Flickering, sacrificing, and bouncing will all work to keep the dragons from being exiled. Flickering makes the game see the dragon as a new object and disconnect it from the exile clause, unlike phasing where the card technically never leaves the battlefield.
I'm not sure this is the right subforum, but no, it sadly wouldn't work like that. Pia's Revolution needs the artifact to actually land in the graveyard, you decide what to do with your commander when it's changing zones. So by the time Revolution triggers, you'll have missed the chance to send Breya to the command zone.
I recently overhauled the deck a bit. Was having issues where I'd either have a great start or I'd spend most of the game lagging behind, or a board wipe would set me pretty far back. The main change was removing most of the untappers since they were really good early game or decently good to get back post-boardwipe, but felt like pretty bad topdecks or reanimation targets. Also removed my Cryptolith Rites because it was also jumped between extremes too much. I'm still testing the changes to see what happens, if it does well I'll post the changes, if not I might move back to playing another G/B/x deck for a while and come back to Sidisi later.
Deadeye Navigator is at it's cheapest 5UUU: Blink a creature. And that alone makes it not banworthy to me. People tend to focus on the 1U: Blink a creature, but it still has a rather steep initial cost.
As for the "New players do not grasp the way the triggers work" argument - isn't this something the more experienced players should teach them?
This is quite true. When it flat out ends the game it's usually in the context of it being paired with Palinchron or Peregrine Drake, so it would in fact be an investment of 5UUU and not too far from an Omniscience or an entwined Tooth and Nail. Seeing it like that I suppose it's not as strong as just thinking about the 1U: Blink, much less now that we only have Seedborn Muse instead of also having Prophet of Kruphix.
Metagames where the Navigator is a problem ought to be running more Torpor Orb and Hushwing Gryff.
Which are solid cards anyway due to how rampant ETB effects are in the format.
My issue with those cards is that they generally hose my own decks, hahaha.
As for the rest of the posts, yeah DEN had fallen off the map for a while in our group too, but around a year a go when the newer players joined it came back and flooded a nice bit. I thought it might be something that had happened in general, but at least now I know it's more of a local situation.
Like others, the only time I've run into this is when someone misses a ban update and usually fixes the issue right away once they are told. When explaining/teaching the format, I always reference the ban list and explain why it exists and I've never had someone question it much. I don't feel like Tuck, off-color mana production, or BaaC were too difficult to understand, even when explaining to 12 year olds who got it, so I question why it was believed they needed to be removed to make things more simple when it wasn't hard to understand to begin with...
Tuck- I suppose it makes more sense to say "If the commander card would be moved from any zone to another that isn't the battlefield, you may instead put it on the command zone" than to have interact differently when it involves the deck.
Off color mana- it would have interacted weirdly with colorless symbols, particularly the case of Eldrazi Displacer would have been pretty nifty with city of brass.
As for the BaaC, I don't particularly feel strongly about it either way. It was a nice tool to have jic, but it honestly didn't have enough creatures in it to really matter. And if they're willing to ban something like Oloro to bring it back, it may as well stay gone, lol.
In reference to Cryogen's question, I had more issues explaining to people that Emrakul/Griselbrand were banned both in the deck and as a commander, than saying "yeah, that's not a legal commander."
So how do people feel about this card at the moment? I saw that there was some discussion about it, but it's pretty old.
As far as the five criteria the RC uses, at least among the people I consistently play with at my LGS(which is a generally decently casual group of over 20 people), the following two are true:
Problematic Casual Omnipresence - Almost all decks that can run it, do.
Creates Undesirable Game States - The most base interaction that DEN has is using it as a psuedo-hexproof, and it's just downhill from there. Even innocent things like Farhaven Elf become two mana reusable Rampant Growth.
While the card itself doesn't have a lot of raw power, since paying two mana (maybe four since people are probably not going to target whatever is already soulbounded) for pseudo-hexproof is a decent inversion, the nature of the format lends it to spiral out of control. Most decklists run a lot of creatures with ETB effects, all with different levels of power, but when combined with DEN, now you're getting to reuse your effects for the mere cost of two mana and no drawbacks and the stronger the effect you're reusing, the better those two mana become.
