Yup, not the best night for EDH. I have no desire to exile my own cards in a B/G EDH deck, and giving my opponents deathtouchers doesn't seem great either.
The guy seems nasty with Sword of Feast and Famine, surely. But once again, exiling your own cards in a format like EDH seems like too steep of a drawback when recursion is so useful and widespread. At least you can still play lands off his ability, and if you can actually play the cards they'll not be exiled any more, so in a deck with a very low curve and some voltron he could be fun.
She only sucks because the creature's owner gets the token.
What do you guys think of Prophetic Flamespeaker? I'm mostly hoping it has no place in Standard and has a low price--I think it's a fun red beater.
They're already calling this the chase mythic of the set, so prepare your $20+
As for Pharika, I am hyper disappointed. The two gods I was looking forward to the most are useless in EDH. Hell, at least I can abuse BW god in modern and could potentially make a bleeder kind of deck in EDH. Pharika is just useless.
Dear lord. Not sure why nobody has said anything yet, but Master of the Feast looks like a pretty solid addition to my Nekusar deck I dare say!! Sure I will take an under-costed fatty with no drawback. Deal Wizards!
Pharika isn't great, but indestructible repeatable grave hate (potentially in the command zone) is pretty hard for graveyard-based decks to deal with. Unfortunately, other G/B generals are much higher impact and have less narrow abilities. That said, being able to give yourself deathtouch blockers at instant speed is nice, she has a few synergies with cards like Blood Seeker and Blasting Station, and there are some options for politics with giving other people deathtouch creatures. I guess she's also pretty amusing with Spreading Plague.
I'm more interested in Twinflame. It works well with theft effects and many red decks have a fair number of high-impact ETB effect creatures.
There is no reason Pharika couldn't have always given you the token. A conditional 1/1 Deathtouch for BG is hardly going to break anything.
She's the only god that has no static ability, and she's the only god that benefits your opponent in some way. Very dissapointed.
I couldn't agree more with you.
I don't see a reason to play her in EDH. First as I was reading it I read it as "GB: Exile target creature card from a graveyard. Put a 1/1 black and green snake enchantment creature token with deathtouch onto the battlefield.". And I was like WOW, that can be quite good. And then I read it again. And I was like WTF? Are they serious? Why the hell would I exile enemy creatures to give them 1/1 Deathtouch blockers? OR why would I exile my own creatures in GB?
Oh my god, my 2 favorites colors gods are both fails. And as I see Pharika, I think even Athreos is better than she is...
I'm surprised at all the hate for the B/G God. She's a really interesting politics/babysitter type of card. You get the ability to turn off degenerate GY interactions, with the ability to turn off non-evasive creature combat by gifting death touchers to people being attacked. Definitely not a cutthroat card by any means, but she's very interesting to build around.
Pharika is extremely disappointing for me. Maybe if Theros had a full-on enchantment theme with Constellation from day 1 she'd be nice, but when there's zero real support for her enchantment creatures and she forces you to use your own graveyard (One of the most valuable areas in Green/Black) as fodder for 1/1s... Yeah, no thanks.
So, it looks like its down to pharika as far as gods go, what are your guys's thoughts and hopes for her and what she might be?
Well I had hoped for something recursiony, but we already got Athreos as the recursion god so...it's probably going to be something deathtouchy or whatever.
Ha, called it. Not that it was a difficult guess.
Anyway it is an odd bummer about Pharika, I wonder if she got nerfed at the last minute or something. She would have been solid if you always got the token, just use global mill and discard and then fight everything with snakes. I guess it's maybe decent for snake tribal, but then seshiro is probably better for that anyway.
The double strike guy is pretty decent, red can definitely use the CA and the more double strikers, the better.
I'm surprised at all the hate for the B/G God. She's a really interesting politics/babysitter type of card. You get the ability to turn off degenerate GY interactions, with the ability to turn off non-evasive creature combat by gifting death touchers to people being attacked. Definitely not a cutthroat card by any means, but she's very interesting to build around.
Because there a lot of better cards for GB to turn off GY interactions. Such as Scavenging Ooze or Necrogenesis. Also, if you play GB, you will have reanimation spells and lot of GY interaction. There is 0 intention from your side to destroy your own GY.
And giving my enemy an advantage, I don't see the point of doing that. If your strategy is giving opponents advantage and not giving advantage to your self, you are doing something wrong.
Anyway it is an odd bummer about Pharika, I wonder if she got nerfed at the last minute or something.
