MTG Salvation

Magic sets aren't always strictly chronological - they mostly follow a linear timeline, but we've had a few sets that go back to explore things that happened in the past in the lore but have never been shown on cardboard. M19 looked at the origins and "youth" of the Elder Dragons, how that shaped Bolas and Ugin as characters, and how Bolas became a planeswalker. The Core Set with the flipwalkers was like this too, looking back at how the Big Five mono-color walkers first sparked and the events leading to their sparking.

Quote from user_938036 »

Balan, Leonin Captain, I think at 6 mana you get the equipment to your hand, not the battlefield. At least based on similar cards; Godo and Nazahn. It being a 'random' tutor helps in that regard but because you can easily make it a guaranteed tutor it doesn't help much. Probably would have to cost at least 7, or 8 and have a larger body or more abilities.

I would take another read of Godo and Nazahn. One is a direct tutor to the battlefield for 5R and the other is to hand, EXCEPT if it meets a specific condition (the condition of being Hammer of Nazahn), in which case it is also directly to battlefield and because of the condition, equipped too. I'm really not seeing how either card is a good example for an argument that 6 CMC with two of it colored can't tutor to field with limitations - one tutors to field unconditionally, the other tutors to field based on a specification.

Godo has the same body, a better tutor, and can be argued to have a more impactful other ability. Nazahn has a noticeably better body, a usually worse tutor, and an other ability that works with your whole board and can provide some evasion. Balan's tutoring seems perfectly fine, but he's probably overall weaker than the two examples that share the similar tutoring. He'll usually be just a very straightforward beater, and without deck manipulation he could often be an expensive beater that isn't actually that big a threat. He might be able to get away with a 4/4 body, or a more interesting secondary ability.

Quote from SyntheticDreamer »

Quote from Ryperior74 »

for r those wondering about why people are saying goodbye to ixalan

With foutain of ichor

Here’s why

https://mtg.gamepedia.com/Glistening_oil

Ichor = the phyrexian oil which is what corrupted karn on Morrison till vensor sacrificed himself to save him

I don’t believe the phyrexians May have finally cracked it on traveling though planes

Yes, and the point people keep repeating is that WotC has repeatedly stated that it's normal oil on Fountain of Ichor. No Phyrexians on Ixalan.

And lots of people are predictably, and somewhat justifiably, very annoyed by this because there's no good reason to name it Fountain of Ichor if they didn't want to invoke speculation - the word doesn't even have anything to do with oil outside of MTG's use of it as an alias for Glistening Oil. If you draw your definition from English in general, it's a badly chosen nonsense name. If you draw your definition from the context of MTG, it's yet another obnoxious red-herring meant to stir speculation, which I would have thought they would learn to do better or not do at all by now.


Edit: Ichorid references the correct, actual English meaning. Ichor Slick is very likely to be The Oil, actually, as the presence of trace elements of the Phyrexian invasion was a significant thematic part of Future Sight and Time Spiral - here's an article about the constant evocation of the Mask of Yawgmoth.

I would hope that they would have learned by now from other foreshadowing and red-herring flops that showing us black, oily goop with that specific aesthetic and sinister flavortext wording as a misdirect or "joke" will play pretty poorly to a lot of people.

Alas, poor Ixalan.

I don't know how many times I can make my point about "tactical" (read: exploitative) scooping encouraging a meta to skew toward non-interactive combo as an archetype immune to being wrenched by scooping. If people know that needing to deal damage to a player or target a player's board will expose them to petty methods like the spite scoop, they have a very direct incentive to build in ways that don't require those vulnerabilities so that they don't have to experience the supreme "feelbads" of a play being stolen by someone taking their ball and going home.


EDIT: One of my all-time favorite wins was off of a copy of someone else's T&N, memorably sniping a victory off my friend's play when he KNEW my deck was better equipped to use the spell and packing copy spells. That interaction would have been impossible in a speed-scooping meta/with a player who supports speed-scooping, he would have just forfeit on the spot instead of accepting the play.

EDIT EDIT: Post editing is acting screwy as hell.

Yes, similar to how it doesn't work for Zada. Soul's Fire can only satisfy the single specified target of either if both the Target Creature You Control and Any Target are the same.

