Yeah I generally agree and that's what I hate about paradox engine. It made "Play a bunch of artifacts with activated abilities" a wincon
I agree Hall is a really good card. Just don't run enough enchantments myself.
I don't remember what's in your build but the ability to start a spam recruiter chain I think you might be underrating. It's unlikely he is going to win the game in the combat step but it's very possible as the game goes long for having a 10/10 on the board or whatever to be meaningful.
You can do something like say: Recruiter for soulherder, end step blink recruiter for whitemane lion. That's a savage turn right there. You pass the turn with whitemane up to protect either of those creatures, and then soulherder can reset lion which is incredibly strong. Works for Venser, Shaper Savant too.
The soulherder engine also enables the timestream combo single-handedly as long as you have either Teferi (flash outlet) or a Stoneforge+greaves in your deck, though I think I wouldn't do that. It also enables infinite Cyclonic Rifts with Archaeomancer which is kinda stupid (and infinite turns if you play a warp). From Recruiter of the Guard + Time Warp or Mystical Tutor to infinite turns is pretty powerful.
The chain of:
Recruiter -> herder -> spellseeker (mystical tutor) -> archaeomancer nets infinite turns over a few turns on its own as well but takes quite a bit of setup without a flash enabler.
This also can set up your Hall / Confinement lock (get spellseeker and weathered wayfarer or trinket mage for expedition map:P).
Conjurer's closet on a 3 mana dude that can turn into a 10/10 is pretty much gold for any Ephara build running enough ETBs. It's even Sun Titanable.
That said, if you're not running critical mass of ETBs it's not amazing. but it is frigging ridiculous with Reveillark and Karmic Guide. And in its absolute worst mode it's triggering Ephara in your turn every turn, which we've established is fairly good.
If you have a turn where someone wraths it, you play Sun Titan, get it back, get a phantasmal image back at the end step copying titan, getting something else back, lol Crazy man.
It does make me wonder if I ought to consider another flash enabler, maybe Raff or something?
Something I did not know about Faerie Artisans is that if you blink it, its tokens now stay forever because it's a new instance of Faerie Artisans.
So your second recruiter off of soulherder being artisans is pretty dang powerful. Hopefully they come out with a foil someday
Say someone plays a creature, you get a token, they pass turn to you, you soulherder the artisans at end step, voila, instant token forever. Pretty crazy.
Still can't find winds/vista foils at prices I like but sure that'll get there.
I did pick up a playset of winds of abandon for like 9 bucks on Ebay and the internet consensus appears to be that it's bulk so whaaaatever. Glad my budget bros can get one for 2 bucks.
And I overpaid for a Nurturing Peatland for gitrog of course.
I might put a foil soulherder up as a thread giveaway(since I had to buy a playset to get a decent price:P) if I find out if that's legal or not. Gonna ask a mod
Alright, so I pinged a mod and asked for permission. It's apparently cool as long as I have a disclaimer that this is 100% my rodeo and MTGSalvation is completely unaffiliated.
I've had a lot of great posts in this thread and I ordered too many foil soulherders (could only find them in a playset). So assuming my preorder gets honored I'd like to give back a little and give one of these bad boys away. Don't let the magnitude of value on display here intimidate you.
I will give away one foil soulherder to the person who posts the coolest take on Ephara that they've actually played and tells us a paragraph or two about it. Don't feel obligated to write a novel just post your decklist in MTGSalvation bbcode format (deck tag) and tell us some stuff about it.
If you learned hot tech from the primer thread that you liked (set reviews, discussions, the primer post itself), or other places such as EDhrec or Reddit or a Tappedout primer I don't know about, or whatever, I would love to hear about that.
Rules
I must actually have my preorder honored by the Ebay seller I purchased from. High confidence hear as I have preordered from them before.
You must live in the continental US so I don't eat my hat for shipping or have to do any annoying customs legwork.
You must have actually played the deck. No theorycraft. Honor system.
I will not announce the winner, I'll just PM you. I don't want to put anyone on the spot or have to explain myself. I like what I like
MTGSalvation is not affiliated with this giveaway
As a bonus I will respond to every post and provide you with high value analysis. Better than the soulherder.
Here's hoping Soulherder herds MTGSalvation to a better place and we can all stick together and I don't have to rewrite my primer on Tappedout and not really ever interact with anyone again.
I had my first games of magic in months tonight, finally got down to the shop now that my back is mostly recovered.
I played Ephara once, as I wanted to try out my new scorpion god and atraxa decks; atraxa won a game fairly durdly (proliferating poison from my one poison source to kill two durdlebots).
Ephara lost its one game fairly handily though I was close to comboing off; I didn't bother taking notes on the game since I played like garbage and got nearly offed in one turn by a fast start from a Goreclaw player who popped me for 23 on turn 4 or some odd. It was a weird game where the Brudiclad player acquired my Ethersworn Canonist and basically ran away with the game because my Hushwing Gryff had neutered the goreclaw player somewhat, after he had had his goreclaw stolen by the brudiclad player.
I made a bunch of mistakes since I'm so rusty but the deck did very well. I just misplayed against controlly deck very severely and didn't get my gryff dead early enough, didn't play to my outs very well, didn't make the right play on the critical turn (I tried to rift instead of trying to drop Teferi, which was super wrong, and I did it at the wrong time too-I was worried about dying and didn't think very well).
On the upside the deck did not do badly. I do think that Mox Diamond may just not be a very good card in this deck as the only time I drew it I was long since out of lands, but I'm going to give it the ol' college try. I think I am really looking forward to having more sweepers in the deck, to be honest.
Good night out, glad to be playing again, think I will jam Ephara a bit more after my new cards get here
I think I may go ahead and go up to 5 sweepers, I've been also really wanting a second artifact/enchantment sweeper. Probably try to get both Winds and Hour in this update.
Nice list, made me realise just how many of the top hatebears are in white. Somehow I always thought that you'd need other colours to really "pop off" in that direction.
I'd probably put in Generous Gift if I were you, maybe over Unexpectedly Absent. Don't forget you can pop it on Ephara herself in an emergency to turn it into a cantrip.
