The BW deck is pretty happy to have one of these, beyond that it seems so-so as it trades for a lot of cheaper creatures/removal. I would consider playing 2 in that deck, or 1 in GB/RB given enough other allies, but I think it would usually be a "23rd" type of card in those situations.
This card's value depends on how much evasion your deck has. I haven't played GB Allies, though I imagine it's at its best there (if that's even a deck.) I have only played it once, and it was good, but I can see not playing it if you already have plenty of Sky Climbers and whatnot.
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My Decks: EDH: Sygg, River Cutthroat , Road to Scion Grimgrin, Corpseborn Modern: Polytokes IRL: Progenitus Polymorph , Goblins
This can be a key card in the b/w allies deck. This deck will usually stall the board through defensive creatures or simply be gaining a lot of life that it can ignore a lot of attacks. When the board gets like this, Chainmage becomes a viable win condition and must kill.
Of course if you are ever on the backfoot then you'll have to trade this for a 2 or 3 drop and that doesn't feel great.
Decent playable. Has the ally typeline and getting in for two damage is a nice upside since board stalls are so common. The downside is that it's pretty awful at combat unless you can find a 4/4 to trade it with or something.
Even if Holdout Settlement and the first Wastes are generally more useful, this is a colorless mana land in a set that cares about colorless mana. I usually pick these up early on Pack 2 if I'm already deep in colorless matters cards and I'm low on fixers.
I keep finding reasons to splash in this format and this card enables that very well. Also, if you actually want to play multiple cards with C in the mana cost, then you kinda have to pick up stuff like this when you can just to make your deck work.
In my view Unknown Shores is somewhat of a priority draft card in a deck requiring some colorless mana.
Including lands which tap for colorless mana can leave you color mana screwed but this card mitigates that by fixing at the cost of one mana, which is a good deal if you need it. And yesterday this gave me a third color so I could Exert Influence my opponent's Eldrazi Displacer which eventually won me the game (in a very mean-seeming way), so converge is another potential (unlikely) benefit of playing this land.
I've been really happy with this, Vestige, and especially the Settlement (the best of them IMO). They can really do double duty in G and/or U, where they randomly power up your converge stuff on top of providing colorless. I've also found myself wanting to play 2 colors plus splashes of another color AND colorless a lot in my more controlling decks (which tend to revolve around U and/or B), and these allow that.
Yeah, I think some combination of UGBC tends to be a real deck. There's a lot of incidental fixing from the colorless lands, you get to play with the gold uncommons no one else wants, and you have tons of ways to gum up the board and win with random noninteractive abilities and value spells.
The eldrazis and gold cards are so good in OGW that it's worth spending high picks to get a few of these. Reflector Mage and Baloth Null are still bombs even if you're paying one extra for them.
Shockingly playable if you have eladazi you need activating or casting. First time ever for this card in limited?
I used it once in theros because I figured it and a scryland was enough fixing to splash for some gold card. I still probably got it last card in the pack though.
I just want to clarify that this card is quite bad for splashing actual colors -- assuming you never actually want a C. If you are running some kind of UBCg splashing for Baloth Null I guess it's like 1/2 a green source.
LSV really seems to like it. I tried it and it was OK, I got a couple activations out of it, but it never felt like it was doing anything unfair, and sometimes you're up against x/4s and x/5s and it sits there looking sheepish.
That said, the deck around it was mediocre, so maybe in a tuned UR deck it excels.
I've been impressed when playing with/against it, definitely easier to trigger than I anticipated when you are slotting it into the surge/prowess oriented UR deck.
how many times does this need to activate to be worth a card? by the time it can trigger, are there even creatures that this will pick off?
I view 2 activations as break even, 3+ is what you really shoot for to offset the times it flops. Thing is, if you even activate this once to kill something, then the threat of it is disruptive (i.e. messes with combat, prevents them from even wanting to cast other small stuff) and you probably aren't doing too bad in terms of getting your mana/cards worth.
And yeah, there will definitely be times they are just beating you with something big and this doesn't help stop it. But if you are on the attack, or in a board stall, the damage can just go to the dome if there aren't good targets. And it also combines well with red burn to take down bigger targets. It can also combine with combat damage, or even just threaten to, to make combat math a lot harder for the opponent as now (this is an aspect of Molten Nursery that I noticed come up a lot and help make it better than it appeared it would be on the surface).
Molten Nursery was tough to play around because the probability that Rx Devoid has a colorless spell in hand to cast postcombat is very high. Even multiple turns in a row.
Assault doesn't carry that same bluff/math-screw potential because the probability that a player can cast 2 spells postcombat is much lower. Without any information on hand contents, I believe the correct play is to always call their bluff and block. If they don't have it, you just avoided damage and made a favorable block. If they do have the postcombat Surge, you've probably drained their gas and you're less likely to have to worry about that trick on subsequent turns. Walking into it once is just letting their 4-mana enchantment shock something after combat, with the opponent being forced to lose some tempo (casting an enchantment that did nothing at first) and curve out more slowly (sandbagging 2 cheap spells for later and playing a do-nothing 4cc enchantment first instead of curving out the fast spells earlier). I'd take that trade. Especially consider the card then has basically 0 bluff value in future turns and probably 0 value at all unless opponent intentionally tempo-screws self sandbagging spells to trigger it again.
