OK, now imagine that Orcish Librarian was drawn not only cartoonishly, but badly as well, and didn't have a picture of an orcish librarian, but instead some random picture of something completely unrelated. So instead of having an admittedly cartoonish depiction of an orcish librarian, you had a badly drawn cartoonish depiction of something having nothing to do with the card.
Then you would be approaching the level of bad that Unflinching Courage's artwork is.
That new Armadillo Cloak has the worst artwork I've seen in 10+ years. It looks like a screenshot from a cutesy PS1 game and the flavor has nothing at all to do with the card. It's a couple of midget cavemen running from a dinosaur. That would, in fact, be the opposite of "unflinching courage," and last I checked, Ravnica was a highly sophisticated city plane, not a prehistoric plane with jungle, dinosaurs, and cavemen. I'm not normally one to complain about artwork, but when it's both crappy and completely unrelated to the card and block it's for, I notice.
Functionally, the card is good, though. And the new Morphling is sweet and will definitely see play.
Beast Within is definitely within green's slice of the color pie, though barely.
Green has "transform"-themed creature removal, ie changing one creature into another or into multiple other creatures. In the form of an enchantment, it has Lignify. For a one-shot temporary effect, it has Snakeform. For a sac effect, it has Feed the Pack and Korozda Guildmage. And for almost the exact same effect as Beast Within, it has Mercy Killing, which kills a creature and gives tokens to the controller.
And obviously green has noncreature permanent removal. No debate there.
Basically, what someone else said: Beast Within is Bramblecrush plus Mercy Killing. Two cards that can be cast entirely with green mana. Explain to me how that is not in green's slice of the color pie.
This. There's really no one-size-fits-all metric for how many colorless non-basics to include in a deck. There are factors that can give you a general idea though:
- How much fixing are you running? The more fixing you run, the more colorless non-basics you can afford to run (up to a point).
- How aggressive is your deck? The more aggressive it is, the more you're going to want to make sure you have the correct colors of mana coming into play untapped in the early game, and hence fewer colorless non-basics.
- How color-intensive are the mana costs of the cards in your deck? If you're running a lot of double, triple, and (possibly) quadruple+ red/green-costing cards, you're going to want more color fixing lands and basics so you can pay the costs on those color-intensive spells rather than colorless utility lands.
In the end, though, you'll just have to test the deck. Throw a mana base together and see how it plays out.
EDIT: It also depends on which utility lands would work well in the deck. Maze of Ith is much better in a control or pillowfort deck than in an aggressive deck, for example. In other words, another way to approach the question is asking "What utility lands does this deck even want?"
Karn can be very good. It tends to ramp very quickly, as there is a lot of very powerful artifact ramp and the fact that things like Sol Ring don't produce colored mana is not a hindrance in a colorless deck. Stax seems to be the best overall strategy for Karn, though he is definitely most effective with infinite combos (of which there are many), so I don't know how good the deck would be without them.
@jetcape15: it depends how you're playing it: the active player got the priority and if he removes all the counter without waiting each seperate effect to resolve , he runs maybe the risk of getting a Swords to Plowshares in respond but he is ok with sudden death.
Oh for sure, there are a lot of things that deal with Mike and Trike if you're looking at all five colors, but the OP asked for mono-black specifically. But yes, you can exile, tuck, or bounce either of them in response to the last counter being removed from Triskelion.
Also, you may already know this, but keep in mind that if both Mikaeus and Triskelion are in play, they can go infinite with your removal spell still on the stack. The only window you have to stop the combo with creature removal is killing Mikaeus in response to Triskelion's undying trigger.
EDIT: So Snuff Out and Slaughter Pact are only useful if you can target Trike without Mike in play. Otherwise, they can just remove the counters in response, and Trike will come back with undying.
EDIT 2: Actually, Sudden Death would work against Triskelion if you did it in response to them removing the first or second counter. They wouldn't be able to remove counters in response, since Sudden Death has split second, so Triskelion would go the graveyard with at least one +1/+1 counter on it and stay dead.
Extirpate and Surgical Extraction would also stop the combo if you cast them in response to the undying trigger. They might not be as useful as creature removal, however.
I'll second the vote for Oona. My meta is very creature-heavy, which plays to black's strengths (creature removal) and doesn't exploit its weaknesses (lack of efficient removal for other permanent types). If your meta is also creature-heavy, I would definitely recommend Oona or another UB general for a control deck. I find the best control generals are the ones that A) gain you a disgusting amount of card/board/tempo advantage just by being in play (e.g. Damia, GAAIV) or B) act as a finisher (e.g. Oona or any other combo general with blue).
