What you need is either:
1) House rules for how many extra turns that can be taken (yes even at a LGS)
2) Have a honor system
3) Ban every card that has the text "extra turn"
4)Stranglehold is allowed to be a commander
1-2 being the reasonable options, 3 is the nuclear option, 4 is the silly option that will never happen.
Usually what I hear is the reason they don't pull the trigger is out of just pure greed for loyalty. As the logic is if you have more loyalty than your ultimate you get to keep that planeswalker around.
Also yes her ultimate is highly underrated and not very understood. Then again Aminatou is one of the most oddball planeswalkers they have printed.
Example 1: A Rhys the Redeemed player on your Left has a massive token army. Using your ultimate and declaring Right will give you that token army.
Example 2: An Atraxa, Praetors' Voice player has many planeswalkers on the board including Atraxa. You want it but they are effectively two seats away in either direction (4-player game), so you use Rings of Brighthearth to copy your ultimate so the effect happens twice. You are now in control of a bunch of planeswalkers and you can use each of their abilities, maybe even ultimates, immediately after.
Another usage requires some political trickery as if you been making at least one ally in the match, you can push the more favorable board controlled by one player onto them. As Aminatou can also function as a kingmaker Commander.
Thinking with Aminatou requires some thinking outside of the box.
Hopefully I will not have the same luck as my RTR experience when I picked Selesnya and ended up Grixis because it was strictly more advantageous. Still a bit sour over that as I felt conned out of my guild choice.
The isle is for explaining how phasing works on the individual. Its pretty much a harmless process. That everyone and everything phased out is perfectly fine. Certainly not like the fast or slow time rifts on Tolaria which could be the death of a person caught by one.
What can create problems, is like Shiv when it was trying to phase in, as due to geographical changes it would have created much damage if Teferi hadn't safely brought it back in.
Teferi was attempting to manipulate time so that he might overcome the difficulties of magical summoning. He theorized that he could drop creatures in and out of the time stream, causing them to appear and disappear at will--"phasing," as he labeled it. But his experiments met with limited success: after years of trial and error, Teferi concluded the process was inherently unstable. Random effects constantly occurred; worse still, Teferi discovered that his early, clumsy experiments had damaged the time stream and threatened to unravel that stream across Dominaria if left unattended. Hardened by the knowledge of his culpability, Teferi prepared to fix the time stream with a colossal energy burst, a dangerous maneuver at best but his only real hope of repairing the damage.
What happened next was truly unexpected. The energy unleashed caused every plant, animal, and building on Teferi's isle to phase out of existence. All that remained was the barren rocky foundation of the isle.
With phasing, its how you originally put it, temporal stasis. As Teferi for example was not aware of his surroundings and was surprised to see a war had brewing in his absence. It would be like you blinking and a hundred years passing just like that.
This is quiet a different stasis compared to how Ravi was when she was sealed inside of the Apocalypse Chime and created what is known as the Dead Zone in Ulgrotha. As Ravi was fully aware of what was happening around her while in the chime, yet she also aged, couldn't sleep, and had went mad from being trapped.
You will note a very different mentality where each rarity mattered more, that the good cards shouldn't be frontloaded into a specific rarity, that they cared about price budgets for players back then.
With the way the conversation usually goes when it comes from WOTC's own words, it usually boils down to "we decided it was too powerful for standard". Wasn't always that way.
Now before I get to the next part, note I'm not necessarily trying to spin some bad web about Mark, but within the structure of the R&D and playtesters that a paradigm shift has indeed happened when regarding the power level of cards within a given set.
As one will note that Swords to Plowshares, Lightning Bolt, Counterspell, and Llanowar Elves (and/or Elvish Mystic) are all very simple cards. Being too powerful for standard will raise a few eyebrows as it doesn't sound like it makes much sense. If they are too powerful at common, why not shift their rarity to uncommon instead? Yet rarity isn't the issue. The common pattren with WotC is that these cards upset a balance within card design, that if Lightning Bolt is in standard the worry is that players wouldn't play other burn spells if given the opportunity to play something better. Which, in my opinion, raises more questions about the matter. As what they have been printing, at least for burn, has been fairly low-powered.