She almost certainly got nerfed for Limited reasons. Being able to make an endless supply of Sedge Scorpions on turn 3 is grossly overpowered in a land where the primary wincon is pantsing up some random hero.
Even still, that's no excuse for her to be so terrible, especially at mythic. All of the JOU gods have been pretty tame, to be honest.
Pharika is indestructible, and your general, making it very difficult to get around her unlike the other two cards you named, however my point wasn't that she's super amazing GY hate, so comparing her to more efficient cards doesn't really counter what I was saying. As far as the "If you play black or green, you have recursion, so she's anti-synergistic" argument, I'm fairly certain that their isn't a law that says you have to play heavy recursion in those colors, or that you have to target cards in your own yard that you intend on recurring.
Pharika is not a cutthroat card. Pharika reminds me a lot of hippo, in that you have the ability to play politics by gifting 1/1 death touchers to neutralize attacking threats. It makes for potentially interesting games, because combat becomes Player A trying to get you not to generate a token when he attacks player B, and player B trying to get you to do the opposite. Sure, you can end up giving advantage to one player by preventing damage he could have taken, but you are also helping yourself because you are killing a threat.
I like the card, she's not amazing, nor is she an auto include in things, but she's a cool "build around me" style of general that makes for drawn out heavy politic style games. How useful that is to you depends on your playgroup, as she probably wouldn't do anything in a hyper competitive, infinite combo filled metagame, but in a relaxed casual setting she seems like she could be pretty fun.
I agree with ZeroWF. I am probably going to give Pharika a try for my B/G deck, see what I can do with her. At the very least I love the flavor of it, even if the power level leaves something to be considered (to say the least). Then again, I also manage to get by playing some other janky generals and win my share of games, so I'm probably not a prime example for anyone building in an actually competitive meta
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X Hope of Ghirapur Swordpile W Ghosty Blinky Anafenza U Nezahal- Big, Blue and HERE! B Gonti Can Afford It R Etali, Primal 'Whatjusthappened?' G Polukranos Wants More Mana WU The Exalted Vizier Temmet WB Home, Athreos WR Basandra, Recursive Aggression WG Karametra, Momma of Lands UB Wrexial Eats Your Brains UR Arjun, the Mad Flame UG The Fable of Prime Speaker BR Hellbent, Malfegor Style BG Jarad, Death is Served RG Running Thromok WUB Varina and ALL the Zombies WUBYennett, the Odd Pain-Train WUR Zedruu the Furyhearted WUG Arcades' Strategy, Shmategy, Sausage and Spam WBR A Case of Mathas' Persistent F*ckery WBRLicia's League of Legendary Lifegain Layabouts WBG The Karador Advantage PackageWRG Gahiji Rattlesnake Collection UBR Jeleva... does... things UBG Damia's Just Deserts URG Yasova's Has More Power Than Sense BRG Wasitora, Bad Kitty WUBRBreya, Eggs, Breya'd Eggs WUBG Tymna and Kydele, Extended Borrowing WURG Kynaios and Tiro, Landfall Impersonations WBRG Saskia Pet Card EnchantressUBRG Yidris of the Chi-Ting Corporation WUBRG Tazri's Amazing Allies
Anyway it is an odd bummer about Pharika, I wonder if she got nerfed at the last minute or something.
She almost certainly got nerfed for Limited reasons. Being able to make an endless supply of Sedge Scorpions on turn 3 is grossly overpowered in a land where the primary wincon is pantsing up some random hero.
Even still, that's no excuse for her to be so terrible, especially at mythic. All of the JOU gods have been pretty tame, to be honest.
I can't see why she would be nerfed for limited. You still need a creature in the graveyard to even get her to work once and she can be beaten by any form of evasion. She's also a mythic rare, so any limited impact she has will be minimal. There would still be far more troubling mythics for limited.
Pharika is indestructible, and your general, making it very difficult to get around her unlike the other two cards you named, however my point wasn't that she's super amazing GY hate, so comparing her to more efficient cards doesn't really counter what I was saying. As far as the "If you play black or green, you have recursion, so she's anti-synergistic" argument, I'm fairly certain that their isn't a law that says you have to play heavy recursion in those colors, or that you have to target cards in your own yard that you intend on recurring.
Pharika is not a cutthroat card. Pharika reminds me a lot of hippo, in that you have the ability to play politics by gifting 1/1 death touchers to neutralize attacking threats. It makes for potentially interesting games, because combat becomes Player A trying to get you not to generate a token when he attacks player B, and player B trying to get you to do the opposite. Sure, you can end up giving advantage to one player by preventing damage he could have taken, but you are also helping yourself because you are killing a threat.
