I do not appreciate this stupid company toying with my emotions like this. "We're dead! Sayonara!"......"We're back! You now belong to this other mindless conglomerate, and we'll see how far their give-a-***** takes you before you're back to step 1. Good luck and enjoy that twitch account we forced upon you all!"
I'm personally out. MTGS is home, sure, but **** am I ready to move out. I haven't really been enthused any of the changes made in the last few years (don't care for twitch or the deckbuilder), so I'll take the leap. Worst come to worst, I'll be back if the new site nosedives. But unless you make me subscribe to another totally unrelated service just to use the new platform, I doubt I shall return.
P.S. to those designing the new site, pleasepleaseplease don't make me jump through stupid hoops like Curse did. I don't want to attach my nonexistant Facebook to my account or integrate any other crap into a process that should not extend beyond email-> username-> password-> confirmation email code.
I just created an account on the test site and it's exactly as simple as you hope it is! It's still in testing mode and I've been invited to be a Mod on the new site, and I can promise that the new site is intuitive, brighter and easier to read on the eyes, and is formatted in a great way.
Is Grafdigger cage in the main for meta or is it really useful?
This thread and all of my Primers will be taken down and moved to the new site.
The Cage is a general meta call. There's a Shuffle Hulk player in my playgroup that I consistently see, and Hulk decks are top of the Tier in cEDH, so it's a great general inclusion.
What a plot twist! I know that I will be happily moving over to the new site and the developments that Airi, Feyd, and Cryogen have been working feverishly on. I wish no ill will on the new owners and hope that they can improve the site in the ways that it needs.
However, if you're looking for a new MTG site that's formatted similarly to MTGSal...
One that caters to your desires for actual articles and meaningful content...
A place where you can post threads, Primers, and comments in the same way that you currently do with MTGSal...
With the majority of the Staff who have created the positive atmosphere and are committed to your development as a player and person...
I warmly invite you to come over to the new site. The features available to users and the permissions available to the Mods are, frankly, exciting. It will be a new chapter in MTG for me and I can't wait to see all of you
I meant to say in addition to Reshape. Gimme all the tutor effects for Artifacts!
@Wraith
I think I'm inclined to disagree with you. While I'm waiting to test out my deck until I get my paper cards in the mail, I think that between Sai, Urza, and new Karn, there should be plenty of targets for Arcum's ability. We only really need to activate him once for him to have paid off and he gets especially broken with Sai. Time will tell.
This thread and all of my Primers will be moving over to the new site, once it's up and running. They're doing some final tweaks now and some server integration/updating, but it looks like it could be ready before the week is over.
Bojuka Bog ETB tapped is actually a pretty big deal. Tapped lands steal a lot of tempo from this deck and with no way to cheat it into play a la Crop Rotation, I think the tempo loss when you draw it might be substantial enough to make me regret playing it in the 99. A solid card and an excellent role-player, I personally have found most of the other Stax pieces provide enough overlap that having an additional 'yard hate card isn't necessary. The goal of this deck is to create layers of Stax/Hate pieces so that even if your opponents tutor for removal effects to get rid of one Stax/Hate piece, there is another one that they have to fight through.
Lavinia is solid as well. I'd like to include her, I just don't think she's any better than the current suite of Stax/Hate pieces.
Kambal doesn't directly help us win, so I'll actually pass on him.
Teferi's Puzzle Box and Narset work exactly like you think it does. I didn't think about the Box as another way to take advantage of the Wheel payoff cards. Good look!
I've had some excellent experiences with Sai, personally. My wife plays her Kaalia deck exclusively, and being able to make chump blockers just by casting Artifacts has been hugely relevant in multiple instances, notably saving me from a Balefire Dragon trigger that would have slaughtered my board. Flying blockers > Clue tokens, at least for my playgroup. And Sai blocks Tymna ALL day, every day and survives most of the Wrath effects in cEDH. I'd recommend Sai, personally, over Trail of Evidence.
Alright, I'll go ahead and move your thread to the cEDH forums since you'll probably get better feedback from the crowd there.
Thread Moved - benjameenbear
Now, assuming that you have a decently sized budget, I'll make the following recommendations:
Mox Diamond - because a T1 Lavinia is MUCH better than a T2 Lavinia.
Lotus Petal - while I loathe one-shot mana effects usually, getting a T1 Lavinia is very important in slowing down a game. Getting her into play ASAP will go a long way to buying you time and tempo over your opponents.
Crucible of Worlds - because Lavinia's Stax effect is tied to the number of lands that your opponents have, it makes sense to run a LD package. Including Strip Mine, [CARD}Field of Ruin[/CARD], and Wasteland all seem really good by themselves and better when used recursively. The goal is NOT to Strip lock people, but to keep them off of lands for as long as possible so they can't cast their interaction/cheap CMC cards from disrupting your own win-condition. Keeping most players at 1-2 lands should be sufficient to slow them all down a HUGE amount and gain you valuable time. Mana Vortex is another card you could look into for a profitable LD package.
