MTG Salvation

I was looking through the Ixalan spoiler today and came across Vona, Butcher of Magan. A quick search showed that Vona wasnt being discussed at all, so I decided to get the ball rolling on a new thread.

When contemplating Vona being the commander of a deck, I initially dismissed her. A 4/4 for 5 with lifelink and vigilance is okay, but the only on your turn clause of her activated ability was off putting. Further, having to wait a turn to use the ability isnt ideal. Sure, a Vindicate every turn is nice so long as your deck is built to fuel it, but its a very telegraphed play.

What are your thoughts of Vona leading an Orzhov deck? Does a commander like Ayli, Eternal Pilgrim just do it better? Or is Vona better since she doesnt fall into the same sac/recur theme that a lot of Orzhov legendaries fall into?

I've grown tired of my aggro Yidris deck (which focuses on making hasty, unblockable creatures) mainly due to the mana inconsistencies and waiting until my 2nd main phase to cast things. I like the unblockable portion, especially Kaseto, Orochi Archmage, and would like to build a deck with him at the helm, but I do love the haste and doublestrike that red provides. Thus the question, which would make a better Temur commander: Maelstrom Wanderer or Kraum, Ludevic's Opus & Thrasios, Triton Hero?

My hesitation to running Maelstrom Wanderer is MW in your command zone paints a large target on you, and decks with MW have been kinda done to death. Kraum and Thrasios might let me fly under the radar a bit, but is it worth sacrificing some power by using these two so I dont get hated at the table so much?

What are your thoughts?

One card that I used to run in a Mizzix deck that proved to be powerful was Mana Geyser. It was quite common to be getting 15+ mana with this spell, and being able to recast it with Kess is gravy.

Now that the full decklists have been revealed and preordering has opened up on multiple websites, what are you getting from C17? Which decks are getting updates from C17? Working on any new brews using a C17 commader?

I ended up preordering the wizards deck as SCG had it listed at $30. While I was there, I also grabbed:

• Kindred Discovery
  
• Patron of the Vein
  
• Disrupt Decorum
  
• Curse of Bounty
  
• Traverse the Outlands

The only card that has a home already is Kindred Discovery in Talrand. As for brews, Im torn between making Kess, Dissident Mage and Mairsil, the Pretender. Who knows, I may end up making both.

I built a Prossh, Skyraider of Kher deck that generates lots of tokens as sac fodder. It can win in three ways:
1) Overrun effects with the tokens
2) Commander damage
3) Purphoros, God of the Forge / Impact Tremors triggers and/or Blood Artist type triggers.

The deck also utilizes the three Grave Pact type cards to help control the board.

So I was a bit salty this morning after the Vampire spoilers from yesterday. Ive been itching to build a Mardu deck for quite some time, with the closest Ive come being a rough draft of converting my Grixis group slug deck to Queen Marchesa. I opened my browser this morning to see Mairsil, the Pretender. A flurry of expletives regarding that card being something exciting to build around and why did it have to be in the colors of a deck I already have escaped my lips. Then later I was treated to Kess, Dissident Mage, and the same string of expletives were repeated. Then I remembered my Grixis to Mardu refactoring idea from months ago, and promptly switched from buying the vampire deck to buying the wizards deck.

Overall, Ive very pleased with the amount of interesting new cards and I cant wait to see what will be reprinted!

I was really looking forward to seeing the vampire legends spoiled, and now that I have, Im not that excited by them. Its unfortunate as there looks to be a lot of fun cards in the vampire deck. Edgar is too tribal-focused for what Im looking to build. Mathas, Fiend Seeker is costed well at 3 cmc, plus being a 3/3 with menace is nice. I get that his ability encourages your opponents to kill the bounty-marked creatures, but Im not very keen on giving my opponents cards and life throughout the game. I see the similar designs between Karador, Ghost Chieftain and Licia, Sanguine Tribune, which I think is cool. However, Im questioning how reliably one can gain the life to reduce her cost. Even if you wait until the second main phase so you can gain life through combat, Licia still doesnt have any evasion to make use of her 7/7 first strike and lifelink self.

Im more than willing to concede that I am approaching Licia with the wrong line of thinking, as I would like to get the vampire deck. So feel free to set me straight! Also, speaking of vampires, arent we missing at least one more vampire legend? Cats and dragons have four currently spoiled.

Quote from blkh »

A few days ago, I control Asceticism. Somebody cast destroy enchantment spell. Unanimously, everybody start gunning for my enchantment althoughI stated repeatedly it is just for self protection. But no, they won't have any of it and persuaded the caster to aim at my enchantment. Take note that they were other targets as well. Why aim at mine? Do you have similar stories?

Why aim at Asceticism? The same reason people aim at Lightning Greaves or Swiftfoot Boots - because at some point, even if its not at this current moment, there is going to be a creature protected by these cards that absolutely needs to die or people start losing.

Despite the higher CMC of Kindred Discovery, Im sure I will be able to find a home for it in my Talrand deck. You can never have enough gas in mono blue control.