For a control deck, you want the deck to be geared towards the control elements as much as possible, with the actual finishers being both extremely powerful and taking up as little real estate in the deck as possible. Unlike in standard, a single creature typically isn't powerful enough on its own to be a finisher; it can be killed, exiled, tucked, stolen, cloned, or otherwise dealt with relatively easily. For that reason, infinite combos are the best finishers, which makes generals that are also combo pieces extremely good as control generals. You spend a few card slots in the deck on combo pieces and you have your finisher. You run tutors, which you would run anyway, and in the early game you fetch control cards, whereas in the late game you fetch your combo pieces. The rest of the deck is just lockdown.
My Oona deck, for example, plays out as a control deck until I have the combo pieces in hand and enough mana to cast them and go off in a single turn with counterspell backup. I (typically) don't have to worry about amassing a superior board position, I just have to hold off my opponent until I can assemble this combo. It's a lot easier to simply keep from dying, make land drops, and then combo off than it is to cast big creatures and try to win through damage.
TL;DR: Combo generals like Oona work great as control generals as well because you can spend most of the card slots on control cards and a few slots on the combo, which works great as a finisher because it wins you the game on the spot.
Argue all you want, but now we have both LSV and Patrick Chapin on record saying that karoo lands provide card advantage. I think I'm going to trust the guys with multiple pro tour top 8s, thanks. Here's Patrick Chapin's article explaining it: http://www.starcitygames.com/php/news/print.php?Article=12353. And no, you can't explain this article away as "Oh, they just didn't understand card advantage back then." They understood it fine. Karoos provide card advantage.
To summarize Chapin's argument: Karoo lands are like dual lands that come into play tapped, produce one mana, and allow you to search your deck for a land and put it into your hand. To quote the article:
Quote from Patrick Chapin »
...Karoos' real strength is that the land that gets removed from play goes to your hand, not your graveyard. This is akin to "drawing" a land.
This means your dual land is effectively drawing you a card (which is always a land). To balance things out a bit, Karoos come into play tapped, which may appear to cost you two mana, though it really only costs one because you can use the land you bounce. This is essentially paying one mana to draw and select a card.
Furthermore, karoo lands providing card advantage is not an obscure or revolutionary concept. Anyone who played back in the original Ravnica should know this already, because there was a lot of discussion about it when people figured it out. It was regarded as common knowledge by the time they rotated out of standard. My, how quickly we forget.
EDIT: And here is LSV saying that karoo lands provide card advantage: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrbsjihikmM. Go to ~19:45 in the video. Here's a transcript, for those who are lazy:
LSV: And [Ravnica] had the bounce lands. I mean, how amazing were the bounce lands?
TSG: It was so nice to have mana fixing on a land that was two colors and common.
LSV: And even more than that, it was card advantage. People didn't realize that at first, and near the end of the format people were first-picking bounce lands and being happy about it. I know I was. In the beginning of the format you'd get them sixth or seventh. People did not realize how insane they were. Playing a deck with like 16 land and like 4 bounce lands meant that you just drew an extra card every game, or two extra cards every game.
He goes on, but the most relevant stuff about bounce lands being card advantage is right there.
Uril and Zur are still in White, and white has SFM. Irrelevant besides, because Zur tutors for shroud/Vanishing, while Uril already has hexproof, as does Sigarda if you want to go there. So basically, playing generals where you don't have to answer maze is... better? Point proven.
Fair enough. I was just pointing out that white is run for reasons besides its equipment tutor package. It's not really relevant to our main discussion about Maze, but I wanted to clarify.
Sure, Acidic Slime is in decks for a lot of reasons, and Maze is only one of those, sure. But a card's quality overall is measured by versatility, adaptability, reuseability, permanence, etc. Slime is played because it answers Maze, and because of these qualities. Sinkhole answers Maze but is not played because it would do little else. Black decks are therefore much worse than they otherwise would be because they need to answer maze, and can't.
Black has a good tutor package, sure, but consider that you have to tutor for boots every game. Enlightened Tutor = Vampiric for those purposes, and SFM has more recurrability and versatility than Demonic. And besides as you mentioned, defensive abilities generally are better in those colors. So since black has nothing to offer, and its tutor advantage is spent because of Maze and others, black aggro decks are considerably worse because of being forced to answer Maze.
