MTG Salvation

Well crap. I've spent a nontrivial amount of time fluffing my various primers on the site, and submitted my Feather for review hours before the bombshell dropped. I fully intend to transfer the primers over to the new forum, and hope to see you there.

With that bitter preamble out of the way, time to delve into the newest treasure trove of goodies, and there's a lot to talk about. MH1 was spearheaded by the mastermind behind the beautifully utilitarian C16, and the set is filled with various practical options to grease up decks. The part I don't understand is the hiked MSRP, as this feels like a similar sort of wonky product to BBD. That one had more reprints, too - the cashest thing MH1 brings is Eladamri's Call. I don't speak modern, so maybe the set truly delivers on the modern promises, but the environmental reaction doesn't seem to be backing this up. Anyway, swap time!



Let's get the easy one out of the way first - I keep rambling on about how removal comes function first. Generous Gift is a white Beast Within, and is an automatic include. Taking out the current worst removal option in Cast Out to make room. This dips me below 30 enchantments for the first time in the deck's life, and I'm not super happy about that. It's probably me just minding a number more than anything - the difference between 29 and 30 is ultimately quite small, but it's just a symbolic barrier that fell. Need to be careful to not meander too far down this low enchant count road. Despark is no longer actively in consideration (partly because this new thing happened).

As for the lands, Heliod's Mattress Emporium is an enchantment Academy Ruins, seems pretty good. Prismatic Vista is another untap fetch, and as such works with Crucible of Worlds and Bolas Rock. Both are obvious shoe-ins. At first, I was considering cutting into basics to make room, but realised that I don't feel comfortable with the concept of six of each given the fetching, Land Tax and Sword of Rampant Growth. As such, I left them at seven and took a look at nonbasics. Frankly, I don't remember the last time I actually used Strip Mine (plus Generous Gift theoretically carries on this fringe functionality in the list), and it was already earmarked for a cut when I was considering Karn's Bastion for a moment. The next worst is Eiganjo Castle - the activated ability is fringe as hell, and it stayed in the list as a relic of times when there used to be a Keranos player around in 2015/2016 who'd shoot my Daxos because yes. Taking it out breaks the nice land symmetry - I used to have seven of each basic, and then one extra land that only netted that colour of mana in the list. It used to be two, but I took out New Benalia and Bojuka Bog ages ago. Now that symmetry is broken. All around discomfort times - below 30 enchantments, OCD land distribution in bits. Yet the deck gets better for it, so there's that. The next land on the chopping block when they print something noteworthy would probably be Caves of Koilos.

In spite of the massive number of new includes already mentioned, there are still tons of interesting cards in the set!

• Silent Clearing - Daxos was never quite colour-access-desperate to run City of Brass variants, and the painland often ends up used for colourless. A mandatory ding is not the best, and I can't see myself sacrificing this for cards as Daxos wants to amass mana. Still, this is the first time there's a land cycle in enemy colours, so that's noteworthy.
• Talisman of Hierarchy - Nice to see this cycle filled out, first time crossing paths with it as I've somehow never had a serious ally pair deck. Is this better than a signet here? Nope. Is this better than Thran Dynamo, arguably the most debatable of the rocks? Also no.
• Yawgmoth, Thran Physician - Looks like a hell of an include at first glance. Then you remember Greed exists and you don't run that, and this effectively costs three mana per card. The proliferate is not too shabby either, but it's ultimately a mixture of two okay modes on a four drop non-enchantment.
• Winds of Abandon - A nice alpha wipe, but if you fail to gib the table all the extra mana should help your opponents bounce back quite quickly.
• Force of Despair - A one-card answer to Avenger of Zendikar gum and other things of that nature, but is quite narrow with regards to when it can be used. The payoff is probably ultimately not worth this stipulation.

That last line hit like a truck. Aw.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUE_nI7dRRc



Not bad for commons.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6c3y51ua-Nw

Yep, I'll be tagging along as well. This is the only MTG site I hit up, the mixture of solid spoiler coverage with a good EDH community is just what I need. I literally just submitted my third EDH primer for review yesterday, hope there will be a way to bring those with us

I know, right? What a cool card. Also, sorry to hear about Daxos's demise. Also also, cool to watch you add Bolas Rock to decks. Also also also, I don't think I thanked you for this anywhere, but I started very actively paying attention to cards' "floors" after reading that somewhere in your threads and it helped me produce a functioning Feather with a relatively short tuning phase.