Answering DEN isn't particularly difficult, since you can respond to the soulbound trigger to kill off either creature, but it has been my experience that a lot of "casual" or new players aren't aware of this. This lack of awareness seems to stem from a general misunderstanding on how the stack works among this subgroup of players.
It feels to me, and a decent amount of people in my group (since house banning it has come up quite often), that this card is not only problematic in terms of power and that casual/normal/new players can accidentally break it, but that it's also these people who might be the worst equipped to deal with it.
How does everyone else feel about it, does the format really gain anything from keeping it or is its strength just an artifact created by my playgroup?
Sidisi was the first place I tried it and I expected it to at worst be a pseudo vigilance enabler for the tokens, and at best make tons of mana by untapping my land untappers and reusing bouncelanda or Cabal Coffers. However it mostly just felt win-more when it worked, and not worth the mana when it would just give "vigilance".
Next, in a search to break it, I moved it into the Sharuum deck. Here I just expected it to work as an expensive really good mana rock that I could recur... And it played exactly that way. Not too bad but not great. So on continued its journey.
Third, I decided to try it in the Yisan deck after hearing one of the people in my playgroup mention the combination. After moving it from the two decks I originally intended to play it in I wasn't too hopeful. That is, until the first time I played it permitted a turn 4 win that wouldn't have been possible otherwise. Between the mana dorks, cheap spells in my hand, and Yisan constantly untapping I managed to draw enough cards to get a Cloudstone Curio and proceed to make infinite mana and draw until I got a Createrhoof Behemoth for the win. It hasn't left the deck, lol.
Similar plays have happened a couple of times, but between not using the deck a lot since I don't think it's particularly fun to play against and not having anyway of effectively tutoring for it, I haven't been able to see how good it would be "normally".
Yeah, it's a bit higher than usual. I'd like to lower the four drops and get some more three drops in, but I find all of the four drops to either be pretty essential or way too useful. The most I'm willing to test in the future is to run Courser of Kruphix over Oracle of Mul Daya, but I'm not sure that's a good switch.
Alright, I'll change those two out and see how that goes. The Lantern should definitely work well.
Not particularly, I generally activate it using the Thespian's Stage so I don't invest ton of mana. However, I had managed to test it properly before I had the Cabal Coffers and while I was still playing Tempt With Discovery. Lately I haven't activated it much, so I'll keep an eye on it and see if I slot in a real land if it doesn't do well.
I might test it just in case if I take out the Dark Depths, but you're probably right. I think it'll play much like the Thrasios and only end up getting used when Seedborn Muse is out.
Yeah, this is easily one of my favorite decks that I have played. I had made an attempt to build her when she got released as a zombie tribal, but ended up getting scrapped. So I'm pretty happy to have found your primer since it's helped a lot! (Maybe too much, hahaha)
My current problem cards are Thrasios, Triton Hero, Vessel of Nascency,and to some extent Cryptolith Rites. The Vessel seems pretty nice since it lets me grab any of the main things from the top of the deck, but often the inversion of 3 mana doesn't feel worth it unless it's during the first couple of turns. The rites on the other hand, help me if my boardstate is decent, but feels really slow if I'm recovering from a boardwipe or if I fell behind. I also felt some issues drawing lands in my opening hand and with blue sources in both games I had yesterday.
I'm thinking of adding for sure the Chromatic Lantern to help with the colors, specially with the recent addition of both Dark Depths and Cabal Coffers. Mulch has also been in my mind lately, but I feel the Vessel is better as it let's me grab the best from the same selection. I should be getting a Vengeful Pharaoh at some point soon. Also probably adding an additional blue source of some type, maybe the painland.
But that's about where I'm at with the deck currently.
