MTG Salvation

Zirilan, of the Claw uses some pretty bad cards like Tel-Jilad Stylus and Sundial of the Infinite.

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I had 5 decks for a time but I felt spread too thin with that many. Now I usually have 2-4 with 3 being the most common. I always have one deck that is my "competitive" deck, right now this is Daretti, Scrap Savant. I also have a deck that I guess you could say is 75%, it has a fairly high power level but doesn't crush tables (usually), this is Geth, Lord of the Vault for me right now. Then I have a deck that is built for pure janky fun, right now this for me is Bladewing, the Risen.

I love to brew new decks so my decks tend to fluctuate. Daretti is brand spanking new, I haven't even finished it yet, it replaces my Jor Kadeen, the Prevailer stax build. Geth is in charge of a deck that changes commanders and strategies frequently. Right now it is more controlling with lots of Wrath effects and discard, not long ago it was Chainer, Dementia Master etb reanimator. Bladewing has been around forever and likely will be, even when I take it apart it comes back stronger, harder, faster, better.

Right now I'm brewing a few Dominaria legends but haven't settled on anything yet.

The judge foil of Crucible of Worlds has the old border. It also has a near $100 price...

I have been playing for a long, long time. My collection is large and valuable. I would lose a lot of that value if they killed the reserve list, and I would be ecstatic about it. WotC killing the reserve list would be so great. I would love to play the Eternal formats but they are just so cost prohibitive that virtually nobody can get into it.

I feel like Villainous Wealth has to get a mention in this thread.

Quote from 3drinks »

Fortunes is the most common, and playable of the cycle, although Murmurs milling eight is pretty insane in 'Yard decks. This is fine as far as the scale for colourless removal goes.



Now see, you've gone and made Putrid Imp so very very sad now. You should apologize to him!

I offer my most sincere and heartfelt apologies to the amazing Putrid Imp. I love the Imp, and still play it in most of my reanimator decks. I have a copy that a friend drew a chalice cape and crown on to turn it into the Pimp Imp that I use in decks.

On topic: I've never seen this Tower in play. It seems like a card to at least consider for mono green since the mana to activate it is pretty easily doable in green. Other posters mentioned playing it with Seedborn Muse which is just wrong.

I've been "that guy" before. Due to miscommunication I ended up bringing a well tuned deck to a group that wasn't prepared for it. It honestly wasn't even fun for me. So we talked and I built a new deck that still ended up being oppressive to them; then they tuned up while I tuned down another notch. I got blown out a few times after that while we found an equilibrium. I honestly found it more fun to play a less tuned deck now and then,it let me put in cards I would never have considered before, why play Life's Finale when you have Damnation? Because Life's Finale can set up some fun stuff that damnation can't do.

As long as everyone is willing to communicate and discuss issues within the group as rational people this shouldn't be a real problem. If there are people unwilling to be rational then you find a new group or let them know you are unwilling to play with them. Again though it will be best to do this in a calm rational way.

I don't think it is really predatory so much as it is metagaming. While it sucks to be on the receiving end of a Blood Moon that shuts you out, it has to be a concern when building your deck. The flexibility of having 4 colors is balanced by increased chance of color screw. I have always seen many 3 and 5 color decks and I expect to see many 4 color decks going forward. Packing hate for NBLs is probably going to be a valid choice, but as with any card you run the risk of it being a totally dead card.

Tl;dr I already pack NBL hate and will continue to use it.

Quote from Weebo »

I truly think the game is better off without 5 additional Swords and 3 additional Spirit Guides.

The only cycles I would like to see more of are enemy colored BFZ duals and enemy colored Talismans.

Agreed on all 3 points. The Talisman Cycle getting enemy pairs would bring a great deal of joy to many players.

I've always struggled with finding right mana rocks for my decks - searching magiccards.info is a really good, but also time consuming way to search for them. While the accelerants are a core parts of any EDH deck, not everyone have enough time to seach for the most optimal ones for their decks. So, to save time and make searching easier, here's the list of all mana-accelerating or mana-making artifacts (I've included things like Wayfarer's Bauble (technically not a rock) and Chromatic Star (eggs may not accelerate you but still are invaluable in certain decks)). If I ommited something worth mentioning - please do tell, I'll update the list!

Last update - Commander 2020 / Ikoria

Quote from Taleran »

Holy crap

So you are telling me there is a 5C legend that not only finds my Serra's Sanctum but allows me to use all that mana late game and not have to use Jodah or Ramos always for enchantress, hell ******* yeah time to start building.

