What follows is my my reasonably-exhaustive list of Modern effects not mentioned elsewhere and printed over the past two years which could be of interest to Emeria strategies, Sticking to base-White for now and starting with outright powerful effects potentially worth running on their own merits:
And then the bread-and-butter marginal effects which can round out different versions of the Emeria strategies, focusing on the unavoidable "Permanents costing 3 or less with ETB triggers which can passively set up or gain later value" and moving through to the "sacrifice/reset/blink effects". The best and most flexible of these come first:
There are also a small number of Azorius "value" cards which might be of interest, included here since they belong to the most popular colour combination:
Beside these theoretically maindeckable effects, there are a few cards which I see primarily as Sideboard tech to be aware of, found in the following list:
Be aware also that in most cases where the creature types do not matter, I cannot see a reason why Nettle Guard wouldn't simply be a strictly-better version of Cathar Commando.
Finally, Equipment-wise, Stoneforge Mystic builds now should remember that they have Assimilation Aegis as a vulnerable though legitimate "removal spell" to tutor up.
In addition to all of this, it is crucial to note the presence of Meticulous Archive and its cycle of duals bearing the Plains subtype, Which enable Emeria, the Sky Ruin in excellent fashion (while providing support for effects such as Lay Down Arms and a luxury target for things like Soaring Sandwing or the better landcyclers). The ability to both turn on Emeria as the seventh Plains AND have a chance at putting a creature in the Graveyard when empty-handed can sometimes save a non-trivial amount of mana and jump the recursion plan ahead by an entire turn, not to mention its passive card selection as a new flexibility which cannot be understated.
Hopefully this can be useful as a resource for people looking to keep track of all the moving parts.
If there are significant effects you think I missed, please let me know!
This message is just to work through a little backlog and keep relevant discussion as the most recent post, in case anyone comes looking for answers to the questions they posed while I was away. (For new decklists, card options, and/or inspiration for alternative versions see my three posts above). If it can be helpful, then, here are my two cents for TriNerd and TwoWycked.
TriNerd: if you are attempting to beat UR Murktide, I would be happy to talk specifics with you at length, but the upshot is that the defensive versions broadly consider it an excellent matchup for Emeria. I would actually call it a real reason to pilot the strategy if you are facing Murktide regularly.
TwoWycked: I go much further into the idea during one of the later paragraphs from my return post on November 13th this month, but you may want to check out the Essence Reliquary builds for Artifact ETB synergies (which have their own specific advantages and drawbacks).
This is a personal update to highlight a few cards from the list(s) above; reporting on the effectiveness of these variants may help some of you make your decisions, and keeps me thinking about the strategy in general regardless. I also wanted to note that my comment on Nettle Guard being "strictly better than Cathar Commando" was based off of the erroneous assumption that the Mouse had Flash. My mistake!
To begin with, Helpful Hunter now allows Stoneforge Mystic builds (or simply deck-velocity hungry templates) to play up to 8 copies of a White Elvish Visionary that can attack with Equipment if they wish, and it is the preferred hedge to max out on in those cases where 1-7 is the needed number of the effect since it is not an Enchantment and so it lacks the additional vulnerabilities that card type might expose us to. As an example, there is nothing worse than losing your only blocker to a Boseiju, Who Endures when its activated ability might otherwise be no more than short-term card disadvantage for opposing strategies. Next, and perhaps more importantly, its typeline makes Kaheera, the Orphanguard builds much more interesting, relevant because the Companion mechanic is already powerful enough to be worthwhile running if possible, because the Glorious Anthem Kaheera provides gives some protection to the blowout ping effects mentioned above, and because its extra White card in hand helps fuel the painful but undeniably high-leverage Pitch-cast version of Solitude.
Since we were speaking about the Cat Creature type, though, I will mention that this sort of build might be happy to incorporate the Flash threat of Kutzil's Flanker, not least because I have had a chance to test it and found it quite versatile and situationally powerful. While I think the fact that Remorseful Cleric is one mana cheaper is huge in the matchups it comes in for, and its ability to put itself in the Graveyard at will is also highly relevant, the Flanker is less narrow and harder to anticipate. These are qualities which obviously make it an excellent Sideboard card, but I can also now speak from experience when I say that its rare "bigger threat" mode against decks with Sweepers gives it enough extra impact, when combined with the fairly high floor on the "Scry 2" mode, to make limited numbers of it worth Maindeck consideration in aggressive builds most of all. It plays particularly well, I will further note, in diversifying Flash threats either alongside or as a means to enable either Settle The Wreckage or The Wandering Emperor. These being 4-Mana plays, and Kaheera already having been mentioned, I can segue rather smoothly to noting that Beza, The Bounding Spring is an Elemental with a very high-impact ETB trigger as a "bridge" in non-Sweeper builds. As a Legend it is susceptible to gumming up hands in multiples, but almost never will all of its four "checks" fail - and it is not difficult with Solitude in the mix to make the highly valuable "draw a card" mode one of the trivial ones. If it ever hits two-plus modes out of four, it can quickly become a game-breaking play.
