Karlov of the Ghost Council
(Mythic)
Whenever you gain life, put two +1/+1 counters on Karlov
, Remove six +1/+1 counters from Karlov : Exile target creature.
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Now, besides the obvious voltron "Put a bunch of swords on him and play good valuable lifelink beaters (Divinity of Pride comes to mind)", I KNOW there is a way to break this guy. Some interaction that makes him go insane. When I first read the card, I thought the same thing I thought when I first read Ezuri, Claw of Progress : "cool card, but it doesn't have in it for the REAL token insanity. Then I thought of cards like
Sage of Hours
or Mycoloth
and realized how hard you can break him, that in mind, I just KNOW that even though Karlov does not have in him for the real +1/+1 counter synergy, I just know you can make him work.
Unfortuntaly, his abillity costs mana, which means going infinite is probably out of the picture, but going infinite isn't that fun anyways, I still believe there are cards that combined with him can allow exiling 5-6 creatures per turn.
So, ehm, any suggestions? Cards that break him?
Edit : With everyone's awesome suggestions, I've made a list of cards. This is NOT a decklist. I've noted the ones that go into Tiny leaders.
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I have to agree with pretty much everything you brought up about Prossh here, and I also have had a long love/hate relationship with this destructive force of a dragon. Because of this, I felt you may like to hear about my current Prossh deck, which I've been adjusting/destroying/rebuilsing/remaking since he came our of the box...
The things you bring up about Prossh are all true. He is very efficient, and very good at everything he can do. For this reason, my current Prossh deck deck was created after applying a few personal-created deck constructing limits.
After a loooooong time of not being able to properly balance this massive winged beast, I decided on making the deck "permanent only". This helped a lot to to be down on the power. I am also careful to not play any cards that "auto-combo" with only Prossh, i.e. Food Chain and/or Xenagos, God of Revels Also, honorable mention to Purphoros, God of the Forge as (though I still play him currently) may just be way too good with Prossh.
Now, after I chose only permanents and no one-piece-combos, the deck fwlt a little flat. It was still good, but there were times when it woild be able to do what Prossh does best and blow up, and others where it felt like nothing much was happening. I didn't like this, so I tried one more thing that I think is the best thing I've done with the deck to date: I added Warp World, Genesis Wave and The Great Aurora. These cards make the deck very fun to play because now the game is centered less on Prossh, and more about gaining as many tokens as you can, making a ton of mana, and resolving one of the (usually) game winning spells to win in awesome fashion... I recommend checking this out if you still want to give Prossh a shot, so here is the decklist: http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/prossh-all-permanents-warp-world-and-others/
Feel free to comment anything there, and hope Prossh can prove useful and fun to you in the future.
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I don't think something that hasn't occurred can be "repeated". For this reason, I believe casting this for BB (X = 0) will still cause one instance of the effect.
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The comparison of Iona, Shield of Emeria to cards like Winter Orb, Armageddon, Jokulhaups, and other "Stax"-type cards are very, very incorrect comparisons.
The big difference between Iona and these cards (though they essentially achieve the same thing), is that cards like Contamination, etc. aren't stapled to a 9 CMC Angel creature. This may seem like an upside to Iona's case, but I believe that for the purposes of the Commander's philosophy and banned list, it is a negative.
Sure, she costs a LOT more to achieve a similar lock with other "Stax" pieces, but she also achieves this type of effect with no other piece(s) required to make it one-sided. Also, and this is the main point I'd like to stress, she looks like a big, fun, awesome angel, so why wouldn't it be a fun card right??? But, then you play it and all of a sudden everyone hates you for it and no one is having anymore fun because they can't play cards (i.e. play the game of Magic) until Iona leaves.
THIS is the main reason she is a problem. She seems fun, but is actually just a "Stax" card.
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Yes. This is the definition of the "warps the format strategically" criteria for banning. Not to mention that I believe she also hits heavily on the "creates undesirable games states/situations" criteria for being able to lock people out of a game in many different scenarios tat people have listed here. None of this says, "should not be banned" to me.
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^--This.
With the change in the RC's banning philosophy, this card currently hits almost no points of criteria for being banned. It seems to me to be a strictly "power-ban" due to the intentional, combo-centric uses of this card. Why then is it still banned?
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As is stated in the OP, I feel that games that involve Iona, Shield of Emeria definitely become less interactive. This is one of the main reasons that Painter's Servant is currently banned, according to some RC quotes. Ban Ki-moon: "Painter's Servant almost always moves the game into a more linear, forced state, taking away from 'Player A beat Player B" while building on "Player A's deck beat Player B's deck.'"
If PS can create "un-interactive" games with card interaction, then Iona does this ll by herself... In my opinion, these cards should switch places on and off the banned list. This should also help get the message across that EDH should encourage interaction from players and not lock everyone out of the game, more so than having PS banned does.