- Vajrayana
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Sep 1, 2019Boyachi posted a message on Building an Assassination DeckPosted in: Commander (EDH)
Blue is the color of flying, so you have access to Levitation and Archetype of Imagination
Red is also the color of “cannot block” abilities like Tectonic Rift and Bedlam. -
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ilovesaprolings posted a message on Building an Assassination DeckIf you want to use hatred you can pair it with the new Greven, predator captainPosted in: Commander (EDH)
Maybe you can also use malignus -
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Gutterstorm posted a message on Building an Assassination DeckTwo words: Tainted Strike.Posted in: Commander (EDH) -
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Chairwolf posted a message on Rakdos Discard EnginesIf by "consistent" you mean repeatable and/or free, I'm sorry to say there aren't a lot of cards that both allow you to discard easily and have impactful effects. Zombie Infestation and Call the Bloodline are the two cards mentioned so far that I think are the best.Posted in: Commander (EDH)
I agree that you should absolutely not play Volrath's Dungeon.
The other free, repeatable discard outlets that I can think of are Oona's Prowler, Putrid Imp, and Skirge Familiar. The Familiar is the only one of those that really gives you any benefit, but its mana cost is relatively high.
I think you might get the most mileage out of the red looters, Mad Prophet and Rummaging Goblin.
Cryptbreaker, Pack Rat, and Tomb Robber have discard effects that cost mana, but they give you something in return. Cryptbreaker has to tap, but will give the most value in the long run.
Faithless Looting, Demonic Collusion, Insolent Neonate, Lightning Axe, Pirate's Pillage, Viashino Racketeer, and Tormenting Voice give you a one-time discard for a reasonable benefit.
Cunning Lethemancer and Necrogen Mists give you a discard once each turn while affecting your opponents.
Tortured Existence allows you to dump creatures you want to reanimate in exchange for any small value creatures you have in the 'yard.
If your deck discards its own cards frequently, I love Big Game Hunter as a piece of removal.
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calamity_unbound posted a message on Rakdos Discard EnginesYou can use the Pithing Needle trick if you're really adamant about keeping Dungeon around. Can also run Lethal Vapors for a similar combo, and this might actually aid your gameplan if you're in creature heavy metas.Posted in: Commander (EDH)
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. -
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Dunharrow posted a message on Rakdos Discard EnginesVolrath's Dungeon will always be destroyed by someone immediately.Posted in: Commander (EDH)
Zombie Infestation is very powerful and there are few cards like it. Most effects have mana costs or are tap effects.
Vampire Hounds and Olivia's Dragoon are the only ones I can think of with no restrictions.
Call the Bloodline is pretty good. Key to the City. Liliana of the Veil.
You should also consider cards like Collective brutality and Cathartic Reunion. Paired with Dredge, these are very good at filling your graveyard. -
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MopDa posted a message on Copying Chandra's -2 AbilityYou cannot copy what she creates(delayed triggered ability) itself, but when its trigger condition is met, triggered ability fires off of that and this is what you can copy with Resonator. Do your best.Posted in: Magic Rulings Archives -
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MikeCline83 posted a message on Maralen of the Mornsong EDHAlso, if you're looking for some two-card-shenanigans then these can be "fun":Posted in: Multiplayer Commander Decklists
Helm of Obedience + Leyline of the Void = DECKED
Deserted Temple + Cabal Coffers + 3 Swamp = Infinite B (I know not REALLY a 2 card combo)
Magus of the Coffers + Umbral Mantle + 3 Swamp = Infinite B (same as above) -
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bobthefunny posted a message on Tibor & Lumia - Spellslinging blue aggroWhy Tibor and Lumia?Posted in: Multiplayer Commander Decklists
This is one of the biggest questions I get. Why Tibor and Lumia as far as they go, even I have to admit they are comparatively weak to other 4 cost generals. Olivia Voldaren alone is equal in stature, has flying by default, and still does damage to whichever targets you want, and has a devastating extra ability. Jenara, likewise, is another powerful 3/3 flyer for cheaper. What makes Tibor and Lumia so special?
I have always been partial to the blue/red pairing. Early on, one of my favorite archetypes was a traditional counter/burn deck. Tibor and Lumia is one of the earliest EDH decks I built; vying with Nemata and Vaevictis, shortly after my Cromat deck. I chose Tibor and Lumia over other blue/red generals (notably Niv-Mizzet, who I jokingly claim T&L would rather be) for several reasons:- Whereas Niv really characterizes the unity of both colors, in turning draw into damage, he feels more like a red general playing blue spells to me. T&L showed me instead a general who still wants to cast spells, but would interact more with the board in general, and would need a combination of both spell colors to really shine.
- Blue and Red are the two worst colors for mana acceleration. Blue gets a bit of help from its illicit affair with artifacts, but that really pales in comparison to every other color: Thus, I aimed for a cheaper general.
