Nicol Bolas is not a Marry Sue character. He has had many flaws over the years of publication and has struggled and suffered because of them on numerous occasions.
-Like how Umezawa killed him when he was the BBEG? He had to lose. He's the BBEG. His only flaw is the BBEG arrogance, which he has due to his character role. A boohoo, Liliana killed her brother in that one story that was written before BFZ and referenced three times in the entire Gatewatch saga, first three chapters of Dominaria,and never again. You argument about her suffering due to killing her brother would hold more water if she had ever referenced it, if that was ever mentioned, in the entire Gatewatch story except for 3 times in a set previous to this one.
-Of the official 5, the only other Gatewatch member whose spark origin holds a candle to Liliana's is Gideon. "Oh )@*# all my friends died because of me, I have to become an invincible planeswalker to never lose a close friend again (until Amonkhet, but we aren't talking about Gideon here). My point is "my bro died" isn't as intense as Gideon's and had already been done with Urza.
Urza...the guy who worked so hard to get his brother back from the Phyrexians that he became a man obsessed and when it came right down to it, didn't rescue his brother from the Phyrexians because he had lost sight of his original goal. Not saying saving Dominaria was not important, but had he not been spurned on to rescue his brother, he would have never found out about the Invasion plans. Invasion is more interesting than losing a brother, but the root is still there. Even after Tempest block where we found out about Planar overlay, Urza block, which told us the start of why Phyrexians were coming, and Nemesis which told us it was nearly upon us. People were really excited for Invasion block, because of the invasion. Not because Urza would probably find out the fate of his brother after all these years.
Liliana made a deal with four demons. What would happen after she took out all of these demons was obvious, she was going to get her brother back...and that is what Belzenlok knew. That's why he made it so that Jossu Vess had to die before he could. He didn't think Liliana would lose sight of her goals... but she did. Cards sold not because of the brother, but because people wanted to find out about these powerful demons. Storywise, it was always about getting her brother back, until she failed herself. If there is a reason for Liliana to take out Bolas then it is not altruism. It is her again saving her own skin. Everything that she does is out of selfish reasons and for her own benefit. Liliana doesn't care about anybody else but her.
-Lol please reread my post starting with "Of course she is ready to die on that hill." and all the way to the bottom. Never said Liliana was looking out for anyone but herself and her brother, and since she (*@#%ed up the latter one, all that is left is to take Bolas out for her on vengeance. Just look at the trailer. She doesn't care about her fellow planeswalkers, she even sics the eternals on Gideon. But the shadows of her past (kids getting crushed)? THAT is the trigger that makes her turn on Bolas.
In the end even in her martyrdom, it's still all about her.
-Yeah...I agree with you completely. The shadows of her past (seeing her self as that little girl who was trying so hard to save her brother from the fate that would utterly snuff both of them out [Nicol Bolas for both the trailer kids and the Vesses]) would throw her life away before having to be reminded yet another time of her original vow (no, not to the Gatewatch, @)*% altruism) to get her brother back.
Produce thine loiny-secrets onto the table for a measure, Nick and Lil!
Is not Nicol Bolas a bigger Mary Sue than Liliana? Is that not the most simple gratifying thing though, striking down a bigger Mary Sue with a smaller one?
Oh my God, I finally understand the ending of Final Fantasy X!!!
Antagonist is SO strong? Antagonist is unstoppable! Even when we plan and plan to our best, the antagonist's plans and power overwhelm said plans!
Which could be said for regimes, and those ruling populaces in real life.
Now I'm depressed.
Thanks for posting your rant! I'm depressed because of it now!
My counterpoint:
First off leaving out the atrocities that Liliana has done from the Killing Wave to messing up Garruk and the fact that she is unable to open up and be vulnerable enough to have an actual relationship with anyone due to reasons made obvious below.
Anyone remember Magic Origins? Young Lily is desperately trying to heal her dying brother, whom she loves dearly (no not like that, you pervs) and naively takes a potion from a stranger a la disguised Evil Queen and zombifies her brother into a killing machine?
