Painter's Servant's Servant2
Artifact Creature - Scarecrow
As Painter's Servant's Servant enters the battlefield, choose a color.
All cards that aren't on the battlefield, spells, and non-land permanents are the chosen color in addition to their other colors.
-------------- When the Master set down his brush for the last time, the Servant became the Master.
Cobra Commander2UBR
Legendary Creature - Human Warrior
Menace
At the beginning of your upkeep, if your devotion to blue is five or more gain control of target non-land permanent, and if your devotion to black is five or more each opponent loses four life, and if your devotion to red is five or more deal four damage to target creature you don’t control.
4/4
Next - a Commander that is at least one color but has activated abilities that have in its cost.
High Tide is already in the deck. (I play the IDW/Dack version, fwiw.)
Sorry. I didn't see it under the Ramp/Big Mana cards.
I'm still curious to know if you ever tried running some of the Changelings for the Sphinx slots. It's not like they are all-stars on their own, but I would think that some of the same principals that apply to Edgar Markov Vampires would apply here; that almost any cheap Sphinx becomes instantly playable due to the trigger. Amoeboid Changeling and Shapesharer seem like they could be good.
One very odd thing I've noticed about War of the Spark - lots of fun new legendary creatures, but very few that actually seem fun to build a commander deck around. When you look at the most popular commanders for the past week and month, only Feather, the Redeemed shows up - #1 most popular in the past week, #10 most popular in the past month.
I think Weebo hit the nail on the head; most of the potential commanders in this set are not cards that really inspire people to want to build around them, either because their abilities are not "build around me" kind of abilities or because of the color restrictions. If you look at the actual options available, this is not really that big of a surprise.
God-Eternal Oketra - I expect that this is the one sleeper general of the set. Mono-white is terrible as far as commanders go, and Oketra makes me want to actually build a mono-white deck. The ability is just so powerful. I would expect an uptick on Oketra in the near future.
Fblthp, the Lost - I think Fblthp has some potential in the 99, but not as a Commander.
God-Eternal Kefnet - This one is at least somewhat interesting, but it doesn't necessarily do what it does so much better than other mono-blue options. Mono-blue spellslinger also typically runs a fair amount of counters, which are a non-bo with Kefnet.
God-Eternal Bontu - I would expect that Bontu will find its way into a lot of decks, but eventually I think it will also become one of the more popular mono-black generals. There is just so much potential value to be had with all the various death triggers in black that having Bontu in the Command Zone makes for a scary proposition.
Massacre Girl - Really cool card, but one more suited to the maindeck in my opinion. I guess its nice to have a potential Wrath effect on demand, but I think a lot of people like to build around more proactive abilities than reactive.
Ilharg, the Raze-Boar - There are some potentially scary creatures you can drop into play on the cheap, but the creatures you want aren't totally obvious (like Eldrazi are much less scary without Annihilator triggers, and Red Myojin is even less scary without its Divinity counter). I think its a matter of time before people figure out how to drop Avatar of Slaughter for 1-shot Commander wins, or Blightsteel Colossus for 1-shot poison kills. Overall though, I just don't think that people find his ability all that interesting.
Krenko, Tin Street Kingpin - I don't think he supplants the original Krenko as the commander, although I would expect to see him in the maindeck of every Goblin tribal deck.
Neheb, Dreadhorde Champion - This is the one that I think can be one of the best generals in the set. Being able to tear through your deck, feed your graveyard, and generate tons of mana in the process seems like a winning proposition to me. Again, I think that the way to really go with Neheb isn't totally obvious, but there are some much more interesting options out there than with Ilharg for mono-red fans.
God-Eternal Rhonas - As someone who plays Ezuri, I can attest to the power of having an Overrun type effect as your commander, but gaining Vigilance instead of Trample is a big letdown. I think that Rhonas could be a fine Commander, but it doesn't really stack up against many of the fine mono-green options already out there and it doesn't do anything so different that its interesting to build around.
Mowu, Loyal Companion - Seems like a leftover Partner commander, and not a very powerful one at that.
Feather, the Redeemed - This is the flavor of the week, new shiny object that everyone is focusing on, but I honestly don't buy the hype. It just seems like the same RW kind of commander to me. Its at least a unique effect and people are excited that it is different from other RW commanders on the surface, but I think that the kinds of decks that Feather promotes are just going to be more of the same. It is nice to see Boros getting some love from the EDH public though.
Niv-Mizzet Reborn - A 5-color commander that actually requires all five colors to cast it (as opposed to something like Ramos) and greatly incentivizes you to run as many gold cards as possible will make for a daunting task for most people to build just based on trying to assemble a workable mana base.
