Oh, look, it is this thread again. Three things in life you can count on are death, taxes, and people complaining about combos in EDH. There has been some thread about this since before the Commander subforum was created, back when we only had topics in the Casual section.
Combos are a part of magic. Get over it.
You are responsible for cultivating the environment you want to play in. Be a poaitive influence rather than a cry baby who takes its ball amd goes home when it doesn't get its way. Cut toxic people from your life if they are unrrasonable.
Zealous Persecution was good in Black White Tokens in Modern for a time. It is not good against most of the field in Commander.
Especially when much of the "tricks" in this deck revolve arpund giving our team fear/menace/prevent all damage delt to them. That stuff is all a lot better.
I am with you. We can agree to disagree. I appreciate sharing ideas in a civil way, so we can improve as players.
Regarding scapegoat, I aagree that it does help combat a wider range of sweepers. From -x/-x, to exile, to tuck boad wipes. All of which are more common in the last 5+ years and that Boros Charm fails to answer while sitting dead in your hand.
I like the casual inclusion of Bolas's Citadel. Even without Necropotence to rip lands off the top, the ability to cast spells for life in a deck with a low curve is nasty.
As for scapegoat, I have a lot of experience using it against fairly good decks. The one mana per turn is nothing and doesn't slow you down. I have never cast it against a wrath and still lost the game that I can remember. It has won me at least two games. I actually tutored for it once just to be certain I would win since I didn't need a finisher at the time. And whaddaya know, somebody cast a wrath which I stopped, winning me the game. In my experience, the most common reason this deck loses is wraths, and stopping one increases the odds of winning drastically. I will never cut scapegoat.
Thanks for the reply, and I would like to respond to a few key points:
First of all, the list you linked to is quite unimpressive to me. I do not know how you figure that it is the most competitive build of Edgar Markov. Combo does not mean more competitive. From reading the primer, I looks like it is trying to do what other decks do better, and by that I mean with fewer cards, fewer points of failure, costing less mana to pull off, and often with control elements to protect their combo which Edgar lacks. I would much rather play Kess, Zur, or Breya versions of Doomsday than Edgar Markov. Moreover, it feels like a waste of the Commander itself. Outside of Razaketh, the Foulblooded, there is no reason to use Edgar over the other options. If people enjoy it, then great, but if I want to play combo competitively, which I do, then I have better options. I play Edgar Markov as the most competitive agro deck I have ever seen. It can straight beat decks down in no time.
Second, concerning Scapegoat, it still resets your board. The point of a wrath is to clear the board, and without any haste enablers (which this deck does not have), you still have to recast your hand of Vampires and want for another round at the table and more potential Wrath effects to resolve without Scapegoat in your hand any longer. How is that better than something like Boros Charm? I know that the difference between one and two mana is a big deal in competitive magic, but I would think that the difference between surviving a Wrath while the rest of the table lost their board and having to recast my hand and wasting a full round at the table is a larger setback. Maybe I am wrong.
I have returned to this thread after several months to maybe a year (has it been that long? I don't think I have posted much since Rivals of Ixalan.)
Well, last I remember reading, Scapegoat was a card being tested. What has the verdict been? Is it really all that good, especially in a more competitive meta?
I like keeping up with the most competitive form of the list even though I am using a more casual build. I have actually powered my list down, cutting fast mana rocks and cheap tutors and replacing them with Burst draw and color fixing 2cmc rocks. In my playgroup of my wife and friends, Edgar was becoming opressively fast. Now it is a threat which wins some and loses some. The inclusion of the new Liliana and Dolman Gate since I was last here is interesting and has been added to my buy list.
I hope you reopen this thread wherever we all end up going once MtGSalvation shuts down. If possible, please link us to a new thread when it is available.
Edit: How could I forget Everflowing Chalice? That is another card which works with proliferate triggers. Cast it for 2 mana and one charge counter, then watch it tick up.
/edit
Yeah, the "Runic Repition" deck list you can find here (after doing a search) has a lot of great ideas.
