Thanks to both of you, I had a very hard timing googling an answer. I figured this was the case but the wording for extra turn spells "takes an extra turn after this one" made me unsure, though I thought the "NEXT untap step" was the key. And thank you to BlazingRagnarok Stonehorn Dignitaryis also one I may have questioned and it fits right into a deck trying to multiply ETB triggers.
I've tried to google this but the right search terms are difficult to determine. If I cast many of the creatures or effects with "tap target permanent. It doesn't untap during its controller's next untap step" in the same turn, will these effects stack so that a creature would not be able to untap for several turns? I would think not, but I didn't think extra turn spells stacked and the wording seems similar.
Thank you for your help. I'm considering putting a Panharmonicon in the new Atraxa, Praetors' Voice deck when it comes out. I'm just trying to find ways to make it work.
You can look at the thread I recently posted asking a lot of questions about panharmonicon, it goes pretty deep.
I'm making my first deck built around panharmonicon using [card]Sydri, Galvanic Geni/card] mostly to animate it for more easy copying/cloning. I lose a lot going into green, some great +1/+1 and stuff like [card]aura shards[/cards] but I lose a lot not going into red also. You can do a lot with panharmonicon.
I think I noticed an error in the decklist by function section: the protection says it has 6 cards but 7 are listed. I don't think drownyard temple is supposed to be there.
I don't know if the great aurora is perfect for your deck, but it sure sounds fun.
White and red suffer from early decisions made about the color pie and the way normal 1 v 1 works.
Because white has the most answers to problems, it has the worst CA and card selection.
Red's agression and damage dealing power simply aren't as effectively in a multiplayer format where people start at 40 life and it's also generally poor at CA.
In most formats this isn't a big deal as you can mix colors freely, but with color identity, mono white, mono white and Boros commanders suffer. And due to the average length of EDH games card advantage is MUCH more important.
WotC is aware of this and attempting to fix it, hence red's impulsive card draw which is a nice step. It seems they haven't found a CA ability as clean that feels "white" - it can draw cards based off playing small creatures but that is limited. Commanders like Depala are an attempt to give Boros much needed CA - may not be that strong now, but she'll only get better as more dwarves and vehicles are printed (possibly much stronger).
This does not explain the other oft-mentioned problem, the seeming sameness of most Boros commanders. This seems odd, as many people have listed quite a few red and white cards with interesting effects that could go on a legendary creature but they still mostly print the same attack focused commanders. I would suggest that the people who came up with these good ideas see if they can get them in front of Rosewater's eyes (as he is the most readily available route to the hivemind at R&D).
I am confused by much of WotC's behavior about legendary creatures (and other things) - they seem to want and try to listen (and have incentive to do so) but things like the werewolf legend and Ludevic baffle me. Rosewater's explanation for the werewolf being them misunderstanding and thinking the fans just wanted the cycle complete and not something for EDH seems ludicrous - he wasn't as involved with Ludevic and the explanation there makes somewhat more sense especially when you read creative's take on Ludevic. I know they have a lot of niche fan groups to appease but I would think they would be better (especially with EDH given its popularity).
They are trying to improve and experimenting, but unfortunately they work several years ahead so we may not see the results of their attempts to solve these problems for a long time. So any of your ideas they read now and like (hopefully they have people reading these forums) may take more than 2 years to materialize - but they may happen. I suspect it may take a while for white and red to get significantly better in EDH but I have more hope for more interesting Boros commanders in the near future.
I really do love cards that are pretty much social experiments.
This is why this card is so great. A lot of people point out how the players you target will team up on you. But the situation becomes similar to a prisoner's dilemma situation (with the potential added complication if yet anger player). As was said later, the player going last has no obligation to uphold deals.
Also, even if the rational answer is to team up against the person who cast the spell, you so seldomky get the chance to thoroughly screw someone over and people are underestimating the fun and likelihood of people doing so.
And it's just a great political card.
I'm glad that WotC is willing to make cards like this.
Oh, to e early poster who replied criticizing the card like people would a constructed card ("strictly worse", "serious constructed play") who got so many people to reply to him: very good troll, you got way more people to respond than I would have thought. At least I really hope it was a troll.
If a creature enters the battlefield from the graveyard, say by the effects of grave betrayal or demon of the dark schemes will any enter the battlefield effects of the creature trigger or do they only trigger when cast? Similarly, will they cause panharmonicon to trigger?
I have to admit there are some cards I'd love to play more than once. Not necessarily because of their power, but because their effect is so unique and so build-around in nature that I'd love to center a deck more strongly around it. Not every effect in the game has been printed in enough variations to be viable in a Singleton format, nor are they all available on legendary creatures. Paradox Haze for a deck that centers around upkeep effects is a good example of what I mean.
