You may cast the top card of your library if it's a creature card.
You may spend mana as though it were mana of any type to cast creature spells.
3/4
I love the top of library cards like Courser of Kruphix and Oracle of Mul Daya. This is extra cool because you don't have to reveal it. Card advantage plus a decent body plus an easy cost plus all your creatures are easier to cast? Seems worth a long look to me.
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Ehh, I'm not sold. It's a decent body and interesting effect, but it's slow and very selective of what you can actually play off the top. Although being a 3/4 is nice, I like the effect of Oracle of Mul Daya much more. This ain't bad, but I think Duskwatch Recruiter is a much better "creatures matters" card, and those subset of cards are rather narrow.
Comparing this to Courser/Oracle, I'm underwhelmed. Lands take up more of your deck than creatures do even in most green decks. You'll rarely be able to cast something off this the turn you play it. The play pattern is worse, since you're actively digging towards lands, and once this gets killed you'll frequently know you're topdecking a non creature. The secondary effect is significantly worse. And all this for what? A slightly beefier body?
Don't get me wrong, I don't think this is trash, and it's in a slot with room to test. I just expect it to play worse than it looks on paper.
What I like about this is the similarity to Oracle in that you could potentially cast a chain of cards from the top. With the two of them in a creature deck, it's just boss. Takes a sweeper, murder, or some heavy combat to deal with it and doesn't die to bolt. I'm heavily considering this as my Woodland Wanderer replacement instead of Elvish Piper (tuned in to this card after Champion of Rhonas excitement and realized Piper is just better). It even produces colorless mana, snow mana, whatever mana for creatures! Pretty sweet.
3/4 with no guaranteed ETB value, not even any guaranteed card advantage if you untap with it. I'd rather play Polukranos.
The only green 4 drop in the history of the game that's 3/4 or bigger that guarantees value on ETB is Obstinate Baloth, so that's probably not really a reasonable expectation. I'm not planning to cut Polukranos for this either, but I think this does have enough potential for runaway value on a sturdy enough body that it's worth a serious work. It also synergizes nicely with green's many shuffle effects and other top of library manipulation effects. It might not get there, but I think it's worth testing.
Here's the art:
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A fine card, but not on Oracle levels of good for all the aforementioned reasons. In summary:
1) No immediate value turn 4 unlike Oracle
2) Even if you can cast this + a mana elf turn 6, this is hardly passing the Vindicate test. Oracle usually does.
3) Much harder to play 16 creatures in a deck than 16 lands (non-mox). The card is narrower.
4) Diminishing returns - after you have 4-5 creatures out, playing more becomes risky. With Oracle you do not have that, the more lands the better
5) Benefits less from shuffle effects, as it is much harder to cast 2+ creatures a turn (especially as most shuffle effects cost mana themselves)
Intruiging card. I agree with pretty much everything said so far and the "any type of mana" clause is cool but doesn't do much for me. If you are splashing creatures Just because this is in your deck you are making a mistake. Still I think this might still be testable.
A fine card, but not on Oracle levels of good for all the aforementioned reasons. In summary:
1) No immediate value turn 4 unlike Oracle
2) Even if you can cast this + a mana elf turn 6, this is hardly passing the Vindicate test. Oracle usually does.
3) Much harder to play 16 creatures in a deck than 16 lands (non-mox). The card is narrower.
4) Diminishing returns - after you have 4-5 creatures out, playing more becomes risky. With Oracle you do not have that, the more lands the better
5) Benefits less from shuffle effects, as it is much harder to cast 2+ creatures a turn (especially as most shuffle effects cost mana themselves)
Veziers body is much more reasonable for a 4 drop, Oracle is very wimpy, but those are all good and relevant points. Surviving bolt and hitting a little bit harder probably doesn't make up for that. Worth testing alongside maybe.
I like it.
Pairs extremely well with oracle , courser of kruphix, senseis diviing top, fetchlands , sylvan library.
I agree with a lot of analysis here, but its the 3/4 body combined some synergies and a card advantage engine that make me like it.
3/4 can at least impact the board enough that if it's not generating card advantage, it's not a total brick.
If it was any smaller of a body I'd dismiss it, but think it's worth testing.
My fear is how aggressively it promotes over extension, and that without library manipulation, the card advantage is not great.
One thing to not overlook is that unlike courser of kruphix/oracle, when this thing is firing on all cylinders, you can generate multiple cards per turn.
I do like card advantage in Green and playing cards off the top of the library is great will all the cube manipulation but I think green 4 drops are terrific and I have cut quite a few that are great. Don't get me wrong a 3/4 body is nice, and this grinds out great value in midrange/jund etc. I jsut don't think the 4-5 mana midrange value space needs any help. If this were a 3 mana 1/4 I would be more excited and if could go in a bant collected company style deck landing on turn 2 after an elf. But as it is ..... I'm just not sure if I need this. It is certainly cool enough to try.
