MTG Salvation

Huh, been a while since I showed my mug 'round these parts, and the deck changed quite a bit Given the fact that each update seems to take it deeper and deeper into +1/+1 town, would Hardened Scales merit consideration these days?

Hello, ghost town. I have relocated the primer to Nexus along with all my other ones. Feel free to check it out: https://www.mtgnexus.com/viewtopic.php?f=35&t=304

Thanks for the kind words. Sorry for the delayed response, I got caught up in porting my stuff over to Nexus. Feather lives here now, feel free to stop by: https://www.mtgnexus.com/viewtopic.php?f=35&t=306

Haven't thought of it before, but I'm not super sold on it. Being forcibly dinged for double digits off an Avenger seems like a bad time, and if you try to actually use the mana the hurt intensifies. It's an interesting card though, I'll give you that.

By the way, seeing how you're a fresh account, check out Daxos on Nexus. I tried porting the primer over, adjusting it to local bbcode standards, and it's mostly operational. Feel free to check it out: https://www.mtgnexus.com/viewtopic.php?f=35&t=305

Left and right card image floats seem to be of different sizes (I might be looking wrong), and the ones that float left overlap the list's bullet points. And yeah, the card image thing is just as great as expected, thanks for that.

Converted my template to Nexus standards, went okay. The interaction between card image floats and lists is wonky, and it's unfortunate that the order of things in the deck is jiggled around. Both of those are known issues already, right?

What a cool resource, thanks! The card image pampering is lovely.

These ranking things ( ) would be nice, if it wouldn't be too much trouble.

Ah nice, so the site is live. Is there a current bbcode guide somewhere so I can start reformatting my primers?

The problem with both of the cards you mention is that they're quite narrow. I ran Imp's Mischief early on, but the fact it only hits single target spells is annoying. Nothing this can do about a wipe, the best it can do is make someone Path their own thing or something. That, or steal a turn spell, if those happen to kick around your meta. Force Spike makes Mana Tithe look like Teferi's Protection

Oh wow, this again, except under the guise of "wide-eyed casual goes out into casual terror waters, gets mauled". Every single time one of these comes up (combos are bad, stax are bad, your ad here is bad), it pretty much boils down to the fact people dislike losing, even if they claim otherwise. My Daxos the Returned is inherently relatively unpleasant, what with the Oppressions and the Rule of Laws, but my meta minds it less than my Feather, the Redeemed that avoids messing with the game. Why? One of those is much better at cleaning house quickly (even though "quickly" is around turn 8).

That said, public EDH mileage may vary. Wildly. I hit up an LGS a few weeks ago, and watched as two guys struck a deal - guy A won't punch guy B for some number of turns if guy B lets guy A's commander resolve. Guy A casts the commander, guy B plonks down Desertion immediately. This was within 10 seconds of finishing up the deal. I saw red, threw all my resources at taking guy B out, and fell over to guy A on the backswing. Given the uncertain nature of the social interaction, building to win is the most reliable way to get something out of a public game, which leads to the rise of various ugly decks that aren't quite cEDH. The best way to get joy out of the format is to cultivate a local meta, which you can then communicate with to inbreed it to whatever standard you desire.

The cEDH facsimile is a pretty good description. I recognise a group of "casual terrors", a general umbrella term for commanders that built competently will annihilate a casual pod, but have no game if actual cEDH were to show up. I'd actually include Marchesa in that category However, your build is relatively benign. Turns out you can do some interesting things with the commander, as evidenced by your take or an artifact-heavy spin (plushpenguin's list, or a severely depowered variant of it cruising around in my meta).

And, of course, if I make a premature set assessment post, something cool pops out later to spite me Hey, I'll take it!



Brought Back is a very versatile card. Note it doesn't say non-land, and the fully decked out list is cruising around with eight fetches. Combine that with a handful other saccables, or ways to find the fetches, and you should be able to get a Rampant Growth or two's worth of value out of it. I hear ripping two fetches turn two, only to immediately bring them back, is a pretty good line of play. I imagine I'll use it for ramp quite often, but there will probably also be a nontrivial number of cases where this picks up a fallen power lifter out of nowhere, much to the remover's chagrin. While the deck tends to barf out enchantments onto the field, not all are created equal and an opportunistic bit of spot removal on Skybind or Sphere of Safety can sometimes lead to game over. Being able to instantly bring them back sounds pretty good to me. Taking out Depression Automaton. While his ramp floor is higher than this thing's, plus he offers an on-death cantrip, he does cost four for this effect. Yes, I do realise he synergises with Brought Back, but it's not enough to cut Thran Dynamo over him.