One might be quick to point out Llanowar Elves in Dominaria, but if you go back two years to 2016, the atitude towards that card was in the same regard as a Counterspell or Lightning Bolt.
(Example: Enter the Infinite + Reliquary Tower + Beacon of Tomorrows and/or Nexus of Fate to accomplish the same result.)
What you need is either:
1) House rules for how many extra turns that can be taken (yes even at a LGS)
2) Have a honor system
3) Ban every card that has the text "extra turn"
4)Stranglehold is allowed to be a commander
1-2 being the reasonable options, 3 is the nuclear option, 4 is the silly option that will never happen.
Also yes her ultimate is highly underrated and not very understood. Then again Aminatou is one of the most oddball planeswalkers they have printed.
Example 1: A Rhys the Redeemed player on your Left has a massive token army. Using your ultimate and declaring Right will give you that token army.
Example 2: An Atraxa, Praetors' Voice player has many planeswalkers on the board including Atraxa. You want it but they are effectively two seats away in either direction (4-player game), so you use Rings of Brighthearth to copy your ultimate so the effect happens twice. You are now in control of a bunch of planeswalkers and you can use each of their abilities, maybe even ultimates, immediately after.
Another usage requires some political trickery as if you been making at least one ally in the match, you can push the more favorable board controlled by one player onto them. As Aminatou can also function as a kingmaker Commander.
Thinking with Aminatou requires some thinking outside of the box.
Seems phasing might also have a chance of appearing in standard if it went from a 9 to an 8. Down to a 7 with rules tweaks.
Which from a narrative perspective would reinforce Zhalfir coming back.
1x Sigarda, Host of Herons
Artifacts (3)
1x Darksteel Reactor
1x Decimator Web
1x Sol Ring
Creatures (1)
1x Ivory Gargoyle
Enchantments (8)
1x Island Sanctuary
1x Lost in the Woods
1x Recycle
1x Rowen
1x Sterling Grove
1x Solitary Confinement
1x Wheel of Sun and Moon
1x Hour of Promise
1x Kodama's Reach
1x Idyllic Tutor
Instant (2)
1x Crop Rotation
1x Enlightened Tutor
Lands (82)
76x Forest
1x Command Tower
1x Krosan Verge
2x Plains
1x Temple Garden
1x Windswept Heath
What can create problems, is like Shiv when it was trying to phase in, as due to geographical changes it would have created much damage if Teferi hadn't safely brought it back in.
This is quiet a different stasis compared to how Ravi was when she was sealed inside of the Apocalypse Chime and created what is known as the Dead Zone in Ulgrotha. As Ravi was fully aware of what was happening around her while in the chime, yet she also aged, couldn't sleep, and had went mad from being trapped.
You will note a very different mentality where each rarity mattered more, that the good cards shouldn't be frontloaded into a specific rarity, that they cared about price budgets for players back then.
Now before I get to the next part, note I'm not necessarily trying to spin some bad web about Mark, but within the structure of the R&D and playtesters that a paradigm shift has indeed happened when regarding the power level of cards within a given set.
As one will note that Swords to Plowshares, Lightning Bolt, Counterspell, and Llanowar Elves (and/or Elvish Mystic) are all very simple cards. Being too powerful for standard will raise a few eyebrows as it doesn't sound like it makes much sense. If they are too powerful at common, why not shift their rarity to uncommon instead? Yet rarity isn't the issue. The common pattren with WotC is that these cards upset a balance within card design, that if Lightning Bolt is in standard the worry is that players wouldn't play other burn spells if given the opportunity to play something better. Which, in my opinion, raises more questions about the matter. As what they have been printing, at least for burn, has been fairly low-powered.
One might be quick to point out Llanowar Elves in Dominaria, but if you go back two years to 2016, the atitude towards that card was in the same regard as a Counterspell or Lightning Bolt.
- Terramorphic Expanse
- Mountain Valley
- Evolving Wilds
- Gruul Turf
- Command Tower
- Karplusan Forest
- Skarrg, the Rage Pits
- Rootbound Crag
EDIT: Your mana production could also use a little boost.