MTG Salvation

Quote from Lemminkainen.Kaukomieli

15 Gods + Karona, False God as commander.

Quote from kattphud

This is a wonderfully hilarious idea. Sadly, the big, gaping hole in this idea is that if you don't have adequate devotion to the right colors, the gods of the colors in question won't count as creature cards and therefore the Podium won't be able to grab them for you. I'm not saying it's impossible to put together 5+ devotion to all five colors, just that you'll be very hard-pressed to do so.

It seems that I was wrong, but even if I were right, if someone were willing to dump enough money to put all 15 gods together into a Karona EDH deck, I'd be willing to make a house rule just to see that deck in action.

Quote from A. Smith

Not actually true. When the gods are outside of the battlefield anywhere (hand, graveyard, library, etc.), they are creatures regardless of your current devotion to their colors, and so the podium will always allow you to reveal them.

So you're saying that the text in the gods' text boxes that says "~ isn't a creature" only applies when said god is on the battlefield? It still seems a bit ambiguous to me, but considering that you can Zombify and Worldly Tutor creatures with shroud, I suppose you're probably right.

Quote from Lemminkainen.Kaukomieli

15 Gods + Karona, False God as commander.

This is a wonderfully hilarious idea. Sadly, the big, gaping hole in this idea is that if you don't have adequate devotion to the right colors, the gods of the colors in question won't count as creature cards and therefore the Podium won't be able to grab them for you. I'm not saying it's impossible to put together 5+ devotion to all five colors, just that you'll be very hard-pressed to do so.

I like this for Kaalia of the Vast EDH because of all of the large, angry, flying Legends under her command. The buff would actually be secondary to getting to durdle for just the right Legendary winged beatstick every turn. It would also help me dig her back out after she got tucked with Condemn or Hinder.

Chromanticore is Akroma, Angel of Wrath only harder to cast and not as good. I would say that it could see play in Commander under any of the several 5-color Legends, but it's really not useful to any of them. Progenitus obviously can't use it, Child of Alara would kill it before it became a creature, it's mostly redundant to Chromat, and handing it Karona, False God is just adding spikes to the beatstick you're already giving to your opponents. The rest of the Rainbow Brigade are Lord of Something Other Than Beasts and therefore have little use for this silly thing. It's almost like they're making fun of Genju of the Realm by making a card that actually manages to be worse.

This is usable in mono-red but not really anywhere else simply because the mana cost would be prohibitive in multicolor for a card that really isn't able to swing the game on its own. It hits creatures and planeswalkers pretty hard, but without the option to hit players (which would make it de facto able to hit planeswalkers anyway) and its inability to deal with gods, its power ends up being rather cumbersome. As for creature removal, each color combination with red has several better options in Standard right now.

That said, this is the biggest bang that Sunforger has ever been able to grab (unless you blow up Draco with Orim's Thunder, but of course that's highly circumstantial).

Please forgive me for posting a deck with such ridiculous moneycards as Stormbreath Dragon and Chandra, Pyromaster in the Budget Forum. Most of the rares and mythics here were pulled out of sheer luck from the few packs I've bought and the rest were traded dearly for.

That said...

Here we go with another Red Deck Wins. Having played mono-red since very nearly the beginning of Time Itself (circa 1995), I've run into the usual shortcomings of the color. Fuse cards to the rescue! I splashed a few of them into my deck to provide answers to red's perpetual problems with things like enchantments and indestructible creatures. All of them have a useful red side so that they're never dead, but the "B-sides" are where the really cool stuff is.

The trouble I'm running into is casting the "B-sides" reliably without impacting the all-important tempo of my deck. Right off the bat, Temples and Shocklands are out because I'm not willing to spend that kind of money on land. I don't like Guildgates because matching the right Guildgate to the right split/fuse card is iffy at best even with Maze's End, and even then lands that hit the table tapped present a speedbump to a deck that absolutely must run fast. This leaves Shimmering Grotto, its functional twin Unknown Shores, and Transguild Promenade.