Roalesk, Apex Hybrid - I'm actually kinda stoked about Roalesk as a card, but I think that most people shy away from Commanders with "dies" triggers because of how they don't interact well with the command zone.
Storrev, Devkarin Lich - A solid creature with solid stats that provides solid value is a fine playable but not a very exciting commander.
Tolsimir, Friend to Wolves - There are a lot of little things going on here, but nothing big enough on its own to justify building around. Also, not having red makes this a no-go as far as being the head of a Wolf Tribal deck.
Fable of Wolf and Owl is one of those cards that seems really good on paper, but in practice it is just outclassed by so many other things at that mana cost. You have to be deep on token production to want to go down this route, and even then its hard to get max value out of it because there aren't a lot of token generating cards in blue. This is one of those cards that if it cost , it would so much better and might see much more play than the current Simic version sees. As it is, UG just has so many good cards and so many good strategies that push out fringe cards like this, and if you want to generate tokens in those colors you have much better options (Talrand, Sky Summoner, Metallurgic Summonings, Sai, Master Thopterist)
The only suggestion that I might make that hasn’t already been said would be to perhaps include a High Tide to help jumpstart the turn you go off, and perhaps you might consider some of the blue Changeling creatures like Shapesharer that are much cheaper to cast than your average Sphinx.
Ruhan’s Rabbit Foot2
Legendary Artifact
Whenever a spell or ability you control has you choose a player or target at random, you may choose that player or target instead.
I haven’t done any testing yet, but I am much more optimistic that Amass cards will see play in certain decks.
I think that Zombie tribal will like the Amass creatures as they will almost always generate a token (I don’t think that there are enough good Amass cards that you will run into multiples in a 99 card deck very often. Getting two bodies on one card plays into all the tribal synergies, and being creatures means that they can be easily recurred. I’m less of a fan of the spells that have Amass, but Commence the Endgame still seems good enough.
I am also thinking that +1/+1 counter decks would like some of cards, and I intend to try a few in Ghave and potentially in Vorel. Given enough Doubling Season and Hardened Scales effects, you can get some really good value out of several of the Amass spells. And with Doubling Season, you will actually generate two tokens when you Amass with no other Army in play, and even though one won’t get counters it will be created (triggering your Cathars’ Crusade and Juniper Oder Ranger) and will die (triggering your Grave Pact and Blood Artist). I think that there is potential there.
But yeah, Rings is great. It combos with tons of commanders, and there are plenty of decks that run a ton of activated abilities that get stupid good when copied from Planeswalkers, untap abilities, fetchlands, etc. The only issue I have with the card is that there are some effects that some people don't realize are not activated abilities; they are triggered abilities (cards like Genesis, Riku of Two Reflections, etc.)
Coticule Stone2
Artifact
Whenever a creature attacking causes an ability of a permanent you control to trigger, that ability triggers an additional time.
I think that Norin the Wary definitely falls into this category; it’s the most flavorful bad card ever, yet it is a machine at generating creature ETB triggers.
There are plenty of cards out there that don’t do anything in EDH in 99.9% of situations, like Thrumming Stone outside of a Relentless Rats-type deck, but one of the most head-scratching cards I have ever seen someone try to get to work was Pyromancer Ascension. There was a Spellwever Volute and a Knowledge Exploitation sighting so they at least had a plan, but talk about needing to jump through hoops...
Oona decks typically fall into three categories (although by no means do you need to stick to popular themes).
Oona Combo typically runs as many infinite mana combos as the player can afford, then takes advantage of the fact that your Commander’s ability wins the game at that point. This is an expensive way to go and will definitely paint a target on you, but it is a very effective deck.
Oona can also be built as a Faerie tribal deck with all the typical payoffs like Scion of Oona, Spellstutter Sprite, and Glen Elendra Liege. This is probably the most straightforward way to build around Oona’s ability.
It can also be built as a Milling deck that attacks players libraries and runs them out of cards. There are sometimes some combos involved, but there are actually a lot of different options for building a deck like this. If you are interested, there’s a link to my Oona mill deck in my sig.
I noticed that you weren't running Rooftop Storm. Any reason for that? Yes, it's 6 mana, but once you cast it, you get to dump the rest of the zombies from your hand into play. It also synergizes fantastically with Havenghoul Lich.
To be honest, Rooftop Storm just seemed 'too cute' to be a real card for this deck, but it seems like more than a few people think very highly of it. I'm seriously considering adding it in.