Furthering the Flash discussion compels me to also update my opinion on Phelia, Exuberant Shepherd, which has tremendous synergy with Skyclave Apparition above almost all else, either to dispense with the token if things went wrong, or to punish noninteractive decks which care about smaller permanents such as Amulet of Vigor or Hardened Scales, by triggering it indefinitely in ideal cases. Since they enjoy a similar and even more boardstate-beneficial synergy with Phelia, Resolute Reinforcements and Toby, Beastie Befriender's stock might rise by a commensurate amount in Flickerwisp-style builds. Phelia also plays well with ETB one-drops, which allows me a brief return to a prior topic in that the "5 through 8 copies" possibilities will also apply to Thraben Inspector/Novice Inspector splits, with little to distinguish these functionally identical cards (which, I will note, leave Clue tokens up on opposing turns which help disguise Flash plays like Phelia).
Moving on, Winter Moon has been more of a disappointment to me, though I think there are some matchups where it can still be very strong (and at only two generic mana it does a credible job at punishing things like Urza's Saga or Creature-Lands, for example). Because it is less useful than I had hoped, however, I think it will be limited to the Maindeck of monocolour decks in the right Metagames, which means they will also have to give up on more than a very few utility lands, and even there it is already close to only being a Burning Earth to the Manabarbs which was its historical equivalent in Winter Orb - a parallel which should be able to evoke a realization or two in those who have experience with any of the four cards. I have also had middling to poor results with The Battle of Bywater in builds not designed to capitalize on it, but my impression of Split Up has solidified. I now believe it to be tellingly unreliable as a "sweeper", but outright impressive when viewed as "value-added spot removal" for any builds with even a single slot available, and is particularly effective in a dedicated defensive structure. It will rarely empty the board entirely, but will virtually always provide a clean solution to specific problem creatures or attackers, scale up quickly to a Morbid Malicious Affliction or better, offer the chance to clear up a board stall cheaply enough to cast follow-up threats in the mid-game, and have an outside chance at being set up to do so in a one-sided fashion. These are its great strengths on top of being only three mana, but since its chosen mode must be announced on the stack it has a notable weakness against Tap abilities which Teferi, Time Raveler can only partly remedy. An active Birds of Paradise or Giver of Runes in the hands of a savvy opponent, for instance, will generally be completely immune to Split Up - though the card can at least keep pace cleanly with explosive starts like Crashing Footfalls off of Shardless Agent or situationally with multiple Haste threats.
Finally, I wanted to delve a little deeper into the various configurations of Season of the Burrow - since the card is essentially a Swiss Army knife, and so might actually see Maindeck play in the "61st card slot" most recently occupied by Elspeth Resplendent for me. To give it more context, then, I had not realized that the Paw count wording of choosing "up to" five Paws allowed for two hidden outlier choices of 1) literally doing nothing other than putting a blank spell on the stack (a downside if facing Mindslaver effects, but a possible upside against some odd Ensnaring Bridge play, against Wojek Investigator under the right conditions, or perhaps in a similarly contrived Day/Night scenario), and 2) choosing to make Rabbit tokens in any number from one to five WITHOUT doing anything else (provided something like a Rampaging Ferocidon has life totals hanging on such a fine balance). In addition to these corner-case wording oddities, it is important to notice that it can be fizzled on the stack if its only target or targets disappear, and an even more relevant close inspection of the card uncovered the fact that its second modality can be used as a cantrip or even as outright card advantage if chosen twice when pointed at its controller's board. This is a costly endeavour, but as an extreme rarity in White spells I thought it deserved mention for builds that have excess low-value permanents (like Germ or Rabbit tokens, for instance, though sadly targeting restrictions prevent any Rabbits from the third line of text from immediately becoming food for its own fourth and fifth lines). The sixth to eighth lines, while we are near the subject, also carry two extra surprises for a casual reader - the sixth makes no restriction on type (Planeswalker and Land being immediately of interest to me), and the eighth mentions an Indestructible counter. This already makes the spell situational Fetchland Ramp, and dredging up an Indestructible Wall of Omens a turn before Sun Titan could even try to sounds great to me, but I imagine Tef3ri or Emeria, the Sky Ruin might be quite happy of such a counter in the right matchups.
