MTG Salvation

Yeah Stella Lee, Wild Card has the potential to make a HUGE impact in cEDH because of the sheer amount of infinite combos she has in her arsenal:

• Twisted Fealty (Infinite life loss)
• Cerulean Wisps (Infinite card draw)
• Bloody Betrayal (Infinite Blood Tokens)
• Furnace Reins (Infinite Treasure if you can connect with Stella Lee)
• Hidden Strings (Infinite taps/untaps, Infinite mana)
• Infuse (Infinite card draw, but delayed)
• Jolt (Infinite card draw, but delayed)
• Kari Zev’s Expertise (Infinite free casts for cards with mana value two or less)
• Mark of Mutiny (Infinitely large Stella Lee)
• Pack’s Betrayal (Infinite Scry if you control a Wolf or Werewolf)
• Refocus (Infinite card draw)
• Shore Up (Infinitely large Stella Lee and Hexproof)
• Toils of Night and Day (Infinite taps/untaps, infinite mana)
• Triton Tactics (Infinite toughness)
• Twitch (Infinite card draw)

Claim the Firstborn, Crimson Wisps, Expedite, Frantic Search, Gitaxian Probe, Gut Shot, Strike it Rich, Snap, Snapback, Rite of Flame, and Mogg Salvage all help to unconditionally get us to 3 spells and combo off. Also Dualcaster Mage with Twinflame does wonders as well. Stella also has tutors with Personal Tutor, Muddle the Mixture via Transmute, and Spellseeker. Archmage Emeritus and Dockside Extortionist are amazing with Stella especially with copy effects such as Phantasmal Image. I do think Birgi, God of Storytelling is much more powerful in here than Storm-Kiln Artist.

https://starwarsunlimited.com/

So for those who don't know, Fantasy Flight Games recently launched a new Paper Trading Card Game / Collectible Card Game using the Star Wars IP where the mechanical identity of it is basically Marvel / DC Vs. System by Upper Deck back in 2005. "Unlimited" basically means anything associated with Star Wars which could mean that the game might cover what was retconned by Disney. If this game does well then I might be interested in trying it but I've already been burned out through so many Paper Trading Card Games / Collectible Card Games that literally died due to incompetence from the companies in charge of making them that I'm not sure If Star Wars Unlimited will be around for the long haul.

I don't know If Star Wars Unlimited will be enough to put my faith back in Star Wars. I thought the Disney films were okay. Not great. Just okay. Didn't get around to watching The Mandalorian as well as the Ob-Wan Kenobi series and Ahsoka. The last Star Wars film I thoroughly enjoyed on the silver screen was Rogue One before Disney attained the Star Wars license from George Lucas and Lucas Films. Based on what I've been hearing in terms of what the current metagame is for Star Wars Unlimited it seems as though Darth Vader and Boba Fett are doing REALLY well right now. Maybe this game might expand more on what the original Star Wars CCG by Decipher didn't so we'll just have to wait and see I guess.

So what are your thoughts?

Yeah I had a brain fart. I forgot that milling in this instance didn't work the way I wanted it to for this card's ability since it would go to the graveyard instead of straight to the battlefield. The card's ability should read, "Whenever a land leaves the battlefield, it's controller puts the top card of their library face-down on the battlefield as a basic land with, "Tap, Add one mana of any color in your commander's color identity". Any player can look at the bottom of the face-down card anytime."

Quote from user_938036 »

Why is this milling? It's extra text that is just confusing. Spelling out your intent helps but this doesn't really do that. Mill doesn't want to waste time untapping and color fixing the opponent's lands. It could be amusing chaining together multiple destroy all lands cards. However, its main value is turning fecthlands and Ghostquarter and similar effects into ramp. WHile also empowering any land with a sacrifice ability. Probably broken beyond fixing.

It's milling because it's replacing the lands being destroyed, exiled, sacrificed, or bounced simultaneously via Mass Land Removal spells such as Armageddon, Decree of Annihilation (without paying Cycling cost), Cataclysm, and Sunder. Even If the lands leave the battlefield due to a state-based action then the lands get replaced with whatever you mill from the top of your library.

If cracking Fetches and other activated abilities on lands in response to this ability is a major problem then I need to add something like, "Whenever a land leaves the battlefield, activated abilities of lands can't be activated unless they're mana abilities" or make it so that players can't float mana in response to their lands leaving the battlefield.