- Niv is done to death, and has too many "I win" combos that just steal the thunder away from the Johnny in me. It's not about the combo for me... it's about doing stuff, and T&L is happy to comply.
What you could do with T&L
The first version of this deck was much more good stuff. I then modified it with a clear goal of attempting to deck myself in EDH, using a lot of card draw and cantrips, while I have come close, I have not yet actually managed this feat. Sphinx-Bone Wand and Cast through Time made prominent appearances in the deck after the volume of spells I could play became evident. This is one way to abuse slinging multiple spells. I fount it a bit too fragile.
Another option for T&L aspirers is to focus on the red ability. The capability to burn the ground is very powerful, couple it with powerful equipment/auras like Charisma or Sword of Kaldra and you have a threat to reckon with. This build lends itself to a very strong control approach, using red to inflict pain, keep your enemies under control, with support from blue for the stack war and protection.
Another take on the red option, is to run repercussion/Mog Maniac type effects (though not the maniac himself, he's not so good with T&L). Other notable ones are Stuffy Doll (which you can clone) and Coal hauler swine.
Yet another option goes in the other direction again. Focus on the blue side of the twins: Run small utility "on connect" creatures like Surrakar Spellblade, or Kukemssa pirates. Use the flying ability to ensure they connect. Mystic Decree and gravity sphere work well in both of these color-specific versions, as does Phyrexian Splicer.
The last option, is quite surprisingly a combination of the two decks above, as well as the current version. Gelectrode and Cinder Pyromancer as well as another untapper with Quicksilver Dagger also plays well with a large number of instant/sorceries, as well as all the controlling equipments. Curiosity and Ophidian Eye then make a close approximation to a cheaper (mana cost) Niv-Mizzet type combo (without actually being boring). It's an extra way to gain cantrips off of your massive spell slinging.
This Version
Rather than focus directly on T&L abilities, this version focuses on the power of blue and red: the two colors best able to fight on the stack. As such, the decks main weapons are in its instants and sorceries, creating spell chains of immense advantage, to bury your opponents under sheer quantity of cards. The deck capitalizes on blues love of artifacts to use equipment such as Runechanter's Pike and Leering Emblem to further take advantage of the spell slinging. T&L fits this strategy by providing a cheap evasive general, with relevant abilities to trigger off of the spell-slinging.
Other Decks!
TheEndIsNear has posted his Storm Combo version, with a higher emphasis on mana rocks to get the early mana needed to fuel cheap spells. Also includes a fair set of 'free' spells.
Notable Themes:- Flashback: Reusability is good. Flashback also gives extra uses of spells for activating T&L's abilites. Once of the first graveyard combo pairs that was added into the deck was River Kelpie + Flame Jab. When you can successfully flamejab and wipe the board of 7/7 Essence of the Wilds... You know something is going right. The printing of Past in Flames simply sealed the deal. Giving your cantrips flashback turns them into powerful draw spells. Giving your powerful draw spells flashback makes them... um. Awesome.
- Storm: As with any deck that plays a lot of spells, storm raises its hand suggestively. Many spells simply are underwhelming though, while others are ridiculously powerful. While I personally do not run some of the more powerful spells, (see notable exclusions), Ignite Memories makes a very stylistic and powerful addition to the deck. While it can be hard to call 1 card a theme, if you play the deck, you'll really appreciate just how many cards simply say: "Play more stuff!"
- Cost Reductions: With the number of spells this deck plays, it quickly became evident that single use mana rocks were simply ineffecient compared to what could be used. Plus, its delightfully fun to mess with power curves of the mana costs, especially when you start to mix in the Urza's bloc 'free' spells that untap lands. Such delight.
Playing the Deck
Step 1: Draw cards.
Step 2: When you have a full hand of cards, Draw more cards.
Step 3: ???
Step 4: Draw cards.
That is exactly how the deck plays out; the goal is to stick one of the awesome equipment on T&L. To get them, you draw cards until you get them, once you have one of them, you draw more cards to make them stronger. Somewhere in there you attack and kill someone. Mostly you look impressive by doing lots of stuff, most of which doesn't do much except let you do more stuff. The fact that some of your stuff does stuff while you do stuff is inconsequential. Until you kill someone with your stuff.
Spellweaver Volute
A card so awesome, it gets its dedicated paragraph.
In a deck where playing spells is good, and volume of spells is great, and running lots of instants is awesome... replaying them all for free is simply sheer brilliance.
The obvious all star here, is Flame Jab, allowing you to suddenly replay any instant you choose, for the simple cost of R.
So here are the fun things to note: The Volute enchants (and attaches) to an instant card in a graveyard. Yes, that means anybodies grave yard. You can cast other peoples cool spells; something I had not been entirely aware of before.