Did you ever wonder what all that power was for in the first place? Why she set off to be the best that she could be?
So that she wouldn't have to ever watch her brother die again or anything close to that.
Queue the rekilling of the undead Jossu Vess in Dominaria to get rid of her final demon.
Of course she is ready to die on that hill. She is as strong as she ever wanted to be, but at the cost of the whole reason she set off to be this strong.
She literally has nothing to live for and no purpose now that she has @$)#(%*ed herself over.
Well, only one reason to live. Nicol Bolas was the person who gave her the potion held the contract with the demons. If she can take him out, she can die peacefully.
You are right, she doesn't seem to really care about Jace, nor the rest of the gatewatch or anything else. But her reason for power turning into "I have to stop anyone from ever going to the lengths that Nicol Bolas did to me in order to gain ultimate power" is too altruistic for her.
Because at the end of the day, she's a teenaged girl trapped in the room with the corpse of her brother she killed twice.
Mary Sue's aren't trapped in those rooms.
So looking at the story line I actually see this as the statue at first glance, but looking at the coloration it looks like Ugin. Wouldn’t it be funny if they killed the wrong dragon planeswalker???
Black and red have astounding one drops. I feel like this is white’s crazy-good common. Here is hoping green and blue get a choice common too.
I learned a while back that while rates and Mythics may win the game, knowing the commons at a prerelease is the best knowledge you can have.
This card is extremely versatile and I have possibilities for it after drafting.
Zada was made to be the star of deck, and since M25 downshifted Zada to uncommon, it has made Zada super budget and super easy to make a Sligh style commander deck (I thought Firesong and Sunspeaker would allow for commander burn decks a la Boros noncombat, but it starts working at turn 6...) Cracking open a Zada made me go through my red commons and uncommons and I can count the number of rares/mythics in that deck on one hand. It works better that the F&S deck hands down which has...a much higher rarity average. A commander that works well on a budget is a good commander indeed in my book.
Hope of Ghirapur/HoG is the perfect commander for deckbuilders to test their skills at building a NON-ELDRAZI/NON-BLIGHTSTEEL COLOSSUS deck. HoG can come out turn 1 and has built in evasion. Not only does it have flying but you can send it back to your command zone at a whim, dodging Pacifism/Claustrophobia/Control Magic effects that would keep it on the field but useless. Sure my deck is one Vandalblastaway from losing the game until Darksteel Forge comes out, but that's why this deck goes after red decks first.
Also, Prossh, Skyraider of Kherwill always be a favorite of mine, but I understand Food Chainruins the experience for most opponents (which is why I don't use it in mine). Infinite combos aside, the commander has so much utility. Token buffing, ETBs, Saccing, Graveyard triggers, dragon tribal, devour theme. Imagine having Essence Warden out before Prossh hits the field, that nets you an at least 7 life.
Meletis has praise and I agree with it. Zada builds a deck easily and on a budget. HoG dusts off all those artifacts. Prossh (once Food chain is shunned) opens up for variety.
If you remove something from being a valid target before the spell targeting it resolves, if that spell had only that one target, the spell fizzles, since the target no longer exists.
When a spell fizzles it is put into the graveyard with no effect.
So as long as you used Woe's ability to kill your Dreadnought in response to Delirium, Delirium would fizzle.
If you already let part of Delirium resolve (like say you let it tap Phyrexian Dreadnought) then it would be too late to respond and you would have to let the rest of the card resolve entirely, as partial resolving is not a thing. Once part Delirium officially starts effecting things on the battlefield (once it starts resolving), no one has priority until it is done resolving.
So Evolution Sage has just been spoiled today. 2G
Creature-Elf Druid
Creature - Elf Druid
Whenever a land enters the battlefield under your control, proliferate.
3/2
Does this have a place in EDH infect? I'm considering it for my Jund infect deck but I'm wondering if it is enough.
Thoughts?
There is a lot that you can do, but it greatly depends on your resources (not just money, but mainly your card pool).