Sun Titan - if you embrace the LD strategy, then Titan is pretty obvious in my mind.
Supreme Verdict - unless you have a reason to be running Wrath of God, the Verdict's uncounterable ability is the real deal.
Otherwise, I think you have a great starting point for your list! Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite is probably the best type of finisher this deck could ask for, so I full ysupport your game plan of hard locking the table and then swinging in for beatz.
@Kingtuf
Welcome to MTGSal! Based on your deck composition and overall strategy, I think your deck might find a better home in the cEDH forums, which can be found here. If you're ok with your thread being moved there, I'm happy to oblige and do the necessary Mod actions to move your thread.
Now, as to your actual list, I assume you're working from some sort of budget, is that correct? I want to make sure I make recommendations to you accordingly so that you actually have a chance of testing them out reasonably. If you're not under a budget, but have the ability to proxy, then I'll happily give you optimized suggestions for Lavinia.
The first thing I'd recommend doing is streamlining your list a touch. I notice that several cards are listed twice in your decklist, which makes it difficult to keep track of how many copies of a card you have in your list. As an example, if I just quickly look at your decklist it looks like you have 21 sources of card draw, which is way too much.
It is Shaper's list from TappedOut, hands down. I don't like Food Chain strategies (personally), so I don't really know the specifics/particulars of how to play this list. I mostly did this thread as a favor to my friend, since he wanted a quick way to answer the same questions on Discord with a link.
Noice! I didn't realize that Trinisphere was so expensive. I guess it's really good in Vintage and Legacy? I'll try and trade into it if I can.
It really depends. I've had great success with both Dispel AND Mental Misstep. I think that the Misstep hits a more varied sort of permanents while also stopping some of the relevant counterspells you would see that break up your turn while Dispel safeguards your combo turn pretty solidly. I prefer to be a little bit more proactive with my control elements, so I'd personally recommend the Misstep. You could run either of them and be totally fine.
I'm really high on Force of Negation, personally. Having another pseudo Force of Will effect is always welcome and the 1UU to defend a combo turn is not THAT big of a deal, particularly in a big mana deck like Urza. I highly recommend running it, since this deck is mostly afraid of non-creature spells comboing out before we can. Looking at you, Flash Hulk and Food Chain...
Arcum is redundant and slow.
Shackles seems redundant and worse than Legacy's Allure
Having more than one counterspell is redundant too. And don't forget to cut sol ring, mox opal, etc....because they're redundant. As you can see, calling something redundant is not a valid argument.
Arcum has been a star in my urza deck. He'll cheat in paradox at instant speed unless he's dealt with, and any card that has to be dealt with is a good card.
Not sure which is better between legacy's allure and shackles. But if there's a creature shutting you down or threatening to combo off, there's plenty of cards that will tutor for shackles and maybe one or two that will fetch the allure. And even if I do find the allure I'll probably have to wait a while before I can use it.
Hey has anyone playtested howling mine in this deck? I find the interaction between it an Urza rather amusing.
I think that there are better draw effects available to the deck? And if Urza were to somehow not stay in play, than the Mine does benefit the table. Not the worst thing I suppose, but the fact that it helps the table when Urza ISN'T in play seems like a strike against the card, in my mind.
Yeah, I'm of the opinion that Shackles is better than the Allure. Being a repeatable effect is the bee's knees (where did this expression even come from??) and it helps increase the Artifact density in the deck. It's tutorable via the majority of the tutors in the deck and it can be cast and activated the turn it comes into play, more often than not. I like Shackles and have always liked Shackles and will continue to run it in any mono-Blue deck.
I don’t want my opponents drawing extra cards!!!! I have Slivers in my meta. Noooo.
Found holes for Invoke Prejudice and Forcefield. Works better actually.
The sky ship is way to slow to me and just not reliable.
Echo of Eons is really good for me as I can not afford a timetwister.
Need to pick up trinisphere and transmute artifact. Not cheap but attainable.
Power artifact is still needed in my opinion as it’s another infinite combo.
Dispel and trickbind/stifle needs to be considered as I have been seeing it do some work in games.
I like the futuresight combo buts a lot of cards to assemble. Adding a spot a for the sculptor is hard.
Thoughts on null rod?
Yeah, Echo of Eons is a godsend to budget cEDH players. I'm so glad they printed one. Now, they just need a functional [CARD}Transmute Artifact[/CARD} replacement.
I think you're underestimating the Future Sight combos. All of the pieces are individually good and Future Sight + Engine is really awesome too. I'm now at the point where I'm beginning to consider Future Sight as a staple card (for me).
The Ineffable won't be bothered by uncompleated organisms that haven't tasted of The Grand Evolution!
That's a surprisingly relevant list. Thanks for sharing your feedback about [CARD]Necroskitter[/CARD}. I thought it was a win-more card when people were including it in their lists, and I'm glad that it's justified.
I might be able to spend some time on Cockatrice at the end of the summer once I'm done with school. Last semester starts in a couple of weeks and then I'll be done with that stupid degree.
