Investigate is the most interesting mechanic wizards has made in a long time. It feels very different then other stuff. I really want to make a deck around it, but I just don't see how it comes together. All these cards that either investigate or cause effects when you investigate just don't keep you alive. How do you stop the other players from just killing you? I also don't see any obvious win condition. If you can make a deck that very effectively generates investigate tokens then tamiyo's journal seems powerful, but what do you search for? Again, investigate seems cool and it seems fun but its cards just seems to sit there doing nothing to keep you alive and nothing to win you the game.
Am I missing something? How do you guys see this all coming together?
I was the guy playing the relentless rats deck back during mirrodin and kamigawa blocks. Yes, cranial extraction was used on me. No, I didn't win much. Yes, I do have a relentless rats edh deck. No, it doesn't win much either...
Investigate is the most interesting mechanic wizards has made in a long time. It feels very different then other stuff. I really want to make a deck around it, but I just don't see how it comes together. All these cards that either investigate or cause effects when you investigate just don't keep you alive. How do you stop the other players from just killing you? I also don't see any obvious win condition. If you can make a deck that very effectively generates investigate tokens then tamiyo's journal seems powerful, but what do you search for? Again, investigate seems cool and it seems fun but its cards just seems to sit there doing nothing to keep you alive and nothing to win you the game.
Am I missing something? How do you guys see this all coming together?
Investigate is bad for the same reason that Radiant Flames is bad. Compare Radiant Flames to cards like Slagstorm, Firespout and Anger of the Gods. They're all 3 mana spells that nuke the board for 3 but Radiant Flames is strictly worse than the others because it has requirements. If you meet N condition to support Y keyword then you get a card no more powerful than its unconditional alternatives. This is the fatal flaw of keywords in practice and why most cards with Keywords are bad. Obviously keywords aren't inherently powerful or weak but how they're implemented is a total joke. For example, just imagine a world where Radiant Flames deal a base 1 damage and scales from there. That wouldn't make it amazing, but at least if it wer a 3 CMC spell that nuked for (up to) 4 then you'd actually have to weigh the pros and cons. Maybe Anger of the Gods still wins out but it's not such a blatantly obvious choice. I have no idea why Wizards refuses to adapt that model and why they want every card with a keyword to be Limited fodder at best.
Moving back to Investigate let's look at Ongoing Investigation. Blue/Green already has extremely powerful and competitive cards like Edric, Spymaster of Trest and Bident of Thassa that draw the cards for free. Onging Investigation was obviously printed so that they could fill their keyword quota but at no point did they try to push the card to be better than its unconditional alternatives. You can either pay 2 or pay 0 and so there's no decision to make. Basically every Investigate card suffers from this flaw and explains why Investigate has so few competitive applications.
The best one, in my mind, is probably Tireless Tracker. Not only does Green need a bit of help on the card draw front but the body is decent and he naturally works well with most of Green's best cards. After all, it's good with Fetchlands, good with Tempt with Discover, good with Sylvan Primordial, makes cards like Crop Rotation better, etc. The easiest way to "make a card work" is to pick something that naturally pairs well with legitimately broken cards. That way even if the card itself isn't the next Repercussion the average power-level of your deck will be enough to offset any weak-ish links. The Tracker is kinda like a Courser of Kruphix in that he's "fire and forget" and he even scales over time. Even if you don't pop the Clues immediately, meh, a Green ramp deck will have spare mana at some point and even a 6 mana Concentrate is fine at that point.
Conversely when I look at a cards like Confirm Suspicions or Trail of Evidence I see unplayable crap. Blue already has access to amazing card draw so who on Earth would you ever want to field these over-costed do-nothings? A deck full of spells needs board presence/removal/protection/win conditions and not the ability to draw more cards for a steep price. A control deck doesn't want to pay 5 mana to Counterspell in order to gain access to a 6 mana Concentrate.
I was thinking of using Investigate more as a way to get lots of cheap artifact tokens rather than for the card draw effect. Then have ways to benefit from sacing the artifact tokens such as Arcbound Ravager. Could include Graf Mole for some life gain (because of the way the card is worded you shouldn't need to pay the 2 to get the effect) and/or Disciple of the Vault for some life loss. Maybe Parallel Lives to help with the token generation.
I never realized that Parallel Lives doubles noncreature tokens as well. That's interesting. Now if only there were some good ways to make nontoken creatures... There's clues, Prototype Portal, gold... that's pretty much it, right?
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All these cards that either investigate or cause effects when you investigate just don't keep you alive. How do you stop the other players from just killing you?
Can I just say that I've been extremely impressed with Tireless Tracker? I mean it's no Basalt Monolith or whatever but with respect to being a generic value 3 drop ala Courser of Kruphix the card has been extremely solid for me in my initial testing. I usually jam it on turn 4 with a Fetchland and as long as it survives for a single circuit and I can play another it nets me 4 cards eventually. It's also not generally seen as a "must kill" threat so it's not as though it's always dying in 1-2 circuits. Sometimes it does and that's life but other times it's around for 3-4 turns and it's not like people are going to Shatter Clues. I've gotten blown out by Fracturing Gust a few times which obviously sucks but I've played with the card like ~15 times already and I'd say that in roughly 10 of those the card was actively powerful and drew at least 3 cards. The most that I've gotten thusfar has been 8 Clues but granted I only popped 4 of them before the game ended.