So unexpectedly absent is a card I used to play in predict miracles and I'll say it's just super good. It's really underplayed in edh and here's why:
It can be tutored by muddle and spellseeker
It can be cast at different cmcs to beat chalice, void winnower, etc
It can save your sacred mesa or whatever
It can mess with people's topdeck manipulation
It removed anything for a very low cost in a pinch. I cast it for ww then untap and go off regularly.
It beats indestructible
Generous gift is a strong card but I don't love targeted destruction effects. They are just too narrow for edh mostly.
Huh. You're not the first person to sell Unexpectedly Absent quite hard, but I thought it'd be kind of obsoleted by the new one. Dammit, now I need to consider again whether I should carve out room for it in my Tomb-less Feather
It's especially awesome with feather because every time you protect a dude you get it back. Obviously you prefer not to do that but in a pinch if you don't have another interaction it works.
I'd probably cut one of the random cantips. Panic is really poor (get the card later, doesn't really do anything).
On a side note, you can tutor UA with sunforger too hehe.
The Sunforger point holds true for most sensible removal you could run in that shell. In my case, I could Isochron Scepter it for even more Fun Times TM. Plus it protects Paradox Engine. Dammit I won't let you besmirch Panic though, it may be a crap one-mana do-nothing instant with a hyper restrictive casting window, it may actively hamper the creature you cast it on, but it draws a card.
Okay, enough Feather-related hijacking, sorry about that. I'd imagine Mox Diamond will probably be fine here, once you get a nice draw engine going you should be sitting on multiple lands in hand. It is quite high variance though, so you might have just ended up on the butt end of it the first time you crossed paths with it. You acknowledge Mistmeadow Witch as super slow, but it also does horrible things to people if you score a Containment Priest, so there's that?
Definitely agree on Mox Diamond being high variance. The new mulligan rule should make it quite a bit better though so I am going to seriously give it a shot to be good. Maybe they will reprint Fellwar Stone in m20 so I can get a foil without selling a kidney.
Mistmeadow is definitely on my watchlist (I own a playset of foils somewhere lol). I already have a huge number of very hard cuts ahead of me so I try not to think about other stuff.
I have to cut at least 3 cards this release, because I've determined I really want to play Hour of Revelation as well. I'm debating slotting it in for Austere though, since I've been shaving back on artifacts quite a bit.
My issue with Sword these days is mostly that it costs a LOT of mana to get blown out by a removal spell, and you also have to commit to attacking so you often get 2-for-1'd if they are able to kill sword and block. And no one wants to just let you sit there thwacking and taking virtual extra turns. but could just be a run of bad luck with it.
That said, Thalia's Lancers and Flickerwisp have both been kinda iffy for quite a while. So that's my current thought on cuts. Lancers just very expensive and I am running less equipment so the first strike body less relevant.
Pardon my potentially idiotic inbound responses, but sometimes it helps to get a complete derp to try to look at your deck for you to reassure yourself of what works.
Is Trophy Mage worth running for its minuscule three-piece toolbox? Does Blasting Station accomplish much when you're not doing the combo? I'm not sure you actually want Winds of Abandon, it feels like a very game-end alpha wipe.
Winds is a removal spell and sweeper tutorable by Spellseeker and Muddle the mixture - I think it's too good not to play in this deck, especially since alpha striking is a common way to win. Being one-sided and also doubling as a second swords is just too much.
But yeah, Trophy Mage I think was better when I Had another sword and a cloudstone curio engine, but its ability to get Oblivion Stone is pretty sweet. It's tough to say but I have run into many circumstances where it was not how I wanted to spend 3 mana.
I will definitely slot in Winds. I'm probably slotting out Oblivion Stone for it - I can't afford Academy Ruins and even if I can I'll probably slot it in Saheeli before Ephara. However, I might slot in a second sword, namely Sword of Sinew and Steel since it's more affordable, so Trophy Mage might stick around. Hall of Heliod's Generosity is also going straight in. Best targets are Sacred Mesa, Solitary Confinement, Eidolon of Rhetoric, Spirit of the Labyrinth, As Foretold, and Luminarch Ascension if you have it. All of them break the game in my favor the longer they stay, and with the land they are virtually unstoppable.
I'm definitely thinking of slotting in Tribute Mage - it fetches mana rocks, creatures, Jitte if you have it, Scroll Rack. It also strengthens running Dowsing Dagger and Sword of the Animist. To be honest it reminds me of Blackblade Reforged, that card can be a late game player killer with minimal effort. On top of all of that, it can help if we run 2CMC artifact hate effects, of which there are plenty of good ones.
I always thought Hour of Revelation was just begging to be put into EDH since it's so easy to play it for WWW when there are 4 players around. The choice factor is great in AusCom, but I feel like we just really want to have an answer-all wrath for cheap rather than an expensive one that can sometimes benefit us more. It's why I run Terminus.
I've already come to realize another combo that we can have in our deck - Lavinia, Azorius Renegade + Spell Queller. If Queller leaves the battlefield when Lavinia is in play they may cast their spell for free (or leave it in exile). If they cast it Lavinia counters it, which effectively makes a soft lock on the board. This finally convinces me to slot her in, which opens the way for some more synergies, namely Devout Chaplain + Hero of Precinct One + Mirror Entity humans, and Teshar, Ancestor's Apostle + Raff Capashen, Ship's Mage historic. (Teshar + Blasting Station + Whitemane Lion + Memnite is an infinite combo, but that seems pretty bad)
I guess I will run Soulherder - it's just too good not to play. I'd have loved if it were possible to blink opposing creatures - so that another card would combo with Containment Priest - but I can only ask for so much. Unsettled Mariner is a no brainer and another enabler for tribal shenanigans. Vesperlark and Generous Gift are obviously being considered, and Giver of Runes hasn't left my eyesight yet. Still need to get a hold of God-Eternal Kefnet.
I've already expressed my opinion that Lancers and Wisp are not up to par with the rest of the deck, in my opinion they can easily be removed. I also can't see cutting SoFaF - that card is unparalleled when trying to cast things on our turn, and the protection from green is great versus the matchup with which we have the biggest stalemates, where we really want this card - the pro black is just great in general.
