A fitting card for Black Friday, because people need to chill the heck out today. It's a good card for the cost, but for a little extra mana there's plenty of better options that pull more weight.
Pacifism is actually quite good. Better than Journey to Nowhere, in my opinion (unless you're being tricky, of course). It's somewhere between tuck and plain removal when hitting a general, which is nice when it's a cheap general that's easily replayed. Biggest downside is obviously that they can get their general back (with haste) just by casting a Disenchant, but there are times when this card locks a voltron-ish deck out of the game for several turns.
cryogen is right that there are better options though. Faith's Fetters, Prison Term, Arrest, Cage of Hands... but none cost 2 mana, giving Pacifism a niche in that it's the only card of that type and cost.
Oh yeah, forgot Temporal Isolation. That is pretty close to strictly better.
Well, there are a few common scenarios where it is worse. For example, it's super bad on your opponent's Kaalia of the Vast, and practically useless against anything with an Annihilator trigger.
There's a billion variations on Pacifism that all offer roughly the same effect and something a little extra. It's not a bad card, but you're probably going to pick one of the variants over it because how many Pacifisms can you really run in your EDH deck?
Pacifism effects are pretty good against aggro of certain color combos, specifically anything lacking Blue, White or Green. Skittles and Rakdos are two decks that hate to see it. You can't even tutor your COmmander out of that.
Faith's fetters is the best variant on this for EDH. I play it in my Rafiq deck, but primarily because it has an enchantment theme (enchantresses and enchantment tutors)
Um.... I guess there's a few decks that could take advantage of this with pingers or something like Seedborn Muse. After all that work though, you're still left with a vanilla 7/7.
I used to have a 60 card casual deck featuring Tamanoa, Deep-Slumber Titan, Pyrohemia and loads of other Pyroclasm effects. That deck was fun to play in our very low-powered meta.
But yeah, for commander, even in a casual deck, he's not that impressive.
Combos with Heavy Arbalest to kill himself. It is even better synergy because you can ignore the "no-untap" drawback of heavy arbalest!
Combos with Paradise Mantle because obviously every card that untaps combos with Paradise Mantle. Add Pestilence to deal damage or something. With Mana Reflection in play this becomes and infinite combo if you add in Ursapine. Pretty badass instant kill combo imo.
Combos with Viridian Longbow and Illusionist's Bracers to deal 1 damage to itself and 1 damage to another target. Machine gun stuff down with the biggest and worse archer ever, somehow he manages to hit himself every time he uses the bow.
All I can think of off the cuff but I'm sure this is only the surface of the creature's true combo potential.
A fitting card for Black Friday, because people need to chill the heck out today. It's a good card for the cost, but for a little extra mana there's plenty of better options that pull more weight.
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I liked the flavor text of this version better. I never really got the coreset version artwork.
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It's not that the coreset art is good but I'm so used to seeing it that other artworks seem weird.
Pacifism is actually quite good. Better than Journey to Nowhere, in my opinion (unless you're being tricky, of course). It's somewhere between tuck and plain removal when hitting a general, which is nice when it's a cheap general that's easily replayed. Biggest downside is obviously that they can get their general back (with haste) just by casting a Disenchant, but there are times when this card locks a voltron-ish deck out of the game for several turns.
cryogen is right that there are better options though. Faith's Fetters, Prison Term, Arrest, Cage of Hands... but none cost 2 mana, giving Pacifism a niche in that it's the only card of that type and cost.
That being said, neither are on par with Oblivion Ring, but OR can't shut down generals - just momentarily delay them.
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Oh yeah, forgot Temporal Isolation. That is pretty close to strictly better.
Well, there are a few common scenarios where it is worse. For example, it's super bad on your opponent's Kaalia of the Vast, and practically useless against anything with an Annihilator trigger.
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One.
But yeah, like everyone said, there's better options that should probably be ran first, unless of course you need it for something like Pauper.
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Um.... I guess there's a few decks that could take advantage of this with pingers or something like Seedborn Muse. After all that work though, you're still left with a vanilla 7/7.
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But yeah, for commander, even in a casual deck, he's not that impressive.
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For a card that needs other cards to do something... it isn't the best.
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Combos with Heavy Arbalest to kill himself. It is even better synergy because you can ignore the "no-untap" drawback of heavy arbalest!
Combos with Paradise Mantle because obviously every card that untaps combos with Paradise Mantle. Add Pestilence to deal damage or something. With Mana Reflection in play this becomes and infinite combo if you add in Ursapine. Pretty badass instant kill combo imo.
Combos with Viridian Longbow and Illusionist's Bracers to deal 1 damage to itself and 1 damage to another target. Machine gun stuff down with the biggest and worse archer ever, somehow he manages to hit himself every time he uses the bow.
All I can think of off the cuff but I'm sure this is only the surface of the creature's true combo potential.
edit: Vigor + pestilence effects
Edit: Vigor doesn't work because Deep Slumber needs to be dealt the damage to untap. Rite of Passage would work with some of the above combos, though.
That one is awesome!!