Theft is theft. It will continue to be a threat to vultron. But there's a host of things that solve it that don't solve maze. Homeward Path and sacrifice, already mentioned, as well as pro-blue, one-shot hexproof effects, etc. So all in all, vultron still has to answer Maze, and it's still substantially worse off for having to do so.
That's it. They're substantially and intractably worse off because they need to answer Maze. Sure, mono-color will suffer from being mono-color. Skittles will suffer from being skittles. But Maze causes problems for Vultron, and those problems are substantial and intractable.
...[I]t does warp the format and keep otherwise good strategies out.
See, the thing is I agree with basically everything you're saying except the [I]degree[/I] to which voltron decks are worse off because of Maze of Ith. They're definitely worse off, but I just don't think Maze is as significant as you think. Yes, Maze is harder to answer than theft/tuck effects, which consequently makes voltron worse. Yes, mono black has trouble answering it, which is one of mono black voltron's many weaknesses. Yes, a G/x voltron general without hexproof should have versatile answers that can hit Maze of Ith. All that is true. But Maze of Ith is not what is making voltron generals unplayable. I guarantee you that if you banned Maze of Ith today, Skithiryx would remain virtually just as good/bad as he is right now. He might get slightly better, but not much. Same goes for other voltron strategies.
Maze destroys a lot of decks, absolutely crushes the purpose of them. So many people in the threat so far have reasoned how bad Maze must be because Boots shuts it off. But they're forgetting that the existence of Maze mandates the use of Boots in the first place. Not theft, there are better solutions to that, like sacrifice and Homeward Path. Not removal, spot can be used in response to the equip and sweepers don't care. Not clone - all those effects get by shroud. It's because of Maze that you need to run Boots.
Greaves/Boots is run in voltron decks because of spot removal and, most importantly, theft. Yes, you can sac in response or hope to get Homeward Path, but it's much easier to be proactive against theft and simply make your glass cannon untargetable instead. There are tons of answers to generals without hexproof/shroud; Maze of Ith is only one of those answers (and not the best one). Voltron strategies are inherently fragile because you're essentially putting all of your eggs in one basket. It's not just Maze that exploits this weakness. Basically, I think you're greatly overestimating Maze of Ith's impact on the format.
Consequently, all the still playable Vultron strategies are in white for equipment tutors, green for Acidic Slime, and are still substantially limited in their options because of Maze. Red's haste is worth less because, hey, you need to play Boots anyway because of Maze.
The playable voltron generals are in green and white because
A) Green and white get the biggest creatures, so the G/W generals present a fast enough clock for a voltron strategy to work
B) G/W creatures get abilities that make them better in combat and at dealing damage (trample, exalted, and flying, to name a few), which is conducive to a voltron strategy, and, most importantly
C) G/W creatures often get abilities that make them resilient to answers (uncounterability, indestructibility, and hexproof, for example). And yes, hexproof and shroud get around Maze of Ith, which is one of the reasons they are good abilities, but there are a million other cards that they're good against as well.
White's equipment tutors certainly help many voltron strategies, but Maze of Ith is not the only reason why equipment tutors are good, and if Maze was banned, equipment tutors would still be essential to many voltron strategies. It's also worth noting that some voltron generals, such as Zur, are often fine without equipment, even though they have access to white.
And obviously having answers to nonland permanents is one of the reasons that green is good in EDH, but people don't run G/x voltron generals solely so they can have answers to Maze of Ith. That's just silly. Also, Strip Mine, Wasteland, and Dust Bowl are cards that every color has access to.
Blight Dragon Vultron is not a serious contender because it can't tutor for boots, and it can't answer Maze on the board (outside of unplayables like Sinkhole).
Last I checked, black had the best tutor suite of any color. There's a long list of cards in black that can tutor for Greaves/Boots. Also, Skittles Voltron is not limited by Maze of Ith, it's limited by the fact that it runs out of steam before it can kill an entire table. Mono-colored voltron decks are also even more inherently fragile than normal voltron decks, as the weakness of the voltron strategy is compounded by the weakness of only having access to a single color (although obviously there are advantages as well). Skittles Voltron suffers from this weakness. Maze of Ith is only one of many cards that hoses it.
There aren't too many cards that are true auto-includes for me, but both StP and PtE are. I always have those in my white decks, no exceptions. I don't run Condemn for the reasons already stated (too situational, doesn't hit utility guys, can't be cast in response to equipping Greaves, etc.).