This is certainly an unexpected development. I know that MTGSalvation is a great site and has excellent memories. I am part of the group that will be heading over to the new site. I warmly wish all MTGSal users who choose to stay an excellent home!
I just created an account on the test site and it's exactly as simple as you hope it is! It's still in testing mode and I've been invited to be a Mod on the new site, and I can promise that the new site is intuitive, brighter and easier to read on the eyes, and is formatted in a great way.
This thread and all of my Primers will be taken down and moved to the new site.
The Cage is a general meta call. There's a Shuffle Hulk player in my playgroup that I consistently see, and Hulk decks are top of the Tier in cEDH, so it's a great general inclusion.
However, if you're looking for a new MTG site that's formatted similarly to MTGSal...
One that caters to your desires for actual articles and meaningful content...
A place where you can post threads, Primers, and comments in the same way that you currently do with MTGSal...
With the majority of the Staff who have created the positive atmosphere and are committed to your development as a player and person...
I warmly invite you to come over to the new site. The features available to users and the permissions available to the Mods are, frankly, exciting. It will be a new chapter in MTG for me and I can't wait to see all of you
@Wraith
I think I'm inclined to disagree with you. While I'm waiting to test out my deck until I get my paper cards in the mail, I think that between Sai, Urza, and new Karn, there should be plenty of targets for Arcum's ability. We only really need to activate him once for him to have paid off and he gets especially broken with Sai. Time will tell.
This thread and all of my Primers will be moving over to the new site, once it's up and running. They're doing some final tweaks now and some server integration/updating, but it looks like it could be ready before the week is over.
Lavinia is solid as well. I'd like to include her, I just don't think she's any better than the current suite of Stax/Hate pieces.
Kambal doesn't directly help us win, so I'll actually pass on him.
Teferi's Puzzle Box and Narset work exactly like you think it does. I didn't think about the Box as another way to take advantage of the Wheel payoff cards. Good look!
Thread Moved - benjameenbear
Now, assuming that you have a decently sized budget, I'll make the following recommendations:
Otherwise, I think you have a great starting point for your list! Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite is probably the best type of finisher this deck could ask for, so I full ysupport your game plan of hard locking the table and then swinging in for beatz.
It's really consistent and it attacks a game from two different angles with its strategy, which makes it an inherently powerful deck.
Welcome to MTGSal! Based on your deck composition and overall strategy, I think your deck might find a better home in the cEDH forums, which can be found here. If you're ok with your thread being moved there, I'm happy to oblige and do the necessary Mod actions to move your thread.
Now, as to your actual list, I assume you're working from some sort of budget, is that correct? I want to make sure I make recommendations to you accordingly so that you actually have a chance of testing them out reasonably. If you're not under a budget, but have the ability to proxy, then I'll happily give you optimized suggestions for Lavinia.
The first thing I'd recommend doing is streamlining your list a touch. I notice that several cards are listed twice in your decklist, which makes it difficult to keep track of how many copies of a card you have in your list. As an example, if I just quickly look at your decklist it looks like you have 21 sources of card draw, which is way too much.
It really depends. I've had great success with both Dispel AND Mental Misstep. I think that the Misstep hits a more varied sort of permanents while also stopping some of the relevant counterspells you would see that break up your turn while Dispel safeguards your combo turn pretty solidly. I prefer to be a little bit more proactive with my control elements, so I'd personally recommend the Misstep. You could run either of them and be totally fine.
I'm really high on Force of Negation, personally. Having another pseudo Force of Will effect is always welcome and the 1UU to defend a combo turn is not THAT big of a deal, particularly in a big mana deck like Urza. I highly recommend running it, since this deck is mostly afraid of non-creature spells comboing out before we can. Looking at you, Flash Hulk and Food Chain...
I think that there are better draw effects available to the deck? And if Urza were to somehow not stay in play, than the Mine does benefit the table. Not the worst thing I suppose, but the fact that it helps the table when Urza ISN'T in play seems like a strike against the card, in my mind.
Yeah, I'm of the opinion that Shackles is better than the Allure. Being a repeatable effect is the bee's knees (where did this expression even come from??) and it helps increase the Artifact density in the deck. It's tutorable via the majority of the tutors in the deck and it can be cast and activated the turn it comes into play, more often than not. I like Shackles and have always liked Shackles and will continue to run it in any mono-Blue deck.
I think you should play both, Jiv.
Yes, a moment of peace and respect for the Mad Mechanical Memnarch.
*bows head*
Yeah, Echo of Eons is a godsend to budget cEDH players. I'm so glad they printed one. Now, they just need a functional [CARD}Transmute Artifact[/CARD} replacement.
I think you're underestimating the Future Sight combos. All of the pieces are individually good and Future Sight + Engine is really awesome too. I'm now at the point where I'm beginning to consider Future Sight as a staple card (for me).
I can't wait for my Urza to get here!
That's a surprisingly relevant list. Thanks for sharing your feedback about [CARD]Necroskitter[/CARD}. I thought it was a win-more card when people were including it in their lists, and I'm glad that it's justified.