Have you considered Throne of the High City? Even though the goal isn't drawing I feel like the permanent card advantage could be nice, and in the case we lose the token and can't swing to get it back it's decently easy to recover the land. What would worry me the most is how viable losing a land and paying 4 mana is.
Got two games in earlier and managed to use the Demon on the first. Casted it using only mana from a cabal coffer to fetch a victimize to recover from a wipe and set up a win on the following turn. I honestly didn't think the Coffers were that necessary until recently when a friend lent me his so I could test it out, but damn.
I'll post my current list later on during the week, though it's way closer to yours than I would have originally liked :P. Still gotta work some kinks out, was testing Thrasios, Triton Hero but it doesn't really pull his weight unless I have Seedborn Muse out.
I was wondering though why you aren't running Oracle of Mul Daya? Helps ramp and move lands out of the way during milling to hit more creatures.
Yep, gotta resolve do genesis or sheoldred before you start milling. Hell's Caretaker would work to get back a titan or anything in response to the reshuffle trigger, though.
I'm currently looking at my own deck trying to see what I'm missing and what I'm willing to cut. Might try to shove in the Rune-Scarred Demon for some more consistency and an extra fatty. Had been avoiding him because of the cost.
Yeah, the deck is strong yet not so brutal that people don't enjoy playing with or against it. Fabulous plays are enjoyed by opponents alike!
As for both titans, you may only keep one if your meta allows. But having them exiled could potentially spell danger. It's better to be safe than sorry. If your entire graveyard gets shuffled various times into your library, just start fresh. Remember that things aren't supposed to stay indefinitely in your graveyard. You should be able to cast most creatures from it a couple of more turns in the game.
That's an interesting ruling question. However, first is untap, so Mesmeric Orb triggers enter the stack and have to be resolved before upkeep even occurs. So you can't use Genesis to recover an eldrazi titan. Even then, the shuffle trigger still happens. The thing with Genesis is that when it triggers, it has to have a legal target, otherwise it frizzles. So you can't respond to Genesis by discarding an eldrazi titan because the titan isn't in the graveyard when the trigger enters the stack - so it's not an allowable target (it's not even a matter of legality). What I used to do is (before Prophet of Kruphix was unjustifiably banned) was cast the eldrazi titan with Havengul Lich in response to it entering the graveyard. The shuffle still happened and I got the eldrazi titan in play. That's usually how it went. Long story short, you can't use Genesis to return an eldrazi titan to your hand. Pretty sure on that one. Although I strongly encourage you to get a second opinion.
I'm honestly no expert, but see this ruling for my question:
4/15/2013 If permanents become untapped during the untap step, Mesmeric Orb’s ability will trigger that many times. However, since no player gets priority during the untap step, those abilities wait to be put on the stack until the upkeep starts. At that time, all the “beginning of upkeep” triggers will also trigger. Those abililties and Mesmeric Orb’s triggers can be put on the stack in any order.
If you could put the eldrazi trigger on the stack then follow it up with genesis sheoldred etc. it makes the titans a lot better in the deck! I tried to find this specific ruling but have come up empty handed so far
The problem being that all the triggers are put into the stack simultaneously, therefore two things: 1) you'll have already picked genesis' target before you even start milling with the mesmeric orb, and 2) since genesis will have already triggered, if you mill into the titan before you resolve genesis, the titans trigger will go above it and resolve first which would in turn make your genesis not return anything.
The correct play would be to put genesis' trigger above all the mesmeric orb back as to get a creature and not risk a titan.
Then your problem isn't with mld, its with bad players. Its the same idea with aggro. Some people hate it because everyone they know that plays aggro does nothing but overextend and single in on one person, or doesn't know how to diversify their threats or pack answers, so they end up knocking one guy out then folding to Wrath. Aggro, of course, doesn't have to play like that, but that's how bad players play it (although, sometimes its right to focus on one person if they are the person who can stop you, but that's a separate discussion). Its not different than the guy who runs 27counters.dek that doesn't know when and what he should counter, so he counters your fatty and lets the other guy's combo piece resolve. Its not different from the guy that Persecutes or Mind Twists the wrong guy at the table.