Are you intentionally avoiding infinite combos here?
Yes.
I've found Gravecrawler to be really excellent, even outside of comboing off for a few reasons: you want early drops to attack the turn you drop Varina, you don't mind discarding it to Varina since you can easily re-cast it after combat, saving other cards in your hand, and it can make for some crazy turns with a free sac outlet in play. On the last, even without going infinite, you could spend a turn sacrificing and casting it to trigger your various drain effects on zombies entering or dying, possibly also creating a bunch of tokens if you have Colossus or Open the Graves in play. With Kindred in play, this also reads pay B: draw a card.
Gravecrawler is going to be added back into the deck as I agree with both you and toctheyounger77 on this one.
I definitely found that anything costing more than 6 wasn't worth playing, including Josu (cast with kicker once normally, and once with Rooftop Storm out, which was great, but hasn't happened again) and Army of the Damned (cast only once).
If you see my last post, I'm in the process of purging a lot of high CMC cards. Josu Vess, Lich Knight is probably going to stay in the deck; I like that he can be a 4/5 for 4 mana or a Cabal Coffers-fueled one-card army. Having some scalable payoffs like that is important.
I've been a huge fan of Graveborn Muse. Worst case, I've sacrificed it before my turn to avoid the trigger, but with the little incidental lifegain from Varina, Wayward Servant, and Bontu's Monument (in my build), I've normally had the life available to make it work.
Graveborn Muse is fine, but I've been wondering whether it is really necessary. The deck is now chock-full of CA engines, so I can be choosy about what I want to run. Perhaps if I added a few more sac outlets I would be less inclined to cut it. I'm still one fence about this one.
I also included Phyrexian Altar in my list since it's a solid sac outlet, can be mana acceleration and color fixing when needed, and goes infinite with a few cards in the deck without really being a dead slot. My goal hasn't been to combo off, usually. I generally play it as an aggressive zombie horde deck that sometimes can just win out of nowhere thanks to all the draw going on.
I love me some Phyrexian Altar, but I'm not really sold on that being a direction I want to go here.
My most frequent tutor target is Noxious Ghoul or a mass reanimate spell, since nothing feels as good as Patriarch's Bidding our a bunch of zombies along with Noxious to kill everything my opponents' returned. Because of this, I've stayed away from playing non-zombies (not to mention that 2 of the 3 reanimation spells we run won't bring them back). I had had The Scarab God in for a while, but found that I very rarely cast him, and never activated his ability, although his passive was useful in one game.
There are a few really good non-Zombie exceptions that are worth it to me. I'm particularly a fan of The Scarab God for both his upkeep trigger and the fact that his activated ability can hit opposing graveyards and help make sure my opponents get as little as possible from the Living Death effects.
I'm excited for the new Oketra, and may include Open the Graves if I can figure out what to drop for it. I also want to try out a couple of the cheaper zombies that come with Amass for two early bodies.
The cards that I think I'm going to try from War of the Spark are as follows: God-Eternal Oketra - This is a slam dunk that will likely require a few small tweaks to the mana that I'll be more than happy to make. Commence the Endgame - So I don't want to go too crazy with non-black Amass cards, but I like this one a lot (at least in principal; how it actually will play out I don't know) Dreadhorde Invasion - Yes, it's not Bitterblossom, but I feel that this card will fill a nice spot in the curve and can provide tons of value over the course of the game. Finale of Eternity - I like removal that gives me options to destroy multiple creatures without wholesale wrathing the board. God-Eternal Bontu - I want this for a couple of decks, and I think this card is awesome. Lazotep Reaver - I think that getting 2 bodies for only two mana makes this potentially the best Amass creature. Liliana, Dreadhorde General - I like the Liliana Planeswalkers that generate Zombie tokens, and this one seems fantastic (even for 6 mana). Vizier of the Scorpion, Aven Eternal, Eternal Skylord - My theory on Amass is that I'm going to get a token like 95% of the time as long as I don't overdo it, so evaluating these with the token makes them probably playable given the number of tribal synergies that I'm running. I also like that the Scorpion and Skylord also grant abilities to all Zombie tokens, so as long as I don't pull too much token production from the deck these become even more desirable. I think I'm going to want to try all 3 of these in addition to Lazotep Reaver and Commence the Endgame just to kinda see how it plays out.
This is still helpful feedback. I’m thinking harder about whether Kindred Discovery fits better here than in dragons, and you guys have suggested some great fixes to things that just don’t quite work well enough. I’m on a budget but a lot of this I could still make work. I guess it’s just whether or not I justify the $30 for Bidding or not. I can’t see it being reprinted anytime really soon.