Of course, the Singleton format is a core part of EDH's identity. If you most enjoy building consistent decks with playsets (nothing wrong with that!), this may simply not be the format for you.
I have the exact same idea of making a deck built around paradox haze and upkeep effects - it's one of e cards I had in mind in my above post with the idea of allowing cards other than legendary creatures start in the command zone.
This would no longer be EDH/commander, so different that you couldn't even really call it a variant. But there's no reason not to try a new format like this with your friends - one of the best things about magic is the pretty much infinite ways it can be played. I enjoy coming up with formats and in general find people more hesitant than I'd like to experiment and make house rules.
I've thought of somewhat similar formats. I love EDH for its union of consistency- you always have your general - and variance - 100 card decks. But you can do anything. People have 60 card decks, 4 copies of a card deeply embedded in their minds, but these are just the choices that were made early on (not even the original choices). Why not 90 card decks with 3 copies of cards? Or 100 card decks with 5 copies? The numbers are arbitrary and it would be interesting to see how these different "formats" played out. Magic Duels I understand is based on rarity allowing you to have 4 copies of a common, 3 uncommmons, 2 rares and 1 mythic (or something like that, I had the idea I listed which they happened to also figure out since it's rather obvious).
These are just simple changes - you could make far more radical changes. I think you should go ahead and use your idea with your friends - if you enjoy it make a website about it. It's always possible (if unlikely) that it could take off and become a new format. But it won't be or replace EDH whose singleton nature is integral to the format.
There are smaller changes that could be variants of commander. Before partner came out I had a similar idea where you were allowed to have a second commander but the color identity of your "sub-commander" only gave you access to cards of both it AND your main commander's color - for example and for simplicity a monowhite commander with a mono black sub-commander could play white cards, white/black cards or cards with white/black hybrid mana. Maybe you also require the sub-commander to share at least one color with the main commander. I also like the idea of allowing a non-creature to co-exist in the command zone that you can also build your deck around but a lot of cards would be too powerful to do this with - something people can work out with their playgroup but hard to make a comprehensive rules list for.
I also like the idea of having a second small (maybe 10 cards) deck that you draw from in addition to your normal draw for the first turns. This deck would contain only ramp - people love to ramp early on and often people get an early head start by happening to draw their ramp in the beginning and this ramp is often dead in the mid to late game, so putting it all in the second deck would alleviate some variance, allow people to get to the mid-game faster (if this is what they wish) and equally while opening up more space for "real" cards in your main deck. I have some other really weird ideas involving multiple decks but I haven't worked it all out yet.
Anyway, I could go on and on (an additional 25 cards but only for "staple" cards - possibly allow 2 copies of "staple" cards), the point is don't be afraid to experiment and play how YOU want to play, but don't expect commander to ever become like what you're suggesting.
EDIT: There are ways of alleviating variance in commander if that is your primary goal. Play similar but not identical cards. You mentioned tutors, but not all are expensive. Card draw can reduce variance as you will just see more cards. Obviously card selection helps and finally and most severely if you're going for consistency you can fill your deck with "air" - cards that do little to nothing except draw you another card, increasing your deck's velocity and effectively shrinking the size of your deck.
I'm still building my first deck so am FAR from an expert, but it's definitely going in. I'm building a Sydri panharmonicon focused deck which will likely have a lot of sac outlets. Faerie artisans or deepglow skate are probably the two best new cards for my deck.
Wow, thanks for the time and effort put into this. I'm not great at parsing the rules language so let me make sure I understand is right using sanateali's interpretstion: so for an effect like this if I target 2 (or more, with more copies of Panharmonicon in play) opponents they will each get "it" returned to them, whether "it" is a card, life or whatever, but if I only target 1 opponent 2+ times they will only get one incidence of "it" back. Do I have this right (insofar as can be determined/extrapolated by the rules)?
I was amazed when I first saw panharmonicon spoiled that they'd print it given the huge number of interactions that they couldn't possibly test or even see all of, but I guess it's overwhelmingly likely to only affect casual formats like EDH.
Thanks again for your help, out of my many questions that was the one that was most confusing to me.
Actually, Panharmonicon does interact with graft, just not with the whole of it. The graft creature entering the battlefield with counters is a static ability creating a replacement effect, so Panharmonicon doesn't do anything there. But a creature entering the battlefield under your control will trigger the "move a counter" ability, and that Panharmonicon does apply to, so the trigger goes off twice, allowing you to move two counters.