I will also mention that, painful as it might be to do so on the card economy front, this five-mana Sorcery can directly solve as many as three different game-threatening problems off of a single topdeck - provided at least one of these problems can be considered "solved" by blocking with a 1/1. Very few other cards could even pretend to give a direct out to this theoretical boardstate from nothing but Land in play with no cards in hand and at 1 life, for instance: a lethal Glaring Fleshraker and Sowing Mycospawn alongside a Grafdigger's Cage and/or a Blade of the Bloodchief. In this scenario, I might even be able to afford targeting the more threatening of the 1-mana Artifacts with one of the two exile effects, if I wanted to gamble on a single Rabbit blocking the Mycospawn. This is unlikely to be enough on its own, but the fact that Season of the Burrow gives a fighting chance with options to spare in such situations illustrates [EDIT: ITS] potential power, and I can think of easily a dozen permutations of Planeswalkers about to Ultimate, Indestructible Gods threatening lethal damage, and Artifacts accruing value that I have lost games to while scrambling to get my feet under me following early pressure. This is not even to mention the fact that it can provide an avenue to Decking opposition in true attrition stalls, or more pragmatically that the removal option is a maindeckable Exile effect which is not limited by mana cost, Colour, or Permanent type apart from Land, and has its effect function through an opposing Elesh Norn, Mother of Machines. Its biggest downside is clearly its mana cost, both in isolation and because it will frequently compete unsuccessfully with Solitude on curve, but I think it may actually be worth consideration despite all of this, since it plays to the board so thoroughly while providing such a unique set of intersections, redundancies, and coverages outside of the normal axes of interaction.
I think this is more or less all I have to say at the moment, so I'll end things there.
Feel free to check out my previous posts for more context,
What follows is my my reasonably-exhaustive list of Modern effects not mentioned elsewhere and printed over the past two years which could be of interest to Emeria strategies, Sticking to base-White for now and starting with outright powerful effects potentially worth running on their own merits:
Then followed by cards highlighting already-present synergies in many builds, but strong enough to potentially skew deckbuilding significantly:
And then the bread-and-butter marginal effects which can round out different versions of the Emeria strategies, focusing on the unavoidable "Permanents costing 3 or less with ETB triggers which can passively set up or gain later value" and moving through to the "sacrifice/reset/blink effects". The best and most flexible of these come first:
Following these are a more ragtag bunch of loosely-synergistic effects in the same vein, organized by permanents first and then spells:
There are also a small number of Azorius "value" cards which might be of interest, included here since they belong to the most popular colour combination:
Beside these theoretically maindeckable effects, there are a few cards which I see primarily as Sideboard tech to be aware of, found in the following list:
Be aware also that in most cases where the creature types do not matter, I cannot see a reason why Nettle Guard wouldn't simply be a strictly-better version of Cathar Commando.
Finally, Equipment-wise, Stoneforge Mystic builds now should remember that they have Assimilation Aegis as a vulnerable though legitimate "removal spell" to tutor up.
In addition to all of this, it is crucial to note the presence of Meticulous Archive and its cycle of duals bearing the Plains subtype, Which enable Emeria, the Sky Ruin in excellent fashion (while providing support for effects such as Lay Down Arms and a luxury target for things like Soaring Sandwing or the better landcyclers). The ability to both turn on Emeria as the seventh Plains AND have a chance at putting a creature in the Graveyard when empty-handed can sometimes save a non-trivial amount of mana and jump the recursion plan ahead by an entire turn, not to mention its passive card selection as a new flexibility which cannot be understated.
Hopefully this can be useful as a resource for people looking to keep track of all the moving parts.
If there are significant effects you think I missed, please let me know!
Wishing you all well,
-Stéphane Gérard
This message is just to work through a little backlog and keep relevant discussion as the most recent post, in case anyone comes looking for answers to the questions they posed while I was away. (For new decklists, card options, and/or inspiration for alternative versions see my three posts above). If it can be helpful, then, here are my two cents for TriNerd and TwoWycked.
TriNerd: if you are attempting to beat UR Murktide, I would be happy to talk specifics with you at length, but the upshot is that the defensive versions broadly consider it an excellent matchup for Emeria. I would actually call it a real reason to pilot the strategy if you are facing Murktide regularly.
TwoWycked: I go much further into the idea during one of the later paragraphs from my return post on November 13th this month, but you may want to check out the Essence Reliquary builds for Artifact ETB synergies (which have their own specific advantages and drawbacks).