I was wondering how you were doing for card draw.
My deck has a lot of digging effects. I love Impulse, Peer Through Depths, and Supreme Will. They all have a single colored pip (as opposed to Steam Augury and Prophetic Bolt). Thirst for Knowledge and Compulsive Research are also great ways to dig while costing a single pip of blue.
Muddle the Mixture is a fantastic card. It can simply be a 2cmc hard counter to protect a combo or Mizzix from removal, but the fact that it can find Merchant Scroll is huge. Merchant Scroll finds Intuition, and Intuition finds Runinc Repeition + Mystic Retrival + Time Warp. It does not matter what they put in your hand, as you can just cycle all three and go infinite.
Depending on your play groups, another piece of tech whuch I learned years ago, while playing Vintage, is Pyroblast and Red Elemental Blast. One mana hard counters which protect your combos have won their fair share of counter wars. It is the same reason Swan Song is good.
I would rather have Negate and Arcane Denial over X counterspells as well. Not only are they 2cmc hard counters, but they are also single pip counters which add to your combo protection with Mizzix online.
The thing is, even in the early game, it is worth casting your cheap dig spells instead of saving them for when Mizzix is in play. As I mentioned before, I realized that I only needed 3 or 4 experience to combo off, which means that I did not have to hold my 1cmc or 2cmc dig spells. I just used them to dig into my tutors/combos/removal.
Also, even with just 3 experience, Firemind's Foresight is reduced to 2RU and adds that 4th experience needed to pull off the Reiterate combo. So, Muddle the Mixture can also find Merchant Scoll, which can find Firemind's Foresight if you do not have Intuition.
Personal Tutor is another tutor to find Merchant Scroll and thus your combo. Personal Tutor can also find Enter the Infinite, which I mentioned earlier can be looted to the graveyard and cast with Mizzix's Mastery. I have set up turn 3 and turn 4 wins with play lines like that. Turn 1 tutor, turn two mana crypt or sol ring into a cheap dig spell that pitches EtI, and turn 3/4 Mizzix Mastery. Draw the deck, free/cheap rocks into lab man and free/cheap draw with Free/cheap counter back up. Mizzix not even needed. Just "oops, I win."
To the mods: OP last updated their list on May 30th, so even though the last post was in Feb., I do not see this as a necro-post. I also wanted to post before this place closes down.
This is my Mizzix deck, looking for some suggestion or any helpful changes.
My build is based on executing one of three main combos:
1) Mystic Retrieval + Runic Repetition = Replaying any spell. If that spell is Time Warp, then I can win with Guttersnipe or various other inevitable cards which check each time a spell is played, which will be 3 or more each of my infinite turns. Heck, you can even just drclare drawing into lab man eventually and just playing draw-go until you deck yourself. You do NOT need Mizzix to go off with this combo either, she just helps make it a lot cheaper once you get to three experience. Simply having Sapphire Medallion and Arcane Melee (for example) will get you to a cost reduction of 3 and makes the "combo" only cost colored pips. Jace's Sanctum, Baral, Chief of Compliance and other cards are all effective at helping Mizzix and helping you get to the magic number of 3 or 4 that you need to go off.
2) Like you, I run the Reiterate + a ritual combos. As I said in #1, I do not even need Mizzix if I can get the cost reduced to 4.
Lands Cascading Cataracts looks terrible. It puts you down one mana in exchange for filtering colorless into colored mana. Is that ever really worth it?
Command Tower, Forbidden Orchard and the like are not really needed in two colors. In fact, in the strong lists I have seen, they tend to take advantage of Back to Basics and Blood Moon while really only playing basics and fetch lands. The fetch lands do not care about Back to Basics, and with only 4 mountains in those decks, they are perfectly fine with Blood Moon turning future fetch lands into Mountains.
