out. ESPECIALLY if you have a sweet foil.