MTG Salvation

You can always use things like Exsanguinate, Comet Storm, or Earthquake for finishers.

One creature I'm fairly fond of is Djinn Illuminatus. The things it can do with 1cmc draw spells is nuts, let alone removal like Lightning Bolt.

I don't mind them keeping it to 4 decks per release so long as they're good. During the C18 spoiler season, Gyrus, Waker of Corpses was the only one I was excited about and is still by quite a margin the most fun I've had with any of them from C18.

I want more tribal. Plain and simple. More Tribals. Pick some tribes that people try to build, but simply doesn't have the support and give it a bunch of support. No goblins, elves, dragons, slivers, merfolk, vampires, or any other tribe with more than enough support. Hell, I wouldn't actually mind Merfolk so long as it was 3+ colors as there are merfolk in :symw:, :symu:, :symb:, and now, but just not esper.

Tribes that need good/more commanders:
Minotaurs
Clerics
Humans
Shamans
Druids
Cats (really messed up that last attempt)
Faeries
Kavu
Angels

Tribes that got commanders, but still not enough support:
Minotaurs
Dinosaurs
Spiders
Defenders (aka walls)

And those are just off the top of my head.

I do also have a couple other things I really want:
First is a 5-color Legendary tribal. We have Arvad the Cursed, Day of Destiny, and a whole set with legendary creatures that support legendaries, but no 5-color commander that isn't just there for colors.

Second is more colorless options that aren't geared specifically towards artifacts. This I realize is very difficult and will probably never happen. Just tired of mono-brown being nothing but artifact combo decks.

My playstyle and what cards and strategies I use have taken a pretty drastic turn since starting up Magic again. I don't enjoy control, basically at all anymore, and that's after switching my control decks to be removal based rather than counter based. I've stopped building with infinite combos, and have moved to intentionally remove them. I've never enjoyed MLD, Stasis, Stax, and Taxation strategies in the first place, so I've never really used any of those. I don't use cards that make people scoop or give people the "well, he just won." mindset, even if there's no guarantee of me winning off it. I avoid needlessly complicated cards that just take forever to resolve them, like Warp World. I've grown a lot more casual over the past few months, and a lot of my builds are just really different. I like turning combo commanders, like Inalla, Archmage Ritualist, and building comboless aggro decks with them.

I've always been a player that preferred weird and fun boardstates and card interactions more than winning, and my last group was just too competitive for me to play that way. My current group has a few people that are a bit too competitive for the people they play with, but there's enough people in general that I can go a few weeks and never have to play against them.

I just try and keep the game interesting for everyone at the table rather than just me.

3 suggestions:

Maelstrom Wanderer - It's very hard to deal with as a control player. You get 3 spells for 8 mana and a lot of times they're better off letting Wanderer stay on the board rather than let you cast it again. Insane value. Can out of nowhere generate an aggressive, hasty boardstate. Hard to deal with.

Karador, Ghost Chieftain - Very hard for a control deck to deal with without a lot of grave hate. Tends to cost 3 mana more often than not and makes it significantly less valuable to counter your creatures.

Muldrotha, the Gravetide - Karador on steroids. Though a bit more costly not having Karador's cost reduction, she let's you recur all permanent types. Countering your things almost seems pointless at times. There is not enough exile removal in the format to properly deal with a Muldrotha deck after it's ramped a bit. Same weakness as Karador, grave hate, but much stronger over all.

I will say that Karador and Muldrotha tend to play better as control but the end game is to have all your opponents' answers spent.

I honestly never saw that card looking through the Battebond spoilers. I want to Copy Enchantment it.

I've been wanting to try out a Teshar, Ancestor's Apostle Voltron strategy. All the creatures are ramp, removal, or equipment based, and the equipment and mana rocks recurs them. Play Stoneforge Mystic, search for Sword of X&Y, sac stoneforge to something, Cast sword for teshar trigger bringing back Stoneforge, and then repeat. I'm just not into playing Voltron as of current, but I've always enjoyed a good mono-white voltron deck.

Rakdos, Lord of Riots. I've been wanting to play him since he released. Run things like Homicidal Seclusion, Deadly Wanderings, andBlood Mist along with the typical voltron things.

I have a funny story I feel like sharing. Started looking through card boxes to get sleeves and cards for Maelstrom wanderer and came across a box with a copy of Alesha, Who Smiles at Death and a ~30 card landbase excluding Basics from when I decided I wanted to build her a few years back and just never finished. I have an Alesha, Who Smiles at Death deck now, cause why not?

Still going to rebuild Wanderer, but I now have one more deck than I was expecting to have.

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I would just go Slimefoot. While white does give you lots of creature buffs, targeted removal, board wipes, and recursion cards, Ghave paints a bad picture on your deck. Basically, everyone is going to expect combos of some sort, not that you can't do that with Slimefoot but he doesn't have the stigma yet. The partners really aren't good enough I think.