Saprazzan Cove seems like it could be fun/interesting tech with proliferate cards, but Mirrodin's Core cannot add more than one counter per activation. Even with proliferate, how useful is Saprazzan Cove? It comes into play tapped and still does not add mana until you have put your first counter on it and untapped it. That is super slow and heavily dependent on proliferate action to be of any use. You also only seem to have Fuel for the Cause, Tezzeret's Gambit, and Inexorable Tide to help with that. Flux Channeler, Contentious Plan, and Steady Progress are quite good if you are trying to go that route . I am also surprised to see that you do not run Coalition Relic, as that is really nice with proliferate. Much nicer than the land Saprazzan Cove.
The rest seem fine. Fetch lands would be better/faster than Evolving Wilds, Myriad Landscape, Grixis Panorama and the like, but budgets are something we all live with. Honestly, the common tapped lands like Izzet Guildgate are better than Evolving Wilds and Terramorphic Expanse (except in the niche situation where you have Chromatic Lantern). Even then, this is not a deck which should want/care about Chromatic Lantern to begin with. I would just rather have access to both colors through my guildgate coming into play tapped than fetching a basic... if I have to live with a land entering the battlefield tapped. My deck is mostly just fetch lands, basics and a few non basics like Spirebluff Canal and Sulfur Falls.
Your deck looks like a lot of fun and has nice ideas which I will steal from and look for cards when I am out flipping through binders at an LGS. one thing Ilove about Mizzix is how many cards which do not have a home anywhere else can be very powerful in Mizzix. Something I learned while playing Mizzix and that otherpeople brought up is that the only X counterspell I would play is Spellburst. There are enough hard counters out there which are not dead when Mizzix is not in play.
Crush of Tentacles is a card I like a lot. Sometimes you just need a reset button, and I have even won games off of the Octopus token a few times.
Deserted Temple + Rings of Brighthearth is an infinite mana combo with any land that produces 4+ mana. For example, Liliana of the Dark Realms ultimate means any swamp can go infinite. Gaea's Cradle with 4+ creatures and so forth. Cabal Coffers needs to produce 6 black to also pay for its activation cost, as well as Crypt of Agadeem, but you get the point by now.
I wonder how Pokken feels abput Strip Mine in many decks. I have cut it and Wasreland from all of my decks as well.
In my nearly 12 years of playing EDH/Commander (since late 2007), neither land has ever mattered to me. There is no land in Magic which scares me to the point of needing either card. Not Gaea's Cradle, Dark Depths, Maze's End, Academy Ruins, or anything else you can think of. I have never lost BECAUSE of those lands. Lots of green mana doesn't matter, just stopping the Tooth and Nail or whatever they want to cast with it. Academy Ruins doesn't matter with graveyard hate. Merit Lage doesn't have Hexproof/Shroud, and Either pair of boots should be removed on sight in most cases anyway. The list goes on.
When we want to talk about the Tower, it is more useful in my Athreos (Shadowborn Apostle) deck than either Strip Mine or Wasteland have EVER been in Commander for 12 years.
I learned quickly that I was not cracking my Wasteland in each game I played, and noticed that the colorless was worse for me than any other land would have been.
My mono black Kagemaro, First to Suffer deck also loves the Tower as well.
I agree that it is overrated, and I also agree that people run too many colorless sources inntheir mono colored and two color decks and that Tower is often one of those cards which should be replaced, but it does have its place in some decks.
The answer to this question is something which has been hashed over countless times in various ways. I just went back to a post i made a year and a half ago that got my most up votes here at MTG Salvation and feel that it is just as relevant in context.
Commander appeals to players on so many levels.
In my 13+ years of experience, I have seen patterns and stories retell themselves from all over. Many old school players started with no idea how to play, just a starter deck and a rule book they didn't understand. Countless newbies make the same mistake. I cannot tell you how often I have seen someone with a 73 card three color deck with 16 or 17 lands. They began with some theme deck, bought boosters, added cards they liked and "made room for them" by cutting lands, then continued to pack more cool stuff in until it became the dumpster fire in front of them.