4) Diminishing returns - after you have 4-5 creatures out, playing more becomes risky.
My fear is how aggressively it promotes over extension, and that without library manipulation, the card advantage is not great.
Wait a minute, if you're playing creatures from off the top of your deck instead of your hand, how is that overextending? This lets you hold creatures in your hand while casting them from your deck that you wouldn't have otherwise had access to. Your opponent wraths your board away, and you should have gas in your hand that you wouldn't have had if you didn't have the Vizier.
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The best selling point for this card is the weakness at green's 4cc creature slot. This card can be incredibly medium though, and ultimately I don't think it's going to be good enough.
4) Diminishing returns - after you have 4-5 creatures out, playing more becomes risky.
My fear is how aggressively it promotes over extension, and that without library manipulation, the card advantage is not great.
Wait a minute, if you're playing creatures from off the top of your deck instead of your hand, how is that overextending? This lets you hold creatures in your hand while casting them from your deck that you wouldn't have otherwise had access to. Your opponent wraths your board away, and you should have gas in your hand that you wouldn't have had if you didn't have the Vizier.
Assuming you always have sufficient gas in hand in addition to your already played four drop is a tall order. In situations where I fear mass removal it should at least sometimes be right to just draw the creature and have reserves instead of exposing it all out. With Oracle you do not have that issue.
4) Diminishing returns - after you have 4-5 creatures out, playing more becomes risky.
My fear is how aggressively it promotes over extension, and that without library manipulation, the card advantage is not great.
Wait a minute, if you're playing creatures from off the top of your deck instead of your hand, how is that overextending? This lets you hold creatures in your hand while casting them from your deck that you wouldn't have otherwise had access to. Your opponent wraths your board away, and you should have gas in your hand that you wouldn't have had if you didn't have the Vizier.
Assuming you always have sufficient gas in hand in addition to your already played four drop is a tall order. In situations where I fear mass removal it should at least sometimes be right to just draw the creature and have reserves instead of exposing it all out. With Oracle you do not have that issue.
The point is you're not overextending if you're playing cards off the top of your library, as there's no investment of having drawn those cards when you play them off the top of your deck. It is the same way that playing cards off of any of the red "exile this card, play it" abilities doesn't work as card disadvantage (like the 0 in chandra, pyromancer). There might be specific scenarios where you would rather that card in your hand for one reason or another, but I don't think it's technically overextending to play cards off the top of your library.
You are correct, but unlike other card advantage engines, the advantage generated can be offset by a wrath.
While you don't LOSE cards, you've gained no cards.
Compare to tireless tracker or oracle, the advantages they generate are much harder to attack on one axis.
This can be offset by playing wrath resilient creatures.
For sure, though I imagine the ceiling on this is a bit higher than both Tracker and Oracle. While it can be offset by a wrath, there are only so many wraths, and playing cube creatures instead of lands and clues seems like a better ceiling.
I'm not sold on this guy by any means, and I agree that the advantage of the others is safer and probably better, but there is something to be said about the ceiling of this card and that there will be a number of times where you'll happily hold guys in your hand for when that wrath does land.
You are correct, but unlike other card advantage engines, the advantage generated can be offset by a wrath.
While you don't LOSE cards, you've gained no cards.
Compare to tireless tracker or oracle, the advantages they generate are much harder to attack on one axis.
This can be offset by playing wrath resilient creatures.
For sure, though I imagine the ceiling on this is a bit higher than both Tracker and Oracle. While it can be offset by a wrath, there are only so many wraths, and playing cube creatures instead of lands and clues seems like a better ceiling.
I'm not sold on this guy by any means, and I agree that the advantage of the others is safer and probably better, but there is something to be said about the ceiling of this card and that there will be a number of times where you'll happily hold guys in your hand for when that wrath does land.
I don't think the ceiling is very high on this card. Even if you're generating advantage playing the top card of your library, you're limited in both quantity and selection. Lands are very interchangeable, but there's going to be a huge difference between creature selection from hand / top of library where playing from the top isn't even the right choice.
this is an include for me! i have an irrational hate of polukranos (probably from theros standard) so my green 4 section is even worse than most. excited for this!
I'm excited for this card. What I like most is that it does a good job bridging into your late game in a green ramp deck. I think it will force a removal spell from your opponent just like courser and Oracle, even if it's not as easy to accrue advantage. I've been down on Baloth and Thrun, so I'm glad there's a medium-sized creature to fill the gap while aligning more closely with green's themes.
Idk. I'm gonna try it. Green has some good ways to get lands out of the deck and this thing gets crazy with fetchlands. I like it more than Master of the Wild Hunt, that's for sure. Its definitely not better than Polukranos for sure though.
Objectively though, it seems okay. It's a way for green to garner incremental card advantage and has a decent enough body that aggro decks need to spend a body and a burn spell on it.