Slimefoot allows you to build tokens and win with aggro despite it being tokens. People aren't going to want to wipe the board of 15+ saplings with Slimefoot out.

Shamans.

I've had these ideas for a while.


1)
Igress Six-Fingers
1UR
Legendary Creature - Vedalken Rogue
1/3

Soulbond
When you cast ~, you may have target noncreature artifact become an artifact creature with power and toughness each equal to its converted mana cost.
As long as ~ is paired with another creature, Each of those creatures has “T: Untap target permanent.”
As long as ~ is paired with another artifact creature, each of those creatures has “UR: This creature gains flying and hexproof until end of turn.”
As long as ~ is paired with another legendary artifact creature, each of those creatures has “3: This creature gets +4/+4 until end of turn.”

Rumor is that the notorious thief Igress Six-Fingers has never stolen a treasure, instead the treasure would follow him home.

Note: A versatile legend who is artifact-friendly, but doesn’t become useless even if there’s no artifact in play. You can also animate opponent’s artifact, if you want to kill it with creature removal.


2)
Reias, Witness of World Reborn
UG
Legendary Creature - Elf Druid
2/2

UG: Target permanent you control loses all abilities and becomes a copy of target land.
3UG: Target land you control loses all abilities and becomes a copy of target nonland permanent.

Note: Land shenanigan legend.


3)
Argus Merryhearth
1WR
Legendary Creature - Human Soldier
5/5

Defender
~ gets -1/-1 for each other creature you control.
2WR: Gain control of target creature with power less than ~. (This effect lasts indefinitely.)

Note: Not a combat Boros legend like too many before him, this one wins loyalty via big parties, until he can’t afford it. One could also “voltron” him to ensure he could control bigger creatures, and doesn’t die to his ability too quickly.


4)
The Fulfilled Circle
2BG
Legendary Creature - Elf Shaman
0/5

When you cast ~, each other player puts a token that's a copy of ~ onto battlefield
Each player may play cards from each graveyard whose owner controls ~. If that card would be put into a graveyard this turn, exile it instead.
5: Destroy target creature named ~. Any player may activate this ability.

Note: A different take on Golgari, this legend forcefully completes the cycle of life via all players, also encourages the player to utilizes mana of other colors. The last ability provides a way for players to get out of the situation, but he/she would lose the ability to cast spells from graveyards because he/she “broke the circle.” The temptation is a double-edge sword. You can also destroy other people’s Fulfilled Circle to keep their dangerous cards being used by another opponent.


5)
Malrion the Scholar
1WB
Legendary Creature - Demon Advisor
5/5

Flying
Each creature and enchantment spell you cast cost 2 less to cast
Each creature and enchantment you control has “At the beginning of your upkeep, you draw a card and you lose 3 life.”

Note: The card depicting a demon scholar who is obsessed with knowledge that he pays great price for them, but the more he learns, the more burdened he feels, and his craving only increases, much to its controller’s chagrin.


6)
Dhalia Winter-Bloom
WG
Legendary Creature - Elf Druid
2/2

You cannot cast creature spells.
Land creatures you control gain first strike, trample, and vigilance.
X2WG: Return target land card from a graveyard to the battlefield under your control. That land becomes a 0/0 Elemental creature with X +1/+1 counters on it.

Note: An odd take on Selesnya color. While this legend prevents you from casting creature spells, it can reanimate your lands indefinitely and make them powerful at the same time. The hefty activation cost is to discourage abuse of lands like Strip Mine.


7)
Riggly, Fraud Master-to-be
1RG
Legendary Creature - Goblin Artificer
2/2

2RG: Put a token onto the battlefield that is a copy of target artifact or enchantment, and put three bomb counter on it.
At the beginning of your upkeep, remove a bomb counter from each permanent with a bomb counter on it. If you do, destroy each permanent that had its last bomb counter removed and ~ deals 3 damage to you.

If only his skills live up to his ego.

Note: New take on Gruul without being outside of color identities. He can copy enchantments and artifacts, but also put 'bombs' into play when doing so, that would damage its owner.


8)
Narkor, Feast of Madness
2BR
Legendary Creature - Human Wizard
3/4

Spells each player plays costs an additional X to cast, where X is the number of cards in that player's hand above 4.
Spells each player plays costs Y less to cast, where Y is the number of cards in that player's hand under 4.

Note: A group hug general (kinda) who manipulates spell costs depending on the number of cards in the player’s hand. However, due to his duality, the deck can be designed either way.