Good catch! I would have missed that interaction. Makes me wonder how many others I'm missing, ha.
I'll have to give cockatrice a try - I've heard you can even draft on it (using a separate program?) which also sounds fun. Still, I'd rather have a group of people I play with in person, but it can be hard to find a good group; unfortunately none of my friends are into magic and most are just in a different place in their lives than me now anyway. I'm sure there's still a lot of socializing on cockatrice but it's not quite the same.
And I'm already on top of faerie artisans! Card seems GREAT for the deck (along with the new deepglow skate). I've done a LOT of searching in gatherer. It turns out when you search for "enters the battlefield" with either "when" or "whenever" you get a LOT of results, ha. It's going to be hard to narrow it down to 100 cards and I have to decide how "competitive" to try to make it - I'm leaning more towards building it so crazy, fun things can happen even if that makes the deck "weaker."
The Laquatus's Champion question was a little different though - I know the ETB effect will trigger twice but what I'm not sure about is the leaves the battlefield trigger if I target 2 opponents, as it's worded "that opponent gains 6 life" - if I chose 2 opponents who is "that" opponent? There seem to be discrepancies in the answers I was given earlier unless I'm misunderstanding (entirely possible). There are a number of creatures with similar interactions (many of the nightmare subtype creatures have both an ETB and leaves the battlefield (LTB?) trigger).
If I have something like a germ token or other creature that would be 0/0 or less on entering the battlefield but have something like Cathars' Crusade in play what happens? Does the creature die based on state based actions before counters can be put on it or if the effect would give it enough counters to survive would it live?
I'm not great with the timing rules (I should probably play magic online to understand them better (and improve at drafting) but I enjoy the social component so much and lose that online) so this is probably a very obvious question.
Thanks again.
Thanks!
You can look at the thread I recently posted asking a lot of questions about panharmonicon, it goes pretty deep.
I'm making my first deck built around panharmonicon using [card]Sydri, Galvanic Geni/card] mostly to animate it for more easy copying/cloning. I lose a lot going into green, some great +1/+1 and stuff like [card]aura shards[/cards] but I lose a lot not going into red also. You can do a lot with panharmonicon.
I think I noticed an error in the decklist by function section: the protection says it has 6 cards but 7 are listed. I don't think drownyard temple is supposed to be there.
I don't know if the great aurora is perfect for your deck, but it sure sounds fun.
Wish I could be more help.
Because white has the most answers to problems, it has the worst CA and card selection.
Red's agression and damage dealing power simply aren't as effectively in a multiplayer format where people start at 40 life and it's also generally poor at CA.
In most formats this isn't a big deal as you can mix colors freely, but with color identity, mono white, mono white and Boros commanders suffer. And due to the average length of EDH games card advantage is MUCH more important.
WotC is aware of this and attempting to fix it, hence red's impulsive card draw which is a nice step. It seems they haven't found a CA ability as clean that feels "white" - it can draw cards based off playing small creatures but that is limited. Commanders like Depala are an attempt to give Boros much needed CA - may not be that strong now, but she'll only get better as more dwarves and vehicles are printed (possibly much stronger).
This does not explain the other oft-mentioned problem, the seeming sameness of most Boros commanders. This seems odd, as many people have listed quite a few red and white cards with interesting effects that could go on a legendary creature but they still mostly print the same attack focused commanders. I would suggest that the people who came up with these good ideas see if they can get them in front of Rosewater's eyes (as he is the most readily available route to the hivemind at R&D).
I am confused by much of WotC's behavior about legendary creatures (and other things) - they seem to want and try to listen (and have incentive to do so) but things like the werewolf legend and Ludevic baffle me. Rosewater's explanation for the werewolf being them misunderstanding and thinking the fans just wanted the cycle complete and not something for EDH seems ludicrous - he wasn't as involved with Ludevic and the explanation there makes somewhat more sense especially when you read creative's take on Ludevic. I know they have a lot of niche fan groups to appease but I would think they would be better (especially with EDH given its popularity).
They are trying to improve and experimenting, but unfortunately they work several years ahead so we may not see the results of their attempts to solve these problems for a long time. So any of your ideas they read now and like (hopefully they have people reading these forums) may take more than 2 years to materialize - but they may happen. I suspect it may take a while for white and red to get significantly better in EDH but I have more hope for more interesting Boros commanders in the near future.
This is why this card is so great. A lot of people point out how the players you target will team up on you. But the situation becomes similar to a prisoner's dilemma situation (with the potential added complication if yet anger player). As was said later, the player going last has no obligation to uphold deals.