I like the card, she's not amazing, nor is she an auto include in things, but she's a cool "build around me" style of general that makes for drawn out heavy politic style games. How useful that is to you depends on your playgroup, as she probably wouldn't do anything in a hyper competitive, infinite combo filled metagame, but in a relaxed casual setting she seems like she could be pretty fun.
She could have still been a fun "political card" while giving you the option to put the token into play under any player's control. Not only would it make her better in general, it would also be better for politics because you aren't restricted by what creature cards are in people's graveyards. No more "I want to give you a token, but you're playing a deck with few or no creatures, so I can't. Sorry!"
Like many others, I'm super disappointed by Pharika. The Karametra of JOU. So far not a lot of the Gods seems very good in EDH. But will still pick up Keranos, Kruphix and Athreos. Maybe even Iroas, even though I don't like playing Boros or aggro. But I doubt many will find their way into a deck.
Also I play Nekusar, but I don't think I'll play Master of the Feast. I'm gonna test it, but not sure it will make the cut.
In Karametra's defense, she's at least decent in commander. Pharika is just bad in this format. There are way better for a of GY hate, and in GB you generally have better things to do with the creatures in your own GY. I suppose you could build her as a rattlesnake / control general, forcing people to attack who you want them to attack or face deathtouchy snake death, but you're relying on the would-be defender having creatures in their GY. I just don't see it being anything more than a novelty.
For a token generator, she uses up a nonrenewable resource that you have many ways to use (Genesis and Volrath's Stronghold being two strong examples).
For graveyard hate, she gives your opponents a fairly powerful token, she's limited to only one card type, and she's both mana and color intensive.
The best thing I can say about her is that she's a decent GB snake tribal commander, but Snakes really wanted a UG commander, not a GB one.
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Graveyard hate that's almost always available T3. You're almost always going to have her ready to stop someone from abusing a sac loop. With every other option I can think of you need to draw/tutor the card first.
Also, GB is probably the color combination that has the easiest time turning on a God and she is still a 5/5 for 3. Slap a sword on her and she kills in 3 hits.
Indeed. I had some fiddling around for a potential decklist and at least in theory a token/sac stax combination could make for a fun (if not exactly obscenely powerful) deck. If you have a handful of Magus of the Abyss / Braids, Cabal Minion / Grave Pact effects, the benefit someone will get from the 1/1 deathtoucher is minimal - whatever you removed would have probably had far worse effect or you wouldn't have removed it, aye? And on the flipside, if you forgo having much creature recursion of your own**, you have tokens to withstand said effects yourself. Now, to be fair Pharika needs help on that department but really, if you can't find token-makers in BG you're doing something wrong.
As for a stax general, Pharika has something over Glissa, the Traitor and Savra, Queen of the Golgari - Pharika won't die to a stiff breeze. ...not that I wouldn't have probably at least Savra in the list as one of the 99, but just bear with me here. And, well, Goddess beatdown is a handy and fun backup option.
In short: most powerful thing ever, liable to break tables in half? Probably not. Potential for fun shenanigans salted with a pinch of potential political play with her ability? Yep. Gorgeous art and interesting as a character? Aye.
**if there is an unwritten rule that a BG deck must be made of creature recursion, I am choosing to ignore it.
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X Hope of Ghirapur Swordpile W Ghosty Blinky Anafenza U Nezahal- Big, Blue and HERE! B Gonti Can Afford It R Etali, Primal 'Whatjusthappened?' G Polukranos Wants More Mana WU The Exalted Vizier Temmet WB Home, Athreos WR Basandra, Recursive Aggression WG Karametra, Momma of Lands UB Wrexial Eats Your Brains UR Arjun, the Mad Flame UG The Fable of Prime Speaker BR Hellbent, Malfegor Style BG Jarad, Death is Served RG Running Thromok WUB Varina and ALL the Zombies WUBYennett, the Odd Pain-Train WUR Zedruu the Furyhearted WUG Arcades' Strategy, Shmategy, Sausage and Spam WBR A Case of Mathas' Persistent F*ckery WBRLicia's League of Legendary Lifegain Layabouts WBG The Karador Advantage PackageWRG Gahiji Rattlesnake Collection UBR Jeleva... does... things UBG Damia's Just Deserts URG Yasova's Has More Power Than Sense BRG Wasitora, Bad Kitty WUBRBreya, Eggs, Breya'd Eggs WUBG Tymna and Kydele, Extended Borrowing WURG Kynaios and Tiro, Landfall Impersonations WBRG Saskia Pet Card EnchantressUBRG Yidris of the Chi-Ting Corporation WUBRG Tazri's Amazing Allies
Prophetic Flamespeaker is a nice, silly card to play around with as well. I could see myself playing it in RW decks fairly easily; especially something like Jor Kadeen, the Prevailer, where you can get power boosts from both Kadeen and whatever equipment you might run.
