MTG Salvation

1)Goblin Balloon Brigade! has evasion, and lurks far, far, FAR under most people's removal radar.
2)Necrosavant! He's a 5/5 and he keeps coming back. A 5/5 seems to stay relevant for quite a few turns.

Quote from jakalova

Personally my hidden gem is Nactl War-Pride making even 2 tokens off of that and sacrificing them to Perilous Forays or Attrition seems to me like a decent small combo.

Good gravy! Imagine The Mimeoplasm copying Nactl War-Pride.

Ah, I have it. I will be able to explain the situation now when the question inevitably comes up.

Persist is a leaves-the-battlefield ability, which is triggered based on the game state right before the event of something leaving the battlefield. In that game state, Puppeteer Clique was face down and didn't have persist, so the ability doesn't trigger. The Clique regains persist once it arrives face-up in the graveyard, but by then it's too late. It stays in the graveyard.

You say persist is a "leaves the battlefield" ability. But the card says "when this creature is put into a graveyard". Does a "put in graveyard" ability really trigger when the card leaves the battlefield? This seems counterintuitive.

Maybe I haven't played enough with persist, and I apologize if they really are the same thing.

I love using Ixidron, so I better get this figured out!

I grabbed Political Puppets on my lunch break.

Haven't had much chance to do anything with it, under than read the inserts.

But overall, I am impressed!

Reality Acid. Gets rid of any permanent in blue. You can bounce it and use it again and again.

Skullbriar hates Giant Oyster.

What do people think about Conversion Chamber?

Most turns you can either
1) exile a troublesome artifact out of someone's graveyard
2) make a 3/3 golem

depending on what the board looks like. And the mana costs are not very expensive.

I got lots of EDH problems, but a Top ain't one.

I would imagine the competative Group Hug deck (the one that intends to eventually win) works better the more "mature" your multiplayer group is. If your gang is just a bunch of frenzied troglodytes who attack the first person they see, you might not see a benefit. But I will say this…in any regular multiplayer group there is a huge advantage to

a) not being the "player to beat"
b) not being the player who won last time

Don't look like you are going to win, until you are. Give your deck

1) non-threatening defensive abilities to protect you from being steam-rolled.
2) abilities that seem to help people (or harm them) in equal amounts
3) non-combo sources of advantage that can be played quickly when the time is right

You are right, that is a great Chancellor. The rules are beautiful, with the leyline-ish ability not doing too much but helping to enable the greater, more powerful enter-the-battlefield ability.

Quote from SuperSonik

Yep. Sounds like the color identity implementation has left some things to be desired. Hope they fix it because I don't want to have to explain (again) to an Intet player why he really shouldn't be running Bojuka Bog just because he can get away with it on MTGO.

Anyway, I'm here to pimp Chancellor of the Spires. I don't think I'll ever play another blue seven-drop over him. Holy crap that card is so good. Add clone and recursion/Mimic Vat shenanigans and it can definitely win games on its own. I'm not sure he qualifies as a hidden gem, but just in case he does, well, here I am :cool2:.

Wow! Anything that tucks the 5-color Sliver posse is a tool I can use! It does cost 4, which is the only thing I am hesitant about.

But the flavor text is phenomenal:

"Whoa-my tail will never fit through that hole!"

Quote from ChokeChainChomp

Ether Well can be used to tuck red generals. It also works on other creatures too! Speaking of cards from Mirage, Shimmer can really hurt mono colored decks if I understand the card correctly. I'm not sure of how much of a hidden gem this is, but Three Dreams can at least fetch three kill spells and is great with Uril. You can even use it to find Arcanum Wings, Eldrazi Conscription, and some other aura.

Horn of Deafening is a pet card of mine. Perfect against insanely large or difficult to handle creatures.

Spellskite can redirect any spell to itself that targets, basically. At least all the spells anyone ever uses in EDH.

I have Death Spark in my discard-heavy deck Malfegor deck, where it pretty much functions as an extra card to discard every time I discard anything. Comes back to my hand over and over again. It's amazingly easy to get a creature on top of it, especially if you are discarding multiple creatures. And it even functions as removal.