First and most importantly, you are a filthy casual and your friend is the allstar tournament/netdeck player.
Totally joking about the adjectives. However you to want two different things: you want to play to have fun, he wants to play to win.
Sure you could always ditch him since you have plenty of people in your playgroup from the sounds of it, but that seems like your last resort.
As you said, he is a friend.
The first thing that comes to mind are variants. Planechase will change the rules around. Horde will have you playing together. Archenemy will combine forces. Other variants may even force a different deck into his hands. This will let him still try to win, but it will probably be less against you or with a less finely tuned deck.
If he always disables you at first, it sounds like you are dueling. Don't duel. Play multiplayer. No one else around? Play two-headed giant where each of you are running two decks.
You could also opt to swap decks for a few games. Maybe he doesn't like getting his strategy destroyed so quickly (maybe he does, that bad boy).
On that like you could fight fire with fire. Elite Arcanist with Turf Wound and run Boomerang on Isochron Scepter with Ankh of Mishrawhile running counterspells (I assume against instants) and Propaganda.
Or make a fast paced pauper deck that goes against his meta to make sure he understands the feeling.
You could also ask him to build a deck that can keep up with his. This would be something that you could do together and if it isn't up to snuff, the two of you continue to tweak it together.
Aetherize wrecks aggro, especially tokens. counterspell 4x. The bread and butter. Propaganda is pricey IRL but for cmc 3 does its job well. Chill is a sideboard card that will wreck red’s chances.
The hardest part about control deckbuilding is being sure that you can stop the other player(s) and still actually have cards that will win you the game. Some people use pingers like prodigal Sorcerer or flying/unblockable creatures while others like to mill out the opponents with cards like psychic corrosion, Sphinx’s Tutelage, Jace’s Erasure, and other mill effects.
Considering the majority of decks win off of creature combat damage, running two Fog effects in a monogreen/dual-colored-green deck has always felt welcome. I have quite few decks that run 4 fog effects, but it will depend on your meta. Two never hurt any deck, and Fog itself has 1 cmc, so just throwing them in really won't disrupt most decks.
My followup question is: do you mean Monogreen control or more bluish colored control?
If you are looking at just monogreen you'd really have to know your meta. Respite would probably be the fog effect of your choice against aggro.
My point is that Rofellos does what it does too well. I mean, it isn't even a 1/1! It is an enabler for any green deck, heck I could head my Ghalta, Primal Hunger deck with it with minimal tweaking (literally one enchantment would need to go and Ghalta would become one of the 99).
Also, Paradox and Azusa are pratically auto additions to a Rofellos deck.
Lastly, only 30 forests? You can run more than that in a mono green. I am not seening the 10 nonbasics that you would be usings, more like 4.
Wouldn't mind see your list for that.
Recently I took a bunch of white cards having to do with lifegain I had lying around and threw them into a deck.
I got up to 8442 life.
I started getting hundreds of +1/+1 counters (due to Sunbond effects and by stacking Spirit Link and Lifelink on things like Serra Avatar.
My question is how to best visualize this for the other players. I have tried dice, but they become obsolete, and even the relic counters from Ultrapro goes up to 999 and stacking them on cards is also confusing (as far as calculating the lifegain from said creature).
The only other idea I have is using a pencil and sticky notes.
Help would be greatly appreciated, because I find this to be a fun deck, but I don't want my playgroup to detest it due to the math suddenly becoming fuzzy and/or taking too long to visualize.
Apocalypse is not banned. Madness is now a thing, discarding in red is actually helpful when you build your deck around it. Throwing down some madness creatures after wiping the board seems to bee a good idea.
I feel like Wake of Destruction and other selected MLD like Boil has not been mentioned as an option here.
A Boil matters nothing to the nonblue player, just as a Ruination matters little to nothing to a monocolored deck.
Heck, Living Plane+Pestilence+Parapet makes MLD onesided, and you don't see people rushing to ban In Garruk's Wake.