Yeh, that's why I said I was fine with it in theory. That said, my playgroup also includes those kind of aggro and control players :(.
Speaking of, I'm not sure I understand the logic of pre-emptively using MLD against ramp decks. I mean even if they blew out a high amount of lands early but it's still early enough in the game where a MLD activation would hinder them, wouldn't it just slow down the game to a crawl because I wrecked -everyone's- lands and now we all have to recovery? Seems like a pretty bad play in general unless you're either far ahead or closing out the game.
Another favorite was this guy who casted an Apocalypse in a three player game while he had a Mogis, god of slaughter and some effect that dealt damage when we drew cards. I had a Wurmcoil Engine and a Sylvan Library in play, the other player had like 30hp left. The guy missed his next five land drops and died from the Wurncoil's tokens and the other player's nearly flawless recovery.
Wurmcoil Engine does not create tokens when it is exiled to Apocalypse. Is there something missing from this description? Mogis does not survive Apocalypse either - guessing it was cast from the Command Zone with floating mana?
Oh! Sorry about that, yes it was Obliterate since the supposed plan was for his two enchantments to kill us. Will fix on the post.
In my experience, I've never seen anyone use MLD and win, the exception of one person I play with that has an elves/token deck. A couple of says ago a person kept throwing down MLDs even though i had a Crucible of Worlds and an Oracle of Mul Daya in play. That's always been the generally story, they wipe the lands without any real sort of back up, often times ignoring what's already in play and even going as far as to miss their own land drops, and never recovering from their own card. So while in theory I'm all for MLD, in practice I'd rather not have the game bd extended for another hour just to watch that person lose miserably.
This is quite true. When it flat out ends the game it's usually in the context of it being paired with Palinchron or Peregrine Drake, so it would in fact be an investment of 5UUU and not too far from an Omniscience or an entwined Tooth and Nail. Seeing it like that I suppose it's not as strong as just thinking about the 1U: Blink, much less now that we only have Seedborn Muse instead of also having Prophet of Kruphix.
My issue with those cards is that they generally hose my own decks, hahaha.
As for the rest of the posts, yeah DEN had fallen off the map for a while in our group too, but around a year a go when the newer players joined it came back and flooded a nice bit. I thought it might be something that had happened in general, but at least now I know it's more of a local situation.
Tuck- I suppose it makes more sense to say "If the commander card would be moved from any zone to another that isn't the battlefield, you may instead put it on the command zone" than to have interact differently when it involves the deck.
Off color mana- it would have interacted weirdly with colorless symbols, particularly the case of Eldrazi Displacer would have been pretty nifty with city of brass.
As for the BaaC, I don't particularly feel strongly about it either way. It was a nice tool to have jic, but it honestly didn't have enough creatures in it to really matter. And if they're willing to ban something like Oloro to bring it back, it may as well stay gone, lol.
In reference to Cryogen's question, I had more issues explaining to people that Emrakul/Griselbrand were banned both in the deck and as a commander, than saying "yeah, that's not a legal commander."
So how do people feel about this card at the moment? I saw that there was some discussion about it, but it's pretty old.
As far as the five criteria the RC uses, at least among the people I consistently play with at my LGS(which is a generally decently casual group of over 20 people), the following two are true:
Problematic Casual Omnipresence - Almost all decks that can run it, do.
Creates Undesirable Game States - The most base interaction that DEN has is using it as a psuedo-hexproof, and it's just downhill from there. Even innocent things like Farhaven Elf become two mana reusable Rampant Growth.
While the card itself doesn't have a lot of raw power, since paying two mana (maybe four since people are probably not going to target whatever is already soulbounded) for pseudo-hexproof is a decent inversion, the nature of the format lends it to spiral out of control. Most decklists run a lot of creatures with ETB effects, all with different levels of power, but when combined with DEN, now you're getting to reuse your effects for the mere cost of two mana and no drawbacks and the stronger the effect you're reusing, the better those two mana become.