Glimerax, the Realm Shaper URW
Legendary Creature - Elemental Shaman

Whenever a land leaves the battlefield, it's controller mills a card and puts it face-down on
the battlefield as a land with, "Tap, Add one mana of any color in your commander's color identity".
Treat the face-down land as though it were a basic land while on the battlefield. Players can look at
the bottom of the face-down cards at any time.

2/4

So I designed this card as a way to encourage Mass Land Destruction in EDH / Commander in a manner that doesn't create as many feel bad's while also sort of utilizing mill as a pseudo-win con especially with Mesmeric Orb to get it off faster. I was initially going to encourage the EDH / Commander Rules Committee to enforce this creature's ability as a new rule in EDH / Commander seeing as it'd be something that playgroups wouldn't need to Rule 0 on. For those who are willing to Rule 0 Glimerax's ability for their 4+ player EDH / Commander pod more power to you. Let me know how it went.

I do warn that Glimerax's ability would pressure players to run cards that shuffle back in permanents on the battlefield into their deck via Chaos Warp, Tel-Jilad Stylus, and Rishadan Pawnshop If they're needing a specific combo piece for their deck to function that was turned into a face-down land with Glimerax's ability. I thought about brewing an EDH / Commander deck list with Glimerax, the Realm Shaper on this thread just to give you guys an example of how the deck would function but I don't think it would be allowed on the forums at least to my knowledge anyway.

Vraska, the Silencer's official oracle text ability now reads, "Whenever a nontoken creature an opponent controls dies, you may pay 1. If you do, return that card to the battlefield tapped under your control. It's a Treasure artifact with "Tap, Sacrifice this artifact: Add one mana of any color," and it loses all other card types." So right out of the gate she has synergy with Amulet of Vigor enabling you to "crack" your opponents creatures for mana on the turn they die which can go in tandem with cards that force opponents to sac creatures such as Grave Pact and Dictate of Erebos. I figured Vraska, the Silencer would have deathtouch but why not add first strike or trample along with it? Arguably the best card spoiled in the set thus far IMO.

Here's the decks that I currently run in the FanZ format:

Main Personality

1 Goku, Farmer
1 Goku, Warming Up
1 Goku, Godly Aura
1 Goku, Super Saiyan Blue

Mastery

1 Orange Energetic Mastery

Drills

1 Orange Charging Drill
1 Orange Crying Drill
1 Orange Intensity Drill
1 Orange Attraction Drill
1 Orange Absorption Drill
1 Orange Aura Drill
1 Orange Disaster Drill
1 Orange Investigation Drill

Events

3 Orange Juke
3 Confrontation
1 Time Is A Warrior's Tool

Physical Combats

3 Orange Leaping Punch
3 Orange Extension
3 Orange Beatdown
3 Orange Truck Lift
3 Orange Swerve
3 Orange Sidestep
2 Orange Enraged Bash
1 Orange Uppercut

Energy Combats

3 Goku's Kamehameha
3 Orange Bicycle Kick
3 Orange Heat Wave
3 Orange Power Point
3 Orange Energy Catch
2 Orange Dismissal

Deck Total - 60

______________________________________

Main Personality

1 Frieza, Resident of HFIL
1 Frieza, Golden
1 Frieza, Galactic Conqueror
1 Frieza, Revived

Mastery

1 Red Relentless Mastery

Events

3 Red Focus
3 Red Counter
2 Red Announcement
2 Frieza's Arrogance
2 Stare Down
1 Overwhelming Power
1 Time Is A Warrior's Tool

Physical Combats

3 Frieza's Captive Strike
3 Red Monstrous Blow
3 Red Sleeper Hold
3 Red Capture
3 Red Duck

Energy Combats

3 Frieza's Supernova
3 Red Shining Sword Attack
3 Red Charged Beam
3 Red Controlled Blast
3 Red Static Shot
3 Red Robotic Blast
3 Red Left Bolt
3 Red Interference
3 Red Body Block
1 Frieza's Death Beam

Allies

1 Chilled, Cackling Tyrant
1 King Cold, Caught Off Guard
1 Shisami, Enforcer

Deck Total - 60

https://icv2.com/articles/news/view/56515/rip-james-m-jim-ward

Quote from ICv2 »

Game designer James M. (Jim) Ward, a member of the Academy of Adventure Gaming Arts & Design Hall of Fame for his contributions to Dungeons & Dragons and other games, has passed away, according to a post on his Facebook. He was 72.


Ward was a friend of Gary Gygax from the very early days of Dungeons & Dragons development. He and Rob Kuntz wrote Gods, Demi-Gods & Heroes in 1976 for TSR, which was the first introduction of gods into the game. He also is the creator of Metamorphosis Alpha, the first science fiction RPG, also published by TSR (see "Jim Ward's 'Metamorphosis Alpha'"). He worked at TSR for 20 years in a number of executive positions, and left in 1996.