Unless I'm missing something, Maze of Ith shouldn't save a creature from Condemn. Maze doesn't remove the creature from combat, it just untaps it and prevents damage it would deal/be dealt. The creature would still be an attacking creature and Condemn would still tuck it. Right?
I hate when people have no idea or they have their ratio all jacked up. I don't expect people to do the math like I do, but you can seperate all your colors and look at them and see wich colors you are running the most of and make you lands match.
I definitely agree with this, and I see what you were saying in that previous post now. It's one thing to not know exactly how many lands you're running, it's quite another to not even be able to give an estimate. That is unfathomable to me.
On the flip side, probably my favorite part about EDH is that even when you do know your deck like the back of your hand, you still discover new things about it and encounter new situations that make you see it from a different perspective, even if only slightly. The deckbuilding process is never finished, because you're not building a deck for a single tournament, you're building a deck to play many times against many different decks, with the assumption that it will evolve and grow over time. So I guess what I'm saying is that the fact that #3 is so important in EDH is why I like it.
Then you would be approaching the level of bad that Unflinching Courage's artwork is.
Functionally, the card is good, though. And the new Morphling is sweet and will definitely see play.
Green has "transform"-themed creature removal, ie changing one creature into another or into multiple other creatures. In the form of an enchantment, it has Lignify. For a one-shot temporary effect, it has Snakeform. For a sac effect, it has Feed the Pack and Korozda Guildmage. And for almost the exact same effect as Beast Within, it has Mercy Killing, which kills a creature and gives tokens to the controller.
And obviously green has noncreature permanent removal. No debate there.
Basically, what someone else said: Beast Within is Bramblecrush plus Mercy Killing. Two cards that can be cast entirely with green mana. Explain to me how that is not in green's slice of the color pie.
- How much fixing are you running? The more fixing you run, the more colorless non-basics you can afford to run (up to a point).
- How aggressive is your deck? The more aggressive it is, the more you're going to want to make sure you have the correct colors of mana coming into play untapped in the early game, and hence fewer colorless non-basics.
- How color-intensive are the mana costs of the cards in your deck? If you're running a lot of double, triple, and (possibly) quadruple+ red/green-costing cards, you're going to want more color fixing lands and basics so you can pay the costs on those color-intensive spells rather than colorless utility lands.
In the end, though, you'll just have to test the deck. Throw a mana base together and see how it plays out.
EDIT: It also depends on which utility lands would work well in the deck. Maze of Ith is much better in a control or pillowfort deck than in an aggressive deck, for example. In other words, another way to approach the question is asking "What utility lands does this deck even want?"
1. Tooth and Nail
2. Swords to Plowshares
3. Sower of Temptation
4. Cryptic Command
5. Damnation
StP and Damnation are there because, despite not being especially "bomby," they're just so darn useful.
Honorable Mentions: Primeval Titan; Treachery; Venser, Shaper Savant; Doubling Season; Scavenging Ooze
Also, you may already know this, but keep in mind that if both Mikaeus and Triskelion are in play, they can go infinite with your removal spell still on the stack. The only window you have to stop the combo with creature removal is killing Mikaeus in response to Triskelion's undying trigger.
EDIT: So Snuff Out and Slaughter Pact are only useful if you can target Trike without Mike in play. Otherwise, they can just remove the counters in response, and Trike will come back with undying.
EDIT 2: Actually, Sudden Death would work against Triskelion if you did it in response to them removing the first or second counter. They wouldn't be able to remove counters in response, since Sudden Death has split second, so Triskelion would go the graveyard with at least one +1/+1 counter on it and stay dead.
Extirpate and Surgical Extraction would also stop the combo if you cast them in response to the undying trigger. They might not be as useful as creature removal, however.
For a control deck, you want the deck to be geared towards the control elements as much as possible, with the actual finishers being both extremely powerful and taking up as little real estate in the deck as possible. Unlike in standard, a single creature typically isn't powerful enough on its own to be a finisher; it can be killed, exiled, tucked, stolen, cloned, or otherwise dealt with relatively easily. For that reason, infinite combos are the best finishers, which makes generals that are also combo pieces extremely good as control generals. You spend a few card slots in the deck on combo pieces and you have your finisher. You run tutors, which you would run anyway, and in the early game you fetch control cards, whereas in the late game you fetch your combo pieces. The rest of the deck is just lockdown.