Also, even if the rational answer is to team up against the person who cast the spell, you so seldomky get the chance to thoroughly screw someone over and people are underestimating the fun and likelihood of people doing so.
And it's just a great political card.
I'm glad that WotC is willing to make cards like this.
Oh, to e early poster who replied criticizing the card like people would a constructed card ("strictly worse", "serious constructed play") who got so many people to reply to him: very good troll, you got way more people to respond than I would have thought. At least I really hope it was a troll.
Thanks.
I have the exact same idea of making a deck built around paradox haze and upkeep effects - it's one of e cards I had in mind in my above post with the idea of allowing cards other than legendary creatures start in the command zone.
I've thought of somewhat similar formats. I love EDH for its union of consistency- you always have your general - and variance - 100 card decks. But you can do anything. People have 60 card decks, 4 copies of a card deeply embedded in their minds, but these are just the choices that were made early on (not even the original choices). Why not 90 card decks with 3 copies of cards? Or 100 card decks with 5 copies? The numbers are arbitrary and it would be interesting to see how these different "formats" played out. Magic Duels I understand is based on rarity allowing you to have 4 copies of a common, 3 uncommmons, 2 rares and 1 mythic (or something like that, I had the idea I listed which they happened to also figure out since it's rather obvious).
These are just simple changes - you could make far more radical changes. I think you should go ahead and use your idea with your friends - if you enjoy it make a website about it. It's always possible (if unlikely) that it could take off and become a new format. But it won't be or replace EDH whose singleton nature is integral to the format.
There are smaller changes that could be variants of commander. Before partner came out I had a similar idea where you were allowed to have a second commander but the color identity of your "sub-commander" only gave you access to cards of both it AND your main commander's color - for example and for simplicity a monowhite commander with a mono black sub-commander could play white cards, white/black cards or cards with white/black hybrid mana. Maybe you also require the sub-commander to share at least one color with the main commander. I also like the idea of allowing a non-creature to co-exist in the command zone that you can also build your deck around but a lot of cards would be too powerful to do this with - something people can work out with their playgroup but hard to make a comprehensive rules list for.
I also like the idea of having a second small (maybe 10 cards) deck that you draw from in addition to your normal draw for the first turns. This deck would contain only ramp - people love to ramp early on and often people get an early head start by happening to draw their ramp in the beginning and this ramp is often dead in the mid to late game, so putting it all in the second deck would alleviate some variance, allow people to get to the mid-game faster (if this is what they wish) and equally while opening up more space for "real" cards in your main deck. I have some other really weird ideas involving multiple decks but I haven't worked it all out yet.
Anyway, I could go on and on (an additional 25 cards but only for "staple" cards - possibly allow 2 copies of "staple" cards), the point is don't be afraid to experiment and play how YOU want to play, but don't expect commander to ever become like what you're suggesting.
EDIT: There are ways of alleviating variance in commander if that is your primary goal. Play similar but not identical cards. You mentioned tutors, but not all are expensive. Card draw can reduce variance as you will just see more cards. Obviously card selection helps and finally and most severely if you're going for consistency you can fill your deck with "air" - cards that do little to nothing except draw you another card, increasing your deck's velocity and effectively shrinking the size of your deck.
I was amazed when I first saw panharmonicon spoiled that they'd print it given the huge number of interactions that they couldn't possibly test or even see all of, but I guess it's overwhelmingly likely to only affect casual formats like EDH.
Thanks again for your help, out of my many questions that was the one that was most confusing to me.
Good catch! I would have missed that interaction. Makes me wonder how many others I'm missing, ha.
And I'm already on top of faerie artisans! Card seems GREAT for the deck (along with the new deepglow skate). I've done a LOT of searching in gatherer. It turns out when you search for "enters the battlefield" with either "when" or "whenever" you get a LOT of results, ha. It's going to be hard to narrow it down to 100 cards and I have to decide how "competitive" to try to make it - I'm leaning more towards building it so crazy, fun things can happen even if that makes the deck "weaker."
Thanks for the reply!
The Laquatus's Champion question was a little different though - I know the ETB effect will trigger twice but what I'm not sure about is the leaves the battlefield trigger if I target 2 opponents, as it's worded "that opponent gains 6 life" - if I chose 2 opponents who is "that" opponent? There seem to be discrepancies in the answers I was given earlier unless I'm misunderstanding (entirely possible). There are a number of creatures with similar interactions (many of the nightmare subtype creatures have both an ETB and leaves the battlefield (LTB?) trigger).
I'm not great with the timing rules (I should probably play magic online to understand them better (and improve at drafting) but I enjoy the social component so much and lose that online) so this is probably a very obvious question.
Thanks,
Justin