Am I missing something? How do you guys see this all coming together?
Investigate is bad for the same reason that Radiant Flames is bad. Compare Radiant Flames to cards like Slagstorm, Firespout and Anger of the Gods. They're all 3 mana spells that nuke the board for 3 but Radiant Flames is strictly worse than the others because it has requirements. If you meet N condition to support Y keyword then you get a card no more powerful than its unconditional alternatives. This is the fatal flaw of keywords in practice and why most cards with Keywords are bad. Obviously keywords aren't inherently powerful or weak but how they're implemented is a total joke. For example, just imagine a world where Radiant Flames deal a base 1 damage and scales from there. That wouldn't make it amazing, but at least if it wer a 3 CMC spell that nuked for (up to) 4 then you'd actually have to weigh the pros and cons. Maybe Anger of the Gods still wins out but it's not such a blatantly obvious choice. I have no idea why Wizards refuses to adapt that model and why they want every card with a keyword to be Limited fodder at best.
Moving back to Investigate let's look at Ongoing Investigation. Blue/Green already has extremely powerful and competitive cards like Edric, Spymaster of Trest and Bident of Thassa that draw the cards for free. Onging Investigation was obviously printed so that they could fill their keyword quota but at no point did they try to push the card to be better than its unconditional alternatives. You can either pay 2 or pay 0 and so there's no decision to make. Basically every Investigate card suffers from this flaw and explains why Investigate has so few competitive applications.
The best one, in my mind, is probably Tireless Tracker. Not only does Green need a bit of help on the card draw front but the body is decent and he naturally works well with most of Green's best cards. After all, it's good with Fetchlands, good with Tempt with Discover, good with Sylvan Primordial, makes cards like Crop Rotation better, etc. The easiest way to "make a card work" is to pick something that naturally pairs well with legitimately broken cards. That way even if the card itself isn't the next Repercussion the average power-level of your deck will be enough to offset any weak-ish links. The Tracker is kinda like a Courser of Kruphix in that he's "fire and forget" and he even scales over time. Even if you don't pop the Clues immediately, meh, a Green ramp deck will have spare mana at some point and even a 6 mana Concentrate is fine at that point.
Conversely when I look at a cards like Confirm Suspicions or Trail of Evidence I see unplayable crap. Blue already has access to amazing card draw so who on Earth would you ever want to field these over-costed do-nothings? A deck full of spells needs board presence/removal/protection/win conditions and not the ability to draw more cards for a steep price. A control deck doesn't want to pay 5 mana to Counterspell in order to gain access to a 6 mana Concentrate.
Guilds of Ravnica - Commander 2018 - Core 2019 - Battlebond - Dominaria - Rivals of Ixalan - Ixalan - Commander 2017 - Hour of Devastation - Amonket - Aether Revolt - Commander 2016 - Kaladesh - Conspiracy 2 - Eldritch Moon - Shadows Over Innistrad - Oath of the Gatewatch - Commander 2015 - Battle for Zendikar - Magic Origins - Dragons of Tarkir
Green - Blue - Red - White - Gold
Investigate just seem too so to be an efficient souce of card draw.
It took Fluctuator to make Cycling into something truly busted and Mortal Combat to channel it into a competitive deck.
I will say that Tireless Tracker certainly caught my eye here. That card feels pretty pushed. If we get a few more at different curve points..maybe..
Didn't think about Plating--very cute indeed. Clue tokens can also help you Shape Anew into a surprise win-con.
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Second Harvest 'cause they're tokens.
Tezerret the Seeker to turn them all into 5/5's...
My meta: 3 or 4 player free for all, anything goes but boring games or broken decks cause a vote to end that game.
You forgot the almighty land mine token from Goblin Kaboomist
EDIT: Oh, Stoneforged Blade from Nahiri, the Lithomancer too. But that is kinda overkill.
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Any new cool Daretti cards printed in the latest set? Tell me about it!
Rules Advisor
Maybe add something that sacrifices artifacts for mana?
My meta: 3 or 4 player free for all, anything goes but boring games or broken decks cause a vote to end that game.
Graf Mole
GR Tron - hardcasting Emrakuls and playing Forest in the sideboard
URB Grixis Delver - Bolt-Snap-Bolt
Guilds of Ravnica - Commander 2018 - Core 2019 - Battlebond - Dominaria - Rivals of Ixalan - Ixalan - Commander 2017 - Hour of Devastation - Amonket - Aether Revolt - Commander 2016 - Kaladesh - Conspiracy 2 - Eldritch Moon - Shadows Over Innistrad - Oath of the Gatewatch - Commander 2015 - Battle for Zendikar - Magic Origins - Dragons of Tarkir
Green - Blue - Red - White - Gold