Armadillo Cloak
I won countless games when I first started playing at the kitchen table with this thing strapped to a Watchwolf or Loxodon Hierarch.
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- calamity_unbound
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Member for 12 years
Last active Wed, Jul, 8 2020 20:40:34
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Sea Gate Oracle / Raven Familiar/ Riverwise Augur - Filter/Draw
Birds of Paradise - enables T2 Animar and helps with color fixing
Sages of the Anima - Really too slow in a competitive build, but can be an excellent draw source until you can replace it with something like Sylvan Library or Glimpse of Nature. Just make sure you're in a good spot before casting it, you don't want to be missing needed land drops.
Garruk's Horde - keep casting those creatures and have a formidable beater to boot.
Caustic Caterpillar/Nantuko Vigilante/Ainok Survivalist - Torpor Orb shuts us down hard, these make sure you can get rid of it.
Brutalizer Exarch - Solid Removal in a budget build
Shrieking Drake /Man o' War - more ways to bounce your stuff or your opponents if necessary
Duplicant - I've of the best pieces of removal we can run, and it runs really well with bounce effects or DEN.
Soul of the Harvest / Primordial Sage - gains us more value from our little utility guys, great draw engines.
Fierce Empath - all around great card for grabbing a combo piece or a needed answer
Does he do anything for Alesha? Seems like a place he could still do some work.
As far as usefulness, this card is obviously close to a staple and most people know what it does by name alone. I locked down an opposing Prossh and Ezuri player a few days ago with a bunch of Nath tokens, this card, and Attrition.
With a sac outlet handy, this card is back breaking in just about any token deck.
Don't forget that some wheel effects will get you a one time use as well. Time Spiral and some of its ilk.
Have you considered running clone effects? That seems much less Mana intensive than hard casting Keiga from the command zone multiple times.
As for your original question, as Dunharrow pointed out, there aren't a ton of these types of effects that are worthwhile in this format. I would recommend looking at any creature with the "Spellshaper" type, as they all have a "pay x, discard a card, tap: effect" ability, but unless you have a convoluted untapping mechanism you'll only be getting one of each effect each turn. Still, Spellshaper tribal could be an interesting build.
Look at:
Greel, Mind Raker
Jaya Ballard, Task Mage
Latulla, Keldon Overseer
Notorious Assassin
Seismic Mage
Bog Witch
Volrath the Fallen
Also, Skirge Familiar seems like something you want to run.
Aetherize feels better to me than River's Rebuke. Blue Sun's Zenith and Comet Storm give you a couple of options as far as wincons with Will's emblem and having juicy copy targets.
I'm going to second the Reprecussion suggestion, as having that paired with all of the "deal damage to creature" spells you're packing, it could be back breaking.
Spot removal also feels really light, sometimes you need a scalpel and not a battle-axe. I can't make any recommendations thought, as your planeswalker combinations may be able to handle that issue for you.
EDIT: New Jhoira seems like an incredible draw engine in this deck.
I vote Kresh, The Bloodbraided. He'll open you up to Green as you want (which gives you Groundbreaker if you missed it) and gives you a little more mileage on sacrificing those fat creatures each turn.
I don't care about shocks getting a reprint if we get a story spotlight card of Bolas stepping on Emmara Tandris.
I like the design of the card, and even at 5 cmc I'd run this any day over something like Scatter to the Winds, but the problem is we've just gotten too many good "counterspell that also does x" cards. Something middle of the road like this never fits in a typical counterspell package, unless maybe your deck has a specific clue token theme.
If I ran Baral and wanted to jam as many decent counterspell variants as possible, this would probably make the cut.
Rend Flesh is another pet card that will sometimes make the cut in B/x decks, hits most relevant creatures and is an easier casting cost than Murder
Fresh Meat can be great with an aggro deck against board wipes. You can also rattlesnake against them with Stalking Vengeance and Vicious Shadows. Even one card in hand can be scary if you're looking at taking 10+ damage from a board wipe. Fecundity is a good recovery plan against them, and if you don't go as heavy on a token theme, Ulvenwald Mysteries might be worth trying out.
There are a lot of solid cards in standard right now that I've already picked up for various EDH decks, so I'm potentially spending less than $50 to acquire the new cards to build the deck I'm spitballing, and $30 of that is split between Search for Azcanta and Torrential Gearhulk, both of which I wanted anyway. Besides that, the deck only uses 2 non basic lands, praise Urza!
I enjoy deck building immensely, and having a limited card pool to choose from or restrictions to build around just gets me ridiculously excited, and that's the reason why the only formats I play exclusively are EDH and Limited. I doubt I'm the target audience here, but I'd this gets some die-hard standard grinders to dip their toes in the EDH hot tub, I won't complain. More players in our format is not a bad thing.