The Volute creates a copy of the card then casts the copy. Many people may groan at the creating a copy part, but here are the important distinctions:- It casts the copy - This was the original reason this made it into the deck for me. Casting a spell does trigger your Leering Emblem, Paradise plume, and does count for storm; it does not create the copy on the stack.
- The copy it creates is created in the graveyard. This is another one I initially played wrong. The copy is cast from the graveyard. Your River Kelpie will trigger off of this. Your Secrets of the dead and Burning Vengeance will trigger if it was enchanting a card in your graveyard.
Tibor and Lumia - A cheap aggressive general, who can give themselves evasion on the cheap, as well as handle threats on the ground. Inherently good against token swarms. Have been a bit overshadowed by their more recent rivals, Jenara, Asura of War, and Olivia Voldaren, yet because of this hold a strength in surprise and in their colors. Whereas Jenara and Olivia require some amount of mana dedicated to themselves, T&L's abilities fire off as a consequence of other actions. This allows the deck to be much faster than its rival generals.
Instants
Shadow Rift - Instant speed evasion. For almost all practical purposes, shadow = unblockable, especially when flying as well. While there is no inherent flashback, the cantrip is nice.
Mind Games - Repeatable blue spell for a source of flying, and able to open otherwise closed attack routes. Do note that it taps things other than creatures, shutting down problematic mana sources or mazes prior to your turn/attack is very useful.
Skred - Burn baby burn. This is red's best single mana removal spell in this format.
Quicken - Technically in trial phase, this synergies with a lot of the deck. With 15 sorceries, and a built in cantrip, this is never a dead draw. Flashing back a Past in Flames for a blowout counterspell action is also very strong.
Snap - Good creature bounce, that happens to be 'free.' With the spell reductions I run, it tends to generate mana for me. A good way to go off sooner.
Reality Ripple - My secret gem of a card, it answers anything, or saves whatever you want. It answers almost anything for the mere cost of 1U.
Psychotic Fury - Double Strikes our T&L for a quick kill, and cantrips in red. Awesome!
Ignorant Bliss - Saves our hands from enemy removal (rarely), or more often from our own wheels. Turns any wheel effect into pure advantage.
Echoing Truth - Blue bounce that hits non-creatures. This is how you deal with problematic enchantments. Side effect of being effective against tokens, if you can't deal with them with T&L for some reason.
Frantic Search - See snap. Card filtration/draw, that is 'free.'
Oona's Grace - On its own, it cycles lands for 2U. Nothing terribly awesome. As soom as you turn it into advantage with a Kelpie/Secrets of the dead, it starts to shine. If you reduce the cost, it positively glows. Turning all your lands into Ancestral Recall has never been cooler.
Repulse - Instant speed answer, with a cantrip!
Long-Term Plans - Tutoring power.
Cerebral Vortex - Can be used on opponents EoT as an instant speed draw 2. Otherwise it punishes card drawers, or whoever you want when you chain wheels.
Chaos Warp - Reds answer all.
Turnabout - Generates absurd amounts of mana. This is one of those cards that was practically a mistake to print. You can also use it to shut out one player's defense if needed.
Inspiration - Drawing cards is cool.
Fact of Fiction - Drawing lots of cards is even cooler.
Overblaze - Can boost T&L with a double damage, akin to Psychotic Fury, but shines as it also doubles T&L tremor ability, as well as being able to stack multiple times for insane damage.
Plagiarize - Currently testing, it's an evil blowout with wheel effects, and is brutal with anyone abusing card draw. Do not cast versus a Sphinx player. (should probably be Jace's Ingenuity, but I can't find one atm.)
Flash of Insight - Blue draw/search, with an easy flashback cost.
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Vex - counter (disputed by others)
Arcane Denial - counter + card advantage
Dream Fracture - counter + card advantage
Sorceries
Artful Dodge - Unblockable for 2 uses, flashback also synergies with the rest of the deck. Spot used to be held by Distortion Strike, which is good in its own way, but this fits better for the deck.
Flame Jab - A true allstar in the deck: the river kelpie/secrets of the dead combo allows you to chain multiples off at a time.
Gamble - tutor
Faithless Looting - filtration with a flashback.
Merchant Scroll - tutor
Fabricate - tutor
Windfall - wheel effect
Wheel of Fortune - wheel
Mystic Retrieval - Returns more spells for you to play. Essentially card advantage.
Deep Analysis - Drawing cards is awesome!
Concentrate - Repeated!
Seize the Day - Our glorious combat trick to eliminate multiple opponents in a single turn. Because once you kill one person in a single hit, others get worried.
Past in Flames - When this card was printed, this deck really cranked it into overdrive. This allows about 40% of the deck to be reused. Typically the turn you cast this, you win.
Ignite Memories - When casting lots of spells, anything that takes advantage of that is pretty cool. Not only does this lay serious pain on someone, it does it with style.