Ward designed the Dragon Ball Z collectible card game (Score Entertainment), as well as helping with the Tomb Raider, Wheel of Time, and Babylon 5 CCGs (Precedence Entertainment). He founded the d20 company Fast Forward Entertainment with Timothy Brown, Lester Smith, John Danovich, and Sean Everett (see "Fast Forward Takes Over Campaign"). He later joined Troll Lord Games as a writer and later the editor for Troll Lord's Castles & Crusades magazine, The Crusader Journal (see "Jim Ward Editor of 'Crusader'").

Ward had a series of health issues over the past 15 years. He was diagnosed with a serious neurological disorder in 2010 (see "Jim Ward Fund Requests Donations"), and had a heart attack in 2014 (see "Jim Ward Suffers Heart Attack").

We knew Ward from his time at TSR in the 1980s and 90s, and found him to be a warm, funny man, and a gamer through and through. We last saw him at a Gamehole Con in the late 2010s, and at that point he seemed little the worse for wear and definitely had the same warm heart. Our condolences to his friends and family.

One of the things that I really loved about how Jim Ward designed Score's Dragon Ball Z CCG is that he actually cared about how to replicate the source material that he was working with in order to make you feel as though you were immersed in the game itself. Most game designers for Paper Trading Card Games / Collectible Card Games would blatantly copy and paste ideas from previous card games as they lacked a real sense of identity that was unique enough to stand out on it's own. The ONLY other card game that succeeded in this was Pokémon TCG under the stewardship of Wizards of the Coast before Pokémon Company International (TPCi) acquired the license and rights from them nearly 20 years ago. Sadly it's treated more as a collectible than it's mechanical identity as an actual card game.

It's a real shame that Jim Ward doesn't get talked about as much as Richard Garfield even though I've never played Ward's other card games that he designed such as Tomb Raider CCG and Babylon 5 CCG which never really had the cult following and lightning captured in a bottle like Dragon Ball did in North America back in the early to mid 2000's. This was also during the big Japanese Anime / Manga boom in North America so Ward was at the right place at the right time. Little did I know that Ward also had a history with Dungeons & Dragons prior to his success with Score Entertainment. Of course Jim Ward really wouldn't have been known about as a game designer had it not been for Akira Toriyama creating Dragon Ball who also sadly passed away recently as well. Too bad Bandai Namco cares more about profits than honoring a game designer's legacy.

So for those old enough to remember the Pojo Message Board Forums before Social Media took off, Pojo himself told me that he still has Jim Ward's business card from meeting him at GenCon and Toy Fairs years ago. His DBZ business card title says "Product Development" on it with an image of Gohan. Believe it or not Score Entertainment actually hired a few Pojo staff members to work for them back in the day and that Pojo himself liked Score Entertainment as a company. Of course we all know that Score Entertainment went under in the late 2000's shortly after the release of the now defunct Bleach TCG. Then Panini bought out Score Entertainment to create Panini Z which they sold the Dragon Ball IP to Bandai Namco when Dragon Ball Super first launched in 2015 which the manga for it is now on indefinite hiatus due to the recent passing of Akira Toriyama earlier this month.

https://comicbook.com/anime/news/dragon-ball-creator-akira-toriyama-dead-68/

https://en.dragon-ball-official.com/news/01_2499.html

Dear Friends and Partners,

We are deeply saddened to inform you that Manga creator Akira Toriyama passed away on March 1st due to acute subdural hematoma. He was in age of 68. It's our deep regret that he still had several works in the middle of creation with great enthusiasm. Also, he would have many more things to achieve. However, he has left many manga titles and works of art to this world. Thanks to the support of so many people around the world, he has been able to continue his creative activities for over 45 years.

We hope that Akira Toriyama's unique world of creation continues to be loved by everyone for a long time to come.

We inform you this sad news, with gratefulness for your kindness during his lifetime. Funeral service was held with his family and very few relatives. Following his wishes for tranquility, we respectfully inform you that we would not accept flowers, condolences gifts, visiting, offering and others. Also, we ask you to refrain from conducting interviews with his family. Future plan for commemorate gathering is not decided, we will let you know when it's confirmed. We deeply thank you for your understanding and support as always.

March 8th, 2024

BIRD STUDIO
CAPSULE CORPORATION TOKYO

Discuss.