My Oona deck, for example, plays out as a control deck until I have the combo pieces in hand and enough mana to cast them and go off in a single turn with counterspell backup. I (typically) don't have to worry about amassing a superior board position, I just have to hold off my opponent until I can assemble this combo. It's a lot easier to simply keep from dying, make land drops, and then combo off than it is to cast big creatures and try to win through damage.
TL;DR: Combo generals like Oona work great as control generals as well because you can spend most of the card slots on control cards and a few slots on the combo, which works great as a finisher because it wins you the game on the spot.
To summarize Chapin's argument: Karoo lands are like dual lands that come into play tapped, produce one mana, and allow you to search your deck for a land and put it into your hand. To quote the article:
Furthermore, karoo lands providing card advantage is not an obscure or revolutionary concept. Anyone who played back in the original Ravnica should know this already, because there was a lot of discussion about it when people figured it out. It was regarded as common knowledge by the time they rotated out of standard. My, how quickly we forget.
EDIT: And here is LSV saying that karoo lands provide card advantage: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrbsjihikmM. Go to ~19:45 in the video. Here's a transcript, for those who are lazy:
LSV: And [Ravnica] had the bounce lands. I mean, how amazing were the bounce lands?
TSG: It was so nice to have mana fixing on a land that was two colors and common.
LSV: And even more than that, it was card advantage. People didn't realize that at first, and near the end of the format people were first-picking bounce lands and being happy about it. I know I was. In the beginning of the format you'd get them sixth or seventh. People did not realize how insane they were. Playing a deck with like 16 land and like 4 bounce lands meant that you just drew an extra card every game, or two extra cards every game.
He goes on, but the most relevant stuff about bounce lands being card advantage is right there.
See, the thing is I agree with basically everything you're saying except the [I]degree[/I] to which voltron decks are worse off because of Maze of Ith. They're definitely worse off, but I just don't think Maze is as significant as you think. Yes, Maze is harder to answer than theft/tuck effects, which consequently makes voltron worse. Yes, mono black has trouble answering it, which is one of mono black voltron's many weaknesses. Yes, a G/x voltron general without hexproof should have versatile answers that can hit Maze of Ith. All that is true. But Maze of Ith is not what is making voltron generals unplayable. I guarantee you that if you banned Maze of Ith today, Skithiryx would remain virtually just as good/bad as he is right now. He might get slightly better, but not much. Same goes for other voltron strategies.
The playable voltron generals are in green and white because
A) Green and white get the biggest creatures, so the G/W generals present a fast enough clock for a voltron strategy to work
B) G/W creatures get abilities that make them better in combat and at dealing damage (trample, exalted, and flying, to name a few), which is conducive to a voltron strategy, and, most importantly
C) G/W creatures often get abilities that make them resilient to answers (uncounterability, indestructibility, and hexproof, for example). And yes, hexproof and shroud get around Maze of Ith, which is one of the reasons they are good abilities, but there are a million other cards that they're good against as well.
White's equipment tutors certainly help many voltron strategies, but Maze of Ith is not the only reason why equipment tutors are good, and if Maze was banned, equipment tutors would still be essential to many voltron strategies. It's also worth noting that some voltron generals, such as Zur, are often fine without equipment, even though they have access to white.
And obviously having answers to nonland permanents is one of the reasons that green is good in EDH, but people don't run G/x voltron generals solely so they can have answers to Maze of Ith. That's just silly. Also, Strip Mine, Wasteland, and Dust Bowl are cards that every color has access to.
Last I checked, black had the best tutor suite of any color. There's a long list of cards in black that can tutor for Greaves/Boots. Also, Skittles Voltron is not limited by Maze of Ith, it's limited by the fact that it runs out of steam before it can kill an entire table. Mono-colored voltron decks are also even more inherently fragile than normal voltron decks, as the weakness of the voltron strategy is compounded by the weakness of only having access to a single color (although obviously there are advantages as well). Skittles Voltron suffers from this weakness. Maze of Ith is only one of many cards that hoses it.
On the flip side, probably my favorite part about EDH is that even when you do know your deck like the back of your hand, you still discover new things about it and encounter new situations that make you see it from a different perspective, even if only slightly. The deckbuilding process is never finished, because you're not building a deck for a single tournament, you're building a deck to play many times against many different decks, with the assumption that it will evolve and grow over time. So I guess what I'm saying is that the fact that #3 is so important in EDH is why I like it.