9)
Oxiron, the Shared Nightmare
1UB
Legendary Creature - Nightmare
2/2

Flying, lifelink
At the beginning of your upkeep, you may search target player's library and exile a card from it. If you do, that player may search your library for a card and exile it.
~ gets +1/+1 for each card in all players' exile zones.

Note: Another play on the exile zone, the neutrality of this legend is a testament to UB’s lack of true allegiance while benefit from all’s losses.


10)
Zexa, Elite Socialite
3WU
Legendary Creature - Human Advisor
4/4

At the beginning of your upkeep, choose one:
> Player with the lowest life chooses a permanent another player controls, then gain control of it. You draw a card.
> Player with the highest life chooses a permanent he or she controls, then chooses another player, the second player gains control of it. You draw a card.
4WU: Exchange life totals with target opponent. Activate this ability only during your turn.

Note: WU enjoys laws and order, doesn’t mean they are entirely moral when doing it. A socialite like Zexa is more adept at favor-earning than any actual progress. The life exchanging ability, while useful to help you steal permanents, may also put you at risk.

Darkeshrine, i would lose it if they made a good kavu tribal deck.

Kavu have never been my favorite creature type, but it does hold a high level of nostalgia for me as i ran kavus in my first deck back in 2000.

More tribal would be nice overall. Just not another power spike. The only two decks out of the box that held a chance were cats and vampires.

3 Player game

I was playing Kydele & Vial Smasher and there was a Muldrotha and a Pir&Toothy

The Muldrotha player does a bunch of stuff on turn 6 including play and crack a Lotus Petal
The Pir&Toothy Player with a Seedborn Muse in play taps out playing stuff and passes the turn.

I Cyclonic Rift the Muse and then Vampiric Tutor for Shaman's Trance on the end of turn.

Tap out playing the Yawgmoth's Will and Shaman's Trance from hand.
Proceed to make infinite mana off the Muldrotha player's Lotus Petal
The other player had a Brainstorm in grave which I then used to draw my deck and find the win.

Ummmmmmmm let me see what I can do to summarize things:

Rules Changes:

• Banned as a commander has been removed. If you recall correctly, there used to be a few cards like Braids, Cabal Minion and Erayo, Soratami Ascendant whom were banned as your commander but legal in the 99. They removed this mechanic in favor of making the rules simpler so those cards are now just entirely banned.
• Kokusho, the Evening Star was unbanned.
• Tuck no longer works on commanders. If a Commander would be put into a library, hand, graveyard or exile from anywhere, its owner may choose to move it to the command zone instead.
• Worldfire was printed and immediately banned.
• Griselbrand was printed and immediately banned.
• Sylvan Primordial got banned.
• Prophet of Kruphix got banned.
• Metalworker got unbanned.
• The restriction on what mana you can make has been removed. City of Brass for instance can tap for mana outside of your commander's colors. The restriction of color identity remains though. The mana restriction was primarily redundant to the color identity restriction on building though so it was removed to streamline and reduce the number of rules.
• Protean Hulk has been unbanned.

I apologize as that probably is not in order of how it happened. I mostly listed it off in the order that I could recall it and some of it might have been before you left.

NEW STUFFS.... this is me doing my best to go through standard and highlight some of the more impressive rare / mythics. There are some that are good that I don't mention that might be roleplayers or just something I missed.