I cannot tell you how many times someone has seen my Magic: the Gathering pin on my bag at work or on the street and told me how they play magic too and that they beat all their friends with their samurai deck or red burn deck... and we are not talking about an optimized sly deck. We are talking something that has Volcanic Hammer and Lava Axe or whatever some 5-15 year old burn spell is from when they started playing.
Not everyone who plays this game is a fanatic who lurks forums, reads article, watches YouTube videos and strives to improve their play. Many of them just like to play a card game with their friends.
Commander appeals to Timmy who loves to cast big creatures and finally has a format where games realistically get to turns where they can actually cast them.
Commander appeals to Vorthos, who loves to tell a story with their deck.
Commander appeal to Spike who likes to break it in half and pretend they are the biggest fish in their little bowl.
Commander appeals to Johnny, who is forced to only have one of each cards and tries to assemble their crazy combo.
Commander is where the guy who wants to use skull clamp can without it being over powered.
Commander is where someone like my wife can get a pre-con deck and build it on a budget over time and watch it grow into something all her own and be proud of it every step of the way.
To expand a little, Magic has always been a game where both cards and decks are designed to fight the inherent randomness of the game. That is why, when allowed 4x copies of a card, most cards are played with those 4 copies, and when there are fewer than 4, there is a reason/rational for it.
If I could play multiple copies of Thrumming Stone in my Atheros (Shadowborn Apostle) deck, I would. There is no other card in magic like it. Not even something similar. As a result, the deck is forced to play things like Secret Salvage and Remembrance as alternative ways of pulling copies from the library.
Even in 60 card 4x copies magic, decks regularly play redundant copies of the most important cards. Look at modern 8 Whack or other decks like 8 Post and 8 Rack. They get those names because a redundant version ofa powerful card was printed and they upped the count of said effect to its limit.
I was told a story about how the first best deck in the history of magic was back before the 4 card limit and decks were only 40 cards. The deck was about 18 Black Lotus, 18 or so Wheel of Fortune and about 4 or so Feldon's Cane. You just cast your free mana and wheel over and over again, eventually using the cane to shuffle your graveyard back into your library and kept going until your opponent lost. You won every time you went first or they passed he turn. That, I am told, is what inspired the 4x rule. Well, the next best decks just ran 4x the power 9 and mostly did the same thing along with Wheel of Fortune and Braingeyser as a finishers and still inning on turn one, or if it was passed to them. This essentially means that they needed a restricted list, else the game would stagnate.
Singleton is good for Commander and god for Magic. I cannot tell you how many LGS locations benefited from Commander and having a sudden demand for bulk cards. I know that my friends and I scoured countless boxes of cards which were once rarely touched for months or even years. Boxes were pulled out of storage, quarter and dollar rare piles were rifled through just looking for hidden gems and cards which finally found a home.
Redundant cards with a twist or higher casting cost suddenly became useful. Some cards which were unplayable jank have become staples and powerhouses. The higher life totals and longer game length resulted in turns where you can actually expect to cast something with a cmc over 4 and have it matter. Heck, 8 drops and even 12 drop cards were being cast as blow out spells. X spells were able to be cast are crazy high values you once only dreamed of, or were only able to through an infinite mana combo, now were just hard cast at 10+.
This is the format where people like to talk about how many non-infnite tokes or creatures they have had, cards they have drawn, or how much non-infinite life they have gained or damage they have done. Some of that is inspired by the deep card pool that we are FORCED to choose from rather than just playing 60x4 casual magic.
I could go on, as you can imagine. Thanks for reading this far.
At the risk of echoing what others have said, I always felt the card was useful but overrated. I only use it in a few decks which it can really benefit from it. The same is true with the mana rock Thought Vessel. The decks in which these cards are good in are thankful to have them, and in all others they would be better served by something else. I only own three Reliquary Towers as a result.
I have been a member here for almost 13 years (My profile says 12 years and 10 months). I have written primers, posted tournament results, helped new players, had heated but respectful arguments, made friends, and countless memories in that time. I went from spending my time in the Standard and draft threads to my time in the casual threads to help new players and write primers for kitchen table magic before the "Elder Dragon Highlander: There Can be Only One Hundred" article brought the attention to the masses. It is not the game which has changed and shaped my life, but the people... the community.