Sorry for not participating in the contest. I really haven't managed to get into any games with Ephara recently, plus I live way out of the States so I wouldn't really be winning the prize anyway.
No worries mate, sorry about that but customs has always been a giant monster for me.
The more I think on it the more I think you're right about Sword of Feast and Famine. It just does so much when it's on and I've gotten way more fliers lately too.
Tribute mage is definitely very good, just the virtue of its curve is really way more attractive than Trophy - it's a virtual 5 drop after Ephara as well as a 3 drop.
I like Sword of Sinew and Steel a lot. In some ways I think it might be the second most powerful sword in EDH too - repeated artifact destruction is savage, and it gets planeswalkers too which are becoming kind of a menace.
I do agree with Flickerwisp and Thalia's Lancers being the weakest cards right now, so that's probably what I'll do -- hour for austere, soulherder and winds in for lancers and flickerwisp.
I definitely think Hall of Heliod's Generosity makes running a bigger enchantment toolkit attractive. It also encourages Eidolon of Rhetoric over Ethersworn Canonist which is rapidly becoming a boon for my opponents who are all loading up on artifacts these days.
Good catch with Planar Collapse! I might swap it in for Wrath of God but *** is just a classic and it's often better to just insta wrath rather than wait for a round. I also love Remora with it, though that one might be win-more with all the card draw.
I also feel like Teferi's Protection might be cuttable from your list. It's difficult to fetch, only helps you for one round, isn't a creature, and can't be reused.
My own list has also gotten very limited use from Capsize. 6 mana is a lot to have up before your upkeep, since you're so busy answering things, and also I'd rather just be putting creatures into play and drawing cards. Also, I don't think I can see myself slotting in Monastery Mentor anymore since it's really not great without Buyback spells, and those are very difficult to tutor for. Same goes for Archaeomancer. In short, I think that the entire package could go.
I highly recommend you get rid of Leonin Relic-Warder. I've found in my own list that the upside of perma-exile is both very difficult to achieve, and also very rarely worth it.
So Teferi's Protection has been basically Fog for me most of the time, I wanted to give it a try since it's so powerful so I'm going to play a few more games with it. But yeah, exiling on resolution is awful. It's probably worse than Evacuation most of the time.
Capsize has been amazing for me, though it was much better with As Foretold. Man that was nuts. It's also nuts with Smothering Tithe if you run that.
Leonin Relic-Warder has always been pretty great for me; I've stonecloaked it, whitemane lioned it, all kinds of nonsense. It can even be Blasting Stationed, which is pretty huge. I think I would need to be sad to draw it one or two times at least, so far I've never once been disappointed. Even just dropping it for a card to punk someone's Gilded Lotus for a few turns has been good.
Honestly I think adding a few more sweepers makes Archaeomancer's stock go up even more. Being able to winds of abandon potentially every turn forever with just a displacer+Archaeomancer is really hard to pass up. Same with Rift.
Monastery Mentor I am 100% on the fence on. I think I need to draw it before I can decide what I think. I just want to give it a try and see if it winds up being as good as I think it will. My thought is, mostly, that it will be a two card combo with a buyback spell to provide some inevitability . But I need to draw it first and see.
Edit: you know I actually did play Mentor one it got immediately removed. Which gave me the idea that maybe I needed to try it longer, because if people are that scared of it it's probably good.
Weirdly I am kinda giving some thought to tossing both the planeswalkers. I have not really wanted to cast either of them the last few times I've seen them because they're just so damned expensive and they rightly draw a lot of threat. I've had them removed a lot more often too which is interesting, I think one side effect of the whole War of the Spark phenomenon is people packing more planeswalker removal (someone seriously Heroes' Downfalled my venser a few months back, which really surprised me. I mean I would do that too but I didn't expect it
What I'm hoping to do here is get a bunch more games in, I still enjoy playing this deck more than most of my others so I think I'm going to try to jam it mostly only for the next few weeks while I try to get back into the swing of playing.
What do you think of the Lavinia + Queller combo I mentioned? In my opinion it actually makes her very strong in our deck. In fact if you were complaining about Ethersworn Canonist she feels like a great alternative.
What do you think of the Lavinia + Queller combo I mentioned? In my opinion it actually makes her very strong in our deck. In fact if you were complaining about Ethersworn Canonist she feels like a great alternative.
Lavinia/Queller is very strong. Lavinia likely better than Canonist I think. Queller/Lavinia get pretty gross when you can reset them with whitemane/soulherder/displacer shenanigans too I think. It maybe makes a case for moving back toward Curio in some ways, as Soulherder kinda does itself. I do have one of the promo lavinia's so I'll noodle on it a bit.
Spell Queller has been nothing short of insane for me just on its own. But I've also perma-exiled a lot o stuff with it. I did win more than one game with Whitemane/Spellqueller/Curio lock back in the day and whitemane/venser/curio locks as well.
Blast Zone is waaaay better than Inventors' Fair but I wanna wait for the foils to settle down a little Gonna see if I can grab one though. It does make me want to think about crucible tho too hehe
Wish white had a creature that got a land from the yard or something other than sun titan. Hell from yard to play would be superb.
This is a rather diagonal connection, but on the subject of cutting SoFaF, if the argument in favor of keeping it without Trophy Mage to tutor for it is that it's good for casting things on your turn (which I take to mean casting things while still having mana untapped for everyone else's turn), Soulherder kind of fills a similar role in that it gets the Ephara trigger from a creature entering on your turn without having to tap lands for it. The two cards are very different in many ways, but if passing with all your mana open while still drawing a card is the appeal, that role is preserved by Soulherder.
Private Mod Note
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Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Zedruu: "This deck is not only able to go crazy - it also needs to do so."
You're definitely correct. Most of the cards that generate a free Ephara trigger do a very similar role (acting as a personal howling mine with sometimes slight boardstate advancement); the difference being that Sword can advance your board state significantly while doing that. Elspeth, Sun's Champion is the other card that does that very well (advancing your board state significantly while triggering every turn).