The thing I think this thread needs to take under consideration is each person's meta. My meta runs a lot of black, so protection from black on a creature is a great idea in my deck, just like if Sir Rampy MonoGreenton McRamperson esq. wins 50% of the time, maybe an Acid Rain or a Wake of Destructionshould be going into your deck.
Maybe you should play reanimator and bring Herald of Leshrac in early to steal their advantage (and run a Claw of Gix to liquidate what would otherwise be returned).
Targeted MLD just takes some planning.
Getting back to Combatting Ramp, not all color combinations are good at it, but red looks to be the boss.
I am not just talking land destruction, Acidic Soil will punish the person with the most resources and Anathemancer lets you target. There are definitely cards that deal damage to a player for each artifact they control or gives them an upkeep cost.
There are many (older) cards created to punish people for having too many resources.
Heck you want to watch someone squirm? Mindslaver them, then on their turn you control, user Bazaar Trader to give them Claw of Gix or just Zuran Orb and take everything from them.
Lastly, and this is heavily meta dependent, what are they doing with all that ramp?
Casting an expensive spell? - Spelljack
Loads of tokens? - Æther Snap (Aether Snap)
Swing wide? - Fog/Constant Mists/Dawnstrider
Storm? - Timestop
After any of these plays stopped, you turn to the other players and say something to the effect of "Did you see what I just stopped? If we don't take this person out by their next turn, I might not have drawn another card that can do something similar. We need to take this person out NOW." Then you have the other players to the brunt of the work ganging up on the player that just tried to go off. If that is your sort of thing. You can keep them in the match if that is how you go about things, its your playgroup after all.
The short answer is you were right. The copied spell keeps the mode/modes chosen at the time of casting, thus each of the five players would take 4 damage and each player would "discard X cards and then draw X cards, where X is equal to the number of cards in said player's hand" 5 times.
The lands and creatures would be untouched by and of the Incendiary Commands.
Measure of Wickedness is a superfun multiplayer EDH card. It forces action to take place be it sorceries and instants or changes to the boardstate. Fun times.
I'm surprised more Golgari counter decks don't run Maga as a finisher.
I agree with your selections. Living Wall is has not been trumped in...whatever creepiness it is doing. The Fallen is up there with the old-school scariness, but I have a special place for Chains of Mephistopheles, what with the third horn and the sinister eyes that seem to be looking directly at you.
There has only been one card that jump-scared me when I opened a pack of cards: Rotting Fensnake. I made it my laptop background for class so if I jump straight to the desktop I can hear the reactions of the people that were looking at my screen.
Mairsil, the Pretender doesn't need to worry about using the abilities only once with proper setup. First off you already mentioned Aetherling (or better yet Deadeye Navigator) which can reset Mairsil for non-tap abilities. After that you need something as simple as Crimson Mage to grant haste to reuse those tap abilities. Finish it off with a Gilded Lotus and you have infinite Mairsil abilities each turn (and mana, but I mean, nothing new with Gilded Lotus) .
Also Shifty Doppelganger is actually looking like it could be star (support) material! Maybe!
I'm glad to see a shout-out going to Bounty Hunter and the Myojins! You did your research and it shows!
-Like how Umezawa killed him when he was the BBEG? He had to lose. He's the BBEG. His only flaw is the BBEG arrogance, which he has due to his character role.
A boohoo, Liliana killed her brother in that one story that was written before BFZ and referenced three times in the entire Gatewatch saga, first three chapters of Dominaria,and never again. You argument about her suffering due to killing her brother would hold more water if she had ever referenced it, if that was ever mentioned, in the entire Gatewatch story except for 3 times in a set previous to this one.
-Of the official 5, the only other Gatewatch member whose spark origin holds a candle to Liliana's is Gideon. "Oh )@*# all my friends died because of me, I have to become an invincible planeswalker to never lose a close friend again (until Amonkhet, but we aren't talking about Gideon here). My point is "my bro died" isn't as intense as Gideon's and had already been done with Urza.
