You can't exactly sandbag this one, because the longer you wait on it, the more likely it is that you won't be able to afford the life payment.
Still quite good if you expect creature+creature+creature in the first two or three turns of a game from your opponent.
You can't exactly sandbag this one, because the longer you wait on it, the more likely it is that you won't be able to afford the life payment.
Still quite good if you expect creature+creature+creature in the first two or three turns of a game from your opponent.
Unless you're Oloro, and you've managed to amass somewhere approaching double your starting life by the time the bigger threats start hitting he table. If only the designers at Wizards were smart enough to put Toxic Deluge in his deck...
Unless you're Oloro, and you've managed to amass somewhere approaching double your starting life by the time the bigger threats start hitting he table. If only the designers at Wizards were smart enough to put Toxic Deluge in his deck...
I'm referring to 20 life magic. In 40 life magic this card is pretty unquestionably good.
Unless you're Oloro, and you've managed to amass somewhere approaching double your starting life by the time the bigger threats start hitting he table. If only the designers at Wizards were smart enough to put Toxic Deluge in his deck...
But didn't you hear? Esper got shafted. They got the messy deck that cannot agree on what they should do and then they get the strictly or partially worse copy of card-effects: Opportunity on Grixis, Brilliant Plans on Esper. Baleful Strix on Grixis, Tidehollow Strix on Esper. They only got one of the more interesting commanders but that's about it, otherwise their deck-list seems inferior and messed up.
But didn't you hear? Esper got shafted. They got the messy deck that cannot agree on what they should do and then they get the strictly or partially worse copy of card-effects: Opportunity on Grixis, Brilliant Plans on Esper. Baleful Strix on Grixis, Tidehollow Strix on Esper. They only got one of the more interesting commanders but that's about it, otherwise their deck-list seems inferior and messed up.
Shafted? I don't agree. They made all the decks have 3 generals with different strategies and cards to support them. So calling Esper shafted would not make sense if that's what you consider shafted. It's a design that was implemented in all decks on purpose.
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EDH: URJhoira of the GhituUR(Under con.) BMaralen of the MornsongB UBLazav, Dimir MastermindUB Standard: UMono U DevotionU Casual: GPrimordial Hydra JankinessG
But didn't you hear? Esper got shafted. They got the messy deck that cannot agree on what they should do and then they get the strictly or partially worse copy of card-effects: Opportunity on Grixis, Brilliant Plans on Esper. Baleful Strix on Grixis, Tidehollow Strix on Esper. They only got one of the more interesting commanders but that's about it, otherwise their deck-list seems inferior and messed up.
All of the decks have mixed strategies to some degree. That having been said, I see no shortage of amazing cards in the esper deck. Unless you mean to tell me that Divinity of Pride, Serra Avatar, Lim-Dûl's Vault, Nevinyrral's Disk, Sanguine Bond, and Sun Droplet are all lackluster commander cards, especially with Oloro as your commander. The only missed opportunity here is the absence of Serra Ascendant.
All of the decks have mixed strategies to some degree. That having been said, I see no shortage of amazing cards in the esper deck. Unless you mean to tell me that Divinity of Pride, Serra Avatar, Lim-Dûl's Vault, Nevinyrral's Disk, Sanguine Bond, and Sun Droplet are all lackluster commander cards, especially with Oloro as your commander. The only missed opportunity here is the absence of Serra Ascendant.
Disk is the only card in that list that isn't lacklustre. Vault is only good in 60 card combo decks and the rest of those cards are pretty bad.
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Disk is the only card in that list that isn't lacklustre. Vault is only good in 60 card combo decks and the rest of those cards are pretty bad.
You're going to have to qualify 'bad' for me, because unless we're deliberately narrowing the context of this conversation to strictly competitive EDH (which is a foolish notion to begin with), then I don't see how any of those cards are bad.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying it's a great deck. None of them are, but then none of them are meant to be. The diverse array of three-color legends in each deck is a pretty clear indication that these decks are as much an introduction to the format as they are a means of providing alternatives to those who already play EDH. There's a sort of mixed bag of relevant cards in each deck, permitting us to either augment the deck as is, or scrap it entirely and use those cards however we see fit in our own creations. That having been said, it's smart marketing on Wizard's part to encourage you to buy multiple decks. Like Oloro but want Baleful Strix? Buy both decks.
If I cast this for 6-8 to remove some bomb cards, then my opponent just drops another huge bomb, slaps Greaves on it and venge-attacks me, then I'm down a ton of life, possibly dead. If I'd have just waited that extra turn for Damnation, maybe I'd be down the same amount, maybe not. Maybe my opponents would have attacked me, maybe they would have left me alone. Personally, it's not a chance I'd take. Seeing someone drop their life total by a good chunk and then leave themselves wide open is often a great incentive for everyone around the table to take you out, especially if you just wiped their board clean.
That's my reasoning for not liking the card, anyway.
...for me, this kind of card gets you killed faster because the people I know enjoy targeting the player with the lowest life total. I wouldn't want to cast this, pay life, potentially having it countered, and then leave myself wide open after just paying a chunk of life.
This sort of thing happens all the time and not just in Commander or even multiplayer.
This card is riding the hype train atm. I'd rather play BSZ, Mutilate or (obv) Damnation over this thing every single time.
So what it's 3 mana..do you need to power it out w/Dark Ritual on T1 or something? No? Then why do you even care? Just wait for four mana and play a better boardwipe.
This sort of thing happens all the time and not just in Commander or even multiplayer.
This card is riding the hype train atm. I'd rather play BSZ, Mutilate or (obv) Damnation over this thing every single time.
So what it's 3 mana..do you need to power it out w/Dark Ritual on T1 or something? No? Then why do you even care? Just wait for four mana and play a better boardwipe.
Or, perhaps because it's cheap enough, you can wipe the board and drop your own fatty immediately afterwards. The fact that there are 'better' options is seldom a reason to not play good cards, especially in a 100 card commander deck. I can certainly think of many situations where Toxic Deluge outclasses those sweepers you named.
Or, perhaps because it's cheap enough, you can wipe the board and drop your own fatty immediately afterwards. The fact that there are 'better' options is seldom a reason to not play good cards, especially in a 100 card commander deck. I can certainly think of many situations where Toxic Deluge outclasses those sweepers you named.
Completely agree. Fire Covenant is one of the best cards in my Lyzolda EDH deck due to its flexibility; I imagine the power level of Toxic Deluge will be very similar.
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Evil is even, truth is an odd number, and death is a full stop.
This sort of thing happens all the time and not just in Commander or even multiplayer.
This card is riding the hype train atm. I'd rather play BSZ, Mutilate or (obv) Damnation over this thing every single time.
So what it's 3 mana..do you need to power it out w/Dark Ritual on T1 or something? No? Then why do you even care? Just wait for four mana and play a better boardwipe.
Mutilate is not splashable, BSZ costs a huge load of mana.
Damnation is almost always better, except it doesn't get rid of indestructible creatures.
And Toxic Deluge will be AWESOME in my Blood Artist / Ajani's Pridemate deck....
I'll just play it for one less life than enough to kill my Pridemate and laugh like a madman.
It's worse than Mutilate in monoblack decks (or all swamps with duals), it's situationally worse than Black Sun's Zenith in decks that can make a lot of mana and it's only better than damnation in situations that hardly even happen, but they do.
Shafted? I don't agree. They made all the decks have 3 generals with different strategies and cards to support them. So calling Esper shafted would not make sense if that's what you consider shafted. It's a design that was implemented in all decks on purpose.
I see we have very spread out opinions and I disagree that all the commanders have a similar spread of mechanics as the Esper ones.
Sydri: Works best with non-creature artifacts of which you have very few and even fewer who makes sense and of those even fewer you'd usually want to be creatures (Disk being a super example).
Oloro: Life-gain deck, has a fair amount of support and is quite frankly the only reason I can picture people picking up the Esper deck (he's my favorite of the new commanders). Works on account that he has utter self-sufficiency, all else is just bonus to make him really sweet.
Sharuum: Works best with powerful artifacts of which you have a handful, that's it. Playing it 6 CMC for a 6/6 flying beater is poor.
If we instead focus on decks with a lil more synergy:
-Jund is the prime as all focus around a sac-outlet and all aid in some way with two being leagues beyond the third but that's that.
-Naya is the poor man, with commanders seemingly aimed at token-strategy but got a whacky non-trample big beastie-deck with low amounts of synergy and limited support for Mayael. A big dumb beater deck without the interactions of Mirror Mastery from Gen 1.
- Grixis is the absolute control-shell with Commanders who either cheats spells out of your opponents, bleed them out slowly while providing Card Draw speed-up or strangely enough beats the living crap out of them. Still Thraxi makes sacrifice and is most likely "must-block" aggressor, which makes him fit somewhat into a control-shell but not the usual kind, we be Grixis mate.
- Bant is the ultimate crap-farm with wanky cards with nice interactions and works entirely on internal synergy and speed to have a chance. Their commander-choices is like Esper random as hell between them all but they seem to still have quite a bit of synergy in the deck in some form.
Rubinia takes the big beaters the deck desperately lacks, Roon makes all their whacky interactions sum up and Derevi makes for the fast-paced combo-played aggression. Neither locks out the other even though Roon and Rubinia doesn't interact super well together but Derevi works with all.
To let Esper gain strictly or partially worse cards than other decks just seems strange to me if they could just have gotten the same cards.
I see we have very spread out opinions and I disagree that all the commanders have a similar spread of mechanics as the Esper ones.
Sydri: Works best with non-creature artifacts of which you have very few and even fewer who makes sense and of those even fewer you'd usually want to be creatures (Disk being a super example).
Oloro: Life-gain deck, has a fair amount of support and is quite frankly the only reason I can picture people picking up the Esper deck (he's my favorite of the new commanders). Works on account that he has utter self-sufficiency, all else is just bonus to make him really sweet.
Sharuum: Works best with powerful artifacts of which you have a handful, that's it. Playing it 6 CMC for a 6/6 flying beater is poor.
If we instead focus on decks with a lil more synergy:
-Jund is the prime as all focus around a sac-outlet and all aid in some way with two being leagues beyond the third but that's that.
-Naya is the poor man, with commanders seemingly aimed at token-strategy but got a whacky non-trample big beastie-deck with low amounts of synergy and limited support for Mayael. A big dumb beater deck without the interactions of Mirror Mastery from Gen 1.
- Grixis is the absolute control-shell with Commanders who either cheats spells out of your opponents, bleed them out slowly while providing Card Draw speed-up or strangely enough beats the living crap out of them. Still Thraxi makes sacrifice and is most likely "must-block" aggressor, which makes him fit somewhat into a control-shell but not the usual kind, we be Grixis mate.
- Bant is the ultimate crap-farm with wanky cards with nice interactions and works entirely on internal synergy and speed to have a chance. Their commander-choices is like Esper random as hell between them all but they seem to still have quite a bit of synergy in the deck in some form.
Rubinia takes the big beaters the deck desperately lacks, Roon makes all their whacky interactions sum up and Derevi makes for the fast-paced combo-played aggression. Neither locks out the other even though Roon and Rubinia doesn't interact super well together but Derevi works with all.
To let Esper gain strictly or partially worse cards than other decks just seems strange to me if they could just have gotten the same cards.
They have different strategies, and thus different cards. If you wanted generic commanders loaded with good-stuff staples, this might not be the product for you.
I don't know enough about Eternal Formats to speak on the matter. I'm a Commander player so I don't care about whether a card is Eternal playable or not. My opinion is based on whether or not I would play this card in one of my EDH decks, and for now, I think the answer is no.
Not necessarily. If I cast this for 6-8 to remove some bomb cards, then my opponent just drops another huge bomb, slaps Greaves on it and venge-attacks me, then I'm down a ton of life, possibly dead. If I'd have just waited that extra turn for Damnation, maybe I'd be down the same amount, maybe not. Maybe my opponents would have attacked me, maybe they would have left me alone. Personally, it's not a chance I'd take. Seeing someone drop their life total by a good chunk and then leave themselves wide open is often a great incentive for everyone around the table to take you out, especially if you just wiped their board clean.
That's my reasoning for not liking the card, anyway.
Not at all, no. Maybe for some people, but for me, this kind of card gets you killed faster because the people I know enjoy targeting the player with the lowest life total. I wouldn't want to cast this, pay life, potentially having it countered, and then leave myself wide open after just paying a chunk of life.
What you are missing about this card is that is is not like damnation. It is not a board reset button. It is a scaleable sweeper. You don't have to kill everything on the board if you don't want to. If you have the biggest guy, then sweep away everything else and when you pass the turn you are the only one with a creature on the board, and its a big one. even if you don't you can sweep the guy with a million 3/3's while leaving your 6/6 alive. you get even more options if you do it post combat.
This sort of thing happens all the time and not just in Commander or even multiplayer.
This card is riding the hype train atm. I'd rather play BSZ, Mutilate or (obv) Damnation over this thing every single time.
So what it's 3 mana..do you need to power it out w/Dark Ritual on T1 or something? No? Then why do you even care? Just wait for four mana and play a better boardwipe.
What you are missing about this card is that is is not like damnation. It is not a board reset button. It is a scaleable sweeper. You don't have to kill everything on the board if you don't want to. If you have the biggest guy, then sweep away everything else and when you pass the turn you are the only one with a creature on the board, and its a big one. even if you don't you can sweep the guy with a million 3/3's while leaving your 6/6 alive. you get even more options if you do it post combat.
As someone who is trying out Toxic Deluge in Legacy, I agree with the above poster for why Toxic Deluge is better than Damnation. ...Well, not only is the scalability nice when I have a Knight of the Reliquary and all they have are smaller Goyfs, but I've found that Toxic Deluge is better overall for the following reasons:
Cheaper--thus can kill creatures faster--thus you can kill Belcher's Turn 1 Empty the Warrens for 6 Storm on your Turn 3 on the play--one turn before you die
Cheaper--thus can kill creatures faster--thus you can kill a Show and Telled-in Emrakul on your Turn 2, assuming you cheated in a land--note that Emrakul can 2HKO and kill your entire board in one swing at this point
Um, unless I'm mistaken, given that this card requires life to use and is a Sorcery, I don't think there's a way for it to take out a turn 2 Emrakul without significant life gain: Emmy comes in and time walks, swings for 14 (almost certainly eliminating any blockers with Annihilate), then you're at 6 life and cannot make the Deluge strong enough.
Granted, this particular situation can be rectified if you put Sigarda, Host of Herons on the field with your opponent's Show and Tell, and this is just one matchup that Toxic Deluge doesn't work in. However, I think that the life loss will be a bigger hamper to the card than some people think when dealing with a deck that's already swung at you.
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Someday, I will own all of the dragons. All of them. 43/111, approximately 39% complete. Over a third done.
(calling it now; there will be a cycle of Legendary dual lands with Basic Land types in Theros block)
... AAAAAAAAND I was wrong
Um, unless I'm mistaken, given that this card requires life to use and is a Sorcery, I don't think there's a way for it to take out a turn 2 Emrakul without significant life gain: Emmy comes in and time walks, swings for 14 (almost certainly eliminating any blockers with Annihilate), then you're at 6 life and cannot make the Deluge strong enough.
Emrakul doesn't time walk when he's brought into play by Show and Tell. That effect only triggers when he's actually cast as a creature spell.
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My 360 Peasant+ Cube!. Modern borders where possible, usually with the newest (or "best") art, and always the most readable card text. I also run all 10 painlands. My playgroup is super casual, as we have a fair number of newer or less experienced players. Typically we draft with 4 to 6 people, using 5 packs of 9.
If you're on the play against Emrakul cheated in through Show and Tell you can use Toxic Deluge on your turn 3 no problems. However are you on the draw you need some mana accel or an Edict-effect to deal with him before he wipes your board - including your lands so you're unable to deal with him.
Emrakul doesn't time walk when he's brought into play by Show and Tell. That effect only triggers when he's actually cast as a creature spell.
Oh, really? Huh, didn't know that. Yeah, as you can probably tell I don't play much Legacy/Vintage (nor do a know a whole lot about those formats), so really my two-cents aren't worth a whole lot. Of course, one would have thought I would have learned to actually read the cards by now...
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Someday, I will own all of the dragons. All of them. 43/111, approximately 39% complete. Over a third done.
(calling it now; there will be a cycle of Legendary dual lands with Basic Land types in Theros block)
... AAAAAAAAND I was wrong
This sure is a funny answer to an early Emrakul, pay 15 life and remove it via this spell.
Obviously stuff like Oblivion Ring, Diabolic Edict, and others do the job, without sacrificing nearly your full life total.
I think the thing that people are pointing out is that the card is not dead against the deck. Toxic Deluge seems fairly strong agaisnt "creature" decks, but the fact that it also is not a dead draw vs (at least 1) combo deck makes all the slightly better
If you're on the play against Emrakul cheated in through Show and Tell you can use Toxic Deluge on your turn 3 no problems. However are you on the draw you need some mana accel or an Edict-effect to deal with him before he wipes your board - including your lands so you're unable to deal with him.
If you have 3 lands in hand, you can cheat one in with Show and Tell so you can cast Toxic Deluge on Turn 2. Same deal if one of your 2 lands is a fetchland and you cheat in Deathrite Shaman.
Speaking of mana accel, I've actually killed Belcher's Empty the Warrens on Turn 2 on the draw in testing with a Turn 1 Deathrite and a fetch in my yard--one turn before the Goblins would have killed me.
Still quite good if you expect creature+creature+creature in the first two or three turns of a game from your opponent.
Unless you're Oloro, and you've managed to amass somewhere approaching double your starting life by the time the bigger threats start hitting he table. If only the designers at Wizards were smart enough to put Toxic Deluge in his deck...
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I'm referring to 20 life magic. In 40 life magic this card is pretty unquestionably good.
Shafted? I don't agree. They made all the decks have 3 generals with different strategies and cards to support them. So calling Esper shafted would not make sense if that's what you consider shafted. It's a design that was implemented in all decks on purpose.
URJhoira of the GhituUR(Under con.)
BMaralen of the MornsongB
UBLazav, Dimir MastermindUB
Standard:
UMono U DevotionU
Casual:
GPrimordial Hydra JankinessG
All of the decks have mixed strategies to some degree. That having been said, I see no shortage of amazing cards in the esper deck. Unless you mean to tell me that Divinity of Pride, Serra Avatar, Lim-Dûl's Vault, Nevinyrral's Disk, Sanguine Bond, and Sun Droplet are all lackluster commander cards, especially with Oloro as your commander. The only missed opportunity here is the absence of Serra Ascendant.
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Disk is the only card in that list that isn't lacklustre. Vault is only good in 60 card combo decks and the rest of those cards are pretty bad.
- Willy Wonka
The Quote function doesn't work for me on this forum. Sorry for any confusion created.
You're going to have to qualify 'bad' for me, because unless we're deliberately narrowing the context of this conversation to strictly competitive EDH (which is a foolish notion to begin with), then I don't see how any of those cards are bad.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying it's a great deck. None of them are, but then none of them are meant to be. The diverse array of three-color legends in each deck is a pretty clear indication that these decks are as much an introduction to the format as they are a means of providing alternatives to those who already play EDH. There's a sort of mixed bag of relevant cards in each deck, permitting us to either augment the deck as is, or scrap it entirely and use those cards however we see fit in our own creations. That having been said, it's smart marketing on Wizard's part to encourage you to buy multiple decks. Like Oloro but want Baleful Strix? Buy both decks.
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This sort of thing happens all the time and not just in Commander or even multiplayer.
This card is riding the hype train atm. I'd rather play BSZ, Mutilate or (obv) Damnation over this thing every single time.
So what it's 3 mana..do you need to power it out w/Dark Ritual on T1 or something? No? Then why do you even care? Just wait for four mana and play a better boardwipe.
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Or, perhaps because it's cheap enough, you can wipe the board and drop your own fatty immediately afterwards. The fact that there are 'better' options is seldom a reason to not play good cards, especially in a 100 card commander deck. I can certainly think of many situations where Toxic Deluge outclasses those sweepers you named.
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Completely agree. Fire Covenant is one of the best cards in my Lyzolda EDH deck due to its flexibility; I imagine the power level of Toxic Deluge will be very similar.
Mutilate is not splashable, BSZ costs a huge load of mana.
Damnation is almost always better, except it doesn't get rid of indestructible creatures.
And Toxic Deluge will be AWESOME in my Blood Artist / Ajani's Pridemate deck....
I'll just play it for one less life than enough to kill my Pridemate and laugh like a madman.
It's worse than Mutilate in monoblack decks (or all swamps with duals), it's situationally worse than Black Sun's Zenith in decks that can make a lot of mana and it's only better than damnation in situations that hardly even happen, but they do.
Still, pretty decent card, imo.
Sydri: Works best with non-creature artifacts of which you have very few and even fewer who makes sense and of those even fewer you'd usually want to be creatures (Disk being a super example).
Oloro: Life-gain deck, has a fair amount of support and is quite frankly the only reason I can picture people picking up the Esper deck (he's my favorite of the new commanders). Works on account that he has utter self-sufficiency, all else is just bonus to make him really sweet.
Sharuum: Works best with powerful artifacts of which you have a handful, that's it. Playing it 6 CMC for a 6/6 flying beater is poor.
If we instead focus on decks with a lil more synergy:
-Jund is the prime as all focus around a sac-outlet and all aid in some way with two being leagues beyond the third but that's that.
-Naya is the poor man, with commanders seemingly aimed at token-strategy but got a whacky non-trample big beastie-deck with low amounts of synergy and limited support for Mayael. A big dumb beater deck without the interactions of Mirror Mastery from Gen 1.
- Grixis is the absolute control-shell with Commanders who either cheats spells out of your opponents, bleed them out slowly while providing Card Draw speed-up or strangely enough beats the living crap out of them. Still Thraxi makes sacrifice and is most likely "must-block" aggressor, which makes him fit somewhat into a control-shell but not the usual kind, we be Grixis mate.
- Bant is the ultimate crap-farm with wanky cards with nice interactions and works entirely on internal synergy and speed to have a chance. Their commander-choices is like Esper random as hell between them all but they seem to still have quite a bit of synergy in the deck in some form.
Rubinia takes the big beaters the deck desperately lacks, Roon makes all their whacky interactions sum up and Derevi makes for the fast-paced combo-played aggression. Neither locks out the other even though Roon and Rubinia doesn't interact super well together but Derevi works with all.
To let Esper gain strictly or partially worse cards than other decks just seems strange to me if they could just have gotten the same cards.
They have different strategies, and thus different cards. If you wanted generic commanders loaded with good-stuff staples, this might not be the product for you.
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#BLM
#DefundThePolice
What you are missing about this card is that is is not like damnation. It is not a board reset button. It is a scaleable sweeper. You don't have to kill everything on the board if you don't want to. If you have the biggest guy, then sweep away everything else and when you pass the turn you are the only one with a creature on the board, and its a big one. even if you don't you can sweep the guy with a million 3/3's while leaving your 6/6 alive. you get even more options if you do it post combat.
As someone who is trying out Toxic Deluge in Legacy, I agree with the above poster for why Toxic Deluge is better than Damnation. ...Well, not only is the scalability nice when I have a Knight of the Reliquary and all they have are smaller Goyfs, but I've found that Toxic Deluge is better overall for the following reasons:
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Granted, this particular situation can be rectified if you put Sigarda, Host of Herons on the field with your opponent's Show and Tell, and this is just one matchup that Toxic Deluge doesn't work in. However, I think that the life loss will be a bigger hamper to the card than some people think when dealing with a deck that's already swung at you.
43/111, approximately 39% complete. Over a third done.
(calling it now; there will be a cycle of Legendary dual lands with Basic Land types in Theros block)
... AAAAAAAAND I was wrong
The Attention Deficit Guy URGU
Emrakul doesn't time walk when he's brought into play by Show and Tell. That effect only triggers when he's actually cast as a creature spell.
Oh, really? Huh, didn't know that. Yeah, as you can probably tell I don't play much Legacy/Vintage (nor do a know a whole lot about those formats), so really my two-cents aren't worth a whole lot. Of course, one would have thought I would have learned to actually read the cards by now...
43/111, approximately 39% complete. Over a third done.
(calling it now; there will be a cycle of Legendary dual lands with Basic Land types in Theros block)
... AAAAAAAAND I was wrong
The Attention Deficit Guy URGU
Obviously stuff like Oblivion Ring, Diabolic Edict, and others do the job, without sacrificing nearly your full life total.
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I think the thing that people are pointing out is that the card is not dead against the deck. Toxic Deluge seems fairly strong agaisnt "creature" decks, but the fact that it also is not a dead draw vs (at least 1) combo deck makes all the slightly better
Edric | Skithiryx | Merieke | Talrand
--------------------------
Well except for pauper EDH
Garruk's Packleader | Inkfathom Witch | Gelectrode | Sigil Captain | Glider Barin | Sludge Strider | Paragon of the Ameshsa
If you have 3 lands in hand, you can cheat one in with Show and Tell so you can cast Toxic Deluge on Turn 2. Same deal if one of your 2 lands is a fetchland and you cheat in Deathrite Shaman.
Speaking of mana accel, I've actually killed Belcher's Empty the Warrens on Turn 2 on the draw in testing with a Turn 1 Deathrite and a fetch in my yard--one turn before the Goblins would have killed me.
Flexibility is a good thing.
I honestly think this card has more constructed (and EDH) applications than the Merfolk that was spoiled.