With my job, I do not get to frequent these forums as often as I did in my youth, so this is news to me about two weeks after the announcement, and it is devastating. Despite what I have written, I feel at a loss for words and will need time to process this.
Thank you. I look forward to news on where we go from here.
3. Anson Maddocks - Not my cup of tea, but at least there's enough art in MTG to match it with.
4. Eric Deschamps - Great artist, but this one's a little too generic for me.
I love the modern card frame and the art/flavor of the final version. I hope that someday it is reprinted in a non-foil version which is easier to get hold of.
I live in Lima, Peru. It is not easy to get older cards, so I have the less popular Anson Maddocks version.
I only have one deck for it, Mizzix of the Izmagnus.
One of the nicer lands given to us by Commander specific products.
This is way overrated by the community.
Comes into play tapped, and requires a three mana investment when you concider that you wont be tapping it for mana either.
It is also only good in one or two color decks.
All of my copies are in my binder, as they were never good enough even for my mono black deck which counts how many swamps are in play.
I can see how in a duel with a mono blue control deck it can be useful, but even in multiplayer, you are rarely leaving mana up to do nothing. At least in my blue decks, I plan on casting instants like Thirst for knowledge and Intuition, or at least Think Twice and the like rather than breaking a Myriad Landscape.
Every Commander product until 2018 had interesting decks. At the very least, they had interesting alternate commanders.
This was the first year I did not buy any of the decks. I hope it is the only year that happens.
According to The Command Zone, Sol Ring is the most valuable card in the set now. Let that sink in. They are the ones who try really hard to avoid negativity on their podcast, and even they couldn't avoid the truth of how bad the 2018 product is/was.
Combos are a part of magic. Get over it.
You are responsible for cultivating the environment you want to play in. Be a poaitive influence rather than a cry baby who takes its ball amd goes home when it doesn't get its way. Cut toxic people from your life if they are unrrasonable.
Especially when much of the "tricks" in this deck revolve arpund giving our team fear/menace/prevent all damage delt to them. That stuff is all a lot better.
Regarding scapegoat, I aagree that it does help combat a wider range of sweepers. From -x/-x, to exile, to tuck boad wipes. All of which are more common in the last 5+ years and that Boros Charm fails to answer while sitting dead in your hand.
I like the casual inclusion of Bolas's Citadel. Even without Necropotence to rip lands off the top, the ability to cast spells for life in a deck with a low curve is nasty.
Thanks for the reply, and I would like to respond to a few key points:
First of all, the list you linked to is quite unimpressive to me. I do not know how you figure that it is the most competitive build of Edgar Markov. Combo does not mean more competitive. From reading the primer, I looks like it is trying to do what other decks do better, and by that I mean with fewer cards, fewer points of failure, costing less mana to pull off, and often with control elements to protect their combo which Edgar lacks. I would much rather play Kess, Zur, or Breya versions of Doomsday than Edgar Markov. Moreover, it feels like a waste of the Commander itself. Outside of Razaketh, the Foulblooded, there is no reason to use Edgar over the other options. If people enjoy it, then great, but if I want to play combo competitively, which I do, then I have better options. I play Edgar Markov as the most competitive agro deck I have ever seen. It can straight beat decks down in no time.
Second, concerning Scapegoat, it still resets your board. The point of a wrath is to clear the board, and without any haste enablers (which this deck does not have), you still have to recast your hand of Vampires and want for another round at the table and more potential Wrath effects to resolve without Scapegoat in your hand any longer. How is that better than something like Boros Charm? I know that the difference between one and two mana is a big deal in competitive magic, but I would think that the difference between surviving a Wrath while the rest of the table lost their board and having to recast my hand and wasting a full round at the table is a larger setback. Maybe I am wrong.
Well, last I remember reading, Scapegoat was a card being tested. What has the verdict been? Is it really all that good, especially in a more competitive meta?