My major worry without sword is that it's a card that is really great at cranking damage through while also generating critical mass of mana for combo turns or game ending multiple-spell turns or similar.
I'm somewhat on the fence about it, but the main thing I dislike is the tempo loss from getting sword removed or the creature it's on removed - this is a thing people are on the lookout for, and it's a blowout you often have to eat if you're going to get full value out of it. Not only have you committed more mana to the board (to get mileage out of the sword trigger) but you're generally shields down if you don't get to untap.
So when sword is bad it is *really* punishing. You essentially need countermagic to protect it almost and I don't run *that* much countermagic.
Trophy mage - well the main issue with that card is twofold. One is that it's telegraphing your play - if you get Ostone and can't cast it, people can spend a turn prepping and adjust their gameplans. Secondly it is quite expensive for a tutor. The upside of course is that it's probably a tutor and a draw.
It's also a really underwhelming body of course. Bears don't go very far in EDH, certainly not as far as they used to. We can play some pretty powerful beaters in there, like brimaz, king of oreskos for example, or even Thalia, Heretic Cathar.
I also am giving some serious thought to shaving tribute mage/oblivion stone for evacuation and some powerhouse card like Reins of Power or Rite of Replication. But gonna let this one stew for a little while
I think I would rather consider cards like Cryptic Command, Mystic Confluence and the like. Reins of Power is good for a specific scenario, but the previous two are never ever dead.
They also get better because you are running Snapcaster and Mentor.
I could see that. I'm not really a huge fan of those cards because they're less triumphant. Evac and Reins both can just straight up win, while also doing similar stuff. I would probably start with evac.
I had two games with Ephara tonight:
Game 1 was vs. Kozilek the GD, and Sram.
Kozilek deck was fairly slow and pondering, Sram deck was a lightning fast tuned competitive Sram. In short, he savaged us because neither one of us could draw removal and he had a fairly nutty draw with sigarda's aid.
I got got by the thing I don't like about Oblivion Stone - it costs 8 dang mana. I coulda e-tutored for it and if I had had one more mana the game was easily mine - I had recruiter in hand and ephara out with a sol ring. Just couldn't get there, Sram popped me on his turn 6 (where I would have untapped and didn't have an untapped land to play for 8 mana).
It is distinctly possible if I had played my hand differently I could have gotten there though; I think I needed to play my tapped lands more aggressively, but eh, you live and learn. Drawing multiple tapped lands (mistveil, emeria, and irrigated farmland) was quite unfortunate though.
Tithe showed up in this game and was great, and Archaeomancer did as well allowing me to arch back the e-tutor and woulda been in the game.
Archaeomancer is basically as good as I expected, as had I survived this game would have ended in displacer lock most likely.
Game 2 vs. Omnath Locus of Mana and the same Kozilek deck
This game played out weirdly; I didn't have a lot of creatures, but was able to keep Omnath off of his sword of feast and famine with relic warder, whitemane lion shenanigans, etc. I got going with sacred mesa fairly early but Omnath bane of progressed it. Tithe got me to my 4th land here and got Ephara out, which was great.
The Kozilek guy flooded the board with stuff and was in a fairly commanding position but I muddled for a cyclonic rift, survived a turn, then rifted - he didn't have a 2 drop but I was forced to rift on Omnath's turn (because I didn't want him to have a chance to draw more cards for Kozilek's ability). Unfortunately he was able to basically play his entire hand back out with colorless shenanigans but did not have a 2 drop for rift. He did not replay kozilek though which was great for me.
When I untapped I had karmic guide, body double and drew blasting station, so because I saw the writing on the wall with kozilek I ran out karmic guide and got whitemane lion back, bounced it. I had a Eldrazi Displacer I had previously discarded to handsize in the bin and an archaeomancer in hand, so I had another avenue to win but could not seem to get a colorless source unfortunately so had to go for the blasting station win. I also had a forbid and a mana drain floating around there.
I passed the turn with a board of karmic guide, relic warder, and some other derp, whitemane / forbid / body double / mana drain in hand. I mana drained Karn Liberated from Kozilek player, untapped and killed them since they'd both tapped out--
* don't pay echo cost, karmic guide to yard
* play blasting station
* play body dobule copying karmic guide, sac body double while trigger is on the stack, untaps blasting station
* karmic guide returns, trigger targets body double, sac guide, etc.
I had plenty of mana to do this without the mana drain mana, but the 7 from Karn let me deploy the entire combo for U, which left double forbid, so whether they were tapped out or not it was happening.
No real serious thoughts there since I never got to deploy anything new, but Hour of Revelation woulda been insane in either game. I find the way people at my new shop build all of my decks are always way behind on the board - I just don't like to commit hard to the board mostly.
My other games were Tuvasa getting wrecked by a Najeela deck and then Najeela losing to the Jarad player he somehow did not realize was the threat, and Inalla proving it is probably my best deck and that people should not let ashnod's altar sit on the board for 3 turns and that Timestream Navigator is insane if you get two and one has haste
These changes lower the average CMC of the deck, which is good, but place more two-color requirements, which is challenging - luckily I do think my mana base is up to it.
Removing most of the Trophy Mage package is OK since the cards coming in are that much better. We prefer fetching by Muddle than by the Mage since it's so narrow, and both Winds and Hour are cheaper than Stone in both their modes (though only Winds is tutorable).
With enchantment Stronghold and the Trophy package coming out, I think that my main wincon will probably become surviving everything and dealing damage with creatures, so Blasting Station goes out. Solitary Confinement will be my hope against the other creature aggression in my meta.
I think I'm glad to see Venser go. He's been expensive and slow, and has never really benefited the game plan beyond simple blinking. Soulherder is cheaper, tutorable, and provides a late-game threat in much the same style - though he really hates being bounced, which is a pain.
I'm thinking that while Muddle can indeed turn into a bunch of things in our deck, it's difficult to get more value out of it for the amount we are playing around the card. I may end up slotting Archaeomancer against my better judgment. However for a card that interacts with instants and sorceries I'd probably much rather have God-Eternal Kefnet, and I'm not really sure I have enough instants and sorceries for either of them to be justified. At least Kefnet does plenty on his own, as it has a better body than almost any other card currently in the deck, and it's very easily recurred with its ability.