Urza...the guy who worked so hard to get his brother back from the Phyrexians that he became a man obsessed and when it came right down to it, didn't rescue his brother from the Phyrexians because he had lost sight of his original goal. Not saying saving Dominaria was not important, but had he not been spurned on to rescue his brother, he would have never found out about the Invasion plans. Invasion is more interesting than losing a brother, but the root is still there. Even after Tempest block where we found out about Planar overlay, Urza block, which told us the start of why Phyrexians were coming, and Nemesis which told us it was nearly upon us. People were really excited for Invasion block, because of the invasion. Not because Urza would probably find out the fate of his brother after all these years.
Liliana made a deal with four demons. What would happen after she took out all of these demons was obvious, she was going to get her brother back...and that is what Belzenlok knew. That's why he made it so that Jossu Vess had to die before he could. He didn't think Liliana would lose sight of her goals... but she did. Cards sold not because of the brother, but because people wanted to find out about these powerful demons. Storywise, it was always about getting her brother back, until she failed herself.
If there is a reason for Liliana to take out Bolas then it is not altruism. It is her again saving her own skin. Everything that she does is out of selfish reasons and for her own benefit. Liliana doesn't care about anybody else but her.
-Lol please reread my post starting with "Of course she is ready to die on that hill." and all the way to the bottom. Never said Liliana was looking out for anyone but herself and her brother, and since she (*@#%ed up the latter one, all that is left is to take Bolas out for her on vengeance.
Just look at the trailer. She doesn't care about her fellow planeswalkers, she even sics the eternals on Gideon. But the shadows of her past (kids getting crushed)? THAT is the trigger that makes her turn on Bolas.
In the end even in her martyrdom, it's still all about her.
-Yeah...I agree with you completely. The shadows of her past (seeing her self as that little girl who was trying so hard to save her brother from the fate that would utterly snuff both of them out [Nicol Bolas for both the trailer kids and the Vesses]) would throw her life away before having to be reminded yet another time of her original vow (no, not to the Gatewatch, @)*% altruism) to get her brother back.
Is not Nicol Bolas a bigger Mary Sue than Liliana? Is that not the most simple gratifying thing though, striking down a bigger Mary Sue with a smaller one?
Oh my God, I finally understand the ending of Final Fantasy X!!!
Antagonist is SO strong? Antagonist is unstoppable! Even when we plan and plan to our best, the antagonist's plans and power overwhelm said plans!
Which could be said for regimes, and those ruling populaces in real life.
Now I'm depressed.
Thanks for posting your rant! I'm depressed because of it now!
My counterpoint:
First off leaving out the atrocities that Liliana has done from the Killing Wave to messing up Garruk and the fact that she is unable to open up and be vulnerable enough to have an actual relationship with anyone due to reasons made obvious below.
Anyone remember Magic Origins? Young Lily is desperately trying to heal her dying brother, whom she loves dearly (no not like that, you pervs) and naively takes a potion from a stranger a la disguised Evil Queen and zombifies her brother into a killing machine?
Did you ever wonder what all that power was for in the first place? Why she set off to be the best that she could be?
So that she wouldn't have to ever watch her brother die again or anything close to that.
Queue the rekilling of the undead Jossu Vess in Dominaria to get rid of her final demon.
Of course she is ready to die on that hill. She is as strong as she ever wanted to be, but at the cost of the whole reason she set off to be this strong.
She literally has nothing to live for and no purpose now that she has @$)#(%*ed herself over.
Well, only one reason to live. Nicol Bolas was the person who gave her the potion held the contract with the demons. If she can take him out, she can die peacefully.
You are right, she doesn't seem to really care about Jace, nor the rest of the gatewatch or anything else. But her reason for power turning into "I have to stop anyone from ever going to the lengths that Nicol Bolas did to me in order to gain ultimate power" is too altruistic for her.
Because at the end of the day, she's a teenaged girl trapped in the room with the corpse of her brother she killed twice.
Mary Sue's aren't trapped in those rooms.
I learned a while back that while rates and Mythics may win the game, knowing the commons at a prerelease is the best knowledge you can have.
This card is extremely versatile and I have possibilities for it after drafting.