Funny story, there's a post from summer of last year where I pinpoint the weaker-looking points of the deck in the high CMC range. By now, the only two that have survived are Cathars' Crusade and Merciless Eviction. They're not going anywhere - the first is unglamorous yet very functional, and the latter costs an arm and a leg but no suitable cheaper alternatives have appeared. Thran Dynamo is now tentatively added to this inconsequential watch list on account of similar unglamorousness. I'm liking where the deck's sitting these days, following the Smothering Tithe logic in some swaps to make breathing room for the weaker decks while interacting better with conventionally stronger lists. Onward!

New set! The closest Feather gets to an include here is Infuriate. Ah well, that's unfortunate. The biggest impact on the deck in the set comes in Kykar, Wind's Fury. Take Feather, make some super broad abilities from the same general cast spam ballpark, add blue, tadaa! Having both a fodder churner and complementary faux-Phyrexian Altar on a body out of the command zone is pretty decent, and I'm pretty sure there's a good low-curve, deck-shredding build waiting to happen. However, Feather's jankier, so I'm staying here

I had a short break from the deck recently, and saw it in a slightly different light when picking it up again for some paper games over the weekend. I noticed that if I see enough of the deck to get the Paradox Engine + Isochron Scepter combo online, the "hand" (usually about the size of the rest of the deck) comes with enough various critical mass to piece together some finite storm'y nonsense to just end the game sans combo. As such, I'll probably devote the Scepter slot to something else. Also being a little critical of Phalanx Leader - I don't think I've ever actually built an X/X swarm with him, and the Feather pump aspect is blanked when you blink her out of harm's way. I'm not sure what to put in the slots, for now Thought Vessel and Titan's Strength are in the lead. I'll give it some more thought, probably harvest some more performance data as well.

Oh boy, another spoiler season. This summer rush is always a bit of a stretch, and the fact the innovation product wasn't reprints made me a bit desensitised by the time M20 rolled around. It doesn't help either that WAR was stunning and MH1 was extremely practical. There are some cards yet to be revealed, but I'm making a post now anyway. In terms of set matters, Starfield Mystic is the closest to an include. Still, Enchantment Medallion does nothing about body production, which is where a lot of mana tends to go each game. He's nowhere near passing the "Thran Dynamo test", i.e. demonstrating that he's of more use than the current most unglamorous rock. Scheming Symmetry is also a thing, but I'm not super keen on giving out free Vampiric Tutors to my foes. Vilis, Broker of Blood is crazy cool as a design, but his blood-curdling mana cost is not ideal given his forecast role in the list (faux-No Mercy disincentivising non-alpha strikes by day, draw hog extraordinaire off the occasional life sink by night).

Why couldn't this wait a couple days, until M20 is officially out in the open?



I just couldn't stop thinking about the newly reduced enchantment count. The last time I dipped to 30, I actively tried to get away from that range. The least I could do was get back to the magical safe number and await future releases from there. I considered the non-enchantment options kicking around the list, and recalled this old stand-in. I'm actually not that sad to see Uba Mask go. There's no denying it's a hellishly strong card, one could argue that even better than Chains in some regards. However, because of this fact it immediately garnered a vehemently negative reception in my playgroup. It nontrivially inconveniences all parties involved, especially when rushed in off early acceleration, and including the per-turn draw here leads to strangling the same ditzy decks that were destroyed by dribble discard. Chains of Mephistopheles leaves those alone, and is superior at choking out actual card advantage attempts - Uba may result in a bit of a "use it or lose it" scenario, but you still get everything you drew for a moment. Meanwhile, Chains actively digs into your options with the forced rummage as you go along. Compare topdecking a fat draw spell with a somewhat depleted hand in each of those scenarios. I did a couple test games in the playgroup and people actually ended up minding it less than Uba, a hypothesis I presented to general distrust before said games.

I wish 2014 me had the foresight to score some duals and other relevant reserved list stuff just as he embarked on the EDH adventure. Alas, no such luck. Nevertheless, one beaten up Italian copy of some ancient cardboard snagged up at a relatively bargain price later, Daxos is now 100% completely pimped, and the magical enchantment count of 30 has been restored while marginally lowering the curve and making the draw control options more palatable to derpier foes.

Lard is lardy