• Aetherflux Reservoir - its terrifying for decks that play lifegain strategies or storm based strategies. Once you have the life to fire this thing off its really hard to interact with.
• Anointed Procession - its like a white Parallel Lives.
• Azor's Gateway - its somewhat handy in decks that lack good card advantage like mono white, mono red, and boros. Its not that likely that you ever get to flip it but if you do there are some decks that would run away with its effect. I think the reasons to run it though are based on what it does on its front side though.
• Blackblade Reforged - its a big buff and the cost to equip is reasonable. Unlike Strata Scythe you are not punished for running more colors or nonbasics.
• Cabal Stronghold - similar to Cabal Coffers but probably only playable in mono black.
• Demon of Dark Schemes - similar to Massacre Wurm but a little different play on it. There are times that one or the other would be more appropriate.
• Dire Fleet Daredevil - some versatility and a new effect for red.
• Disallow - Voidslime but for mono U.
• Dowsing Dagger - its a nifty amount of ramp, I really like it with decks who have a 1-3 mana commander where you could curve it fairly well too. The land side of it is non legendary too so you could copy it with things like Vesuva which is sweeeeeet.
• Growing Rites of Itlimoc - its really a poor man's Gaea's Cradle. Its nowhere near as good but.... there are decks that you would run it for still.
• Helm of the Host - its really amusing with some commanders who have ETB effects or an effect that would be brutal to stack like Grand Arbiter Augustin IV. Notice that the token is not exiled or sacrificed so you keep the copies.
• Hour of Promise - its sort of like a bad Primeval Titan in that its one and done but it is still decent in a lot of cases.
• Hour of Revelation - another good white wrath.
• Karn's Temporal Sundering - its a strong Time Warp effect and costing one more than really the good ones but getting that bounce might be just fine.
• Nezahal, Primal Tide - it has self evasion on it and it draws cards. I have not seen it much yet but it seems like a fairly good creature all around.
• Noxious Gearhulk - its got a nice ETB and being its black you can potentially loop it with rez effects. It is a little different effect from Duplicant but I can see times you would vary between which you would run.
• Panharmonicon - double ETBs and its colorless so you can run it anywhere.
• Paradox Engine - it combos really hard with mana stones. There don't seem to be much for non combo uses but it goes off hard.
• Ramunap Excavator - its Crucible of Worlds on legs, and its green to boot.
• Razaketh, the Foulblooded - its a good sac outlet and it plays well into token / ETB / dies effect decks.
• Rishkar's Expertise - its strong draw and the tempo of playing a spell after the draw is good too.
• Scavenger Grounds - colorless grave hate. Its a great effect.
• Tendershoot Dryad - the number of tokens it can make given the time it takes to make them and then also boost them is a little nutty. Just playing this card can result in situations that require wraths.
• The Immortal Sun - its nice draw for colors who are starved for draw like white, red, and boros. The cost reduction can also be really nifty for some decks that chain spells together.
• The Scarab God - its such a strong control creature. It is stat efficient and somewhat hard to remove not to mention its effect being very useful for positive value as well as depriving opponents of creatures in grave.
• Torment of Hailfire - its sort of like a new Exsanguinate effect with a similar but slightly different effect.
• Torrential Gearhulk - in a deck with a lot of instants it can be nice.
• Walking Ballista - its mostly an infinite mana dump.
• Whir of Invention - its a really sweet artifact tutor due to the improvise + instant speed + the artifact going to play. Responding to some big fat ETB creature with tutoring Torpor Orb to play is really good.
• World Shaper - somewhat useful with sac outlets. Somewhat of a silly combo is to run this with Emeria Shepherd which can do silly things together.
• Yahenni, Undying Partisan - its a good sac outlet. Its very robust.

Its the end of your turn. You go to pass priority on your end step, and the opponent to your left has something. He's in UR, maybe another color, but that doesn't matter right now, because he's tapping the two Islands he held up for counter mana and a mountain. "Maybe he's just drawing some cards" you think, as he has, after all, been playing control. Nope. Confidently, with a hint of a smirk forming, he lays Pestermite on the field. He's tapped out, but unafraid of the mountains he sees untapped across the table, signaling a FoW in hand. "Any response?" he asks the table, almost daring someone to fire off removal. Nobody takes the bait, and it moves to his turn. He untaps,and draw his card without even looking at it. He's casual, relaxed, the sort of posture from a man who knows he's got the game in the bag and there's nothing anyone can do about it. He taps four mountains, leaving two Islands open, a clear signal that he's got double counters at the ready, the Force and something else. Down comes Splinter Twin, he moves to tap the now enchanted fae and go infinite. You start going over the game, analyzing what you could have done differently, when from across the table comes "I have a response." She taps her two mountains, to which PesterTwin responds by pointing to his Islands, "So do I." "No, you don't" she says, as she points a card at the fae. Your heart races, you've heard of such power, but its not a lesson a Jedi would teach you. Your opponent sees the card, his smirk leaves his face, the color drains from his cheeks and he begins to shake. The rest of the table is breathless. "It has Split" she begins, her voice echoing in the silence, your opponent has begun to cry, and a pool of yellow fluid begins to form at his feat, ruining his parent's old lawn chair, "Second" she finishes, as the entire table jumps up shouting "WORLDSTAR" and the PesterTwin player bursts into flame, his face melting like the Nazis at the end of Raiders. Your savior stands up, puts on her coat, and walks out, as the survivors begin a standing ovation. Such is the power of Sudden Shock.

So 6/10, depends on your meta.

Quote from darkeshrine »

No Auriok Salvagers? Goes infinite with Lion's Eye Diamond and let's you get every 3cmc creature and 0-1cmc artifact from your graveyard with your commander. Generally useful with bunches of low cost artifacts anyway.

Bomberman is in there. I put it under "Good stuff" section of deck list rather than "Graveyard recursion creatures", as I didn't want people getting confused that Auriok Salvagers is part of the Teshar, Ancestor's Apostle infinite's.

Azorius is a boring color combo.

Has everyone else not noticed that he cant imprint Baleful Strix? Chrome Mox says "nonartifact, nonland" and Baleful Strix is an Artifact...

But as everyone else has said. We dont know your deck. If its a combo then dont exile Vampiric Tutor. If its not then exile away

Done! Apologies for delay!

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