Molten Nursery was tough to play around because the probability that Rx Devoid has a colorless spell in hand to cast postcombat is very high. Even multiple turns in a row.
Assault doesn't carry that same bluff/math-screw potential because the probability that a player can cast 2 spells postcombat is much lower. Without any information on hand contents, I believe the correct play is to always call their bluff and block. If they don't have it, you just avoided damage and made a favorable block. If they do have the postcombat Surge, you've probably drained their gas and you're less likely to have to worry about that trick on subsequent turns. Walking into it once is just letting their 4-mana enchantment shock something after combat, with the opponent being forced to lose some tempo (casting an enchantment that did nothing at first) and curve out more slowly (sandbagging 2 cheap spells for later and playing a do-nothing 4cc enchantment first instead of curving out the fast spells earlier). I'd take that trade. Especially consider the card then has basically 0 bluff value in future turns and probably 0 value at all unless opponent intentionally tempo-screws self sandbagging spells to trigger it again.
Yeah, that's what I thought before playing with/against it. Turns out triggering it is easier than it looks and lots of games go to situations where sandbagging cards to trigger it isn't punished (i.e. stalls where players are drawing and waiting for something to break through, in which you aren't punished for playing the random dudes you drew immediately).
It's fine. A 3/1 blocks well in a board stall, and its fragility on offense is mitigated by Support. You kinda really want a bunch of Support before this guy does what you want though.
Been good more often than not when I've played with/against him. When played on turn 3 he can usually attack once or twice before getting walled out by something fat, and by that point you often have a chance to play removal/support/tricks to continue pushing through. Not as exciting late, but not useless either as 3 power still makes him relevant in combat more often than not. And we are talking about a common 3-drop with 3 power that attacks well, so we can't be too picky about it not playing well in every situation or phase of the game.
In my view Kor Scythemaster is a bit above average in an aggressive deck including white-green support or red-white, and is average in a white-black allies filling out the required ally spots.
I did not particularly like white's common creatures at first but the ally synergies make enough of a difference that some of the otherwise mediocre cards become average or better, and in this case the attacking first strike would be valuable in an aggressive deck anyway, especially with support.
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Of course if you are ever on the backfoot then you'll have to trade this for a 2 or 3 drop and that doesn't feel great.
Including lands which tap for colorless mana can leave you color mana screwed but this card mitigates that by fixing at the cost of one mana, which is a good deal if you need it. And yesterday this gave me a third color so I could Exert Influence my opponent's Eldrazi Displacer which eventually won me the game (in a very mean-seeming way), so converge is another potential (unlikely) benefit of playing this land.
I used it once in theros because I figured it and a scryland was enough fixing to splash for some gold card. I still probably got it last card in the pack though.
That said, the deck around it was mediocre, so maybe in a tuned UR deck it excels.
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some of my favourite flavour text:
Wayward Soul
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He raged at the world, at his family, at his life. But mostly he just raged.
I view 2 activations as break even, 3+ is what you really shoot for to offset the times it flops. Thing is, if you even activate this once to kill something, then the threat of it is disruptive (i.e. messes with combat, prevents them from even wanting to cast other small stuff) and you probably aren't doing too bad in terms of getting your mana/cards worth.
And yeah, there will definitely be times they are just beating you with something big and this doesn't help stop it. But if you are on the attack, or in a board stall, the damage can just go to the dome if there aren't good targets. And it also combines well with red burn to take down bigger targets. It can also combine with combat damage, or even just threaten to, to make combat math a lot harder for the opponent as now (this is an aspect of Molten Nursery that I noticed come up a lot and help make it better than it appeared it would be on the surface).
Assault doesn't carry that same bluff/math-screw potential because the probability that a player can cast 2 spells postcombat is much lower. Without any information on hand contents, I believe the correct play is to always call their bluff and block. If they don't have it, you just avoided damage and made a favorable block. If they do have the postcombat Surge, you've probably drained their gas and you're less likely to have to worry about that trick on subsequent turns. Walking into it once is just letting their 4-mana enchantment shock something after combat, with the opponent being forced to lose some tempo (casting an enchantment that did nothing at first) and curve out more slowly (sandbagging 2 cheap spells for later and playing a do-nothing 4cc enchantment first instead of curving out the fast spells earlier). I'd take that trade. Especially consider the card then has basically 0 bluff value in future turns and probably 0 value at all unless opponent intentionally tempo-screws self sandbagging spells to trigger it again.
Yeah, that's what I thought before playing with/against it. Turns out triggering it is easier than it looks and lots of games go to situations where sandbagging cards to trigger it isn't punished (i.e. stalls where players are drawing and waiting for something to break through, in which you aren't punished for playing the random dudes you drew immediately).
I did not particularly like white's common creatures at first but the ally synergies make enough of a difference that some of the otherwise mediocre cards become average or better, and in this case the attacking first strike would be valuable in an aggressive deck anyway, especially with support.