I like keeping up with the most competitive form of the list even though I am using a more casual build. I have actually powered my list down, cutting fast mana rocks and cheap tutors and replacing them with Burst draw and color fixing 2cmc rocks. In my playgroup of my wife and friends, Edgar was becoming opressively fast. Now it is a threat which wins some and loses some. The inclusion of the new Liliana and Dolman Gate since I was last here is interesting and has been added to my buy list.
I hope you reopen this thread wherever we all end up going once MtGSalvation shuts down. If possible, please link us to a new thread when it is available.
Edit: How could I forget Everflowing Chalice? That is another card which works with proliferate triggers. Cast it for 2 mana and one charge counter, then watch it tick up.
/edit
Yeah, the "Runic Repition" deck list you can find here (after doing a search) has a lot of great ideas.
I was wondering how you were doing for card draw.
My deck has a lot of digging effects. I love Impulse, Peer Through Depths, and Supreme Will. They all have a single colored pip (as opposed to Steam Augury and Prophetic Bolt). Thirst for Knowledge and Compulsive Research are also great ways to dig while costing a single pip of blue.
Muddle the Mixture is a fantastic card. It can simply be a 2cmc hard counter to protect a combo or Mizzix from removal, but the fact that it can find Merchant Scroll is huge. Merchant Scroll finds Intuition, and Intuition finds Runinc Repeition + Mystic Retrival + Time Warp. It does not matter what they put in your hand, as you can just cycle all three and go infinite.
Depending on your play groups, another piece of tech whuch I learned years ago, while playing Vintage, is Pyroblast and Red Elemental Blast. One mana hard counters which protect your combos have won their fair share of counter wars. It is the same reason Swan Song is good.
I would rather have Negate and Arcane Denial over X counterspells as well. Not only are they 2cmc hard counters, but they are also single pip counters which add to your combo protection with Mizzix online.
The thing is, even in the early game, it is worth casting your cheap dig spells instead of saving them for when Mizzix is in play. As I mentioned before, I realized that I only needed 3 or 4 experience to combo off, which means that I did not have to hold my 1cmc or 2cmc dig spells. I just used them to dig into my tutors/combos/removal.
Also, even with just 3 experience, Firemind's Foresight is reduced to 2RU and adds that 4th experience needed to pull off the Reiterate combo. So, Muddle the Mixture can also find Merchant Scoll, which can find Firemind's Foresight if you do not have Intuition.
Personal Tutor is another tutor to find Merchant Scroll and thus your combo. Personal Tutor can also find Enter the Infinite, which I mentioned earlier can be looted to the graveyard and cast with Mizzix's Mastery. I have set up turn 3 and turn 4 wins with play lines like that. Turn 1 tutor, turn two mana crypt or sol ring into a cheap dig spell that pitches EtI, and turn 3/4 Mizzix Mastery. Draw the deck, free/cheap rocks into lab man and free/cheap draw with Free/cheap counter back up. Mizzix not even needed. Just "oops, I win."
I hope it helps. Keep me (us) updated.
My build is based on executing one of three main combos:
1) Mystic Retrieval + Runic Repetition = Replaying any spell. If that spell is Time Warp, then I can win with Guttersnipe or various other inevitable cards which check each time a spell is played, which will be 3 or more each of my infinite turns. Heck, you can even just drclare drawing into lab man eventually and just playing draw-go until you deck yourself. You do NOT need Mizzix to go off with this combo either, she just helps make it a lot cheaper once you get to three experience. Simply having Sapphire Medallion and Arcane Melee (for example) will get you to a cost reduction of 3 and makes the "combo" only cost colored pips. Jace's Sanctum, Baral, Chief of Compliance and other cards are all effective at helping Mizzix and helping you get to the magic number of 3 or 4 that you need to go off.
2) Like you, I run the Reiterate + a ritual combos. As I said in #1, I do not even need Mizzix if I can get the cost reduced to 4.