Oracle blocks only after you've gotten value, this does both. It seems good in aggro and midrange matchups. Idk how it would be vs. Control.
Vizier is quite low in my 4-drop ranking, there's at least 4 cards that I would Cube before it that I'm already not running. I called it as the trap of the set and everyone else's testing results that I've seen seem to agree. I recall Usman saying in his article that it was the biggest disappointment from AKH.
Vizier of the Menagerie 3G
Creature - Naga Cleric
You may look at the top card of your library.
You may cast the top card of your library if it's a creature card.
You may spend mana as though it were mana of any type to cast creature spells.
3/4
I love the top of library cards like Courser of Kruphix and Oracle of Mul Daya. This is extra cool because you don't have to reveal it. Card advantage plus a decent body plus an easy cost plus all your creatures are easier to cast? Seems worth a long look to me.
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It does not provide immediate value at first (aside from the peek) but can get out of hand easily.
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Don't get me wrong, I don't think this is trash, and it's in a slot with room to test. I just expect it to play worse than it looks on paper.
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The only green 4 drop in the history of the game that's 3/4 or bigger that guarantees value on ETB is Obstinate Baloth, so that's probably not really a reasonable expectation. I'm not planning to cut Polukranos for this either, but I think this does have enough potential for runaway value on a sturdy enough body that it's worth a serious work. It also synergizes nicely with green's many shuffle effects and other top of library manipulation effects. It might not get there, but I think it's worth testing.
Here's the art:
450 card Peasant cube thread. Draft it here.
1) No immediate value turn 4 unlike Oracle
2) Even if you can cast this + a mana elf turn 6, this is hardly passing the Vindicate test. Oracle usually does.
3) Much harder to play 16 creatures in a deck than 16 lands (non-mox). The card is narrower.
4) Diminishing returns - after you have 4-5 creatures out, playing more becomes risky. With Oracle you do not have that, the more lands the better
5) Benefits less from shuffle effects, as it is much harder to cast 2+ creatures a turn (especially as most shuffle effects cost mana themselves)
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Veziers body is much more reasonable for a 4 drop, Oracle is very wimpy, but those are all good and relevant points. Surviving bolt and hitting a little bit harder probably doesn't make up for that. Worth testing alongside maybe.
Pairs extremely well with oracle , courser of kruphix, senseis diviing top, fetchlands , sylvan library.
I agree with a lot of analysis here, but its the 3/4 body combined some synergies and a card advantage engine that make me like it.
3/4 can at least impact the board enough that if it's not generating card advantage, it's not a total brick.
If it was any smaller of a body I'd dismiss it, but think it's worth testing.
My fear is how aggressively it promotes over extension, and that without library manipulation, the card advantage is not great.
One thing to not overlook is that unlike courser of kruphix/oracle, when this thing is firing on all cylinders, you can generate multiple cards per turn.
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Wait a minute, if you're playing creatures from off the top of your deck instead of your hand, how is that overextending? This lets you hold creatures in your hand while casting them from your deck that you wouldn't have otherwise had access to. Your opponent wraths your board away, and you should have gas in your hand that you wouldn't have had if you didn't have the Vizier.
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Assuming you always have sufficient gas in hand in addition to your already played four drop is a tall order. In situations where I fear mass removal it should at least sometimes be right to just draw the creature and have reserves instead of exposing it all out. With Oracle you do not have that issue.
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The point is you're not overextending if you're playing cards off the top of your library, as there's no investment of having drawn those cards when you play them off the top of your deck. It is the same way that playing cards off of any of the red "exile this card, play it" abilities doesn't work as card disadvantage (like the 0 in chandra, pyromancer). There might be specific scenarios where you would rather that card in your hand for one reason or another, but I don't think it's technically overextending to play cards off the top of your library.
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While you don't LOSE cards, you've gained no cards.
Compare to tireless tracker or oracle, the advantages they generate are much harder to attack on one axis.
This can be offset by playing wrath resilient creatures.
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For sure, though I imagine the ceiling on this is a bit higher than both Tracker and Oracle. While it can be offset by a wrath, there are only so many wraths, and playing cube creatures instead of lands and clues seems like a better ceiling.
I'm not sold on this guy by any means, and I agree that the advantage of the others is safer and probably better, but there is something to be said about the ceiling of this card and that there will be a number of times where you'll happily hold guys in your hand for when that wrath does land.
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I don't think the ceiling is very high on this card. Even if you're generating advantage playing the top card of your library, you're limited in both quantity and selection. Lands are very interchangeable, but there's going to be a huge difference between creature selection from hand / top of library where playing from the top isn't even the right choice.
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Objectively though, it seems okay. It's a way for green to garner incremental card advantage and has a decent enough body that aggro decks need to spend a body and a burn spell on it.
Oracle blocks only after you've gotten value, this does both. It seems good in aggro and midrange matchups. Idk how it would be vs. Control.
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