Thanks again for all the hard work, Fluff!
-Stéphane Gérard
This is a personal update to highlight a few cards from the list(s) above; reporting on the effectiveness of these variants may help some of you make your decisions, and keeps me thinking about the strategy in general regardless. I also wanted to note that my comment on Nettle Guard being "strictly better than Cathar Commando" was based off of the erroneous assumption that the Mouse had Flash. My mistake!
First and foremost, though; Helpful Hunter. I still prefer Wall of Omens since it lacks the terrible Tempo vulnerability to Wrenn and Six and Orcish Bowmasters (not to mention the ever-present ping effects like Walking Ballista, Lava Dart, Fire // Ice, and Gut Shot), but the printing of the new Spirited Companion in cat form has a much much bigger impact than the dog version did for a few reasons.
To begin with, Helpful Hunter now allows Stoneforge Mystic builds (or simply deck-velocity hungry templates) to play up to 8 copies of a White Elvish Visionary that can attack with Equipment if they wish, and it is the preferred hedge to max out on in those cases where 1-7 is the needed number of the effect since it is not an Enchantment and so it lacks the additional vulnerabilities that card type might expose us to. As an example, there is nothing worse than losing your only blocker to a Boseiju, Who Endures when its activated ability might otherwise be no more than short-term card disadvantage for opposing strategies. Next, and perhaps more importantly, its typeline makes Kaheera, the Orphanguard builds much more interesting, relevant because the Companion mechanic is already powerful enough to be worthwhile running if possible, because the Glorious Anthem Kaheera provides gives some protection to the blowout ping effects mentioned above, and because its extra White card in hand helps fuel the painful but undeniably high-leverage Pitch-cast version of Solitude.
Since we were speaking about the Cat Creature type, though, I will mention that this sort of build might be happy to incorporate the Flash threat of Kutzil's Flanker, not least because I have had a chance to test it and found it quite versatile and situationally powerful. While I think the fact that Remorseful Cleric is one mana cheaper is huge in the matchups it comes in for, and its ability to put itself in the Graveyard at will is also highly relevant, the Flanker is less narrow and harder to anticipate. These are qualities which obviously make it an excellent Sideboard card, but I can also now speak from experience when I say that its rare "bigger threat" mode against decks with Sweepers gives it enough extra impact, when combined with the fairly high floor on the "Scry 2" mode, to make limited numbers of it worth Maindeck consideration in aggressive builds most of all. It plays particularly well, I will further note, in diversifying Flash threats either alongside or as a means to enable either Settle The Wreckage or The Wandering Emperor. These being 4-Mana plays, and Kaheera already having been mentioned, I can segue rather smoothly to noting that Beza, The Bounding Spring is an Elemental with a very high-impact ETB trigger as a "bridge" in non-Sweeper builds. As a Legend it is susceptible to gumming up hands in multiples, but almost never will all of its four "checks" fail - and it is not difficult with Solitude in the mix to make the highly valuable "draw a card" mode one of the trivial ones. If it ever hits two-plus modes out of four, it can quickly become a game-breaking play.
Furthering the Flash discussion compels me to also update my opinion on Phelia, Exuberant Shepherd, which has tremendous synergy with Skyclave Apparition above almost all else, either to dispense with the token if things went wrong, or to punish noninteractive decks which care about smaller permanents such as Amulet of Vigor or Hardened Scales, by triggering it indefinitely in ideal cases. Since they enjoy a similar and even more boardstate-beneficial synergy with Phelia, Resolute Reinforcements and Toby, Beastie Befriender's stock might rise by a commensurate amount in Flickerwisp-style builds. Phelia also plays well with ETB one-drops, which allows me a brief return to a prior topic in that the "5 through 8 copies" possibilities will also apply to Thraben Inspector/Novice Inspector splits, with little to distinguish these functionally identical cards (which, I will note, leave Clue tokens up on opposing turns which help disguise Flash plays like Phelia).