Riddle of Lightning has some nice reprint art, so I might take a second look at whether I want to run it somewhere.
Anyway it is an odd bummer about Pharika, I wonder if she got nerfed at the last minute or something.
She almost certainly got nerfed for Limited reasons. Being able to make an endless supply of Sedge Scorpions on turn 3 is grossly overpowered in a land where the primary wincon is pantsing up some random hero.
Even still, that's no excuse for her to be so terrible, especially at mythic. All of the JOU gods have been pretty tame, to be honest.
Actually, it's most likely for Standard reasons, I think. If she always gave you the token, then she'd wall aggro decks pretty hard, as long as you could get one of their guys into the graveyard (in black/green). Once you have the ability to make one snake, then either they attack, allowing you to trade off a non-card for one of theirs, and giving her more fuel, or they don't, which is exactly what you want. That'd be very powerful ability on an indestructible enchantment. So they made the ability interesting, at the cost of making it less powerful.
What do you guys think of Prophetic Flamespeaker? I'm mostly hoping it has no place in Standard and has a low price--I think it's a fun red beater.
(U/B)(U/B)(U/B) JUMP IN THE LINE, ROCK YOUR BODY IN TIME
(R/W)(R/W)(R/W) RISING FROM THE NEON GLOOM, SHINING LIKE A CRAZY MOON
(U/R)(R/G)(G/U) STEALIN' WHEN I SHOULD HAVE BEEN BUYIN'
Good luck with that! I suspect it'll be a $20+ card. I may consider it for my Godo deck, but I dislike exiling my own stuff.
They're already calling this the chase mythic of the set, so prepare your $20+
As for Pharika, I am hyper disappointed. The two gods I was looking forward to the most are useless in EDH. Hell, at least I can abuse BW god in modern and could potentially make a bleeder kind of deck in EDH. Pharika is just useless.
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and I'm sure some more I'm missing. Maybe not an absurdly powerful ability, but yard hate in the command zone is pretty unique.
I'm more interested in Twinflame. It works well with theft effects and many red decks have a fair number of high-impact ETB effect creatures.
Scavenging Ooze and Necrogenesis do better by themselves.
RRRAshling, the PilgrimRRR
UUUThadda Adel, AcquisitorUUU
She's the only god that has no static ability, and she's the only god that benefits your opponent in some way. Very dissapointed.
EDH Decks
BGGlissa, the TraitorGB
URTibor and LumiaRU
WUBOloro, Ageless AsceticBUW
UBSygg, River CutthroatBU
RGXenagos, God of RevelsGR
UGVorel of the Hull CladeGU
GBSavra, Queen of the GolgariBG
URGMaelstrom WandererGRU
I couldn't agree more with you.
I don't see a reason to play her in EDH. First as I was reading it I read it as "GB: Exile target creature card from a graveyard. Put a 1/1 black and green snake enchantment creature token with deathtouch onto the battlefield.". And I was like WOW, that can be quite good. And then I read it again. And I was like WTF? Are they serious? Why the hell would I exile enemy creatures to give them 1/1 Deathtouch blockers? OR why would I exile my own creatures in GB?
Oh my god, my 2 favorites colors gods are both fails. And as I see Pharika, I think even Athreos is better than she is...
Ha, called it. Not that it was a difficult guess.
Anyway it is an odd bummer about Pharika, I wonder if she got nerfed at the last minute or something. She would have been solid if you always got the token, just use global mill and discard and then fight everything with snakes. I guess it's maybe decent for snake tribal, but then seshiro is probably better for that anyway.
The double strike guy is pretty decent, red can definitely use the CA and the more double strikers, the better.
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Because there a lot of better cards for GB to turn off GY interactions. Such as Scavenging Ooze or Necrogenesis. Also, if you play GB, you will have reanimation spells and lot of GY interaction. There is 0 intention from your side to destroy your own GY.