Normally through spoiler season I see new legendaries get spoiled and Im very impartial, as very few get me excited. But The Scarab God is a different story! Its the commander I didnt know I needed. A multifacted Dimir legendary that doesnt focus on mill!! Im excited to start brainstorming!

tl;dr - How to make a deck more powerful without resorting to MLD, stax, combo, or lockdowns?

Sometimes when I play at my LGS, I get the feeling that my decks just arent at the same power level as other decks I play with. I'm sure others have felt this way before. But when I sit down and try to evaluate how to improve a deck to make it more powerful, increase its chances of winning, and improve the quality of its threats and plays, I have a hard time coming up with something better.

Here are some of the ideas I brainstormed on how to make a deck more powerful:
a) Lower mana curve
b) Better mana rocks/more fast mana
c) Expensive cards that dont really have cheaper equivalents (ie Sneak Attack, Pact of Negation, Survival of the Fittest)
d) Stop making grindy, value decks
e) Dont focus so much on the theme of the deck in restricting which cards go in the deck
f) Dont use so many utility creatures
g) Establish clear, obtainable wincons
h) More tutors?
j) Have multiple ways to win the game
k) ???

As an example of a decent deck I have that I want to make more powerful - a The Mimeoplasm deck that has a heavy mill theme. It doesnt have enough mill to actually win via milling. Instead it relies on The Mimeoplasm becoming something awesome and attacking, or using one of several cards in the deck that use my opponents' milled creatures to win (Sepulchral Primordial, Wrexial, etc). Sure, the deck is very much on theme, but its slow, may rely too much on the cards in my opponents' decks, and doesnt do anything explosive.

Another example is my Vial Smasher/Kraum deck that utilizes cards like Vial Smasher, Painful Quandary, etc to whittle lives down, but doesnt have a way to close out games.

So what have you done to improve the power level of your decks without turning to the strategies that many playgroups dislike?

Quote from papa_funk »

Quote from Kisoji »

I will admit that I was a bit puzzled about Selvala suddenly being on the RC's radar.

It's not sudden - it's been on our radar since the day it was spoiled, there've been multiple threads about it in various places, and it certainly does things that we tend to take a close look at.

That being said, lots of cards end up on our radar, so I wouldn't treat a mention as predictive.

I think what I was more thinking but didnt come across in what I wrote was given the bannings over the past few years, and the explanations on the RC's thought process in how banning decisions are made, Selvala didnt seem like the type of card that would make it into a banned discussion. In other words, it didnt seem like the type of card that drastically warped games (Prophet of Kruphix) or created very unfun games (Leovold). Selvala seems to fit into the format as one of many powerful yet legal cards.

I wont treat it as predictive, as there are many cards that have been and still are discussed that have not been banned.

I will admit that I was a bit puzzled about Selvala suddenly being on the RC's radar. I will admit that my experience with Selvala is only playing against a typical ramp into fatties version, but nothing about that experience makes me think she would be banworthy. Definitely not in the same way that Leovold did. Sure she does have the ability to produce a bunch of mana, but it does require a little setup, and there are a lot of other similar abilities in the game. Like, I dont see how it would be justifiable to ban Selvala, a creature with only three toughness and no innate protection, but let Cabal Coffers, a land card that most decks (at least in my meta) dont contain an answer for and requires no other setup than playing lands, be legal. As someone who loves mono black decks and Coffers as a card, I cannot deny the power it gives to a deck. It is 99% of the time my first tutor target because its too good not to have on the field.

In the container I keep my Magic stuff is a folder of decklists I have tried and subsequently taken apart. Three versions of Oloro I didnt like, two of The Mimeoplasm before I settled on the current build, a bunch of aggro decks that didnt quite make the cut, and so on.

The deck that recently disappointed me a lot was my Breya deck. I wanted SO much to have a fun Esper deck, and the addition of red plus it being an artifact deck seemed really awesome. Yet, every version (combo, token-focused, artifacts that copy abilities theme) I made I hated. All of them were either really inconsistent or plain unfun. The sleeves still sit half filled with the good black and white cards in the hopes that an inspiring Orzhov or Esper commander is released. The silver lining though is that taking apart the deck freed up the red and artifact cards, which I used to make a very fun and explosive Kiki-Jiki ETB focused deck.

I would suggest looking at Yidris, Maelstrom Wielder decklists on tappedout or EDHrec as both him and Vial Smasher want to cast spells for cheaper than their retail price. Since you are going the spellslinger style, any of the cards that reduce instant or sorcery costs may be helpful (Jace's Sanctum, the 5 cmc blue enchantment that makes them 2 cheaper whose name is escaping me).

As someone who plays a Vial Smasher deck partnered with Kraum, Ludevic's Opus, in my experience players are okay with taking the random 4-5 damage from Vial Smasher, but make a concerted effort to kill her if you 1) start slinging high cmc spells; or 2) life total start to get low. Thus I would suggest some protection for Vial Smasher or counter backup.