In fact, I'm sensing that there's got to be an instant or sorcery that I can win if I copy with Kefnet enough times. One of which is Approach of the Second Sun, but it's just so expensive. But it's fair enough on its own since we draw so many cards - though it becomes difficult if we happen to shuffle. Finally we could go for the obvious Nexus of Fate win, but it's both expensive and boring, plus Approach has some sort of "achievement unlocked" feel if you actually manage to win with it in EDH.
I agree Hall is a really good card. Just don't run enough enchantments myself.
I don't remember what's in your build but the ability to start a spam recruiter chain I think you might be underrating. It's unlikely he is going to win the game in the combat step but it's very possible as the game goes long for having a 10/10 on the board or whatever to be meaningful.
You can do something like say: Recruiter for soulherder, end step blink recruiter for whitemane lion. That's a savage turn right there. You pass the turn with whitemane up to protect either of those creatures, and then soulherder can reset lion which is incredibly strong. Works for Venser, Shaper Savant too.
The soulherder engine also enables the timestream combo single-handedly as long as you have either Teferi (flash outlet) or a Stoneforge+greaves in your deck, though I think I wouldn't do that. It also enables infinite Cyclonic Rifts with Archaeomancer which is kinda stupid (and infinite turns if you play a warp). From Recruiter of the Guard + Time Warp or Mystical Tutor to infinite turns is pretty powerful.
The chain of:
Recruiter -> herder -> spellseeker (mystical tutor) -> archaeomancer nets infinite turns over a few turns on its own as well but takes quite a bit of setup without a flash enabler.
This also can set up your Hall / Confinement lock (get spellseeker and weathered wayfarer or trinket mage for expedition map:P).
Conjurer's closet on a 3 mana dude that can turn into a 10/10 is pretty much gold for any Ephara build running enough ETBs. It's even Sun Titanable.
That said, if you're not running critical mass of ETBs it's not amazing. but it is frigging ridiculous with Reveillark and Karmic Guide. And in its absolute worst mode it's triggering Ephara in your turn every turn, which we've established is fairly good.
If you have a turn where someone wraths it, you play Sun Titan, get it back, get a phantasmal image back at the end step copying titan, getting something else back, lol Crazy man.
It does make me wonder if I ought to consider another flash enabler, maybe Raff or something?
UW Ephara Hatebears [Primer], GB Gitrog Lands, BRU Inalla Combo-Control, URG Maelstrom Wanderer Landfall
So your second recruiter off of soulherder being artisans is pretty dang powerful. Hopefully they come out with a foil someday
Say someone plays a creature, you get a token, they pass turn to you, you soulherder the artisans at end step, voila, instant token forever. Pretty crazy.
UW Ephara Hatebears [Primer], GB Gitrog Lands, BRU Inalla Combo-Control, URG Maelstrom Wanderer Landfall
Still can't find winds/vista foils at prices I like but sure that'll get there.
I did pick up a playset of winds of abandon for like 9 bucks on Ebay and the internet consensus appears to be that it's bulk so whaaaatever. Glad my budget bros can get one for 2 bucks.
And I overpaid for a Nurturing Peatland for gitrog of course.
I might put a foil soulherder up as a thread giveaway(since I had to buy a playset to get a decent price:P) if I find out if that's legal or not. Gonna ask a mod
UW Ephara Hatebears [Primer], GB Gitrog Lands, BRU Inalla Combo-Control, URG Maelstrom Wanderer Landfall
Ephara Primer Foil Soulherder Contest!
I've had a lot of great posts in this thread and I ordered too many foil soulherders (could only find them in a playset). So assuming my preorder gets honored I'd like to give back a little and give one of these bad boys away. Don't let the magnitude of value on display here intimidate you.
I will give away one foil soulherder to the person who posts the coolest take on Ephara that they've actually played and tells us a paragraph or two about it. Don't feel obligated to write a novel just post your decklist in MTGSalvation bbcode format (deck tag) and tell us some stuff about it.
If you learned hot tech from the primer thread that you liked (set reviews, discussions, the primer post itself), or other places such as EDhrec or Reddit or a Tappedout primer I don't know about, or whatever, I would love to hear about that.
Rules
Here's hoping Soulherder herds MTGSalvation to a better place and we can all stick together and I don't have to rewrite my primer on Tappedout and not really ever interact with anyone again.
UW Ephara Hatebears [Primer], GB Gitrog Lands, BRU Inalla Combo-Control, URG Maelstrom Wanderer Landfall
I played Ephara once, as I wanted to try out my new scorpion god and atraxa decks; atraxa won a game fairly durdly (proliferating poison from my one poison source to kill two durdlebots).
Ephara lost its one game fairly handily though I was close to comboing off; I didn't bother taking notes on the game since I played like garbage and got nearly offed in one turn by a fast start from a Goreclaw player who popped me for 23 on turn 4 or some odd. It was a weird game where the Brudiclad player acquired my Ethersworn Canonist and basically ran away with the game because my Hushwing Gryff had neutered the goreclaw player somewhat, after he had had his goreclaw stolen by the brudiclad player.
I made a bunch of mistakes since I'm so rusty but the deck did very well. I just misplayed against controlly deck very severely and didn't get my gryff dead early enough, didn't play to my outs very well, didn't make the right play on the critical turn (I tried to rift instead of trying to drop Teferi, which was super wrong, and I did it at the wrong time too-I was worried about dying and didn't think very well).
On the upside the deck did not do badly. I do think that Mox Diamond may just not be a very good card in this deck as the only time I drew it I was long since out of lands, but I'm going to give it the ol' college try. I think I am really looking forward to having more sweepers in the deck, to be honest.
Good night out, glad to be playing again, think I will jam Ephara a bit more after my new cards get here
I think I may go ahead and go up to 5 sweepers, I've been also really wanting a second artifact/enchantment sweeper. Probably try to get both Winds and Hour in this update.