And giving my enemy an advantage, I don't see the point of doing that. If your strategy is giving opponents advantage and not giving advantage to your self, you are doing something wrong.
Even still, that's no excuse for her to be so terrible, especially at mythic. All of the JOU gods have been pretty tame, to be honest.
Pharika is not a cutthroat card. Pharika reminds me a lot of hippo, in that you have the ability to play politics by gifting 1/1 death touchers to neutralize attacking threats. It makes for potentially interesting games, because combat becomes Player A trying to get you not to generate a token when he attacks player B, and player B trying to get you to do the opposite. Sure, you can end up giving advantage to one player by preventing damage he could have taken, but you are also helping yourself because you are killing a threat.
I like the card, she's not amazing, nor is she an auto include in things, but she's a cool "build around me" style of general that makes for drawn out heavy politic style games. How useful that is to you depends on your playgroup, as she probably wouldn't do anything in a hyper competitive, infinite combo filled metagame, but in a relaxed casual setting she seems like she could be pretty fun.
I can't see why she would be nerfed for limited. You still need a creature in the graveyard to even get her to work once and she can be beaten by any form of evasion. She's also a mythic rare, so any limited impact she has will be minimal. There would still be far more troubling mythics for limited.
She could have still been a fun "political card" while giving you the option to put the token into play under any player's control. Not only would it make her better in general, it would also be better for politics because you aren't restricted by what creature cards are in people's graveyards. No more "I want to give you a token, but you're playing a deck with few or no creatures, so I can't. Sorry!"
In Karametra's defense, she's at least decent in commander. Pharika is just bad in this format. There are way better for a of GY hate, and in GB you generally have better things to do with the creatures in your own GY. I suppose you could build her as a rattlesnake / control general, forcing people to attack who you want them to attack or face deathtouchy snake death, but you're relying on the would-be defender having creatures in their GY. I just don't see it being anything more than a novelty.
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StaffFor a token generator, she uses up a nonrenewable resource that you have many ways to use (Genesis and Volrath's Stronghold being two strong examples).
For graveyard hate, she gives your opponents a fairly powerful token, she's limited to only one card type, and she's both mana and color intensive.
The best thing I can say about her is that she's a decent GB snake tribal commander, but Snakes really wanted a UG commander, not a GB one.
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Indeed. I had some fiddling around for a potential decklist and at least in theory a token/sac stax combination could make for a fun (if not exactly obscenely powerful) deck. If you have a handful of Magus of the Abyss / Braids, Cabal Minion / Grave Pact effects, the benefit someone will get from the 1/1 deathtoucher is minimal - whatever you removed would have probably had far worse effect or you wouldn't have removed it, aye? And on the flipside, if you forgo having much creature recursion of your own**, you have tokens to withstand said effects yourself. Now, to be fair Pharika needs help on that department but really, if you can't find token-makers in BG you're doing something wrong.
As for a stax general, Pharika has something over Glissa, the Traitor and Savra, Queen of the Golgari - Pharika won't die to a stiff breeze. ...not that I wouldn't have probably at least Savra in the list as one of the 99, but just bear with me here. And, well, Goddess beatdown is a handy and fun backup option.
In short: most powerful thing ever, liable to break tables in half? Probably not. Potential for fun shenanigans salted with a pinch of potential political play with her ability? Yep. Gorgeous art and interesting as a character? Aye.
**if there is an unwritten rule that a BG deck must be made of creature recursion, I am choosing to ignore it.
Riddle of Lightning has some nice reprint art, so I might take a second look at whether I want to run it somewhere.
Master of the Feast will likely find a way into my friend's Nekusar, the Mindrazer deck, and that is likely the only spot I'll be seeing it in my group.
I like Pharika, God of Affliction as well, but I think pretty much everything I'd want to say about it has been said.
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StaffSure, but if you look at the card quality, blue offers things you'd actually want to play like Patagia Viper, Mystic Snake, Coiling Oracle, Lorescale Coatl, and Winged Coatl, while black has... An expensive Nekrataal.
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Actually, it's most likely for Standard reasons, I think. If she always gave you the token, then she'd wall aggro decks pretty hard, as long as you could get one of their guys into the graveyard (in black/green). Once you have the ability to make one snake, then either they attack, allowing you to trade off a non-card for one of theirs, and giving her more fuel, or they don't, which is exactly what you want. That'd be very powerful ability on an indestructible enchantment. So they made the ability interesting, at the cost of making it less powerful.