TGP seems dangerously slow to me unless I don't include them in my mana base and just go with 22 or so Mountains and just find room elsewhere for the Promenades. That seems like a waste though. Grotto/Shores generally won't slow me down (unless I need to cast a RR creature on turn 2 and I have a Mountain and a Grotto/Shore), but they make fusing my split cards an expensive prospect.

Another consideration I've made is eliminating some of the split cards. Armed//Dangerous doesn't really serve a specific purpose, and Toil//Trouble is somewhat redundant with Magma Jet, so I guess they can be eliminated. That leaves Turn//Burn as an answer to Gods and other fatties, and Wear//Tear as an answer to enchantments, and in both cases they can probably be sideboarded along with the appropriate red/whatever Guildgate to cast them.

(For the record, all these practical concerns make me very sad, when I really want to bust out with a RDW that does stuff that RDW isn't supposed to do.)

Suggestions?

Here's my current decklist:

The idea here is for the deck to function perfectly well if I never cast an off-color split card, but for that to be an option. I've lost many, many games for want of an answer to a single troublesome permanent.

If my budget allowed, I would happily throw in shocklands and/or Temples, but that really isn't an option for me. The high-dollar rares and mythics were either pulled from packs or traded dearly for. The same is true for the lesser one-ofs. Even if I could get shocklands, the problem of matching the right land with the split/fuse card I have in my hand still exists.

Perhaps if I settled for just a couple of the split/fuse cards I would do better. Armed//Dangerous doesn't really have a specific purpose here and can be eliminated, especially since Turn//Burn is a pretty nasty combat trick itself. Toil//Trouble is somewhat redundant with Magma Jet. That leaves Turn//Burn and Wear//Tear, and they're mostly just answers to contingencies and can go into the sideboard along with the appropriate Guildgate to cast their off-color sides.

I see what you're saying about my creatures, especially the one-ofs. They're also mostly cases of having been pulled from packs. Aside from quadding up on the rares, what creatures would you suggest?

I thought of using the Guildgates, but the likelihood of matching the right Guildgate with any given split/fuse card I have in my hand is slim at best, and Maze's End presents a massive tempo problem. Besides that, I'm not a fan of any land that hits the table tapped. Transguild Promenade is even worse in that it actually sets you back 1 on top of hitting the table tapped. If only City of Brass or Vivid Crag were legal in Standard. Sadly, it seems that Shimmering Grotto and functionally identical Unknown Shores are my only good options.

Here we go with another Red Deck Wins. Having played mono-red since very nearly the beginning of Time Itself (circa 1995), I've run into the usual shortcomings of the color. Fuse cards to the rescue! I splashed a few of them into my deck to provide answers to red's perpetual problems with things like enchantments and indestructible creatures. All of them have a useful red side so that they're never dead, but the "B-sides" are where the really cool stuff is, powered by Shimmering Grotto.

The rest of the deck aside, what does the Forum think?

I don't blame you for feeling this way, because I've been there. I used to play in a meta full of degenerate monocolor decks where the only rule was "no hosers" (which meant the poor schmuck playing white couldn't use Circles of Protection). After every halfway creative deck I played got ground into the dirt before it even got off the ground, I finally broke down and started running monored Sligh and was finally competitive against the blue permission deck and the black Necropotence deck. It got old quick, and I ended up not playing Magic for several years afterwards. Thankfully, some years later I finally got over my butt-hurt and found a meta that was smart and creative, and I had fun even when I lost. A side effect was that I became a much better Magic player.

Obviously you don't want to quit playing Magic, so you have three other options:

Option 1: Adapt and play similarly un-fun decks. I recommend land destruction.

Option 2: Play moneyball. Dump every spare dollar you can into buying dual lands, Power 9, and other overpowered rares and mythics and simply out-spend your group.

Option 3: Walk away and find another group to play with. You have to ask yourself now and then if you even like the people you're playing with anyway.

My first thoughts went to Sol'Kanar the Swamp King, but the spelling is different. Too bad.