3) Enter the Infinite is also a flavor win in my opinion. It has a quote from the guild leader Niv-Mizzet and sets up a Laboratory Maniac win. Draw your deck, cast free and cheap mana rocks, then free/cheap draw to win the game and have Force of Will + Pact of Negation and Misdirection as free Counterspell backup.
===============================
Feedback on your list:
Lands
Cascading Cataracts looks terrible. It puts you down one mana in exchange for filtering colorless into colored mana. Is that ever really worth it?
Command Tower, Forbidden Orchard and the like are not really needed in two colors. In fact, in the strong lists I have seen, they tend to take advantage of Back to Basics and Blood Moon while really only playing basics and fetch lands. The fetch lands do not care about Back to Basics, and with only 4 mountains in those decks, they are perfectly fine with Blood Moon turning future fetch lands into Mountains.
Saprazzan Cove seems like it could be fun/interesting tech with proliferate cards, but Mirrodin's Core cannot add more than one counter per activation. Even with proliferate, how useful is Saprazzan Cove? It comes into play tapped and still does not add mana until you have put your first counter on it and untapped it. That is super slow and heavily dependent on proliferate action to be of any use. You also only seem to have Fuel for the Cause, Tezzeret's Gambit, and Inexorable Tide to help with that. Flux Channeler, Contentious Plan, and Steady Progress are quite good if you are trying to go that route . I am also surprised to see that you do not run Coalition Relic, as that is really nice with proliferate. Much nicer than the land Saprazzan Cove.
The rest seem fine. Fetch lands would be better/faster than Evolving Wilds, Myriad Landscape, Grixis Panorama and the like, but budgets are something we all live with. Honestly, the common tapped lands like Izzet Guildgate are better than Evolving Wilds and Terramorphic Expanse (except in the niche situation where you have Chromatic Lantern). Even then, this is not a deck which should want/care about Chromatic Lantern to begin with. I would just rather have access to both colors through my guildgate coming into play tapped than fetching a basic... if I have to live with a land entering the battlefield tapped. My deck is mostly just fetch lands, basics and a few non basics like Spirebluff Canal and Sulfur Falls.
Your deck looks like a lot of fun and has nice ideas which I will steal from and look for cards when I am out flipping through binders at an LGS. one thing Ilove about Mizzix is how many cards which do not have a home anywhere else can be very powerful in Mizzix. Something I learned while playing Mizzix and that otherpeople brought up is that the only X counterspell I would play is Spellburst. There are enough hard counters out there which are not dead when Mizzix is not in play.
Crush of Tentacles is a card I like a lot. Sometimes you just need a reset button, and I have even won games off of the Octopus token a few times.
Deserted Temple + Rings of Brighthearth is an infinite mana combo with any land that produces 4+ mana. For example, Liliana of the Dark Realms ultimate means any swamp can go infinite. Gaea's Cradle with 4+ creatures and so forth. Cabal Coffers needs to produce 6 black to also pay for its activation cost, as well as Crypt of Agadeem, but you get the point by now.
In my nearly 12 years of playing EDH/Commander (since late 2007), neither land has ever mattered to me. There is no land in Magic which scares me to the point of needing either card. Not Gaea's Cradle, Dark Depths, Maze's End, Academy Ruins, or anything else you can think of. I have never lost BECAUSE of those lands. Lots of green mana doesn't matter, just stopping the Tooth and Nail or whatever they want to cast with it. Academy Ruins doesn't matter with graveyard hate. Merit Lage doesn't have Hexproof/Shroud, and Either pair of boots should be removed on sight in most cases anyway. The list goes on.
When we want to talk about the Tower, it is more useful in my Athreos (Shadowborn Apostle) deck than either Strip Mine or Wasteland have EVER been in Commander for 12 years.
I learned quickly that I was not cracking my Wasteland in each game I played, and noticed that the colorless was worse for me than any other land would have been.
My mono black Kagemaro, First to Suffer deck also loves the Tower as well.