Answering DEN isn't particularly difficult, since you can respond to the soulbound trigger to kill off either creature, but it has been my experience that a lot of "casual" or new players aren't aware of this. This lack of awareness seems to stem from a general misunderstanding on how the stack works among this subgroup of players.
It feels to me, and a decent amount of people in my group (since house banning it has come up quite often), that this card is not only problematic in terms of power and that casual/normal/new players can accidentally break it, but that it's also these people who might be the worst equipped to deal with it.
How does everyone else feel about it, does the format really gain anything from keeping it or is its strength just an artifact created by my playgroup?
Sidisi was the first place I tried it and I expected it to at worst be a pseudo vigilance enabler for the tokens, and at best make tons of mana by untapping my land untappers and reusing bouncelanda or Cabal Coffers. However it mostly just felt win-more when it worked, and not worth the mana when it would just give "vigilance".
Next, in a search to break it, I moved it into the Sharuum deck. Here I just expected it to work as an expensive really good mana rock that I could recur... And it played exactly that way. Not too bad but not great. So on continued its journey.
Third, I decided to try it in the Yisan deck after hearing one of the people in my playgroup mention the combination. After moving it from the two decks I originally intended to play it in I wasn't too hopeful. That is, until the first time I played it permitted a turn 4 win that wouldn't have been possible otherwise. Between the mana dorks, cheap spells in my hand, and Yisan constantly untapping I managed to draw enough cards to get a Cloudstone Curio and proceed to make infinite mana and draw until I got a Createrhoof Behemoth for the win. It hasn't left the deck, lol.
Similar plays have happened a couple of times, but between not using the deck a lot since I don't think it's particularly fun to play against and not having anyway of effectively tutoring for it, I haven't been able to see how good it would be "normally".
Alright, I'll change those two out and see how that goes. The Lantern should definitely work well.
Not particularly, I generally activate it using the Thespian's Stage so I don't invest ton of mana. However, I had managed to test it properly before I had the Cabal Coffers and while I was still playing Tempt With Discovery. Lately I haven't activated it much, so I'll keep an eye on it and see if I slot in a real land if it doesn't do well.
I might test it just in case if I take out the Dark Depths, but you're probably right. I think it'll play much like the Thrasios and only end up getting used when Seedborn Muse is out.
Yeah, this is easily one of my favorite decks that I have played. I had made an attempt to build her when she got released as a zombie tribal, but ended up getting scrapped. So I'm pretty happy to have found your primer since it's helped a lot! (Maybe too much, hahaha)
1 Expedition Map
1 Sol Ring
2 Altar of Dementia
2 Mesmeric Orb
2 Scroll Rack
3 Crucible of Worlds
7 Akroma's Memorial
Creature (35)
1 Deathrite Shaman
2 Aphetto Alchemist
2 Kiora's Follower
2 Riftsweeper
2 Sakura-Tribe Elder
2 Satyr Wayfinder
2 Thrasios, Triton Hero
2 Voyaging Satyr
3 Death Baron
3 Eternal Witness
3 Krosan Restorer
3 Reclamation Sage
3 Skullwinder
3 Wood Elves
4 Clever Impersonator
4 Filth
4 Glen Elendra Archmage
4 Gurmag Drowner
4 Hell's Caretaker
4 Mystic Snake
4 Nullmage Shepherd
4 Oracle of Mul Daya
4 Undead Alchemist
5 Genesis
5 Grimgrin, Corpse-Born
5 Havengul Lich
5 Phyrexian Delver
5 Seedborn Muse
5 Shriekmaw
5 Sidisi, Undead Vizier
6 Noxious Gearhulk
7 Rune-Scarred Demon
7 Sheoldred, Whispering One
8 Craterhoof Behemoth
10 Kozilek, Butcher of Truth
1 Phyrexian Reclamation
1 Vessel of Nascency
2 Animate Dead
2 Cryptolith Rite
2 Survival of the Fittest
4 Opposition
Instant (6)
1 Entomb
1 Epiphany at the Drownyard
