MTG Salvation

hey everyone,

so sylvan primordial got the ban and people are sad/butthurt about it. but I'm making this thread to hear thoughts on diluvian primordial. the OPness of SP came from when you blinked him (often involving deadeye navigator, who i think was the real culprit who should have been banned), but i have played many games where diluvian primordial, ETB only once, has either heavily changed the game in favor of its caster or outright won the game on its own.

situational? definitely, but i can't be the only person who feels this way. please share your absurd diluvian primordial tales with me, because this card is absolutely ridiculous. i am NOT calling on him to be banned, i just find that his power level is very much on par with or exceeds SP if they each ETB only once.

ill start. my friend plays DP and proceeds to decree of pain the board, plays storm herd, and then time stretches. guess what happened next.

Sure that can happen assuming opponents already played or discarded bombs AND no one has any GY hate. I think The Blue and Black one are great, and spot on for EDH. Huge plays that can get eaten up by hate, or might just win the game. Perfect.

Diluvian Primordial is one of those cards that has a funny way of swinging games in my favor. Due to the limited pool of target cards in graveyards, it doesn't have the sick recursion potential that SP had. But it seems like once a game that I play him, I hit at least one really powerful effect like Insurrection, Blatant Thievery, or Time Warp, and 2 or 3 good spells like removal or tutors.

He's in no way a sleeper; just another situational thing that has the potential to make crazy plays. One example is when he's in your graveyard while someone uses Living Death.

His less-powerful-yet-more-abusable brother chancellor of the spires is where you want to go if you want to make players cry for mercy. Particularly fun when rite of replication is in someone's graveyard.

I think all the other primordials, except SP, are very situational, but still worth blinking with DEN.
Exile all the creeps? Gain control of all the creeps? Revive all the creeps? Yes, why not. But still highly situational.
Bad is, that you can only use opponents graveyards, and not yours. In my playgroup, there are many decks which do a lot of things with all the graveyards, so we got a veeeery strong graveyard hate and every deck runs atl east 2 cards to exile cards from graveyard or whole graveyard. Thus, the primordials are not as usable as they would be.
Still, I think they are worth the shot. Mainly in color combination, that have access to DEN...

It is a pretty good card, but not universally useful. A lot of times, you end up getting a ramp spell and a tutor, which is good, but nothing exceptional. I think it warrants a slot anyway, not because of it being extremely good, but mostly because it has plenty of versatility in varying types of metas.

id rather play Chancellor of the Spires considering DiPry removes the card while chancellor does not.

Its great mid-late game. I've seen people using that Mind Seize general with it.

not everyone in my meta has altered their decks to deal with the graveyard recursion that some of the more powerful decks in the area bring to the table. i wouldn't say i've been terrorized by diluvian primordial, but i'm at the point where i spend all my resources trying to counter/remove so many threats that i never seem to expect DI and when it makes an appearance it is usually pretty ugly.

DP is strong, but fine. You can't ramp it out turn 3/4 and win the game with it, and if it drops late game hitting, as you said, Time Warp, Decree of Pain, AND Storm Herd, well then that game has been an exciting game, hasn't it? There is NO way that's going to happen every time you play/blink DP, which is why it's a fine card, unlike SP. Sepulchral Primordial really only gets bad when you there are clones in the Graveyard, but then again, Rise of the Dark Realms is a card that gets more creatures. No, I'm not saying either card is broken or OP. They're fine. Graveyard hate is a thing that EVERY DECK can run, so no one has an excuse

Definitely not a sleeper. It's a legit card that many recognize. In fact, possibly the 2nd most played primordial in my playgroup after Sylvan. But now that the latter's banned, Diluvan may be getting a deserved respect.

Hard to play around, and usually impactful. Even getting a free Cultivate and/or Divination is so much value. Ever tried getting those Dark Ascension's Increasing Cycles? Yea I've... It's so awesome.

DP is definitely great value, but I don't expect it to be game ending in most situations. I usually don't see discard in my games outside of specific decks so any spells that are game ending got to the graveyard by ending the game. But normally there would plenty of tutors, card advantage, removal, and lots of utility available.

Of course graveyard hate also varies wildly in usage. A single relic of progenitus can easily ruin your day. I find myself often tutoring for nihil spellbomb with my mishra deck online which has blanked plenty of graveyard plays in the past.

A lot of people underrate it, since even a ramp spell and a removal plus a 5/5 flying body is good value, and there are plenty of ways to make sure graveyards stay full enough despite gravehate. For example, blue is the color of Windfall, Jace's Archivist, and Magus of the Jar, all fine cards, and can also abuse Memory Jar + Academy Ruins reliably. Throw in a Psychosis Crawler and a Diluvian Primordian and you have two strong wincons, deck synergy, and no weak individual pieces.

And if you're playing Jeleva, Nephalia's Scourge, Nekusar, the Mindrazer, Wrexial, the Risen Deep, or anything similar, it can very easily become busted. The same goes for Sepulchral Primordial.

It's strongest competition for slots tends to be Chancellor of the Spires and Sphinx of Uthuun.

I know a few people who run it and I have seen it be decent but its kind of rough in a lot of situations because:

1) It is graveyard dependant. This means that you need good targets for it to be good and it also wants good targets in EACH opponents graveyard.

2) It exiles on completing its casts meaning its hard to abuse it yourself with flicker, bounce, clones because you are stripping the good targets out each time you get its trigger.

3) It isn't cheap to cast.

4) It is similar to Chancellor of the Spires but costs more and cant continue to abuse the same spell.

Overall... I likely wouldn't use the spell outside of your meta giving you a reason to or having some sort of specific synergy with it in a particular deck. If your meta is throwing all sort of good spells in graveyards but not hating on graveyards then perhaps what you actually need is a graveyard deck. Blue primordial I would rate as a below average card as far as things I normally want to include in my EDH decks.

It is a card really dependent on the meta in which it is played.

In my meta you aren't ever going to get much with it. Any big bombs it could play should have already won the game (unless they were countered). If a bomb is in a yard people will just exile it in response to DP. Sometimes it can get there and make a big play but it isn't consistent enough to be worth using a slot for. Especially with its CMC.

In other metas that don't run graveyard hate or can't finish people off with bombs DP is almost a must run.

Quote from Giodante

And if you're playing Jeleva, Nephalia's Scourge

People keep bringing up Jeleva with Diluvian and I'm not sure why. Jeleva arguably goes against Diluvian because she exiles unless you're talking about. I mean if you swing, cast a card, and then cast Diluvian, that would work, but it's reliant on your opponent.

That was just me forgetting the exact wording of a card again. Side-effect of taking a break from the game. It's still good in Jeleva though if you're going the mill route.

The way I see it being good in Jeleva is swinging with Jeleva, casting a big spell from an opponent, and then casting it again with DP in the second main.

Quote from ISBPathfinder

4) It is similar to Chancellor of the Spires but costs more and cant continue to abuse the same spell.

They both cost the same, Diluvan is uu and Chancellor is uuu however.