As long as you are mindful of stack sequence, yes. In fact, with enough fodder and another sac outlet, you can sac Bontu on ETB to set up drawing her back if you feed enough other stuff into her trigger.

That's correct, yes.

You're misreading the card. What's being rounded up is the amount of life lost - so, if they are at 1, Revenge rounds the .5 to 1, killing them.

Edit for clarification: The way the card is worded, it would have to round DOWN to do what you expected, so that when it reaches dropping your opponent's life by .5, it rounds to 0. Instead, it is rounding the amount it takes at 1 UP, to 1.

Quote from Evil Never Dies »

Quote from krishnath »

Quote from RedGauntlet »

I Wished it was about the old story with Urza :/.

Well, hopefully they can make The Gatewatch character more likeble and interesting.

Why would you want an animated series focused on a supervillain that would give Mengele a run for his money fighting an evil god who wants to conquer the multiverse, and then joining said evil god before them both getting killed because the supervillains doomsday device gets activated?

If you think Urza is a supervillain you either don't know that well the character or having moral parameters far too strict for my tastes.

I clearly know the character better than you. He was a mass murdering sociopath that made genetic experiments on unwitting subjects, and when his time travel experiments blew up in his face, he left Tolaria rather than helping with fixing the problems he caused. He blew up a continent to kill his brother. Oh, and he outright murdered Taysir. Then, when he finally met the evil god he had opposed, he joined them. Urza was a villain, he always was.

I'm not really interested in discussing Purphoros, but I would like to mention that comments like this...

Quote from Onering »

I mean, you blather on...

and this...

Quote from Laughing Loa »

What is even this irrelevant non-argument you posted?

are appalling.

There's a reason most people avoid the Rules Discussion subforum, and it's because of posts like these. Everyone wants to be listened to, but too few are willing to listen.

Conversations must entail reciprocity. Disagreements are going to happen because people think differently from one another, and that doesn't mean they're not deserving of your respect, so start assuming the best of others, and choose your words more carefully next time.

You can play 5C Zada, Hedron Grinder BTW

Zada is an Ally and General Tazri is a card that says ETB: Find Zada put Zada in my hand.

EtombedHydra at it again Commander products have 15 new cards per deck designed specifically for Commander. Time to move on.

Cards look good HB

I don't understand the mindset of players who play grouphug or chaos decks without intending to win, which does lead me to wonder how common that mindset is and if perhaps we're arguing against a straw-man. In a long time playing Magic, I've only ever really encountered one deck I would have characterized as this sort of deck, and that was a Gahiji, Honored One deck that intended to give resources to all its opponents so they could fight each other to death. I guess it technically even had a win condition, just not a very practical one.

That having been said, I tend to play a lot of control-oriented decks, so I hate people getting more resources. Group hug is one of the worst matchups for several of my decks simply because they accelerate the rest of the table beyond my ability to respond to threats. I would say that having a group hug deck in the meta warps things in favor of combo or mid-range while penalizing control and aggro. That frustrates me, but it would seem to just be part of the rock-paper-scissors of multiplayer magic, and Wizards has been pushing it as a legitimate strategy.

If there is some unicorn out there who plays group hug just because they like to watch the world burn, then I hate them with all the passion of everyone else on this thread. Maybe I've just been very lucky in my playgroups?

I will punt any grouphug player out of the game as soon as I possibly can. That said, if a grouphug player manages to win via their own hug strategies, that I will definitely applaud. It's no easy feat and requires some pretty good deckbuilding.

Let me just put my suggested version down:

Girt One-Tooth BG
Legendary Creature - Rat Warrior (U)
Immortalize (If this creature would die, you may exile it immortalized instead. This creature gets +1/+1 for each immortalized card you own with the same name.)
When Girt One-Tooth enters the battlefield, create two 1/1 black Rat Rogue creature tokens for each immortalized card you own named Girt One-Tooth. Those tokens have "This creature can't block."
Rats you control must be blocked if able.
2/1

This is possibly way too good in Limited, but consider the iterations and how it grows:
Iteration 1 - He's fodder. Obviously he's bretty gud if your one-drop was Typhoid Rats but most of the time he's here to trade. He's going to swing and he's going to die.
Iteration 2 - More concerning for your opponents. He's a 3/2, which is harder to block for even neutral returns, and he comes down with two more power. 5 power on the board is definitely a threat, but one that can still be picked apart with a bit of effort; blast Girt himself with a removal spell and suddenly the non-blocking 1/1s look a lot less terrifying, and a simple Pyroclasm makes it all go away.
Iteration 3 - Now he's back and he's pissed. A 4/3 that has to be blocked is going to eat up your chumps really quickly, and then there's the four 1/1s also to consider. He can easily finish games fast.
Iteration 4 - 5/4, six tokens, no escape from creature-to-creature combat. Oh God, we're all gonna die.

