“It was big. Really, really big. No, bigger. No, more. Look, we’re talking krakens and dreadnoughts for jewelry. It was big!” —Arna Kennerüd, skyknight
I always liked cards that reference other cards in their flavor text, like Multani's Harmony and Revenant. Okay, not so much Revenant, since it's not subtle about it.
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Card advantage is not the same thing as card draw. Something for 2B cannot be strictly worse than something for BBB or 3BB. If you're taking out Swords to Plowshares for Plummet, you're a fool. Stop doing these things!
I love how Werebear always diverts conversations into funny flavor text - and I personally like Aluren for that conversation.
Back to the right to bear arms, though, I remember loving him back when I started playing over 15 years ago, but it's probably been more than a decade since I last put him in a deck. Maybe I should try him out again.
So easy to make this always on. Have two dudes in the yard and a leyline of the void and you get to kill any non black creature every turn.
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The Meaning of Life: "M-hmm. Well, it's nothing very special. Uh, try and be nice to people, avoid eating fat, read a good book every now and then, get some walking in, and try and live together in peace and harmony with people of all creeds and nations"
Onering's 4 simple steps that let you solve any problem with Magic's gameplay
Whether its blue players countering your spells, red players burning you out, or combo, if you have a problem with an aspect of Magic's gameplay, you can fix it!
Step 1: Identify the problem. What aspect of Magic don't you like? Step 2: Find out how others deal with the problem. How do players deal with this aspect of the game when they run into it? Step 3: Do what those players do. Step 4: No more problem. Bonus: You are now better at Magic. Enjoy those extra wins!
Yep. This one is probably the best of the keepers. Though admittedly Keeper of the Mind has promise in Nekusar, the Mindrazer. (I've always wanted to give Keeper of the Flame infect and just go at it, of course. Not the most efficient use of infect, but it's just funny.)
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Card advantage is not the same thing as card draw. Something for 2B cannot be strictly worse than something for BBB or 3BB. If you're taking out Swords to Plowshares for Plummet, you're a fool. Stop doing these things!
Repeatable targeted removal is nice. This one can be enabled either by dumping your own creatures or bogging your opponent.
I played this in a non-combo version of Iname, Death Aspect. It worked well, because I would always have 8-10 creatures in the 'yard, and frequently, no one would be able to ever catch up.
Part of me wants to build a non-Iname creature-dense deck that uses cards that require a certain population of dead creatures, Oversold Cemetery, Shadows of the Past...
I thought about running it in my blind seer deck as a great way to color hose people (just change the color of their first spell), but it was very mana consumptive to use, and as a mono color deck vs multi color decks, sometimes it didnt have the impact i wanted.
[quote from="tstorm823 »" url="/forums/the-game/commander-edh/787014-random-card-of-the-day-mana-maze?comment=2214"]Works surprisingly well the more colors you have.
Theme of the block. It can also be used for more. So, if you play your Dromar's Charm, your fellow Esper player can't play white, blue, or black until next turn. And playing your Commander usually means you can't cast any more spells this turn. (Exceptions include partner and ones like Alesha, Who Smiles at Death and Bosh, Iron Golem where their color identity isn't the same as their colors.)
Artifact decks have an out, of course. And the more colors you have, the more it just means you have to dance. And activated and triggered abilities can actually make it irrelevant. But where it's good, it's good. It can even to some extent stop heavy hitters like Animar. (Good luck storming off with Cloudstone Curio and Aluren now. Animar can still send a colossus or part of a cosmic horror after you, though.)
That Blind Seer combo doesn't work, by the way. It checks the colors when the spell is cast.
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Card advantage is not the same thing as card draw. Something for 2B cannot be strictly worse than something for BBB or 3BB. If you're taking out Swords to Plowshares for Plummet, you're a fool. Stop doing these things!
Believe it or not, I used to see this card a lot in my one group. They liked the land ramp part.
I also used to see this a lot. Both the token generation and ramp are incredibly useful, specifically in builds that run all perms for cards like Genesis Wave or Primal Surge. Being instant speed is also a plus. Each individual effect can be outclassed by other cards, but it’s a tidy package that goes into any deck.