UW Ephara Hatebears [Primer], GB Gitrog Lands, BRU Inalla Combo-Control, URG Maelstrom Wanderer Landfall
I'd probably put in Generous Gift if I were you, maybe over Unexpectedly Absent. Don't forget you can pop it on Ephara herself in an emergency to turn it into a cantrip.
So unexpectedly absent is a card I used to play in predict miracles and I'll say it's just super good. It's really underplayed in edh and here's why:
It can be tutored by muddle and spellseeker
It can be cast at different cmcs to beat chalice, void winnower, etc
It can save your sacred mesa or whatever
It can mess with people's topdeck manipulation
It removed anything for a very low cost in a pinch. I cast it for ww then untap and go off regularly.
It beats indestructible
Generous gift is a strong card but I don't love targeted destruction effects. They are just too narrow for edh mostly.
Too many forges and such floating around.
Gift is definitely on my radar however:)
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UW Ephara Hatebears [Primer], GB Gitrog Lands, BRU Inalla Combo-Control, URG Maelstrom Wanderer Landfall
It's especially awesome with feather because every time you protect a dude you get it back. Obviously you prefer not to do that but in a pinch if you don't have another interaction it works.
I'd probably cut one of the random cantips. Panic is really poor (get the card later, doesn't really do anything).
On a side note, you can tutor UA with sunforger too hehe.
UW Ephara Hatebears [Primer], GB Gitrog Lands, BRU Inalla Combo-Control, URG Maelstrom Wanderer Landfall
Okay, enough Feather-related hijacking, sorry about that. I'd imagine Mox Diamond will probably be fine here, once you get a nice draw engine going you should be sitting on multiple lands in hand. It is quite high variance though, so you might have just ended up on the butt end of it the first time you crossed paths with it. You acknowledge Mistmeadow Witch as super slow, but it also does horrible things to people if you score a Containment Priest, so there's that?
Mistmeadow is definitely on my watchlist (I own a playset of foils somewhere lol). I already have a huge number of very hard cuts ahead of me so I try not to think about other stuff.
I have to cut at least 3 cards this release, because I've determined I really want to play Hour of Revelation as well. I'm debating slotting it in for Austere though, since I've been shaving back on artifacts quite a bit.
What I'm stressing out the most about is:
Where do I make room for Soulherder and Winds of Abandon? I'm bordering on cutting Sword of Feast and Famine and Trophy Mage to be honest, mostly because the more I think about how good Flickerwisp could be with Soulherder I wonder if that's the right cut. But it probably is.
My issue with Sword these days is mostly that it costs a LOT of mana to get blown out by a removal spell, and you also have to commit to attacking so you often get 2-for-1'd if they are able to kill sword and block. And no one wants to just let you sit there thwacking and taking virtual extra turns. but could just be a run of bad luck with it.
That said, Thalia's Lancers and Flickerwisp have both been kinda iffy for quite a while. So that's my current thought on cuts. Lancers just very expensive and I am running less equipment so the first strike body less relevant.
UW Ephara Hatebears [Primer], GB Gitrog Lands, BRU Inalla Combo-Control, URG Maelstrom Wanderer Landfall
Is Trophy Mage worth running for its minuscule three-piece toolbox? Does Blasting Station accomplish much when you're not doing the combo? I'm not sure you actually want Winds of Abandon, it feels like a very game-end alpha wipe.
But yeah, Trophy Mage I think was better when I Had another sword and a cloudstone curio engine, but its ability to get Oblivion Stone is pretty sweet. It's tough to say but I have run into many circumstances where it was not how I wanted to spend 3 mana.
UW Ephara Hatebears [Primer], GB Gitrog Lands, BRU Inalla Combo-Control, URG Maelstrom Wanderer Landfall
Hall of Heliod's Generosity is also going straight in. Best targets are Sacred Mesa, Solitary Confinement, Eidolon of Rhetoric, Spirit of the Labyrinth, As Foretold, and Luminarch Ascension if you have it. All of them break the game in my favor the longer they stay, and with the land they are virtually unstoppable.
I'm definitely thinking of slotting in Tribute Mage - it fetches mana rocks, creatures, Jitte if you have it, Scroll Rack. It also strengthens running Dowsing Dagger and Sword of the Animist. To be honest it reminds me of Blackblade Reforged, that card can be a late game player killer with minimal effort. On top of all of that, it can help if we run 2CMC artifact hate effects, of which there are plenty of good ones.
I always thought Hour of Revelation was just begging to be put into EDH since it's so easy to play it for WWW when there are 4 players around. The choice factor is great in AusCom, but I feel like we just really want to have an answer-all wrath for cheap rather than an expensive one that can sometimes benefit us more. It's why I run Terminus.
I've already come to realize another combo that we can have in our deck - Lavinia, Azorius Renegade + Spell Queller. If Queller leaves the battlefield when Lavinia is in play they may cast their spell for free (or leave it in exile). If they cast it Lavinia counters it, which effectively makes a soft lock on the board. This finally convinces me to slot her in, which opens the way for some more synergies, namely Devout Chaplain + Hero of Precinct One + Mirror Entity humans, and Teshar, Ancestor's Apostle + Raff Capashen, Ship's Mage historic. (Teshar + Blasting Station + Whitemane Lion + Memnite is an infinite combo, but that seems pretty bad)
I guess I will run Soulherder - it's just too good not to play. I'd have loved if it were possible to blink opposing creatures - so that another card would combo with Containment Priest - but I can only ask for so much.
Unsettled Mariner is a no brainer and another enabler for tribal shenanigans.
Vesperlark and Generous Gift are obviously being considered, and Giver of Runes hasn't left my eyesight yet. Still need to get a hold of God-Eternal Kefnet.
I've already expressed my opinion that Lancers and Wisp are not up to par with the rest of the deck, in my opinion they can easily be removed. I also can't see cutting SoFaF - that card is unparalleled when trying to cast things on our turn, and the protection from green is great versus the matchup with which we have the biggest stalemates, where we really want this card - the pro black is just great in general.
Sorry for not participating in the contest. I really haven't managed to get into any games with Ephara recently, plus I live way out of the States so I wouldn't really be winning the prize anyway.