Moving on, Winter Moon has been more of a disappointment to me, though I think there are some matchups where it can still be very strong (and at only two generic mana it does a credible job at punishing things like Urza's Saga or Creature-Lands, for example). Because it is less useful than I had hoped, however, I think it will be limited to the Maindeck of monocolour decks in the right Metagames, which means they will also have to give up on more than a very few utility lands, and even there it is already close to only being a Burning Earth to the Manabarbs which was its historical equivalent in Winter Orb - a parallel which should be able to evoke a realization or two in those who have experience with any of the four cards. I have also had middling to poor results with The Battle of Bywater in builds not designed to capitalize on it, but my impression of Split Up has solidified. I now believe it to be tellingly unreliable as a "sweeper", but outright impressive when viewed as "value-added spot removal" for any builds with even a single slot available, and is particularly effective in a dedicated defensive structure. It will rarely empty the board entirely, but will virtually always provide a clean solution to specific problem creatures or attackers, scale up quickly to a Morbid Malicious Affliction or better, offer the chance to clear up a board stall cheaply enough to cast follow-up threats in the mid-game, and have an outside chance at being set up to do so in a one-sided fashion. These are its great strengths on top of being only three mana, but since its chosen mode must be announced on the stack it has a notable weakness against Tap abilities which Teferi, Time Raveler can only partly remedy. An active Birds of Paradise or Giver of Runes in the hands of a savvy opponent, for instance, will generally be completely immune to Split Up - though the card can at least keep pace cleanly with explosive starts like Crashing Footfalls off of Shardless Agent or situationally with multiple Haste threats.
Finally, I wanted to delve a little deeper into the various configurations of Season of the Burrow - since the card is essentially a Swiss Army knife, and so might actually see Maindeck play in the "61st card slot" most recently occupied by Elspeth Resplendent for me. To give it more context, then, I had not realized that the Paw count wording of choosing "up to" five Paws allowed for two hidden outlier choices of 1) literally doing nothing other than putting a blank spell on the stack (a downside if facing Mindslaver effects, but a possible upside against some odd Ensnaring Bridge play, against Wojek Investigator under the right conditions, or perhaps in a similarly contrived Day/Night scenario), and 2) choosing to make Rabbit tokens in any number from one to five WITHOUT doing anything else (provided something like a Rampaging Ferocidon has life totals hanging on such a fine balance). In addition to these corner-case wording oddities, it is important to notice that it can be fizzled on the stack if its only target or targets disappear, and an even more relevant close inspection of the card uncovered the fact that its second modality can be used as a cantrip or even as outright card advantage if chosen twice when pointed at its controller's board. This is a costly endeavour, but as an extreme rarity in White spells I thought it deserved mention for builds that have excess low-value permanents (like Germ or Rabbit tokens, for instance, though sadly targeting restrictions prevent any Rabbits from the third line of text from immediately becoming food for its own fourth and fifth lines). The sixth to eighth lines, while we are near the subject, also carry two extra surprises for a casual reader - the sixth makes no restriction on type (Planeswalker and Land being immediately of interest to me), and the eighth mentions an Indestructible counter. This already makes the spell situational Fetchland Ramp, and dredging up an Indestructible Wall of Omens a turn before Sun Titan could even try to sounds great to me, but I imagine Tef3ri or Emeria, the Sky Ruin might be quite happy of such a counter in the right matchups.
I will also mention that, painful as it might be to do so on the card economy front, this five-mana Sorcery can directly solve as many as three different game-threatening problems off of a single topdeck - provided at least one of these problems can be considered "solved" by blocking with a 1/1. Very few other cards could even pretend to give a direct out to this theoretical boardstate from nothing but Land in play with no cards in hand and at 1 life, for instance: a lethal Glaring Fleshraker and Sowing Mycospawn alongside a Grafdigger's Cage and/or a Blade of the Bloodchief. In this scenario, I might even be able to afford targeting the more threatening of the 1-mana Artifacts with one of the two exile effects, if I wanted to gamble on a single Rabbit blocking the Mycospawn. This is unlikely to be enough on its own, but the fact that Season of the Burrow gives a fighting chance with options to spare in such situations illustrates [EDIT: ITS] potential power, and I can think of easily a dozen permutations of Planeswalkers about to Ultimate, Indestructible Gods threatening lethal damage, and Artifacts accruing value that I have lost games to while scrambling to get my feet under me following early pressure. This is not even to mention the fact that it can provide an avenue to Decking opposition in true attrition stalls, or more pragmatically that the removal option is a maindeckable Exile effect which is not limited by mana cost, Colour, or Permanent type apart from Land, and has its effect function through an opposing Elesh Norn, Mother of Machines. Its biggest downside is clearly its mana cost, both in isolation and because it will frequently compete unsuccessfully with Solitude on curve, but I think it may actually be worth consideration despite all of this, since it plays to the board so thoroughly while providing such a unique set of intersections, redundancies, and coverages outside of the normal axes of interaction.
I think this is more or less all I have to say at the moment, so I'll end things there.
Feel free to check out my previous posts for more context,
And wishing you all a happy Holiday season.
-Stéphane Gérard