It's a nice little value activator, but nowadays I look at this and then I look at Chaos Wand and ask myself why I would ever run the former before the latter
Way back when, I used to run Druidic Satchel in my Rith, the Awakener saproling deck. Even there it was pretty weak and got replaced pretty quickly.
I do think this might have a place in an Aminatou, the Fateshifter deck, though. A colorless way to ramp lands you know are there off the top of your library seems decent enough to be worth a test run.
I used to run this back when I had a Melek, Izzet Paragon deck as a way to clear land cards off the top of my library while ramping and it did a decent job of that, plus occasionally making a saproling or gaining some life when I had some spare mana.
It's okay, but just okay. The trick is to find some way to use it: Either make lifegain better (e.g., play it in Oloro, Ageless Ascetic or with Drogskol Reaver or Sanguine Bond, and if you're in that kind of deck, then you're probably running Soul's Attendant or Suture Priest to make the saproling do the same; you can also use Retreat to Hagra to gain life off the land drop), or run a deck based around landfall or creature-heavy to make the "bad" outcome. A third option is to manipulate your library with Sylvan Library, scry, Brainstorm, whatever. A fourth is to include Future Sight variants; here, the whole point is to get rid of excess lands on top of your library. Having access to Cryptolith Rite or Earthcraft (or yes, Life and Limb) means the saproling can also be a forest.
Interestingly, it's in the class of what I call ABO cards. If condition A, then result A′. If condition B, then result B′. If condition NOT A AND NOT B, then result C′. (There is no C. The prime is only there for consistent style.) And only one A AND B option...
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Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Card advantage is not the same thing as card draw. Something for 2B cannot be strictly worse than something for BBB or 3BB. If you're taking out Swords to Plowshares for Plummet, you're a fool. Stop doing these things!
I thought about running it in my blind seer deck as a great way to color hose people (just change the color of their first spell), but it was very mana consumptive to use, and as a mono color deck vs multi color decks, sometimes it didnt have the impact i wanted.
Also, it doesn't work. Mana Maze cares about the color the spell was when it was cast, not the color it was when it resolved.
See also one of the two Gatherer rulings on Mana Maze:
If a spell’s color was changed while on the stack, use the color at the time it was when you started announcement, not as it currently is on the stack or as it was at the time it resolved.
“It was big. Really, really big. No, bigger. No, more. Look, we’re talking krakens and dreadnoughts for jewelry. It was big!” —Arna Kennerüd, skyknight
On phasing:
Back to the right to bear arms, though, I remember loving him back when I started playing over 15 years ago, but it's probably been more than a decade since I last put him in a deck. Maybe I should try him out again.
2023 Average Peasant Cube|and Discussion
Because I have more decks than fit in a signature
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Repeatable targeted removal is nice. This one can be enabled either by dumping your own creatures or bogging your opponent.
Onering's 4 simple steps that let you solve any problem with Magic's gameplay
Step 1: Identify the problem. What aspect of Magic don't you like? Step 2: Find out how others deal with the problem. How do players deal with this aspect of the game when they run into it? Step 3: Do what those players do. Step 4: No more problem. Bonus: You are now better at Magic. Enjoy those extra wins!
On phasing:
Part of me wants to build a non-Iname creature-dense deck that uses cards that require a certain population of dead creatures, Oversold Cemetery, Shadows of the Past...
http://www.commandercast.com/category/articles/generally-speaking
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Hell, anything with Sneak Attack should work.
(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'
People have played this against Zedruu. It makes Knowledge Pool, Possibility Storm, and Eye of the Storm very sad.
Works surprisingly well the more colors you have. Suppress mono color well also.