I agree that it is overrated, and I also agree that people run too many colorless sources inntheir mono colored and two color decks and that Tower is often one of those cards which should be replaced, but it does have its place in some decks.
To expand a little, Magic has always been a game where both cards and decks are designed to fight the inherent randomness of the game. That is why, when allowed 4x copies of a card, most cards are played with those 4 copies, and when there are fewer than 4, there is a reason/rational for it.
If I could play multiple copies of Thrumming Stone in my Atheros (Shadowborn Apostle) deck, I would. There is no other card in magic like it. Not even something similar. As a result, the deck is forced to play things like Secret Salvage and Remembrance as alternative ways of pulling copies from the library.
Even in 60 card 4x copies magic, decks regularly play redundant copies of the most important cards. Look at modern 8 Whack or other decks like 8 Post and 8 Rack. They get those names because a redundant version ofa powerful card was printed and they upped the count of said effect to its limit.
I was told a story about how the first best deck in the history of magic was back before the 4 card limit and decks were only 40 cards. The deck was about 18 Black Lotus, 18 or so Wheel of Fortune and about 4 or so Feldon's Cane. You just cast your free mana and wheel over and over again, eventually using the cane to shuffle your graveyard back into your library and kept going until your opponent lost. You won every time you went first or they passed he turn. That, I am told, is what inspired the 4x rule. Well, the next best decks just ran 4x the power 9 and mostly did the same thing along with Wheel of Fortune and Braingeyser as a finishers and still inning on turn one, or if it was passed to them. This essentially means that they needed a restricted list, else the game would stagnate.
Singleton is good for Commander and god for Magic. I cannot tell you how many LGS locations benefited from Commander and having a sudden demand for bulk cards. I know that my friends and I scoured countless boxes of cards which were once rarely touched for months or even years. Boxes were pulled out of storage, quarter and dollar rare piles were rifled through just looking for hidden gems and cards which finally found a home.
Redundant cards with a twist or higher casting cost suddenly became useful. Some cards which were unplayable jank have become staples and powerhouses. The higher life totals and longer game length resulted in turns where you can actually expect to cast something with a cmc over 4 and have it matter. Heck, 8 drops and even 12 drop cards were being cast as blow out spells. X spells were able to be cast are crazy high values you once only dreamed of, or were only able to through an infinite mana combo, now were just hard cast at 10+.
This is the format where people like to talk about how many non-infnite tokes or creatures they have had, cards they have drawn, or how much non-infinite life they have gained or damage they have done. Some of that is inspired by the deep card pool that we are FORCED to choose from rather than just playing 60x4 casual magic.
I could go on, as you can imagine. Thanks for reading this far.
With my job, I do not get to frequent these forums as often as I did in my youth, so this is news to me about two weeks after the announcement, and it is devastating. Despite what I have written, I feel at a loss for words and will need time to process this.
Thank you. I look forward to news on where we go from here.
-Drain Life
I love the modern card frame and the art/flavor of the final version. I hope that someday it is reprinted in a non-foil version which is easier to get hold of.
I live in Lima, Peru. It is not easy to get older cards, so I have the less popular Anson Maddocks version.
I only have one deck for it, Mizzix of the Izmagnus.
This is way overrated by the community.
Comes into play tapped, and requires a three mana investment when you concider that you wont be tapping it for mana either.
It is also only good in one or two color decks.
All of my copies are in my binder, as they were never good enough even for my mono black deck which counts how many swamps are in play.
I can see how in a duel with a mono blue control deck it can be useful, but even in multiplayer, you are rarely leaving mana up to do nothing. At least in my blue decks, I plan on casting instants like Thirst for knowledge and Intuition, or at least Think Twice and the like rather than breaking a Myriad Landscape.
This was the first year I did not buy any of the decks. I hope it is the only year that happens.
According to The Command Zone, Sol Ring is the most valuable card in the set now. Let that sink in. They are the ones who try really hard to avoid negativity on their podcast, and even they couldn't avoid the truth of how bad the 2018 product is/was.