2 Cyclonic Rift
2 Grisly Salvage
4 Fact or Fiction
4 Sudden Reclamation
Planeswalker (4)
4 Garruk Wildspeaker
4 Kiora, Master of the Depths
5 Tezzeret the Seeker
6 Teferi, Temporal Archmage
Sorcery (5)
2 Life from the Loam
3 Buried Alive
3 Victimize
4 Dread Return
4 Jarad's Orders
Land (36)
0 Academy Ruins
0 Alchemist's Refuge
0 Breeding Pool
0 Buried Ruin
0 Cabal Coffers
0 Command Tower
0 Dark Depths
0 Dimir Aqueduct
0 Drowned Catacomb
6 Forest
0 Golgari Rot Farm
0 Hinterland Harbor
2 Island
0 Mana Confluence
0 Nephalia Drownyard
0 Overgrown Tomb
0 Polluted Delta
0 Reflecting Pool
0 Seat of the Synod
0 Simic Growth Chamber
3 Swamp
0 Thespian's Stage
0 Tolaria West
0 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
0 Vault of Whispers
0 Watery Grave
0 Windswept Heath
0 Woodland Cemetery
My current problem cards are Thrasios, Triton Hero, Vessel of Nascency,and to some extent Cryptolith Rites. The Vessel seems pretty nice since it lets me grab any of the main things from the top of the deck, but often the inversion of 3 mana doesn't feel worth it unless it's during the first couple of turns. The rites on the other hand, help me if my boardstate is decent, but feels really slow if I'm recovering from a boardwipe or if I fell behind. I also felt some issues drawing lands in my opening hand and with blue sources in both games I had yesterday.
I'm thinking of adding for sure the Chromatic Lantern to help with the colors, specially with the recent addition of both Dark Depths and Cabal Coffers. Mulch has also been in my mind lately, but I feel the Vessel is better as it let's me grab the best from the same selection. I should be getting a Vengeful Pharaoh at some point soon. Also probably adding an additional blue source of some type, maybe the painland.
But that's about where I'm at with the deck currently.
Have you considered Throne of the High City? Even though the goal isn't drawing I feel like the permanent card advantage could be nice, and in the case we lose the token and can't swing to get it back it's decently easy to recover the land. What would worry me the most is how viable losing a land and paying 4 mana is.
I'll post my current list later on during the week, though it's way closer to yours than I would have originally liked :P. Still gotta work some kinks out, was testing Thrasios, Triton Hero but it doesn't really pull his weight unless I have Seedborn Muse out.
I was wondering though why you aren't running Oracle of Mul Daya? Helps ramp and move lands out of the way during milling to hit more creatures.
I'm currently looking at my own deck trying to see what I'm missing and what I'm willing to cut. Might try to shove in the Rune-Scarred Demon for some more consistency and an extra fatty. Had been avoiding him because of the cost.
The problem being that all the triggers are put into the stack simultaneously, therefore two things: 1) you'll have already picked genesis' target before you even start milling with the mesmeric orb, and 2) since genesis will have already triggered, if you mill into the titan before you resolve genesis, the titans trigger will go above it and resolve first which would in turn make your genesis not return anything.
The correct play would be to put genesis' trigger above all the mesmeric orb back as to get a creature and not risk a titan.
Yeh, that's why I said I was fine with it in theory. That said, my playgroup also includes those kind of aggro and control players :(.
Speaking of, I'm not sure I understand the logic of pre-emptively using MLD against ramp decks. I mean even if they blew out a high amount of lands early but it's still early enough in the game where a MLD activation would hinder them, wouldn't it just slow down the game to a crawl because I wrecked -everyone's- lands and now we all have to recovery? Seems like a pretty bad play in general unless you're either far ahead or closing out the game.
Oh! Sorry about that, yes it was Obliterate since the supposed plan was for his two enchantments to kill us. Will fix on the post.