Shu Yun, the Silent Tempest WUR Voltron Control
Temmet, Vizier of Naktamun WU Unblockable Mirror Trickery
Ra's al Ghul (Sidar Kondo) and Face-Down Ninjas
Brudiclad, Token Engineer
Vaevictis (VV2) the Dire Lantern
Rona, Disciple of Gix
Tiana the Auror
Hallar
Ulrich the Politician
Zur the Rebel
Scorpion, Locust, Scarab, Egyptian Gods
O-Kagachi, Mathas, Mairsil
"Non-Tribal" Tribal Generals, Eggs
Primer - Mishra, Artificer Prodigy
Thor, Ragnar Röks!
Hela, and the Enemies of Asgard
Teferi, Temporal Archmage
Theme of the block. It can also be used for more. So, if you play your Dromar's Charm, your fellow Esper player can't play white, blue, or black until next turn. And playing your Commander usually means you can't cast any more spells this turn. (Exceptions include partner and ones like Alesha, Who Smiles at Death and Bosh, Iron Golem where their color identity isn't the same as their colors.)
Artifact decks have an out, of course. And the more colors you have, the more it just means you have to dance. And activated and triggered abilities can actually make it irrelevant. But where it's good, it's good. It can even to some extent stop heavy hitters like Animar. (Good luck storming off with Cloudstone Curio and Aluren now. Animar can still send a colossus or part of a cosmic horror after you, though.)
That Blind Seer combo doesn't work, by the way. It checks the colors when the spell is cast.
On phasing:
Believe it or not, I used to see this card a lot in my one group. They liked the land ramp part.
I also used to see this a lot. Both the token generation and ramp are incredibly useful, specifically in builds that run all perms for cards like Genesis Wave or Primal Surge. Being instant speed is also a plus. Each individual effect can be outclassed by other cards, but it’s a tidy package that goes into any deck.
I do think this might have a place in an Aminatou, the Fateshifter deck, though. A colorless way to ramp lands you know are there off the top of your library seems decent enough to be worth a test run.
Interestingly, it's in the class of what I call ABO cards. If condition A, then result A′. If condition B, then result B′. If condition NOT A AND NOT B, then result C′. (There is no C. The prime is only there for consistent style.) And only one A AND B option...
On phasing:
The Unidentified Fantastic Flying Girl.
EDH
Xenagos, the God of Stompy
The Gitrog Monster: Oppressive Value.
Marchesa, Marionette Master - Undying Robots
Yuriko, the Hydra Omnivore
I make dolls as a hobby.
See also one of the two Gatherer rulings on Mana Maze:
Two Score, Minus Two or: A Stargate Tail
(Image by totallynotabrony)
Agree about aminatou, looks pretty bad nearly everywhere else.
EDH Primers
Phelddagrif - Zirilan
EDH
Thrasios+Bruse - Pang - Sasaya - Wydwen - Feather - Rona - Toshiro - Sylvia+Khorvath - Geth - QMarchesa - Firesong - Athreos - Arixmethes - Isperia - Etali - Silas+Sidar - Saskia - Virtus+Gorm - Kynaios - Naban - Aryel - Mizzix - Kazuul - Tymna+Kraum - Sidar+Tymna - Ayli - Gwendlyn - Phelddagrif 4 - Liliana - Kaervek - Phelddagrif 3 - Mairsil - Scarab - Child - Phenax - Shirei - Thada - Depala - Circu - Kytheon - GrenzoHR - Phelddagrif - Reyhan+Kraum - Toshiro - Varolz - Nin - Ojutai - Tasigur - Zedruu - Uril - Edric - Wort - Zurgo - Nahiri - Grenzo - Kozilek - Yisan - Ink-Treader - Yisan - Brago - Sidisi - Toshiro - Alexi - Sygg - Brimaz - Sek'Kuar - Marchesa - Vish Kal - Iroas - Phelddagrif - Ephara - Derevi - Glissa - Wanderer - Saffi - Melek - Xiahou Dun - Lazav - Lin Sivvi - Zirilan - Glissa
PDH - Drake - Graverobber - Izzet GM - Tallowisp - Symbiote Brawl - Feather - Ugin - Jace - Scarab - Angrath - Vraska - Kumena Oathbreaker - Wrenn&6