However I would also like to add Zada, Hedron Grinder and Hope of Ghirapur.
Zada was made to be the star of deck, and since M25 downshifted Zada to uncommon, it has made Zada super budget and super easy to make a Sligh style commander deck (I thought Firesong and Sunspeaker would allow for commander burn decks a la Boros noncombat, but it starts working at turn 6...) Cracking open a Zada made me go through my red commons and uncommons and I can count the number of rares/mythics in that deck on one hand. It works better that the F&S deck hands down which has...a much higher rarity average. A commander that works well on a budget is a good commander indeed in my book.
Hope of Ghirapur/HoG is the perfect commander for deckbuilders to test their skills at building a NON-ELDRAZI/NON-BLIGHTSTEEL COLOSSUS deck. HoG can come out turn 1 and has built in evasion. Not only does it have flying but you can send it back to your command zone at a whim, dodging Pacifism/Claustrophobia/Control Magic effects that would keep it on the field but useless. Sure my deck is one Vandalblastaway from losing the game until Darksteel Forge comes out, but that's why this deck goes after red decks first.
Also, Prossh, Skyraider of Kherwill always be a favorite of mine, but I understand Food Chainruins the experience for most opponents (which is why I don't use it in mine). Infinite combos aside, the commander has so much utility. Token buffing, ETBs, Saccing, Graveyard triggers, dragon tribal, devour theme. Imagine having Essence Warden out before Prossh hits the field, that nets you an at least 7 life.
Meletis has praise and I agree with it. Zada builds a deck easily and on a budget. HoG dusts off all those artifacts. Prossh (once Food chain is shunned) opens up for variety.
If you remove something from being a valid target before the spell targeting it resolves, if that spell had only that one target, the spell fizzles, since the target no longer exists.
When a spell fizzles it is put into the graveyard with no effect.
So as long as you used Woe's ability to kill your Dreadnought in response to Delirium, Delirium would fizzle.
If you already let part of Delirium resolve (like say you let it tap Phyrexian Dreadnought) then it would be too late to respond and you would have to let the rest of the card resolve entirely, as partial resolving is not a thing. Once part Delirium officially starts effecting things on the battlefield (once it starts resolving), no one has priority until it is done resolving.
2G
Creature-Elf Druid
Creature - Elf Druid
Whenever a land enters the battlefield under your control, proliferate.
3/2
Does this have a place in EDH infect? I'm considering it for my Jund infect deck but I'm wondering if it is enough.
Thoughts?
First and most importantly, you are a
filthycasual and your friend is theallstartournament/netdeck player.Totally joking about the adjectives. However you to want two different things: you want to play to have fun, he wants to play to win.
Sure you could always ditch him since you have plenty of people in your playgroup from the sounds of it, but that seems like your last resort.
As you said, he is a friend.
The first thing that comes to mind are variants. Planechase will change the rules around. Horde will have you playing together. Archenemy will combine forces. Other variants may even force a different deck into his hands. This will let him still try to win, but it will probably be less against you or with a less finely tuned deck.
If he always disables you at first, it sounds like you are dueling. Don't duel. Play multiplayer. No one else around? Play two-headed giant where each of you are running two decks.
You could also opt to swap decks for a few games. Maybe he doesn't like getting his strategy destroyed so quickly (maybe he does, that bad boy).
On that like you could fight fire with fire. Elite Arcanist with Turf Wound and run Boomerang on Isochron Scepter with Ankh of Mishrawhile running counterspells (I assume against instants) and Propaganda.
Or make a fast paced pauper deck that goes against his meta to make sure he understands the feeling.
You could also ask him to build a deck that can keep up with his. This would be something that you could do together and if it isn't up to snuff, the two of you continue to tweak it together.
counterspell 4x. The bread and butter.
Propaganda is pricey IRL but for cmc 3 does its job well.
Chill is a sideboard card that will wreck red’s chances.