The more I think on it the more I think you're right about Sword of Feast and Famine. It just does so much when it's on and I've gotten way more fliers lately too.
Tribute mage is definitely very good, just the virtue of its curve is really way more attractive than Trophy - it's a virtual 5 drop after Ephara as well as a 3 drop.
I like Sword of Sinew and Steel a lot. In some ways I think it might be the second most powerful sword in EDH too - repeated artifact destruction is savage, and it gets planeswalkers too which are becoming kind of a menace.
I do agree with Flickerwisp and Thalia's Lancers being the weakest cards right now, so that's probably what I'll do -- hour for austere, soulherder and winds in for lancers and flickerwisp.
I definitely think Hall of Heliod's Generosity makes running a bigger enchantment toolkit attractive. It also encourages Eidolon of Rhetoric over Ethersworn Canonist which is rapidly becoming a boon for my opponents who are all loading up on artifacts these days.
Putting a few of these cards in:
Would allow for a lot of inevitability with Hall. Planar Collapse in particular is extremely efficient and tutorable with muddle.
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re: Soulherder
If it was creatures you own even, my life would be complete and blinking gilded drake would be my new wincon Alas.
UW Ephara Hatebears [Primer], GB Gitrog Lands, BRU Inalla Combo-Control, URG Maelstrom Wanderer Landfall
I also feel like Teferi's Protection might be cuttable from your list. It's difficult to fetch, only helps you for one round, isn't a creature, and can't be reused.
My own list has also gotten very limited use from Capsize. 6 mana is a lot to have up before your upkeep, since you're so busy answering things, and also I'd rather just be putting creatures into play and drawing cards. Also, I don't think I can see myself slotting in Monastery Mentor anymore since it's really not great without Buyback spells, and those are very difficult to tutor for. Same goes for Archaeomancer. In short, I think that the entire package could go.
I highly recommend you get rid of Leonin Relic-Warder. I've found in my own list that the upside of perma-exile is both very difficult to achieve, and also very rarely worth it.
Capsize has been amazing for me, though it was much better with As Foretold. Man that was nuts. It's also nuts with Smothering Tithe if you run that.
Leonin Relic-Warder has always been pretty great for me; I've stonecloaked it, whitemane lioned it, all kinds of nonsense. It can even be Blasting Stationed, which is pretty huge. I think I would need to be sad to draw it one or two times at least, so far I've never once been disappointed. Even just dropping it for a card to punk someone's Gilded Lotus for a few turns has been good.
Honestly I think adding a few more sweepers makes Archaeomancer's stock go up even more. Being able to winds of abandon potentially every turn forever with just a displacer+Archaeomancer is really hard to pass up. Same with Rift.
Monastery Mentor I am 100% on the fence on. I think I need to draw it before I can decide what I think. I just want to give it a try and see if it winds up being as good as I think it will. My thought is, mostly, that it will be a two card combo with a buyback spell to provide some inevitability . But I need to draw it first and see.
Edit: you know I actually did play Mentor one it got immediately removed. Which gave me the idea that maybe I needed to try it longer, because if people are that scared of it it's probably good.
Weirdly I am kinda giving some thought to tossing both the planeswalkers. I have not really wanted to cast either of them the last few times I've seen them because they're just so damned expensive and they rightly draw a lot of threat. I've had them removed a lot more often too which is interesting, I think one side effect of the whole War of the Spark phenomenon is people packing more planeswalker removal (someone seriously Heroes' Downfalled my venser a few months back, which really surprised me. I mean I would do that too but I didn't expect it
What I'm hoping to do here is get a bunch more games in, I still enjoy playing this deck more than most of my others so I think I'm going to try to jam it mostly only for the next few weeks while I try to get back into the swing of playing.
UW Ephara Hatebears [Primer], GB Gitrog Lands, BRU Inalla Combo-Control, URG Maelstrom Wanderer Landfall
Have you given thought to slotting in Blast Zone?
Lavinia/Queller is very strong. Lavinia likely better than Canonist I think. Queller/Lavinia get pretty gross when you can reset them with whitemane/soulherder/displacer shenanigans too I think. It maybe makes a case for moving back toward Curio in some ways, as Soulherder kinda does itself. I do have one of the promo lavinia's so I'll noodle on it a bit.
Spell Queller has been nothing short of insane for me just on its own. But I've also perma-exiled a lot o stuff with it. I did win more than one game with Whitemane/Spellqueller/Curio lock back in the day and whitemane/venser/curio locks as well.
Blast Zone is waaaay better than Inventors' Fair but I wanna wait for the foils to settle down a little Gonna see if I can grab one though. It does make me want to think about crucible tho too hehe
Wish white had a creature that got a land from the yard or something other than sun titan. Hell from yard to play would be superb.
UW Ephara Hatebears [Primer], GB Gitrog Lands, BRU Inalla Combo-Control, URG Maelstrom Wanderer Landfall
My major worry without sword is that it's a card that is really great at cranking damage through while also generating critical mass of mana for combo turns or game ending multiple-spell turns or similar.
I'm somewhat on the fence about it, but the main thing I dislike is the tempo loss from getting sword removed or the creature it's on removed - this is a thing people are on the lookout for, and it's a blowout you often have to eat if you're going to get full value out of it. Not only have you committed more mana to the board (to get mileage out of the sword trigger) but you're generally shields down if you don't get to untap.
So when sword is bad it is *really* punishing. You essentially need countermagic to protect it almost and I don't run *that* much countermagic.
Trophy mage - well the main issue with that card is twofold. One is that it's telegraphing your play - if you get Ostone and can't cast it, people can spend a turn prepping and adjust their gameplans. Secondly it is quite expensive for a tutor. The upside of course is that it's probably a tutor and a draw.
It's also a really underwhelming body of course. Bears don't go very far in EDH, certainly not as far as they used to. We can play some pretty powerful beaters in there, like brimaz, king of oreskos for example, or even Thalia, Heretic Cathar.