Time Spiral - (trial) Fits under the wheel/draw 7 idea, as well as generating more mana. I have some concern over losing my graveyard, as that's my goto for quick answers, especially if some spells are already exiled, as that would dilute the spell-nonspell ratio of the deck. Still, it was a broken card once, I don't see why that would end now.
Creatures
Walking Atlas - Mana acceleration (while he lasts). Getting going in the early game is crucial.
Guard Gomazoa - I'm trying out the 2 jellyfish as early deterrents. Updates to come.
Gomazoa
Anger - haste.
River Kelpie - Oh sweet awesome the draw.
Artifacts
Swiftfoot Boots - haste/hexproof/awesome (greaves prevents you from giving T&L flying, as well as other self buff spells, like psychotic fury)
Leering Emblem - Oh sweet heaven, this is responsible for many a blowout. With only 2 spells it makes T&L a 7/7, which is a 3 hit kill. For two more, at 11/11 is 2 hit, which happens to work well with psychotic fury, Overblaze and Carpe Diem.
Runechanter's Pike - You may think this doesn't work well with flashback, but let me educate you: Every spell you flashback gets you more cards. More cards means more spells to play, which means more spells in the graveyard. It's cool. Don't trust me on this, just try it.
Diviner's Wand - Auto equips to T&L, and a wheel effect alone puts T&L in kill zone (1 card for your turn, +7 off of wheel puts T&L up to an 11/11. Add Overblaze/Double Strike, etc = dead opponent)
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Wayfarer's Bauble - ramp
Sol Ring - rock
Izzet Signet - rock
Darksteel Ingot - non-dying rock
Paradise Plume - rock that gains sick absurd amounts of life.
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helm of Awakening - cheap
Sapphire Medallion - cheap for me
Catalyst Stone - cheaper for me sometimes
Stone Calendar - cheap for me for everything
Mana Matrix - I'm a cheapskate
Enchantments
Secrets of the Dead - Kelpie version 2.0
Burning Vengeance - (kinda trial) Alternate damage options are useful at times.
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Spellweaver Volute - It is awesome, see the dedicated section.
Planeswalker
Tezzeret the Seeker - searchy stuff, or untap the mana stuff you have.
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LANDS
12 Snow-Covered Mountain
12 Snow-Covered Island
1 Minamo, School at Water's Edge
1 Izzet Boilerworks
1 Temple of the False God
1 Reliquary Tower
1 Riptide Laboratory
1 Buried Ruin
1 Academy Ruins
1 Haunted Fengraf
1 Terrain Generator
1 Thawing Glaciers
1 Tectonic Edge
1 Ghost Quarter
1 Strip Mine
Trade Secrets - an all-star card in this deck; sadly it is a one-stop-shop for degenerate situations if you target the right player, often ending in "you win now, or they win on their turn" type of plays.
Crucible of Worlds - The retrace spells absolutely beg for this; and yet it never makes the final cut. It is always just 1 card away.
Trade Routes - Another card that retrace loves, it is a bit more of a suicidal approach. Very strong, but eventually I found it to really be just on par. Great, but not necessary.
Empyrial Plate - For a deck that loves to draw cards, this is another great equipment for an aggressive build. Overall, I felt that 3 equipment served the job plenty fine, and oddly, I found this one to be the one hardest to charge up to lethal (though gives the best permanent return as well).
Surrakar Spellblade and friends - Great cards, goes for a different version of the deck. ;-P (imagine a blue cantrip theme with "on connect" creatures like Kukemsa Pirates, using T&L's blue ability as free connection tool)
Radiate - A beastly monster of a card, this can do so much, though you never know game to game what it will do. Further in this thread, one advocate of this card used it to Reality Ripple everything during an opponents end step, so he was the only one with permanents. No blockers, no counterspell mana... Seems like a cool way to win to me.
Reckless Charge - Probably the only place you will ever see this card on a Notable Exclusions list. I still need to wrangle one into my deck, extra haste sources allow that blowout kill from anywhere, and built in pump as well as flashback make this a no-brainer.
POWERFUL STORM CARDS:
Volcanic Awakening - Powerful land destruction.
Temporal Fissure - Powerful bounce.
Mind's Desire - More of everything.
To put storm spells in perspective, I have hit over 30 spells in a turn before. I believe I have hit over 40.
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Saelon posted a message on Memnarch and EnchantmentsIf the enchantment is an aura, then it remains attached to the permanent it was previously attached to. The card Aura Thief has a pertinant ruling on a similar situation to this.Posted in: Magic Rulings Archives
10/4/2004 Gaining control of an enchantment often isn't very interesting since it probably won't change what the enchantment is doing. It only matters if the enchantment does something specifically to "you" or "an opponent" or if the enchantment has an activated ability (which only the controller can use). - To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
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