Quote from Ferenczys

I'd be interested in Aura flip cards:

Strength of the Bold 1W
Enchantment - Aura
Enchant Creature
Enchanted Creature gets +2/+2
If Strength of the Bold would be put into a graveyard from play, return it to play flipped.
//////
Humility of the Meek
Enchantment - Aura
Enchant Creature
Enchanted creature can't attack or block.

I like this idea, but I think the primary purpose of flip cards is so a card can spontaneously change its type line without players having to keep track with sticky notes. The Kamigawa flip cards either started as a non-legendary creature and then became legendary, or started as a creature and then became an enchantment. What you have could be accomplished with a simple "when ~ enters the battlefield, choose one -", along with a one-time recursion effect like undying.

I could see an artifact that could become an aura under certain circumstances. The Autobot Matrix of Leadership served as a symbol of authority when held by Ultra Magnus, but it wasn't until Hot Rod opened it that Rodimus Prime arose.

Autobot Matrix of Leadership 6
Legendary Tribal Artifact - Autobot Equipment
Equipped creature has protection from Unicron.
As long as ~ is attached to an Autobot creature, Autobot creatures you control get +1/+1.
T, tap an untapped Autobot creature with Heroic you control: Destroy target creature named Unicron, then flip ~ and attach it to the creature tapped for this ability.
Equip 2
"Light our darkest hour."
//////
Power of Primus
Legendary Tribal Enchantment - Autobot Aura
Enchant creature
~ counts as having the same name as Autobot Matrix of Leadership. (The "legend rule" applies to both as if they had the same name.)
As long as ~ is attached to an Autobot, enchanted creature gets +5/+5 and has first strike, trample, and vigilance, and other Autobot creatures get +2/+2 and have first strike.
"Til all are one!"

Quote from Thought Criminal

I wouldn't call Lumi my "ideal" commander, but she's one I recently thought of:

Lumi, the Lightborn 3WB
(W) Legendary Creature - Human Wizard {M}
You may have ~ enter the battlefield transformed.
Lifelink, protection from black
2WW: Exile target creature for as long as you control ~. Then you may transform ~.
4/4
-----
Lumi, the Shadowsoul
(B) Legendary Creature - Human Wizard {M}
Deathtouch, protection from white
2BB: ~ deals 1 damage to up to X target creatures and you gain X life, where X is the number of creatures exiled with ~. Then you may transform ~.
4/4



There's a Knight card in my graveyard that has first strike. I can choose to give all my guys double strike even though the targeted card in a graveyard didn't have it. I don't think that's what you intended.

Bah. No, not at all. It's too texty and I can't think of a way to make it less so without watering him down or leaving him breakable.

I like your transformable commander, but the big issue is the Legend Rule, which would let a player have two of these on the battlefield, one in each form. Of course both would immediately evaporate if the player transformed one, but the whole thing is really just bad for flavor. You might add text to one side that states that it's the same card as the other side for purposes of the Legend Rule:

"Lumi, the Shadowsoul counts as having the same name as Lumi, the Lightborn. (The "Legend Rule" applies.)"

On second thought, that is pretty ugly. The flavor I'm going for is that of a grizzled old military officer who's seen his share of front line action and is now too old for all that, but has amassed a wealth of experience in military tactics and strategy from both his own exploits and those of countless commanders before him. He's white because he's orderly and loyal, he's black because he's ruthless and cunning, and he's red because he carries the blood of tens of thousands on his hands and regrets nothing. He delves into history (e.g., graveyards) to find tactics that worked well in the past, and then applies them to the present conflict on a massive scale. Mechanically, I was trying to find a way to glue together Cairn Wanderer and Concerted Effort. I like your suggestions to clean him up though. How about this:

x,t: Choose target Soldier, Warrior, Knight, or Samurai creature in any graveyard. If it has flying, fear, first strike, double strike, deathtouch, haste, landwalk, lifelink, protection, reach, trample, vigilance, or bushido, choose one of those abilities, and each other Soldier, Warrior, Knight, and Samurai creature you control gains that ability until end of turn.