The one thing I really like about Kindred Discovery is that it doesn't care about actually casting the creature spell like Vanquisher's Banner (which is still good, and something that I like for any non-blue tribal deck). This is really important for things like token generation, where you get a token for each time you activate Varina and casting something like a Gisa's Bidding will also draw you two cards. You also draw cards for attacking... so if you play it after you've played some creatures you can still draw cards off of it. Kindred Discovery is absolutely sick in this deck, but I get not wanting to spend $20USD on it. And if you don't want to spend $26USD on Rise of the Dark Realms or $18USD for Patriarch's Bidding, there is a middle-of-the-road option in Zombie Apocalypse that is only $3-$4USD.
I'm starting to think that this was an April Fool's joke.... the cake is a lie.
In all seriousness, I had just opened up a TO account with the intention of putting all my decks there when this announcement came out. I held off doing anything with the hopes of just keeping everything here on MTGS. 4-1/2 months since the announcement, we don't even have any information about what is going on. Even bad news would be better than no news at this point.
My favorite Magic card is probably Oversold Cemetery. Reusing and abusing the graveyard for fun and profit has always been one of my favorite things to do.
The sig editor is telling me there is a 512 character limit, so it won't let me "fix" the mana tags in my signature. Furthermore, it must also be counting the url in each link as part of the character limit.
Artifact Creature - Scarecrow
As Painter's Servant's Servant enters the battlefield, choose a color.
All cards that aren't on the battlefield, spells, and non-land permanents are the chosen color in addition to their other colors.
--------------
When the Master set down his brush for the last time, the Servant became the Master.
Next - Garza Zol, Plague Queen
Legendary Creature - Human Warrior
Menace
At the beginning of your upkeep, if your devotion to blue is five or more gain control of target non-land permanent, and if your devotion to black is five or more each opponent loses four life, and if your devotion to red is five or more deal four damage to target creature you don’t control.
4/4
Next - a Commander that is at least one color but has activated abilities that have
Nice backup plan for Borborygmos Enraged along with Land's Edge, and now that there are plenty of ways to use those lands in the GY (Crucible of Worlds, Ramunap Excavator, Life From the Loam, etc.) there are some nice ways to make Seismic Assault into a value play. Combo with Barrel Down Sokenzan FTW!!!
Sorry. I didn't see it under the Ramp/Big Mana cards.
I'm still curious to know if you ever tried running some of the Changelings for the Sphinx slots. It's not like they are all-stars on their own, but I would think that some of the same principals that apply to Edgar Markov Vampires would apply here; that almost any cheap Sphinx becomes instantly playable due to the trigger. Amoeboid Changeling and Shapesharer seem like they could be good.
I think Weebo hit the nail on the head; most of the potential commanders in this set are not cards that really inspire people to want to build around them, either because their abilities are not "build around me" kind of abilities or because of the color restrictions. If you look at the actual options available, this is not really that big of a surprise.
In the end, I think that God-Eternal Oketra, God-Eternal Bontu, and Neheb, Dreadhorde Champion will all see some increased play as a commander over time, but as of right now it makes sense that nothing is really generating the kind of buzz that Feather, the Redeemed is generating.
Legendary Artifact
Whenever a spell or ability you control has you choose a player or target at random, you may choose that player or target instead.
Next - Lord Windgrace
I think that Zombie tribal will like the Amass creatures as they will almost always generate a token (I don’t think that there are enough good Amass cards that you will run into multiples in a 99 card deck very often. Getting two bodies on one card plays into all the tribal synergies, and being creatures means that they can be easily recurred. I’m less of a fan of the spells that have Amass, but Commence the Endgame still seems good enough.
I am also thinking that +1/+1 counter decks would like some of cards, and I intend to try a few in Ghave and potentially in Vorel. Given enough Doubling Season and Hardened Scales effects, you can get some really good value out of several of the Amass spells. And with Doubling Season, you will actually generate two tokens when you Amass with no other Army in play, and even though one won’t get counters it will be created (triggering your Cathars’ Crusade and Juniper Oder Ranger) and will die (triggering your Grave Pact and Blood Artist). I think that there is potential there.
I can't tell if you are kidding sometimes...
But yeah, Rings is great. It combos with tons of commanders, and there are plenty of decks that run a ton of activated abilities that get stupid good when copied from Planeswalkers, untap abilities, fetchlands, etc. The only issue I have with the card is that there are some effects that some people don't realize are not activated abilities; they are triggered abilities (cards like Genesis, Riku of Two Reflections, etc.)