Feels like a HUGE missed opportunity while at the same time they aren't as passionate about it like they were with Dinosaur and Phyrexian.

Now that you mention it I did experiment with The Meathook Massacre for this deck before posting it and realized that there weren't enough bounce effects within Abzan to fully utilize the cast trigger off of it for when it enters the battlefield. The idea was to cast The Meathook Massacre by paying 2 for X to give my opponents creatures -2/-2 with Nature's Revolt active or casting Natural Affinity with something like Mirror Box pumping my land creatures' power and toughness and then finding ways to bounce The Meathook Massacre back to hand with Emancipation Angel, Invasive Species, and Cloudstone Curio for recasting it later. If you blink The Meathook Massacre with Leonin Relic-Warder then it's ETB won't trigger.

As for Bastion of Remembrance I was never really a huge fan of it however it does have potential with cards like Trudge Garden which goes infinite with Ashnod's Altar. It also has synergy with Blood Pet and Enduring Renewal. Leonin Relic-Warder does also combo off of Bastion of Remembrance with either Animate Dead, Dance of the Dead, or Necromancy. I would probably also need to run Felidar Guardian and Oblivion Ring for more blink effects. I have been looking into some combat damage prevention tools like Spore Frog, Kami of False Hope, and No Mercy. Pitiless Plunderer and other Treasure support might seem good though I may reconsider. I appreciate the feedback. I feel as though the mana curve might need to be lowered a bit more.

Did my best to recreate my friends' old Ghave, Guru of Spores Abzan Stax EDH / Commander Deck that I had difficulty beating at one point. Unfortunately he didn't have a deck list available so I tried to remember what he ran at the time before he quit Magic: The Gathering entirely. The deck is designed to lock your opponents from playing ANY cards from hand and graveyard with no lands to tap mana for as well as no creatures on the battlefield.

I did try to toss in some infinite combos and synergies to go along with it to make it a bit more consistent though I may add in some new cards If I ever get around to actually building this deck on Paper. I did manage to stall against it one time with some hate bears like Gaddock Teeg with Uril, the Miststalker though I mainly got lucky on that. Ghave pretty much runs these combos or synergies to win in this order:

1. Grave Pact / Dictate of Erebos to kill off creatures.
2. Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite / Massacre Wurm + Natural Affinity / Nature's Revolt = "Land Destruction" on crack via state based action.
3. Maralen of the Mornsong + Leonin Arbiter / Opposition Agent = Draw Lock.

Relic of Progenitus almost made the cut in here over Tormod's Crypt but exiling our own graveyard would've been too risky. I could probably swap out Elven Chorus for Cryptolith Rite to help lower the decks' mana curve a bit more. Pitiless Plunderer with Titania's Song and Abyssal Persecutor seems a bit gimmicky to pull off especially when there's not too many other cards to combo with Titania's Song. Yeah you got Poison-Tip Archer, Disciple of the Vault, and Vindictive Vampire but that's really about it. I also wanted to add more discard from hand combos in here but it seems very limited unfortunately.

Thoughts?

With the recent news of Twitch being unprofitable despite efforts from Amazon to prop them up just to stay alive made me wonder how this will affect the MTG Salvation forums going forward. They already laid off 500 employees and shutdown their operations in South Korea because they couldn't afford it. How will users on MTG Salvation be able to log in and out of the forums If their Twitch account ceases to exist since MTG Salvation is merged with Twitch? Granted I'm fully aware that MTG Nexus gets more active members than MTG Salvation after the recent split due to how severely fractured the MTG Community is as a whole as well as what went on with the COVID-19 Pandemic 4 years ago.

Aetherwell Animator 3
Artifact
Whenever a player casts an instant or sorcery spell it instead enters the battlefield as a creature card with power and toughness equal to it's original mana value and it's oracle text now triggers as a creature entering the battlefield to trigger the effect. The same is true for instant or sorcery spells being copied while on the stack, except that they enter as creature tokens with power and toughness equal to the original mana value of the copied instant or sorcery spell.

Discuss.

I remember Game of Thrones used to be one of the most pirated TV series on the Internet for those who weren't subscribed to HBO Max's streaming services up until Amazon got their hands on the IP which is ironic because Wizards of the Coast / Hasbro is also partners with them as well. Unfortunately the writing for Game of Thrones fell off a cliff and there was a famous scene where one of the actors left a cup of Starbucks coffee filmed within the series. One of the guys at a barber shop I used to go to before the pandemic was a HUGE Game of Thrones fan. Unfortunately there's not as much hype for Game of Thrones nowadays like there is for the Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit.