How many 0 or 1 CMC artifacts before Trinket Mage gets a slot
How many 4 or less R/W instants before Sunforger finds a home
How many lands entering the graveyard or effects that do the same before Crucible of Worlds comes out.
This is probably even more personal and subjective than I think it is but in general do you have any guidelines or formulas you follow for this kind of thing?
It depends how much you want of a particular effect. I run expedition map and crop rotation in Tasigur just to tutor out Reliquary Tower but I wouldn't run map in Kess even though it also has tower.
Interesting discussion. Here are my responses to the sample questions. Sorry if you were looking for hard numbers. All I have to offer are my heuristics.
That's a tough one. I'm really not sure. For a card like Eidolon of Blossoms, I would need a critical mass of enchantments before it became worthwhile since, for the same cost, I could just cast Harmonize and draw three cards immediately, and that's better than drawing multiple cards over time. So, I guess the question I have to ask myself is: "how many cards do I need to draw with Eidolon of Blossoms to exceed the opportunity cost of not playing Harmonize?" It obviously has to be greater than three. Four cards maybe? It isn't apparent to me that drawing one card now and three cards later is measurably better than drawing three cards upfront, so maybe I'll set the bar at five cards total. At five cards, I'm fairly confident that I'd be more happy playing Eidolon of Blossoms than I would Harmonize.
Once I have that number, that sort of gives me an idea of just how many enchantments I need to be playing in order to hit my target. To draw four extra cards off Eidolon, I might want to be playing upwards of 25 enchantments. So, roughly one fourth of my deck. That sounds like a lot because it is, but if I only see an enchantment every four cards, I'm going to need to see at least sixteen cards by the time Eidolon of Blossoms completes its lifespan. And sure, the Eidolon will help me a little bit by finding additional enchantments to trigger it, but every enchantment I cast prior to casting the Eidolon is another enchantment I'll have to locate later.
Now, with Argothian Enchantress, things are a little different since, at two mana, I don't need to expect to draw as many cards with it. At a minimum, I'll need to ensure that Argothian Enchantress draws at least two cards, one to replace the card itself, and one to justify spending the mana, but it's hard to do much better than that for two mana. Because of this, I proportionally don't need to see as many enchantments since I don't need to draw as many cards with it to make it worth my mana. Perhaps eighteen enchantments would be enough? Again, it's hard for me to say. I usually trust my gut when it comes to this sort of stuff and just tune my decks to the proper number given sufficient playtesting.
How many 0 or 1 CMC artifacts before Trinket Mage gets a slot
For tutors, I really don't need that many targets in order to justify playing them. What's important to me isn't the number of targets they can find, but how valuable the targets they can find are. I would probably want more than one target in case I drew my Trinket Mage target naturally, but I think I would be comfortable with only playing two targets provided they were valuable enough.
How many 4 or less R/W instants before Sunforger finds a home
Same deal as Trinket Mage. If the card I'm tutoring for with Sunforger is critically important, I don't need to be playing a lot of different possible targets to justify playing it. I just need to make sure those key cards alone are worth it. You can see this sort of thing in action by looking at many of the competitive Zur decks. These decks will play roughly four or so targets because that's what they've determined is all that's necessary. The fact that a card like Sunforger can be used multiple times is just gravy. I don't need to get an excessive amount of value from it. I just need to get enough value out of the card to justify its inclusion, and sometimes that value can come from the inclusion of only a single card or two.
How many lands entering the graveyard or effects that do the same before Crucible of Worlds comes out.
It's virtually impossible to get me to play Crucible of Worlds in any deck. I think it's a garbage card that all but the most synergistic of decks should avoid.
This is probably even more personal and subjective than I think it is but in general do you have any guidelines or formulas you follow for this kind of thing?
I don't really have a hard and fast rule. I kind of wish I did. I tend to make a lot of comparisons whenever I think about including or excluding a given card, and most of my decisions tend to be based off opportunity cost.
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argothian enchantress does basically nothing on its own. Simply replacing itself is pretty weak, so it better draw at least 2, so I'd probably need at least 20% enchantments before I'd consider it (that way I'd draw 2 before turn 3 on average). But realistically, once you start running that many, then you justify a lot of enchantment synergy pieces, which raises the value of enchantments, which further raises the value of synergy pieces, and so forth. So you probably end up with more if you're considering it.
Eidolon of blossoms is itself a striped bears, which isn't a travesty of a card even if that's all it draws. If it draws another it's a cheaper mulldrifter without flying. So you could go lower than argothian (but the other stuff still probably applies).
Of course, with both of those, you take the risk of only draw 1-2 because the potential ceiling of drawing 10 is worth it occasionally underperforming.
Trinket mage only needs 1-2 targets because, so long as it has any legal targets in the deck, you get roughly equal value. Sure, having more gives better selection, but just having sol ring + mana crypt is good enough to justify it in a deck that wants ramp badly. More than 2 is just gravy, you probably won't draw both targets AND trinket mage in the same game. And you always get a 2/2 body to boot.
Sunforger is partly about number, partly about selection. If they all do the same thing it might be kinda meh. If you have a good variety of things - spells that kill different permanent types, spells that protect you from targeted removal, spells that protect you from board wipes, spells that produce tokens, etc. Also depends if the equipment itself is justifiable. Could be worth it with only a couple, if they're really useful spells for what you're trying to do and the equipment itself is useful.
crucible needs at least one fetch or strip or whatever, but you need to actually have it in hand/play/grave. So you probably want at least 10% those lands, or tutors which can hit those lands, ideally more like 15%.
I think the three most important questions are:
Do I need X in hand/play or in deck?
-deck usually means it's easy to justify, in hand/play means you really better have a decent percentage of your deck dedicated.
How many of X do I need before Y is reasonable?
-for in deck, just figure out how many you have. For in hand, figure a percentage based on how many cards you expect to see before you might play it.
Does Y have any other benefits besides synergy with X (for instance, a 2/2 body or a +4/+0 eq)?
-obviously if it's good enough, this could make all the difference. Sunforger might be fine if you just want a way to buff power in a RW voltron deck, and 1-2 targets is just gravy. Argothian enchantress, no so much, and crucible even less.
If I have a deck that relies on a type, then it normally has to be at least one quarter of the deck, but I'm more probably going to aim for like a third.
So I'd need minimum of 25 enchantments before I'd start adding Argothian Enchantress or Eidolon of Blossoms, but as I say I would realistically aim for closer to 33 enchantments to feel like it's a better build.
Conversely if I have cards that are artifact specific, I would normally need at bare-minimum 25% of the deck to be artifacts.
How many 0 or 1 CMC artifacts before Trinket Mage gets a slot
I don't play Enchantress, so I'm not commenting on that in particular, but in a similar vein like with Zombie Tribal, I think most enchantress (or blatantly enchantment-based like Enduring Ideal) decks have the base idea (and natural execution) to already have more-than-enough to meet "targets". The cases where a deck with some other plan somehow ends up with way more enchantments that it's considering this are honestly incredibly rare and I personally never ran into such a situation.
Trinket Mage is honestly to me, a card only put it to emphasize the importance of the artifact it's looking for, mainly because it's technically an "overcosted tutor" and 1-mana-or-less artifacts don't have that massive of specific utility applications (general utility yes, but in that case the tutors are also generic and/or tuned to the deck's more specific plans instead). I don't run it in any of my decks because they don't need it (and can't utilize it in other ways as well), not because they lack 1-drop-or-less artifacts or that I put some minimum number on it.
Sunforger is in some ways, opposite of the Mage. I run it in Alesha because a)it works well with the Commander (having first strike favors +power), b) I do have a equipment subtheme and this is a reasonable card to be in it and c) I do run a number of instants it can fetch regardless of whether it was in or not, but I didn't set a number. If Sunforger wasn't an equipment but just an artifact that let's say, tapped to fetch instead of unequip, I would be highly de-incentivised to play the card regardless of the number of instants I had.
Crucible of Worlds. I play it in Horde and I can tell you it'll be useless in any other of my decks. Horde doesn't run fetches (but runs Terramorphic/Wilds along with Strip Mine to give Crucible some bare base utility) while my other multicolored decks have their respective fetches, but I can tell you it's not fetches that make Crucible Good. It's me literally playing Titania, Protector of Argoth, Omnath, Locus of Rage, The Gitrog Monster and a myriad of "awakening" cards (including Liege of the Tangle, believe it or not) that Crucible sees way more utility than it would ever see. The topper? Crucible is only part of the backup plan. The actual plan is for Oblivion Sower to allow me to utilize other players' lands for animation so I have less risk to begin with but you could safely guess there's quite the good amount of times it doesn't work (as well or at all) and I have to animate my own lands to keep up with the game.
At the end of the day, I don't think I'd put a number on it - it needed the insane synergy between almost every card in the deck to make it the reasonable backup battery and even my opponents know it - unless I had Strip Mine (or they suspected I do), no one even prioritizes it for removal even if they knew what my deck revolves around.
As others have said, probably 25. However, I could see playing Eidolon of Blossoms with fewer enchantments if I am playing a lot of enchantment tokens.
How many 0 or 1 CMC artifacts before Trinket Mage gets a slot
I always assume you will have 1-2 mana rocks to get, but you need at least one other target that is useful in the late game. Getting an early Sol Ring is great, but it does nothing late game. Top and Skullclamp can work, for example.
How many 4 or less R/W instants before Sunforger finds a home
Sunforger is amazing, and if you are playing it you ought to have a lot of cards to maximize its value. There are so many unique effects that are worthwhile. If you are Jeskai, you get counterspells. Otherwise you have spells that protect your board, that tutor, that deal with permanents... At a minimum I would have 5 spells to get.. but I think it is easily worth playing 10+.
How many lands entering the graveyard or effects that do the same before Crucible of Worlds comes out.
I would only play this in decks like The Gitrog Monster that synergize with sacrificing lands. It is not good enough for a simple dredge deck. You need to be able to reliably play multiple lands per turn, and to have at least 20 lands that can be sacrificed. I would always expect Strip Mine and Glacial Chasm in the deck if you play crucible.
Eidolon of Blossoms is a cantrip, so I'd feel pretty comfortable about including her over other enchantresses. Plus, she can be blinked (but then again, the same can be said of Elvish Visionary). But for other enchantresses, I'd say at least 15, probably more than 20.
Trinket Mage and Sunforger are tutors, so you really don't need that many targets. Plus, there's nothing like playing Absorb or Suffocating Blast off Sunforger after an opponent has probed your hand and found no counterspells. That trick works once.
Crucible of Worlds is...more than just fetchlands and Strip Mine. I do consider including cycling lands and Armageddon. But I'm generally using it for cake (as in "having one's...and eating it too") more than infinity.
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Card advantage is not the same thing as card draw. Something for 2B cannot be strictly worse than something for BBB or 3BB. If you're taking out Swords to Plowshares for Plummet, you're a fool. Stop doing these things!
While I agree Crucible of Worlds is a bit overrated by the larger MtG community, it’s been a bit unfairly maligned in this thread. It does have good uses. I run it in my monored deck, where there are four fetchlands and tons of mountains all those fetches can hit. In a deck like this, Crucible is essentially “3: never miss a land drop,” which I absolutely consider worthwhile. Monoblue would benefit similarly (coincidentally, the other best color for artifacts). The upside of reusing a Strip Mine is pure gravy.
I have run a solid enchantress deck yet, but for these effects that require a card type for you to draw (although they then help you draw into more) I'd put the lower bound around 15-17 - assuming you're using self recurring pieces, such as rancor, in order to get multiple procs. If you're planning to just try and chain draw, it could be around 25 or so for a lower bound.
How many 0 or 1 CMC artifacts before Trinket Mage gets a slot
In all honesty, with a toolbox tutor like this, the number can be much lower - I've run him with as few as 2 or 3 a number of times - if some of those are very important, or very powerful. I HAVE run him solely to get skullclamp once. I've also run him with far more, including artifact lands - I think the most has been about 10-12.
How many 4 or less R/W instants before Sunforger finds a home
I typically run about 10. The lowest I'd consider would probably be 4. Sunforger is such a repeatable toolbox card though, that I don't really see any way that you'd run so few. At worst, you have Swords and Path for direct creature removal, return to dust for other permanents, Chaos Warp as a catch-all removal, Arcbond for mass removal, Teferi's Protection, Angel's Grace, Dawn Charm, etc for self protection,
How many lands entering the graveyard or effects that do the same before Crucible of Worlds comes out.
I'm a bad example for this. I am perfectly willing to put crucible in every deck.
The lowest I've run though is... zero. It was a mono green deck, with many must answer lands, such as Cradle, which I knew would get answered. So Crucible was in there as inevitable recovery.
Typically though, it'll be about 7-8, Buried Ruin is absolutely great, as the two protect each other, from there it's mostly fetches, and various Strip Mine effects. I tend to run 3 per deck. I also love Mirror Pool.
This is probably even more personal and subjective than I think it is but in general do you have any guidelines or formulas you follow for this kind of thing?
It's really a question of what are the chances of activating it, versus how important is it? Cards that are tutors, like trinket mage, are a guaranteed value. The only risk is whether you draw your tutor targets first. Having about 4 targets mitigates this. The next question is how often you plan to use/abuse it - do you have flicker effects, graveyard rez? My Chainer deck ran a lot of 4 cost targets because I had both the Transfigure and Transmute guys, which I planned to reuse a lot.
For effects like the Enchantresses, the question is how much value you plan to get out of them, and how reliable you want it to be. In a 100 card deck, having 20 targets gives you a 1/5 chance on every draw to get another target. If you get 2 draw guys out, alongside your normal draw per turn, you should be able to keep the cards rolling fairly consistently.
While I agree Crucible of Worlds is a bit overrated by the larger MtG community, it’s been a bit unfairly maligned in this thread. It does have good uses. I run it in my monored deck, where there are four fetchlands and tons of mountains all those fetches can hit. In a deck like this, Crucible is essentially “3: never miss a land drop,” which I absolutely consider worthwhile. Monoblue would benefit similarly (coincidentally, the other best color for artifacts). The upside of reusing a Strip Mine is pure gravy.
If your meta is more squeamish about land destruction, Crucible isn't so useful unless played fairly.
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Card advantage is not the same thing as card draw. Something for 2B cannot be strictly worse than something for BBB or 3BB. If you're taking out Swords to Plowshares for Plummet, you're a fool. Stop doing these things!
I'm no Frank Karsten, but using a MtG Hypergeometric Card Probability Calculator I thought I'd take a stab at each question. I used this link for all calculations.
1a: How many enchantments do you need for Argothian Enchantress to be worth a slot?
I agree with the thread consensus that I want enchantress to be, at a minimum, "draw 2". Draw 1 merely replaces a fairly bad 0/1 body. Thus I plugged in the likelihood of drawing at least 2 enchantments by turn 4. Specifically, in a 99 card deck in which you've seen 12 cards (opening 7 + draw 1 each turn + a "bonus" draw from enchantress or some other effect), how many enchantments do you need in the deck to hit at least two? To look at the fail rate, I also looked at the probability of hitting 0 enchantments.
I posted a ton of data because everyone's own tolerance for failure and success is different. I did a lower bound of 9, which is lower than anyone in thread mentioned, and is a bonkers low number - you will fail as often as you succeed, and it super isn't worth a slot. I set the higher bound at 40, as we're well beyond both diminishing returns and the highest recommendation in thread so far (35 at this posting). Personally, I'd say 21+ feels like the sweet spot. At 21 enchantments, you're at a point where you only fail 1 in 20 games to draw some cards right away with a turn 2 enchantress. Given that she is hard to remove and the possible high roll of drawing a ton of cards (especially with recurrent enchantments like Rancor, Whip Silk, etc), I'm willing to stomach *only* a 77.6% chance to get two or more enchantments that early. Note this is "enchantments you can cast" so you may want to leave the Zendikar's Resurgences and Overwhelming Splendors out of contention when building your deck. Conversely, I might consider Enlightened Tutor, Heliod's Pilgrim, etc. to be virtual enchantments when constructing my deck as they will grab something that then draws a card.
For a floor, I'd say anything less than 17 enchantments makes me uncomfortable; too often Argothian enchantress will be a dead draw. I'd only run Argothian Enchantress in a deck with fewer than 17 enchantments if almost all of them were of the Whip Silk/Flickering Ward/Rancor variety. 27 or 28 enchantments is the point of diminishing returns, it seems - in a dedicated enchantress deck going higher isn't bad, but if I'm struggling to find room I wouldn't feel compelled to go higher on my enchantment count if I didn't have too, as the probabilistic gains are increasingly small.
This took way longer than expected, so that's it for today!
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Personally, I'd say 21+ feels like the sweet spot. At 21 enchantments, you're at a point where you only fail 1 in 20 games to draw some cards right away with a turn 2 enchantress. Given that she is hard to remove and the possible high roll of drawing a ton of cards (especially with recurrent enchantments like Rancor, Whip Silk, etc), I'm willing to stomach *only* a 77.6% chance to get two or more enchantments that early. Note this is "enchantments you can cast" so you may want to leave the Zendikar's Resurgences and Overwhelming Splendors out of contention when building your deck. Conversely, I might consider Enlightened Tutor, Heliod's Pilgrim, etc. to be virtual enchantments when constructing my deck as they will grab something that then draws a card.
As you alluded to the thing is that you need to factor in casting costs of your enchantments as well, if you want to satisfy your own "sweet spot". If you're expecting to get a return on your Argothian Enchantress on Turn 3 say after casting her on Turn 2 for a 76% chance of casting an enchantment, then you can only included enchantments of converted mana cost 3 or less, in that particular equation.
You could alter this range a little bit if you play mana acceleration realistically at one or less range, Sol Ring, Birds of Paradise, Chrome Mox, etc.
Crucible is good in decks that will see lots of lands hit the graveyard. You basically need to be getting value out of it immediately when you cast it and every turn from then on. So yeah, Gitrog, lands.dek, etc. Just fetches and mine/wasteland isn't enough. Getting some value going with Dustbowl+Bog to get remove a land and a graveyard each turn, or Dustbowl + Flagstones of Torkair, or something like Gitrog or Titania or Omnath 2.0 that wants recurrent landfall/land death lets it perform well enough in a grindy way. If you have access to Life from the Loam, its usually better, because it helps with everything Crucible does and more, while fueling your graveyard.
Because of all this, Crucible can go anywhere from being worth it with just 1 card (Gitrog, as your commander) to 20 not being good enough (a slew of fetches, some strip mine effects, myriad landscape, and like harrow and crop rotation).
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Crucible is good in decks that will see lots of lands hit the graveyard. You basically need to be getting value out of it immediately when you cast it and every turn from then on. So yeah, Gitrog, lands.dek, etc. Just fetches and mine/wasteland isn't enough. Getting some value going with Dustbowl+Bog to get remove a land and a graveyard each turn, or Dustbowl + Flagstones of Torkair, or something like Gitrog or Titania or Omnath 2.0 that wants recurrent landfall/land death lets it perform well enough in a grindy way. If you have access to Life from the Loam, its usually better, because it helps with everything Crucible does and more, while fueling your graveyard.
Because of all this, Crucible can go anywhere from being worth it with just 1 card (Gitrog, as your commander) to 20 not being good enough (a slew of fetches, some strip mine effects, myriad landscape, and like harrow and crop rotation).
The thing people don't calculate is that it is vulnerable to graveyard hate. Somebody in the thread was mentioning that it represents a land drop every turn, and this is not correct. First you need to have the renewable land type (fetches). Then it has to survive all the graveyard hate during a game. This is the where I find it can stall for use during a game.
If you're using it with Strip Mine, Dust Bowl, Wasteland, this essentially doesn't even include being a land drop as you are using it for land destruction. You're not gaining traction on the opponents you're not destroying lands. Great in duels, not so great in multiplayer.
Then the thing that makes it least useful is when you just have natural lands to play from your hand. I mean you really have to have a deck that is very poor at drawing cards, because most games you have lands to play from your hand. Even a Gitrog deck tends to get a draw engine going where it's not often you don't have the lands to play from your hand.
So even in specialized decks, like landfall, it's an overrated card for the reasons I pointed out.
Most times it would be better off just being some other card, and that's why I'm calling it out as a trap card for many.
For something like this, you have to be selling out on enchantments in order to make these worth the slots, otherwise they are too inefficient as draw spells as compared to running a plain old Harmonize. I would think that the bare minimum would be around 36, which is also where I draw the bare minimum of lands for most of my decks. You need a large commitment to enchantments as a theme in order to make this work. In my own Enchantress deck, I run 41 Enchantments and it seems to work well enough.
How many 0 or 1 CMC artifacts before Trinket Mage gets a slot
I think the importance and quality of the artifacts in question is more important than just the number. If your deck already wants 4-5 0CMC-1CMC artifacts, and these are important enough as answers in the various matchups you expect to face, then I would think that Trinket Mage makes plenty of sense. I've seen people run a small package with Engineered Explosives, Expedition Map, Pithing Needle, Relic of Progenitus, Sol Ring, and a Seat of Synod to make it a flex removal/ramp card, but I've also seen people run it in a UR Minotaurs Deck to fetch up Didgeridoo. In general, I would think that you would want at least 5 targets for it.
How many 4 or less R/W instants before Sunforger finds a home
Same thing as for Trinket Mage, about 5. The nice thing about Sunforger (and Trinket Mage for that matter) is that you really don't have to go too far out of your way to run things that make it good (as opposed to something like Isochron Scepter which is much more restrictive).
How many lands entering the graveyard or effects that do the same before Crucible of Worlds comes out.
This one is harder because there are other ways that lands end up in the graveyard (through looting or Wheel effects for example). Based strictly on lands, I would think that you only want it if it fits your commanders theme (The Gitrog Monster, Borborygmos 2.0, Titania, Omnath 2.0, etc. I run it in only teo decks, both of which get value through cycling lands, fetchlands, the fact that it is an artifact, to recur artifact lands, or because of the number of looting effects in the deck (specifically Bosh and Ni-Mizzet). This is hard to put a number on; I think this is more of a feel thing than anything.
This is probably even more personal and subjective than I think it is but in general do you have any guidelines or formulas you follow for this kind of thing?
The only other rule I have is for "pure synergy" cards that do nothing unless I have the another card in play to combo with. Cards like Rings of Brighthearth, Strionic Resonator, Thousand-Year Elixir, etc. need at least 14 other cards in the deck to be useful with (in a major way, not minor) before I will consider keeping them in the deck. Obviously, that number goes down if they have major synergy with the commander, but 14 is generally where I draw the line.
For me, it's less of a hard number and more about theme. Taking the example of enchantress cards, it's less about how many enchantments I run, and more about whether or not I actually care about enchantments. If I'm looking for a source of draw, I might consider running it without the theme if I think that I can consistently get draw off of an enchantress effect (though, if I'm not focusing on enchantment themes, I probably am not running enough low cost enchantments for it to be worth it, regardless of how many enchantments I actually have), but those occasions are usually not common.
Instead of setting a hard rule, really I'm just looking at how much use I can realistically get out of a card. That might depend on the deck (if I want to abuse fetch lands, for example, I will run Crucible of Worlds, and it might not need to be a deck with 10 fetches).
Crucible is good in decks that will see lots of lands hit the graveyard. You basically need to be getting value out of it immediately when you cast it and every turn from then on. So yeah, Gitrog, lands.dek, etc. Just fetches and mine/wasteland isn't enough. Getting some value going with Dustbowl+Bog to get remove a land and a graveyard each turn, or Dustbowl + Flagstones of Torkair, or something like Gitrog or Titania or Omnath 2.0 that wants recurrent landfall/land death lets it perform well enough in a grindy way. If you have access to Life from the Loam, its usually better, because it helps with everything Crucible does and more, while fueling your graveyard.
Because of all this, Crucible can go anywhere from being worth it with just 1 card (Gitrog, as your commander) to 20 not being good enough (a slew of fetches, some strip mine effects, myriad landscape, and like harrow and crop rotation).
The thing people don't calculate is that it is vulnerable to graveyard hate. Somebody in the thread was mentioning that it represents a land drop every turn, and this is not correct. First you need to have the renewable land type (fetches). Then it has to survive all the graveyard hate during a game. This is the where I find it can stall for use during a game.
If you're using it with Strip Mine, Dust Bowl, Wasteland, this essentially doesn't even include being a land drop as you are using it for land destruction. You're not gaining traction on the opponents you're not destroying lands. Great in duels, not so great in multiplayer.
Then the thing that makes it least useful is when you just have natural lands to play from your hand. I mean you really have to have a deck that is very poor at drawing cards, because most games you have lands to play from your hand. Even a Gitrog deck tends to get a draw engine going where it's not often you don't have the lands to play from your hand.
So even in specialized decks, like landfall, it's an overrated card for the reasons I pointed out.
Most times it would be better off just being some other card, and that's why I'm calling it out as a trap card for many.
Lots of good cards get hosed by graveyard hate, so that's not a convincing argument at all. The real question is whether what you are getting from the card is valuable enough that your are willing to risk it being dead to gy hate. For crucible, in a generic deck, the answer is no, but with a ton of synergy the answer is yes.
The decks that want it have lands that can be repeatedly sacrificed for value, specifically lands that you would want to repeatedly reuse over just playing another land from your hand, and get you additional value from playing or sacrificing land. The arguments you make are invalid when applied to the decks that want crucible. In Gitrog, you get an extra land drop a turn, and your lands dying draw you cards. You are incentivized to continually replay whatever your most valuable sac land is over and over again. Yes, that can often involve a strip mine that let's you clear out any cradles and coffers, and even color screw people, or it might mean resetting glacial chasm every couple turns. In lands.dek, your often have several cards that increase your number of land drops, and yeah you get a ton of value from strip mining three lands in a turn with Titania or Omnath out. It helps boost that decks grindy plan B if the combo win doesn't work out, not to mention it helps protect the combo win.
Those are the types of decks that really benefit from it. I've seen it work well enough in stax or as a way for someone to break synergy on geddon, but I've never done it and it's likely that if I looked at their decks I'd be able to figure out a better card that could replace crucible, but as I havent seen their full lists I can't say.
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Onering's 4 simple steps that let you solve any problem with Magic's gameplay
Whether its blue players countering your spells, red players burning you out, or combo, if you have a problem with an aspect of Magic's gameplay, you can fix it!
Step 1: Identify the problem. What aspect of Magic don't you like? Step 2: Find out how others deal with the problem. How do players deal with this aspect of the game when they run into it? Step 3: Do what those players do. Step 4: No more problem. Bonus: You are now better at Magic. Enjoy those extra wins!
Lots of good cards get hosed by graveyard hate, so that's not a convincing argument at all. The real question is whether what you are getting from the card is valuable enough that your are willing to risk it being dead to gy hate. For crucible, in a generic deck, the answer is no, but with a ton of synergy the answer is yes.
The decks that want it have lands that can be repeatedly sacrificed for value, specifically lands that you would want to repeatedly reuse over just playing another land from your hand, and get you additional value from playing or sacrificing land. The arguments you make are invalid when applied to the decks that want crucible. In Gitrog, you get an extra land drop a turn, and your lands dying draw you cards. You are incentivized to continually replay whatever your most valuable sac land is over and over again. Yes, that can often involve a strip mine that let's you clear out any cradles and coffers, and even color screw people, or it might mean resetting glacial chasm every couple turns. In lands.dek, your often have several cards that increase your number of land drops, and yeah you get a ton of value from strip mining three lands in a turn with Titania or Omnath out. It helps boost that decks grindy plan B if the combo win doesn't work out, not to mention it helps protect the combo win.
Those are the types of decks that really benefit from it. I've seen it work well enough in stax or as a way for someone to break synergy on geddon, but I've never done it and it's likely that if I looked at their decks I'd be able to figure out a better card that could replace crucible, but as I havent seen their full lists I can't say.
I'm pointing out that many people assume a particular thing from Crucible, and that they can put it in almost any deck, and that it instantly means that they get a land drop every turn for the rest of the game, this was highlighted by the below user...
While I agree Crucible of Worlds is a bit overrated by the larger MtG community, it’s been a bit unfairly maligned in this thread. It does have good uses. I run it in my monored deck, where there are four fetchlands and tons of mountains all those fetches can hit. In a deck like this, Crucible is essentially “3: never miss a land drop,” which I absolutely consider worthwhile. Monoblue would benefit similarly (coincidentally, the other best color for artifacts). The upside of reusing a Strip Mine is pure gravy.
So it's important to make it clear to players, that this is not true all the time. This is not an argument, it's a fact.
The thing is all I'm basically seeing is some very specific decks, Gitrog Monster, landfall (Titania or Omnath) and mass land destruction. At this point it's just a combo card, much like Food Chain is for certain decks.
So sort of pointing out that Food Chain is good for Prossh, Skyraider of Kher, is really the same thing as pointing out that Crucible is good for Gitrog, not necessary
So the thing is that this thread was about a formula for playing Crucible in decks, and this alluded to it being a sort of catch all card for any deck, "as long as you play a certain number of targets".
These conclusions have all come from actually playing the cards in a variety of decks, and ended up being cut due to ir underperfoming, for the reasons I've pointed out. Listen that's not to say that in synergy with cards it can't be good, Exploration, Azusa, Lost but Seeking, but we really are talking combo at this stage.
A lot of casual players are simply slotting it into their deck, thinking that they are going to get immediate value from the card because they are playing X number of fetches, and this is not what really happens.
Lots of good cards get hosed by graveyard hate, so that's not a convincing argument at all. The real question is whether what you are getting from the card is valuable enough that your are willing to risk it being dead to gy hate. For crucible, in a generic deck, the answer is no, but with a ton of synergy the answer is yes.
The decks that want it have lands that can be repeatedly sacrificed for value, specifically lands that you would want to repeatedly reuse over just playing another land from your hand, and get you additional value from playing or sacrificing land. The arguments you make are invalid when applied to the decks that want crucible. In Gitrog, you get an extra land drop a turn, and your lands dying draw you cards. You are incentivized to continually replay whatever your most valuable sac land is over and over again. Yes, that can often involve a strip mine that let's you clear out any cradles and coffers, and even color screw people, or it might mean resetting glacial chasm every couple turns. In lands.dek, your often have several cards that increase your number of land drops, and yeah you get a ton of value from strip mining three lands in a turn with Titania or Omnath out. It helps boost that decks grindy plan B if the combo win doesn't work out, not to mention it helps protect the combo win.
Those are the types of decks that really benefit from it. I've seen it work well enough in stax or as a way for someone to break synergy on geddon, but I've never done it and it's likely that if I looked at their decks I'd be able to figure out a better card that could replace crucible, but as I havent seen their full lists I can't say.
I'm pointing out that many people assume a particular thing from Crucible, and that they can put it in almost any deck, and that it instantly means that they get a land drop every turn for the rest of the game, this was highlighted by the below user...
While I agree Crucible of Worlds is a bit overrated by the larger MtG community, it’s been a bit unfairly maligned in this thread. It does have good uses. I run it in my monored deck, where there are four fetchlands and tons of mountains all those fetches can hit. In a deck like this, Crucible is essentially “3: never miss a land drop,” which I absolutely consider worthwhile. Monoblue would benefit similarly (coincidentally, the other best color for artifacts). The upside of reusing a Strip Mine is pure gravy.
So it's important to make it clear to players, that this is not true all the time. This is not an argument, it's a fact.
Yeah, you should have quoted his post to discuss that. You quoting me and then going there made it sound like you were trying to refute me with that point, which is kind of weird considering my post said multiple times that 20 sac lands wouldn't be enough to run crucible without other support.
The thing is all I'm basically seeing is some very specific decks, Gitrog Monster, landfall (Titania or Omnath) and mass land destruction. At this point it's just a combo card, much like Food Chain is for certain decks.
So sort of pointing out that Food Chain is good for Prossh, Skyraider of Kher, is really the same thing as pointing out that Crucible is good for Gitrog, not necessary
So the thing is that this thread was about a formula for playing Crucible in decks, and this alluded to it being a sort of catch all card for any deck, "as long as you play a certain number of targets".
These conclusions have all come from actually playing the cards in a variety of decks, and ended up being cut due to ir underperfoming, for the reasons I've pointed out. Listen that's not to say that in synergy with cards it can't be good, Exploration, Azusa, Lost but Seeking, but we really are talking combo at this stage.
A lot of casual players are simply slotting it into their deck, thinking that they are going to get immediate value from the card because they are playing X number of fetches, and this is not what really happens.
If you had followed the thread, there's a common theme that some of these cards, like crucible and trinket mage, don't fit the how many x to run y formula. The entire point that Crucible is worthwhile in certain decks even with only a few lands that hit the yard naturally, yet bad in some decks that have a bunch that do, is important, because it shows that Crucible really isn't a card that can be assessed according to the thread's premise, unlike an enchantress. It isn't a critical mass card, its a synergy card (combo is way too strong of a word, that's like saying Doubling Season is a combo with +1/+1 counters, or Wee Dragonauts is a combo with instants), just like trinket mage isn't a critical mass card, its a tutor. The point is that there is no answer to X, because X is irrelevant. You can answer X for an enchantress, because those care about the number of enchantments you cast, so you need to be able to see a certain number for it to pay off. For Crucible, you literally need to see just one sac land for it to do its thing, and that thing isn't good enough on its own, so you need support cards, preferably a commander, that make it better. This results, like I said, in just 1 card, Gitrog in the command zone, being good enough, because Crucible will help rebuild your mana base without playing lands from your hand (because then you can discard those lands to draw even more cards with Gitrog), but not worth it with X= 20 if its just lands that sac and no other support. Its really weird of you to try to argue that this goes without stating, when in your previous post you said it isn't even good in specialized decks.
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Onering's 4 simple steps that let you solve any problem with Magic's gameplay
Whether its blue players countering your spells, red players burning you out, or combo, if you have a problem with an aspect of Magic's gameplay, you can fix it!
Step 1: Identify the problem. What aspect of Magic don't you like? Step 2: Find out how others deal with the problem. How do players deal with this aspect of the game when they run into it? Step 3: Do what those players do. Step 4: No more problem. Bonus: You are now better at Magic. Enjoy those extra wins!
I'm pointing out that many people assume a particular thing from Crucible, and that they can put it in almost any deck, and that it instantly means that they get a land drop every turn for the rest of the game, this was highlighted by the below user...
While I agree Crucible of Worlds is a bit overrated by the larger MtG community, it’s been a bit unfairly maligned in this thread. It does have good uses. I run it in my monored deck, where there are four fetchlands and tons of mountains all those fetches can hit. In a deck like this, Crucible is essentially “3: never miss a land drop,” which I absolutely consider worthwhile. Monoblue would benefit similarly (coincidentally, the other best color for artifacts). The upside of reusing a Strip Mine is pure gravy.
So it's important to make it clear to players, that this is not true all the time. This is not an argument, it's a fact.
Couldn’t disagree with you more. You may have noticed I agree with the general premise that it’s often overrated, but I was refuting early statements that implied it was universally poor.
I make heavy use of artifacts in monored (which I think is common), so I can exploit synergies there. Land ramp is weakness the color and fetches do help hit land drops. 80% of the time I draw Crucible, I will already have a fetch land so it absolutely does become “hit all your land drops.” And being a deck that is light on recursion, I’ve never drawn graveyard hate; obviously global graveyard hate can hit me incidentally, but I don’t think that’s the point. Random other synergies like reusing Strip Mine lands and trading it with Goblin Welder push it well over the utility threshold.
Crucible is quite good in the deck and it’s not a dedicated land reanimation deck.
Its really weird of you to try to argue that this goes without stating, when in your previous post you said it isn't even good in specialized decks.
I do think that most times it's unnecessary in Gitrog Monster as the engine of card draw will most times get you into land drops and I also think that it's not good in landfall without other cards to fuel it like Exploration, Azusa, Lost but Seeking, etc.
So even in the decks that it's more specialized for, I still think that it's only an average card for the builds. Not a very weird statement at all.
Its really weird of you to try to argue that this goes without stating, when in your previous post you said it isn't even good in specialized decks.
I do think that most times it's unnecessary in Gitrog Monster as the engine of card draw will most times get you into land drops and I also think that it's not good in landfall without other cards to fuel it like Exploration, Azusa, Lost but Seeking, etc.
So even in the decks that it's more specialized for, I still think that it's only an average card for the builds. Not a very weird statement at all.
Well, yeah, its still pretty weird, considering that you've now changed your assessment twice. You've argued in two separate posts that A) crucible isn't good in specialized decks that can benefit from it's effect and B) it goes without stating that crucible is good in specialized decks that can uilize it's effect, so it's irrelevant to talk about it, complete with a mocking emoji to drive that point home. So yes, it is pretty weird to make both of those arguments, because those arguments are contradictory and mutually exclusive. You either think that the card isn't good in those decks, which opens discussion as to whether that is indeed the case, or you think that it's so obvious that the card is good in those decks that its silly to point it out. You can't make both claims without it looking like you are changing your argument to suit whatever point your trying to make at the time.
It's also kind of weird that you've made the point that you should already be hitting land drops with Gitrog when I already made the counterpoint that playing lands from the graveyard when you have lands in hand is usually superior because you A) get to reuse the best land for the job, including sac lands that let you draw more cards, and B) not playing the cards in your hand let's you get over 7 cards, making you discard down to 7, which triggers Gitrog drawing you more cards. Repeating your first argument doesn't change this, so yeah, that's a bit weird.
It really looks like a situation where you've over reacted in your assessment of the card. You are correct that it's outright bad in most decks, and i, and most people in the thread, agree. It's open to debate whether it's good, bad, or just ok in specialized decks that can maximize it's value. It looks like you want to take the strongest possible position (the card sucks), and are adverse to a more nuanced assessment (the card generally sucks, but has valid uses where it can be pretty good). The idea that the crucible is an overrated trap card that is overplayed and the idea that crucible can be a powerful and effective support card in certain decks are not mutually exclusive.
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Onering's 4 simple steps that let you solve any problem with Magic's gameplay
Whether its blue players countering your spells, red players burning you out, or combo, if you have a problem with an aspect of Magic's gameplay, you can fix it!
Step 1: Identify the problem. What aspect of Magic don't you like? Step 2: Find out how others deal with the problem. How do players deal with this aspect of the game when they run into it? Step 3: Do what those players do. Step 4: No more problem. Bonus: You are now better at Magic. Enjoy those extra wins!
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Some common examples:
How many enchantments to run an Argothian Enchantress or Eidolon of Blossoms
How many 0 or 1 CMC artifacts before Trinket Mage gets a slot
How many 4 or less R/W instants before Sunforger finds a home
How many lands entering the graveyard or effects that do the same before Crucible of Worlds comes out.
This is probably even more personal and subjective than I think it is but in general do you have any guidelines or formulas you follow for this kind of thing?
Trying to put a number on X is very silly.
Once I have that number, that sort of gives me an idea of just how many enchantments I need to be playing in order to hit my target. To draw four extra cards off Eidolon, I might want to be playing upwards of 25 enchantments. So, roughly one fourth of my deck. That sounds like a lot because it is, but if I only see an enchantment every four cards, I'm going to need to see at least sixteen cards by the time Eidolon of Blossoms completes its lifespan. And sure, the Eidolon will help me a little bit by finding additional enchantments to trigger it, but every enchantment I cast prior to casting the Eidolon is another enchantment I'll have to locate later.
Now, with Argothian Enchantress, things are a little different since, at two mana, I don't need to expect to draw as many cards with it. At a minimum, I'll need to ensure that Argothian Enchantress draws at least two cards, one to replace the card itself, and one to justify spending the mana, but it's hard to do much better than that for two mana. Because of this, I proportionally don't need to see as many enchantments since I don't need to draw as many cards with it to make it worth my mana. Perhaps eighteen enchantments would be enough? Again, it's hard for me to say. I usually trust my gut when it comes to this sort of stuff and just tune my decks to the proper number given sufficient playtesting.
For tutors, I really don't need that many targets in order to justify playing them. What's important to me isn't the number of targets they can find, but how valuable the targets they can find are. I would probably want more than one target in case I drew my Trinket Mage target naturally, but I think I would be comfortable with only playing two targets provided they were valuable enough.
Same deal as Trinket Mage. If the card I'm tutoring for with Sunforger is critically important, I don't need to be playing a lot of different possible targets to justify playing it. I just need to make sure those key cards alone are worth it. You can see this sort of thing in action by looking at many of the competitive Zur decks. These decks will play roughly four or so targets because that's what they've determined is all that's necessary. The fact that a card like Sunforger can be used multiple times is just gravy. I don't need to get an excessive amount of value from it. I just need to get enough value out of the card to justify its inclusion, and sometimes that value can come from the inclusion of only a single card or two.
It's virtually impossible to get me to play Crucible of Worlds in any deck. I think it's a garbage card that all but the most synergistic of decks should avoid.
I don't really have a hard and fast rule. I kind of wish I did. I tend to make a lot of comparisons whenever I think about including or excluding a given card, and most of my decisions tend to be based off opportunity cost.
Trap your friends in an endless game with this 23-card combo!
argothian enchantress does basically nothing on its own. Simply replacing itself is pretty weak, so it better draw at least 2, so I'd probably need at least 20% enchantments before I'd consider it (that way I'd draw 2 before turn 3 on average). But realistically, once you start running that many, then you justify a lot of enchantment synergy pieces, which raises the value of enchantments, which further raises the value of synergy pieces, and so forth. So you probably end up with more if you're considering it.
Eidolon of blossoms is itself a striped bears, which isn't a travesty of a card even if that's all it draws. If it draws another it's a cheaper mulldrifter without flying. So you could go lower than argothian (but the other stuff still probably applies).
Of course, with both of those, you take the risk of only draw 1-2 because the potential ceiling of drawing 10 is worth it occasionally underperforming.
Trinket mage only needs 1-2 targets because, so long as it has any legal targets in the deck, you get roughly equal value. Sure, having more gives better selection, but just having sol ring + mana crypt is good enough to justify it in a deck that wants ramp badly. More than 2 is just gravy, you probably won't draw both targets AND trinket mage in the same game. And you always get a 2/2 body to boot.
Sunforger is partly about number, partly about selection. If they all do the same thing it might be kinda meh. If you have a good variety of things - spells that kill different permanent types, spells that protect you from targeted removal, spells that protect you from board wipes, spells that produce tokens, etc. Also depends if the equipment itself is justifiable. Could be worth it with only a couple, if they're really useful spells for what you're trying to do and the equipment itself is useful.
crucible needs at least one fetch or strip or whatever, but you need to actually have it in hand/play/grave. So you probably want at least 10% those lands, or tutors which can hit those lands, ideally more like 15%.
I think the three most important questions are:
Do I need X in hand/play or in deck?
-deck usually means it's easy to justify, in hand/play means you really better have a decent percentage of your deck dedicated.
How many of X do I need before Y is reasonable?
-for in deck, just figure out how many you have. For in hand, figure a percentage based on how many cards you expect to see before you might play it.
Does Y have any other benefits besides synergy with X (for instance, a 2/2 body or a +4/+0 eq)?
-obviously if it's good enough, this could make all the difference. Sunforger might be fine if you just want a way to buff power in a RW voltron deck, and 1-2 targets is just gravy. Argothian enchantress, no so much, and crucible even less.
EDH Primers
Phelddagrif - Zirilan
EDH
Thrasios+Bruse - Pang - Sasaya - Wydwen - Feather - Rona - Toshiro - Sylvia+Khorvath - Geth - QMarchesa - Firesong - Athreos - Arixmethes - Isperia - Etali - Silas+Sidar - Saskia - Virtus+Gorm - Kynaios - Naban - Aryel - Mizzix - Kazuul - Tymna+Kraum - Sidar+Tymna - Ayli - Gwendlyn - Phelddagrif 4 - Liliana - Kaervek - Phelddagrif 3 - Mairsil - Scarab - Child - Phenax - Shirei - Thada - Depala - Circu - Kytheon - GrenzoHR - Phelddagrif - Reyhan+Kraum - Toshiro - Varolz - Nin - Ojutai - Tasigur - Zedruu - Uril - Edric - Wort - Zurgo - Nahiri - Grenzo - Kozilek - Yisan - Ink-Treader - Yisan - Brago - Sidisi - Toshiro - Alexi - Sygg - Brimaz - Sek'Kuar - Marchesa - Vish Kal - Iroas - Phelddagrif - Ephara - Derevi - Glissa - Wanderer - Saffi - Melek - Xiahou Dun - Lazav - Lin Sivvi - Zirilan - Glissa
PDH - Drake - Graverobber - Izzet GM - Tallowisp - Symbiote Brawl - Feather - Ugin - Jace - Scarab - Angrath - Vraska - Kumena Oathbreaker - Wrenn&6
So I'd need minimum of 25 enchantments before I'd start adding Argothian Enchantress or Eidolon of Blossoms, but as I say I would realistically aim for closer to 33 enchantments to feel like it's a better build.
Conversely if I have cards that are artifact specific, I would normally need at bare-minimum 25% of the deck to be artifacts.
3. Yes Sol Ring and Mana Crypt really are that good, and hell, let's just throw in a Sensei's Divining Top while we are at it.
8. You can use Sunforger to cast Tithe, then you can get Mistveil Plains. This allows your deck to function on a very small margin of "targets" as you can just keep reshuffling in the ones you cast.
Hint; Swords to Plowshares, Oblation, Chaos Warp, Tithe, Enlightened Tutor, Boros Charm, Wear // Tear, Teferi's Protection, is all the love you need to run Sunforger.
No threshold meets the criteria, this card sucks. True story, always gets cut from decks due to under-performing.
Niv-Mizzet Reborn
Feather, the Redeemed
Estrid, the Masked
Teshar
Tymna/Ravos
Najeela, Blade-Blossom
Firesong & Sunspeaker
Zur the Enchanter
Lazav, the Multifarious
Ishai+Reyhan
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-Prime Speaker Vannifar
---------------------Will & Rowan Kenrith
Trinket Mage is honestly to me, a card only put it to emphasize the importance of the artifact it's looking for, mainly because it's technically an "overcosted tutor" and 1-mana-or-less artifacts don't have that massive of specific utility applications (general utility yes, but in that case the tutors are also generic and/or tuned to the deck's more specific plans instead). I don't run it in any of my decks because they don't need it (and can't utilize it in other ways as well), not because they lack 1-drop-or-less artifacts or that I put some minimum number on it.
Sunforger is in some ways, opposite of the Mage. I run it in Alesha because a)it works well with the Commander (having first strike favors +power), b) I do have a equipment subtheme and this is a reasonable card to be in it and c) I do run a number of instants it can fetch regardless of whether it was in or not, but I didn't set a number. If Sunforger wasn't an equipment but just an artifact that let's say, tapped to fetch instead of unequip, I would be highly de-incentivised to play the card regardless of the number of instants I had.
Crucible of Worlds. I play it in Horde and I can tell you it'll be useless in any other of my decks. Horde doesn't run fetches (but runs Terramorphic/Wilds along with Strip Mine to give Crucible some bare base utility) while my other multicolored decks have their respective fetches, but I can tell you it's not fetches that make Crucible Good. It's me literally playing Titania, Protector of Argoth, Omnath, Locus of Rage, The Gitrog Monster and a myriad of "awakening" cards (including Liege of the Tangle, believe it or not) that Crucible sees way more utility than it would ever see. The topper? Crucible is only part of the backup plan. The actual plan is for Oblivion Sower to allow me to utilize other players' lands for animation so I have less risk to begin with but you could safely guess there's quite the good amount of times it doesn't work (as well or at all) and I have to animate my own lands to keep up with the game.
At the end of the day, I don't think I'd put a number on it - it needed the insane synergy between almost every card in the deck to make it the reasonable backup battery and even my opponents know it - unless I had Strip Mine (or they suspected I do), no one even prioritizes it for removal even if they knew what my deck revolves around.
As others have said, probably 25. However, I could see playing Eidolon of Blossoms with fewer enchantments if I am playing a lot of enchantment tokens.
I always assume you will have 1-2 mana rocks to get, but you need at least one other target that is useful in the late game. Getting an early Sol Ring is great, but it does nothing late game. Top and Skullclamp can work, for example.
Sunforger is amazing, and if you are playing it you ought to have a lot of cards to maximize its value. There are so many unique effects that are worthwhile. If you are Jeskai, you get counterspells. Otherwise you have spells that protect your board, that tutor, that deal with permanents... At a minimum I would have 5 spells to get.. but I think it is easily worth playing 10+.
I would only play this in decks like The Gitrog Monster that synergize with sacrificing lands. It is not good enough for a simple dredge deck. You need to be able to reliably play multiple lands per turn, and to have at least 20 lands that can be sacrificed. I would always expect Strip Mine and Glacial Chasm in the deck if you play crucible.
8.RG Green Devotion Ramp/Combo 9.UR Draw Triggers 10.WUR Group stalling 11.WUR Voltron Spellslinger 12.WB Sacrificial Shenanigans
13.BR Creatureless Panharmonicon 14.BR Pingers and Eldrazi 15.URG Untapped Cascading
16.Reyhan, last of the Abzan's WUBG +1/+1 Counter Craziness 17.WUBRG Dragons aka Why did I make this?
Building: The Gitrog Monster lands, Glissa the Traitor stax, Muldrotha, the Gravetide Planeswalker Combo, Kydele, Chosen of Kruphix + Sidar Kondo of Jamuraa Clues, and Tribal Scarecrow Planeswalkers
Trinket Mage and Sunforger are tutors, so you really don't need that many targets. Plus, there's nothing like playing Absorb or Suffocating Blast off Sunforger after an opponent has probed your hand and found no counterspells. That trick works once.
Crucible of Worlds is...more than just fetchlands and Strip Mine. I do consider including cycling lands and Armageddon. But I'm generally using it for cake (as in "having one's...and eating it too") more than infinity.
On phasing:
I have run a solid enchantress deck yet, but for these effects that require a card type for you to draw (although they then help you draw into more) I'd put the lower bound around 15-17 - assuming you're using self recurring pieces, such as rancor, in order to get multiple procs. If you're planning to just try and chain draw, it could be around 25 or so for a lower bound.
1 - skullclamp
In all honesty, with a toolbox tutor like this, the number can be much lower - I've run him with as few as 2 or 3 a number of times - if some of those are very important, or very powerful. I HAVE run him solely to get skullclamp once. I've also run him with far more, including artifact lands - I think the most has been about 10-12.
I typically run about 10. The lowest I'd consider would probably be 4. Sunforger is such a repeatable toolbox card though, that I don't really see any way that you'd run so few. At worst, you have Swords and Path for direct creature removal, return to dust for other permanents, Chaos Warp as a catch-all removal, Arcbond for mass removal, Teferi's Protection, Angel's Grace, Dawn Charm, etc for self protection,
I'm a bad example for this. I am perfectly willing to put crucible in every deck.
The lowest I've run though is... zero. It was a mono green deck, with many must answer lands, such as Cradle, which I knew would get answered. So Crucible was in there as inevitable recovery.
Typically though, it'll be about 7-8, Buried Ruin is absolutely great, as the two protect each other, from there it's mostly fetches, and various Strip Mine effects. I tend to run 3 per deck. I also love Mirror Pool.
It's really a question of what are the chances of activating it, versus how important is it? Cards that are tutors, like trinket mage, are a guaranteed value. The only risk is whether you draw your tutor targets first. Having about 4 targets mitigates this. The next question is how often you plan to use/abuse it - do you have flicker effects, graveyard rez? My Chainer deck ran a lot of 4 cost targets because I had both the Transfigure and Transmute guys, which I planned to reuse a lot.
For effects like the Enchantresses, the question is how much value you plan to get out of them, and how reliable you want it to be. In a 100 card deck, having 20 targets gives you a 1/5 chance on every draw to get another target. If you get 2 draw guys out, alongside your normal draw per turn, you should be able to keep the cards rolling fairly consistently.
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A lot of it also depends on what your lands are. Besides fetchlands and Strip Mine, if you play Gaea's Cradle or Cabal Coffers or Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx, I have to blow that up.
If your meta is more squeamish about land destruction, Crucible isn't so useful unless played fairly.
On phasing:
1a: How many enchantments do you need for Argothian Enchantress to be worth a slot?
I agree with the thread consensus that I want enchantress to be, at a minimum, "draw 2". Draw 1 merely replaces a fairly bad 0/1 body. Thus I plugged in the likelihood of drawing at least 2 enchantments by turn 4. Specifically, in a 99 card deck in which you've seen 12 cards (opening 7 + draw 1 each turn + a "bonus" draw from enchantress or some other effect), how many enchantments do you need in the deck to hit at least two? To look at the fail rate, I also looked at the probability of hitting 0 enchantments.
Number of Enchantments || Prob to hit 2 or more || Prob to Hit 0 Enchantments
09 || 29.9% || 29.6%
10 || 34.8% || 25.7%
11 || 39.7% || 22.2%
12 || 44.5% || 19.2%
13 || 49.1% || 16.5%
14 || 53.5% || 14.2%
15 || 57.6% || 12.2%
16 || 61.6% || 10.5%
17 || 65.3% || 9.0%
18 || 68.7% || 7.7%
19 || 71.9% || 6.5%
20 || 74.9% || 5.5%
21 || 77.6% || 4.7%
22 || 80.1% || 4.0%
23 || 82.4% || 3.4%
24 || 84.5% || 2.8%
25 || 86.3% || 2.4%
26 || 88.0% || 2.0%
27 || 89.5% || 1.7%
28 || 91.0% || 1.4%
29 || 92.1% || 1.2%
30 || 93.1% || 1.0%
31 || 94.1% || 0.8%
32 || 94.9% || 0.6%
33 || 95.6% || 0.5%
34 || 96.3% || 0.4%
35 || 96.8% || 0.4%
36 || 97.3% || 0.3%
37 || 97.7% || 0.2%
38 || 98.1% || 0.2%
39 || 98.4% || 0.2%
40 || 98.7% || 0.1%
I posted a ton of data because everyone's own tolerance for failure and success is different. I did a lower bound of 9, which is lower than anyone in thread mentioned, and is a bonkers low number - you will fail as often as you succeed, and it super isn't worth a slot. I set the higher bound at 40, as we're well beyond both diminishing returns and the highest recommendation in thread so far (35 at this posting). Personally, I'd say 21+ feels like the sweet spot. At 21 enchantments, you're at a point where you only fail 1 in 20 games to draw some cards right away with a turn 2 enchantress. Given that she is hard to remove and the possible high roll of drawing a ton of cards (especially with recurrent enchantments like Rancor, Whip Silk, etc), I'm willing to stomach *only* a 77.6% chance to get two or more enchantments that early. Note this is "enchantments you can cast" so you may want to leave the Zendikar's Resurgences and Overwhelming Splendors out of contention when building your deck. Conversely, I might consider Enlightened Tutor, Heliod's Pilgrim, etc. to be virtual enchantments when constructing my deck as they will grab something that then draws a card.
For a floor, I'd say anything less than 17 enchantments makes me uncomfortable; too often Argothian enchantress will be a dead draw. I'd only run Argothian Enchantress in a deck with fewer than 17 enchantments if almost all of them were of the Whip Silk/Flickering Ward/Rancor variety. 27 or 28 enchantments is the point of diminishing returns, it seems - in a dedicated enchantress deck going higher isn't bad, but if I'm struggling to find room I wouldn't feel compelled to go higher on my enchantment count if I didn't have too, as the probabilistic gains are increasingly small.
This took way longer than expected, so that's it for today!
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WGBDoran: Ent-mootWBG
GGGMultani: Group Bear HugGGG
GB(B/G)The Gitrog Monster: Dredgefall DurdleGB(B/G)
RGWGahiji, the Honored Group Hug MonsterRGW
UB(U/B)Yuriko, Ninja Trinket AggroUB(U/B)
WUBRGAtogatog: Assembling a OHKOWUBRG
You could alter this range a little bit if you play mana acceleration realistically at one or less range, Sol Ring, Birds of Paradise, Chrome Mox, etc.
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Because of all this, Crucible can go anywhere from being worth it with just 1 card (Gitrog, as your commander) to 20 not being good enough (a slew of fetches, some strip mine effects, myriad landscape, and like harrow and crop rotation).
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If you're using it with Strip Mine, Dust Bowl, Wasteland, this essentially doesn't even include being a land drop as you are using it for land destruction. You're not gaining traction on the opponents you're not destroying lands. Great in duels, not so great in multiplayer.
Then the thing that makes it least useful is when you just have natural lands to play from your hand. I mean you really have to have a deck that is very poor at drawing cards, because most games you have lands to play from your hand. Even a Gitrog deck tends to get a draw engine going where it's not often you don't have the lands to play from your hand.
So even in specialized decks, like landfall, it's an overrated card for the reasons I pointed out.
Most times it would be better off just being some other card, and that's why I'm calling it out as a trap card for many.
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For something like this, you have to be selling out on enchantments in order to make these worth the slots, otherwise they are too inefficient as draw spells as compared to running a plain old Harmonize. I would think that the bare minimum would be around 36, which is also where I draw the bare minimum of lands for most of my decks. You need a large commitment to enchantments as a theme in order to make this work. In my own Enchantress deck, I run 41 Enchantments and it seems to work well enough.
I think the importance and quality of the artifacts in question is more important than just the number. If your deck already wants 4-5 0CMC-1CMC artifacts, and these are important enough as answers in the various matchups you expect to face, then I would think that Trinket Mage makes plenty of sense. I've seen people run a small package with Engineered Explosives, Expedition Map, Pithing Needle, Relic of Progenitus, Sol Ring, and a Seat of Synod to make it a flex removal/ramp card, but I've also seen people run it in a UR Minotaurs Deck to fetch up Didgeridoo. In general, I would think that you would want at least 5 targets for it.
Same thing as for Trinket Mage, about 5. The nice thing about Sunforger (and Trinket Mage for that matter) is that you really don't have to go too far out of your way to run things that make it good (as opposed to something like Isochron Scepter which is much more restrictive).
This one is harder because there are other ways that lands end up in the graveyard (through looting or Wheel effects for example). Based strictly on lands, I would think that you only want it if it fits your commanders theme (The Gitrog Monster, Borborygmos 2.0, Titania, Omnath 2.0, etc. I run it in only teo decks, both of which get value through cycling lands, fetchlands, the fact that it is an artifact, to recur artifact lands, or because of the number of looting effects in the deck (specifically Bosh and Ni-Mizzet). This is hard to put a number on; I think this is more of a feel thing than anything.
The only other rule I have is for "pure synergy" cards that do nothing unless I have the another card in play to combo with. Cards like Rings of Brighthearth, Strionic Resonator, Thousand-Year Elixir, etc. need at least 14 other cards in the deck to be useful with (in a major way, not minor) before I will consider keeping them in the deck. Obviously, that number goes down if they have major synergy with the commander, but 14 is generally where I draw the line.
Goo thread and good discussion!
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Instead of setting a hard rule, really I'm just looking at how much use I can realistically get out of a card. That might depend on the deck (if I want to abuse fetch lands, for example, I will run Crucible of Worlds, and it might not need to be a deck with 10 fetches).
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Lots of good cards get hosed by graveyard hate, so that's not a convincing argument at all. The real question is whether what you are getting from the card is valuable enough that your are willing to risk it being dead to gy hate. For crucible, in a generic deck, the answer is no, but with a ton of synergy the answer is yes.
The decks that want it have lands that can be repeatedly sacrificed for value, specifically lands that you would want to repeatedly reuse over just playing another land from your hand, and get you additional value from playing or sacrificing land. The arguments you make are invalid when applied to the decks that want crucible. In Gitrog, you get an extra land drop a turn, and your lands dying draw you cards. You are incentivized to continually replay whatever your most valuable sac land is over and over again. Yes, that can often involve a strip mine that let's you clear out any cradles and coffers, and even color screw people, or it might mean resetting glacial chasm every couple turns. In lands.dek, your often have several cards that increase your number of land drops, and yeah you get a ton of value from strip mining three lands in a turn with Titania or Omnath out. It helps boost that decks grindy plan B if the combo win doesn't work out, not to mention it helps protect the combo win.
Those are the types of decks that really benefit from it. I've seen it work well enough in stax or as a way for someone to break synergy on geddon, but I've never done it and it's likely that if I looked at their decks I'd be able to figure out a better card that could replace crucible, but as I havent seen their full lists I can't say.
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I'm pointing out that many people assume a particular thing from Crucible, and that they can put it in almost any deck, and that it instantly means that they get a land drop every turn for the rest of the game, this was highlighted by the below user...
So it's important to make it clear to players, that this is not true all the time. This is not an argument, it's a fact.
The thing is all I'm basically seeing is some very specific decks, Gitrog Monster, landfall (Titania or Omnath) and mass land destruction. At this point it's just a combo card, much like Food Chain is for certain decks.
So sort of pointing out that Food Chain is good for Prossh, Skyraider of Kher, is really the same thing as pointing out that Crucible is good for Gitrog, not necessary
So the thing is that this thread was about a formula for playing Crucible in decks, and this alluded to it being a sort of catch all card for any deck, "as long as you play a certain number of targets".
These conclusions have all come from actually playing the cards in a variety of decks, and ended up being cut due to ir underperfoming, for the reasons I've pointed out. Listen that's not to say that in synergy with cards it can't be good, Exploration, Azusa, Lost but Seeking, but we really are talking combo at this stage.
A lot of casual players are simply slotting it into their deck, thinking that they are going to get immediate value from the card because they are playing X number of fetches, and this is not what really happens.
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Yeah, you should have quoted his post to discuss that. You quoting me and then going there made it sound like you were trying to refute me with that point, which is kind of weird considering my post said multiple times that 20 sac lands wouldn't be enough to run crucible without other support.
If you had followed the thread, there's a common theme that some of these cards, like crucible and trinket mage, don't fit the how many x to run y formula. The entire point that Crucible is worthwhile in certain decks even with only a few lands that hit the yard naturally, yet bad in some decks that have a bunch that do, is important, because it shows that Crucible really isn't a card that can be assessed according to the thread's premise, unlike an enchantress. It isn't a critical mass card, its a synergy card (combo is way too strong of a word, that's like saying Doubling Season is a combo with +1/+1 counters, or Wee Dragonauts is a combo with instants), just like trinket mage isn't a critical mass card, its a tutor. The point is that there is no answer to X, because X is irrelevant. You can answer X for an enchantress, because those care about the number of enchantments you cast, so you need to be able to see a certain number for it to pay off. For Crucible, you literally need to see just one sac land for it to do its thing, and that thing isn't good enough on its own, so you need support cards, preferably a commander, that make it better. This results, like I said, in just 1 card, Gitrog in the command zone, being good enough, because Crucible will help rebuild your mana base without playing lands from your hand (because then you can discard those lands to draw even more cards with Gitrog), but not worth it with X= 20 if its just lands that sac and no other support. Its really weird of you to try to argue that this goes without stating, when in your previous post you said it isn't even good in specialized decks.
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Couldn’t disagree with you more. You may have noticed I agree with the general premise that it’s often overrated, but I was refuting early statements that implied it was universally poor.
I make heavy use of artifacts in monored (which I think is common), so I can exploit synergies there. Land ramp is weakness the color and fetches do help hit land drops. 80% of the time I draw Crucible, I will already have a fetch land so it absolutely does become “hit all your land drops.” And being a deck that is light on recursion, I’ve never drawn graveyard hate; obviously global graveyard hate can hit me incidentally, but I don’t think that’s the point. Random other synergies like reusing Strip Mine lands and trading it with Goblin Welder push it well over the utility threshold.
Crucible is quite good in the deck and it’s not a dedicated land reanimation deck.
So even in the decks that it's more specialized for, I still think that it's only an average card for the builds. Not a very weird statement at all.
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Well, yeah, its still pretty weird, considering that you've now changed your assessment twice. You've argued in two separate posts that A) crucible isn't good in specialized decks that can benefit from it's effect and B) it goes without stating that crucible is good in specialized decks that can uilize it's effect, so it's irrelevant to talk about it, complete with a mocking emoji to drive that point home. So yes, it is pretty weird to make both of those arguments, because those arguments are contradictory and mutually exclusive. You either think that the card isn't good in those decks, which opens discussion as to whether that is indeed the case, or you think that it's so obvious that the card is good in those decks that its silly to point it out. You can't make both claims without it looking like you are changing your argument to suit whatever point your trying to make at the time.
It's also kind of weird that you've made the point that you should already be hitting land drops with Gitrog when I already made the counterpoint that playing lands from the graveyard when you have lands in hand is usually superior because you A) get to reuse the best land for the job, including sac lands that let you draw more cards, and B) not playing the cards in your hand let's you get over 7 cards, making you discard down to 7, which triggers Gitrog drawing you more cards. Repeating your first argument doesn't change this, so yeah, that's a bit weird.
It really looks like a situation where you've over reacted in your assessment of the card. You are correct that it's outright bad in most decks, and i, and most people in the thread, agree. It's open to debate whether it's good, bad, or just ok in specialized decks that can maximize it's value. It looks like you want to take the strongest possible position (the card sucks), and are adverse to a more nuanced assessment (the card generally sucks, but has valid uses where it can be pretty good). The idea that the crucible is an overrated trap card that is overplayed and the idea that crucible can be a powerful and effective support card in certain decks are not mutually exclusive.
Onering's 4 simple steps that let you solve any problem with Magic's gameplay
Step 1: Identify the problem. What aspect of Magic don't you like? Step 2: Find out how others deal with the problem. How do players deal with this aspect of the game when they run into it? Step 3: Do what those players do. Step 4: No more problem. Bonus: You are now better at Magic. Enjoy those extra wins!