Artifact
Whenever a creature attacking causes an ability of a permanent you control to trigger, that ability triggers an additional time.
Next - Roalesk, Apex Hybrid
Mishra, Artificer Prodigy also seemingly has a blank text box in a Commander game, but throw in a Possibility Storm or Blood Funnel and now you have an insane value engine.
There are plenty of cards out there that don’t do anything in EDH in 99.9% of situations, like Thrumming Stone outside of a Relentless Rats-type deck, but one of the most head-scratching cards I have ever seen someone try to get to work was Pyromancer Ascension. There was a Spellwever Volute and a Knowledge Exploitation sighting so they at least had a plan, but talk about needing to jump through hoops...
Oona Combo typically runs as many infinite mana combos as the player can afford, then takes advantage of the fact that your Commander’s ability wins the game at that point. This is an expensive way to go and will definitely paint a target on you, but it is a very effective deck.
Oona can also be built as a Faerie tribal deck with all the typical payoffs like Scion of Oona, Spellstutter Sprite, and Glen Elendra Liege. This is probably the most straightforward way to build around Oona’s ability.
It can also be built as a Milling deck that attacks players libraries and runs them out of cards. There are sometimes some combos involved, but there are actually a lot of different options for building a deck like this. If you are interested, there’s a link to my Oona mill deck in my sig.
To be honest, Rooftop Storm just seemed 'too cute' to be a real card for this deck, but it seems like more than a few people think very highly of it. I'm seriously considering adding it in.
Yes.
Gravecrawler is going to be added back into the deck as I agree with both you and toctheyounger77 on this one.
If you see my last post, I'm in the process of purging a lot of high CMC cards. Josu Vess, Lich Knight is probably going to stay in the deck; I like that he can be a 4/5 for 4 mana or a Cabal Coffers-fueled one-card army. Having some scalable payoffs like that is important.
Graveborn Muse is fine, but I've been wondering whether it is really necessary. The deck is now chock-full of CA engines, so I can be choosy about what I want to run. Perhaps if I added a few more sac outlets I would be less inclined to cut it. I'm still one fence about this one.
I love me some Phyrexian Altar, but I'm not really sold on that being a direction I want to go here.
There are a few really good non-Zombie exceptions that are worth it to me. I'm particularly a fan of The Scarab God for both his upkeep trigger and the fact that his activated ability can hit opposing graveyards and help make sure my opponents get as little as possible from the Living Death effects.
The cards that I think I'm going to try from War of the Spark are as follows:
God-Eternal Oketra - This is a slam dunk that will likely require a few small tweaks to the mana that I'll be more than happy to make.
Commence the Endgame - So I don't want to go too crazy with non-black Amass cards, but I like this one a lot (at least in principal; how it actually will play out I don't know)
Dreadhorde Invasion - Yes, it's not Bitterblossom, but I feel that this card will fill a nice spot in the curve and can provide tons of value over the course of the game.
Finale of Eternity - I like removal that gives me options to destroy multiple creatures without wholesale wrathing the board.
God-Eternal Bontu - I want this for a couple of decks, and I think this card is awesome.
Lazotep Reaver - I think that getting 2 bodies for only two mana makes this potentially the best Amass creature.
Liliana, Dreadhorde General - I like the Liliana Planeswalkers that generate Zombie tokens, and this one seems fantastic (even for 6 mana).
Vizier of the Scorpion, Aven Eternal, Eternal Skylord - My theory on Amass is that I'm going to get a token like 95% of the time as long as I don't overdo it, so evaluating these with the token makes them probably playable given the number of tribal synergies that I'm running. I also like that the Scorpion and Skylord also grant abilities to all Zombie tokens, so as long as I don't pull too much token production from the deck these become even more desirable. I think I'm going to want to try all 3 of these in addition to Lazotep Reaver and Commence the Endgame just to kinda see how it plays out.
The one thing I really like about Kindred Discovery is that it doesn't care about actually casting the creature spell like Vanquisher's Banner (which is still good, and something that I like for any non-blue tribal deck). This is really important for things like token generation, where you get a token for each time you activate Varina and casting something like a Gisa's Bidding will also draw you two cards. You also draw cards for attacking... so if you play it after you've played some creatures you can still draw cards off of it. Kindred Discovery is absolutely sick in this deck, but I get not wanting to spend $20USD on it. And if you don't want to spend $26USD on Rise of the Dark Realms or $18USD for Patriarch's Bidding, there is a middle-of-the-road option in Zombie Apocalypse that is only $3-$4USD.