The hardest part about control deckbuilding is being sure that you can stop the other player(s) and still actually have cards that will win you the game. Some people use pingers like prodigal Sorcerer or flying/unblockable creatures while others like to mill out the opponents with cards like psychic corrosion, Sphinx’s Tutelage, Jace’s Erasure, and other mill effects.
My followup question is: do you mean Monogreen control or more bluish colored control?
If you are looking at just monogreen you'd really have to know your meta. Respite would probably be the fog effect of your choice against aggro.
Green needs a ramp commander like blue needs Ertai, Wizard Adept needs to cost 2 less mana; red needs Kamahl, Pit Fighter to untap like Goblin Sharpshooter does; like black needs Lim-Dûl the Necromancer to cost 5 less; like white needs Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite to cost 5 less.
I don't know how I got stuck on 5 less.
My point is that Rofellos does what it does too well. I mean, it isn't even a 1/1! It is an enabler for any green deck, heck I could head my Ghalta, Primal Hunger deck with it with minimal tweaking (literally one enchantment would need to go and Ghalta would become one of the 99).
Also, Paradox and Azusa are pratically auto additions to a Rofellos deck.
Lastly, only 30 forests? You can run more than that in a mono green. I am not seening the 10 nonbasics that you would be usings, more like 4.
Wouldn't mind see your list for that.
I got up to 8442 life.
I started getting hundreds of +1/+1 counters (due to Sunbond effects and by stacking Spirit Link and Lifelink on things like Serra Avatar.
My question is how to best visualize this for the other players. I have tried dice, but they become obsolete, and even the relic counters from Ultrapro goes up to 999 and stacking them on cards is also confusing (as far as calculating the lifegain from said creature).
The only other idea I have is using a pencil and sticky notes.
Help would be greatly appreciated, because I find this to be a fun deck, but I don't want my playgroup to detest it due to the math suddenly becoming fuzzy and/or taking too long to visualize.
I feel like Wake of Destruction and other selected MLD like Boil has not been mentioned as an option here.
A Boil matters nothing to the nonblue player, just as a Ruination matters little to nothing to a monocolored deck.
Heck, Living Plane+Pestilence+Parapet makes MLD onesided, and you don't see people rushing to ban In Garruk's Wake.
The thing I think this thread needs to take under consideration is each person's meta. My meta runs a lot of black, so protection from black on a creature is a great idea in my deck, just like if Sir Rampy MonoGreenton McRamperson esq. wins 50% of the time, maybe an Acid Rain or a Wake of Destructionshould be going into your deck.
Maybe you should play reanimator and bring Herald of Leshrac in early to steal their advantage (and run a Claw of Gix to liquidate what would otherwise be returned).
Targeted MLD just takes some planning.
Getting back to Combatting Ramp, not all color combinations are good at it, but red looks to be the boss.
I am not just talking land destruction, Acidic Soil will punish the person with the most resources and Anathemancer lets you target. There are definitely cards that deal damage to a player for each artifact they control or gives them an upkeep cost.
There are many (older) cards created to punish people for having too many resources.
Heck you want to watch someone squirm? Mindslaver them, then on their turn you control, user Bazaar Trader to give them Claw of Gix or just Zuran Orb and take everything from them.
Lastly, and this is heavily meta dependent, what are they doing with all that ramp?
Casting an expensive spell? - Spelljack
Loads of tokens? - Æther Snap (Aether Snap)
Swing wide? - Fog/Constant Mists/Dawnstrider
Storm? - Timestop
After any of these plays stopped, you turn to the other players and say something to the effect of "Did you see what I just stopped? If we don't take this person out by their next turn, I might not have drawn another card that can do something similar. We need to take this person out NOW." Then you have the other players to the brunt of the work ganging up on the player that just tried to go off. If that is your sort of thing. You can keep them in the match if that is how you go about things, its your playgroup after all.
The short answer is you were right. The copied spell keeps the mode/modes chosen at the time of casting, thus each of the five players would take 4 damage and each player would "discard X cards and then draw X cards, where X is equal to the number of cards in said player's hand" 5 times.
The lands and creatures would be untouched by and of the Incendiary Commands.