Solid deck, not a lot of smart stuff to say here. You should consider losing the personal rule about off-colour fetches, this deck seems like it wants to go long, and in those sort of scenarios a fetch + Crucible of Worlds can go a long way. Sun Titan doesn't mind either. Other than that, you're a smidge sac outlet light. Attrition may not get doubled by Teysa, but it gives you something to do with your dudes.

Maybe there will be an MH2 (seems plausible, given the set code on display here), and that will have some more of the swords? It took them a while with the original five.

I actually oddly like that this one doesn't mess with the opposition on connecting. I feel guilty running SoFaF as my group gets super salty about the discard part. These should be less salinity-inducing, hopefully.

Fun fact - this was restricted in Vintage for almost a decade. "But what if they use this to pick up the Lotus, Recall or something?"

Interesting how things vary format to format. Like how there was a moment when people were considering Slash Panther.

So this is a thing.

Timely reprint, given Liliana's Triumph. Ah well.

Ah nice, so these are a cycle. Hello Gx EDH staple.

How does exile help here exactly?

I'll actually defend Patron of the Orochi here. The mana boost that thing gives Yeva is insane and should probably stay. True, Seedborn Muse is better, but this effect is just so good in here that a kinda crappier version at 8 is still perfectly slot-worthy.

I'd dime the creature cast draw, you've got Beast Whisperer, Guardian Project and Zendikar Resurgent in the maybeboard, promote them to main. You could consider Cloudstone Curio for various ETB-juggling shenanigans. Shamanic Revelation also sounds like a pretty good idea. The list is oddly ramp-light, you could consider adding various time-honoured classics of the 2-4 CMC varieties. Arboria is also cute, I hear.

Thanks. I'm sorry to pop the bubble here, but Soul's Fire variants don't work with Zadas. The spell only gets spread around if it targets only the Zada variant. So yeah, you could use it to have your board punch itself in the face, but that doesn't seem like something you'd want to do Balefire Liege does a lot of stuff here, but given the deck's white skew this thing will mainly gain life rather than dispense bolts. It's not a bad include by any means though. Sentinel Tower would best be a Sphinx-Bone Wand instead, the fact this only tracks your main phase spell spam and resets each time seems a bit suboptimal.

Speaking of Sphinx-Bone Wand, actually...



When adding Scroll of the Masters, I A/B'd it against the Wand. I admitted the Wand is objectively better (if you count to 18, the Scroll makes Feather a one shot for extra mana, while the Wand ended the game), but pointed out the merits of a cheaper option that can be worked in easier. I think a lot of those parallels carry over to Mangara of Corondor vs. Meteor Golem. I've already compared pure card quality when it was first brought up in the thread, discussing Mangara's drawbacks. However, I forgot some important upsides of his - cost and the rattlesnake factor. The Golem is the lone card above 5CMC (Blasphemous Act doesn't count) left in the list, and chasing him out is a similar tempo hit to setting Wand down. By contrast, I can play Mangara whenever and just let him sit there. Don't do anything too spooky or I'll eat it. Show some flicker and people will be on edge even more. The threat of interaction is something that my Daxos the Returned uses to good effect, and I imagine it'll also be fine in this build. I don't tend to bomb removal heavily here, Duergar Hedge-Mage has ended up as Chrome Mox fodder more often than on the battlefield. However, I'm not quite irresponsible enough to strip this list of all interaction.

Mangara's major drawback is that he taps to do his thing. This is an occasional upside, as he turns into a board chainsaw with Paradox Engine, but overall it's a flaw. I'm still not super stoked about that, as removal should preferably come here and now. As such, I've started actively considering Samut's Sprint, and narrowed it down to three proposed cuts - Panic, Titan's Strength and Stand Firm. However, none of those seem worse than the Sprint - even the crappiest cantrip is still a cantrip, the +1 power from Titan's Strength speeds up Feather's clock, and the double dig of Stand Firm is phenomenal for finding things to do. As such, for now I didn't add it. However, I did also swap out a basic because of the whole white-leaning thing.