Two things that I believe to be true:

1. Girt One-Tooth was not the card to sell people on immortalize. And, going back to earlier comments in this thread, I think Girt is affecting perception of the immortalize mechanic more than I anticipated. It occurs to me that I'm really the only one who knows what immortalize is "supposed" to look like, so it's not entirely unfair that people are scratching their heads and wondering why I'm trying to promote some weenie / can't-block / pseudo-provoke mechanic as this major set hook. I think I need to start another thread with some more basic immortalize cards.
2. Girt One-Tooth is better than people think it is... probably. Mini-Lure abilities usually cost a lot, and this would be the cheapest card in Magic that just gives you that ability without needing to jump through any hoops. It's also in deathtouch colors, which I think makes it better still. It's a Spike card. I realized that about 20 posts ago, which is why I veered even further in the Spike direction. I think a lot of people have expectations about the "legendary feel", i.e. it's gotta be something that Timmy would like, and something that would play well in EDH. Yeah, this isn't either of those. And by doubling down on the Spike quotient, I'm doubling down on a different language for legendary creatures. In part, I'm fine with that. In other part, I should again probably have started with something in a more familiar design language.

EDIT: Also, thank you Ebline and void_nothing for some good ideas. I'll come back to Girt here after I reset the baseline for immortalize.

Yes I know it's only been a while, but list changes!



The Keeper of Progenitus is an all-star, absolute beast of a card. Yes, he isn't restricted to just my stuff, but I find myself tutoring for him very often. Helps in all sorts of situations, be it in an attempt to snowball out of control or rebuild after serious hate. And hey, at least I'm not helping blue/black.

Given the tutorable utility of the mana doubler, I figured I could use a tutorable piece of hate. Reclamation Sage has a good range (artifact/enchantment) for 3 mana, and this fits in the "this needs to be cheap" part of the deck. Acidic Slime had a short stint due to the added utility and nicer body for 2 mana extra, but I was never particularly psyched to see him. Sage's been better.

That needed a cut to make work, obviously. Ebline (many kudos for the insightful comments on this issue!) suggested Frontier Guide, and I begrudgingly agree - the ramp can be useful with spare mana while digging with massive draw or something, but on the whole it's too expensive to use as actual ramp while ramping. I still love the card to bits, and thought it would have a home here. Maybe some other time.

Also, just diming tutors. I wasn't running Primal Command, so now I'm running Primal Command. Why the Abundance cut? Imagine a 1v1 card substitution scenario. I'd be happier to go dig for a creature of choice for 5 mana (plus do something fun like gain 7 life) than filter my draws a bit for 4. Plus the Command can be used as a faux-Deglamer on all sorts of fun stuff. Just more utility in the end.

The second tweak is removing Omnath, Locus of Mana. He was never meant as a beatstick here, more as a mana bubble and attack deterrent. Whilst nice if I managed to hit a token maker with mana stored up, or someone accidentally left themselves wide open, on the whole the game plan would be better off with some dig instead. As such, enter Well of Knowledge, a thing I used to run in my Hugmnath list. This will benefit you far more than it benefits anybody else, and offers an absolutely crazy level of dig.

Nemesis Mask never really did anything either. I once managed to pull off a hilarious win where I put that on Patron and swung with him and a beefed up Omnath, but that's about it. Token-wise, it's better to make the tokens bigger than to connect with a few more 1/1s than you otherwise would have. Coat of Arms is about as good as it gets, just hold it up until you're reasonably sure you can blow everybody up or it may backfire a bit.

I think I'm getting relatively close to a proper list here. I'm enjoying playing this dude more than I should, I might just make it happen in paper and take it to my playgroups. Feedback would be really appreciated before I blow money on cards