UW Ephara Hatebears [Primer], GB Gitrog Lands, BRU Inalla Combo-Control, URG Maelstrom Wanderer Landfall
In
Out
I also am giving some serious thought to shaving tribute mage/oblivion stone for evacuation and some powerhouse card like Reins of Power or Rite of Replication. But gonna let this one stew for a little while
UW Ephara Hatebears [Primer], GB Gitrog Lands, BRU Inalla Combo-Control, URG Maelstrom Wanderer Landfall
They also get better because you are running Snapcaster and Mentor.
I had two games with Ephara tonight:
Game 1 was vs. Kozilek the GD, and Sram.
Kozilek deck was fairly slow and pondering, Sram deck was a lightning fast tuned competitive Sram. In short, he savaged us because neither one of us could draw removal and he had a fairly nutty draw with sigarda's aid.
I got got by the thing I don't like about Oblivion Stone - it costs 8 dang mana. I coulda e-tutored for it and if I had had one more mana the game was easily mine - I had recruiter in hand and ephara out with a sol ring. Just couldn't get there, Sram popped me on his turn 6 (where I would have untapped and didn't have an untapped land to play for 8 mana).
It is distinctly possible if I had played my hand differently I could have gotten there though; I think I needed to play my tapped lands more aggressively, but eh, you live and learn. Drawing multiple tapped lands (mistveil, emeria, and irrigated farmland) was quite unfortunate though.
Tithe showed up in this game and was great, and Archaeomancer did as well allowing me to arch back the e-tutor and woulda been in the game.
Archaeomancer is basically as good as I expected, as had I survived this game would have ended in displacer lock most likely.
Game 2 vs. Omnath Locus of Mana and the same Kozilek deck
This game played out weirdly; I didn't have a lot of creatures, but was able to keep Omnath off of his sword of feast and famine with relic warder, whitemane lion shenanigans, etc. I got going with sacred mesa fairly early but Omnath bane of progressed it. Tithe got me to my 4th land here and got Ephara out, which was great.
The Kozilek guy flooded the board with stuff and was in a fairly commanding position but I muddled for a cyclonic rift, survived a turn, then rifted - he didn't have a 2 drop but I was forced to rift on Omnath's turn (because I didn't want him to have a chance to draw more cards for Kozilek's ability). Unfortunately he was able to basically play his entire hand back out with colorless shenanigans but did not have a 2 drop for rift. He did not replay kozilek though which was great for me.
When I untapped I had karmic guide, body double and drew blasting station, so because I saw the writing on the wall with kozilek I ran out karmic guide and got whitemane lion back, bounced it. I had a Eldrazi Displacer I had previously discarded to handsize in the bin and an archaeomancer in hand, so I had another avenue to win but could not seem to get a colorless source unfortunately so had to go for the blasting station win. I also had a forbid and a mana drain floating around there.
I passed the turn with a board of karmic guide, relic warder, and some other derp, whitemane / forbid / body double / mana drain in hand. I mana drained Karn Liberated from Kozilek player, untapped and killed them since they'd both tapped out--
* don't pay echo cost, karmic guide to yard
* play blasting station
* play body dobule copying karmic guide, sac body double while trigger is on the stack, untaps blasting station
* karmic guide returns, trigger targets body double, sac guide, etc.
I had plenty of mana to do this without the mana drain mana, but the 7 from Karn let me deploy the entire combo for U, which left double forbid, so whether they were tapped out or not it was happening.
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No real serious thoughts there since I never got to deploy anything new, but Hour of Revelation woulda been insane in either game. I find the way people at my new shop build all of my decks are always way behind on the board - I just don't like to commit hard to the board mostly.
My other games were Tuvasa getting wrecked by a Najeela deck and then Najeela losing to the Jarad player he somehow did not realize was the threat, and Inalla proving it is probably my best deck and that people should not let ashnod's altar sit on the board for 3 turns and that Timestream Navigator is insane if you get two and one has haste
UW Ephara Hatebears [Primer], GB Gitrog Lands, BRU Inalla Combo-Control, URG Maelstrom Wanderer Landfall
-Venser, the Sojourner
-Day of Judgment
-Oblivion Stone
-Trophy Mage
-Victory Chimes
-Blasting Station
-Phyrexian Metamorph (I can only afford one, and this one is going into Saheeli)
-Ancient Tomb (same as above)
+Winds of Abandon
+Unsettled Mariner
+Soulherder
+Linvala, Azorius Renegade
+Hour of Revelation
+Solitary Confinement
+Hall of Heliod's Generosity
? Tribute Mage
? God-Eternal Kefnet
These changes lower the average CMC of the deck, which is good, but place more two-color requirements, which is challenging - luckily I do think my mana base is up to it.
Removing most of the Trophy Mage package is OK since the cards coming in are that much better. We prefer fetching by Muddle than by the Mage since it's so narrow, and both Winds and Hour are cheaper than Stone in both their modes (though only Winds is tutorable).
With enchantment Stronghold and the Trophy package coming out, I think that my main wincon will probably become surviving everything and dealing damage with creatures, so Blasting Station goes out. Solitary Confinement will be my hope against the other creature aggression in my meta.
I think I'm glad to see Venser go. He's been expensive and slow, and has never really benefited the game plan beyond simple blinking. Soulherder is cheaper, tutorable, and provides a late-game threat in much the same style - though he really hates being bounced, which is a pain.
I'm thinking that while Muddle can indeed turn into a bunch of things in our deck, it's difficult to get more value out of it for the amount we are playing around the card. I may end up slotting Archaeomancer against my better judgment. However for a card that interacts with instants and sorceries I'd probably much rather have God-Eternal Kefnet, and I'm not really sure I have enough instants and sorceries for either of them to be justified. At least Kefnet does plenty on his own, as it has a better body than almost any other card currently in the deck, and it's very easily recurred with its ability.
In fact, I'm sensing that there's got to be an instant or sorcery that I can win if I copy with Kefnet enough times. One of which is Approach of the Second Sun, but it's just so expensive. But it's fair enough on its own since we draw so many cards - though it becomes difficult if we happen to shuffle. Finally we could go for the obvious Nexus of Fate win, but it's both expensive and boring, plus Approach has some sort of "achievement unlocked" feel if you actually manage to win with it in EDH.
What are your thoughts, people?