Splicer's Skill

I'm so torn. I wish their dive into splicing to any instant or sorcery was something more abusable and less mana intensive than a 4 mana 3/3, but my love of both Precursor Golem and the splice mechanic makes me the exact target audience of this card. I have to play with it at least long enough to splice this onto a copy spell targeting a golem so I can do "yo dawg, I heard you like golems, so I made a golem with your golem while you made a golem of your golem,"

So the trailer for War of the Spark is awesome, but I was trying to find a quick overview (a 'sparknotes' if you will) of how we got here. After reading the General Discussion thread and checking the Wiki, I couldn't seem to figure out quite whats going on, so I figured I'd make a post.

So here's a quick rundown of where we are (thats relevant) and how we got here, as far as I can tell:

Mending of Dominaria:
Prior this, planeswalkers were practically gods. Afterwards, they are not. Nicol Bolas is pissed about his downgrade in power, and is scheming to be more powerful.

Gatewatch exists, with the goal of protecting the multiverse-
Gideon, Jace, Nissa, Chandra, Liliana

Kaladesh:
Gatewatch gets requested here by Dovin Baan, and originally refuses, as his concerns are small. Ends up going as a result of it being Chandra's home and Tezzeret being involved.
There's an inventors fair, an uprising led by Chandra's mom, and plenty of other stuff. What matters is that a Planar Bridge is invented, allowing more than individuals to move through planes. Tezzeret steals it, working for Bolas (we know that, right?). Ajani joins the Gatewatch, and the Gatewatch decides to go after Bolas, heading to Amonkhet.

Amonkhet:
Bolas has warped the plane. Turns out, he's created an entire system to kill off the best warriors through a series of trials. They are to be reanimated as his Eternals (specially made to be able to survive travel through the Planar Bridge). He shows up, claims his army, and beats the Gatewatch. Showing up to the fight without a plan was a bad plan. Gatewatch is scattered, Jace's mind is wiped.

Ixalan: (whoops, originally mislabeled this plane)
Jace is here, and gets picked up by Vraska. Vraska is on a mission from Bolas to find something. They work together, become close, and end up finding the Eternal Sun, which is something that locks planeswalkers on a plane. Vraska helps Jace recover his memories, and they realize she's being played by Bolas (he offered to help her make the Golgari powerful), but fears she is screwed. She and Jace decide to play along, so Jace wipes her memories of him and she delivered the Eternal Sun to Bolas.

Dominaria:
Liliana, Chandra, Nissa, and Gideon arrive here. Nissa feels used that the Gatewatch is just killing demons to get Liliana out of her contract, leaves the Gatewatch and peaces out. The other 3 work together and with the Weatherlight crew and protect the plane, killing Lili's last demon. Turns out her contract defaults to Nicol Bolas (oops), and she has no choice but to leave with him. Teferi is restored as a planeswalker and joins up with the Gatewatch.

Ravnica:
There's plenty of chaos as the guildpact (Jace) has been absent. 5 Guilds, led by planeswalkers, are being manipulated behind the scenes by Bolas.
Vraska is working with him because the Golgari are downtrodden.
Dovin Baan found him from investigating Tezz, and he agreed to help him rise in the Azorius.
Kaya has taken over the Orzhov to free them from ghosts.
Ral Zarek is building something with the Izzet.
Domri is now in charge of the Gruul.

Summary:
Bolas has an undead army, a portal to move them, a way to trap planeswalkers, and control of Liliana who has to work for him.
Most of the remaining Gatewatch is together, with Jace the most informed off on his own.
Bolas has worked to prepare Ravnica for his next move.

What did I miss? What else do we need to know before the events of the War of the Spark?

I'm going to have to go through this list and see if I can find anything interesting in recent sets to give this deck a little tune up. I might have to get it loaded into MTGO soon.

Quote from toctheyounger77 »

Quote from Gashnaw »

Quote from JDviant »

So in Commander Anthology II, Vorosh is getting foiled and Ghave isn't. Okay. I guess they're saving that for Anthology 3 or 4.
I feel for you Ghave and Skullbriar players.
https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/news/commander-anthology-vol-ii-legends-and-decklists-2018-05-08

My ghave deck was stolen. That is 500 bucks I will probably never get back. Most of it is not really worth much. But then have are a like earthcraft, cavern of souls. Shocks, filters, checks, fetches, elesh, Mike...

Ugh, that's so rough! I feel for you man. It's pretty low of someone to thieve your deck, I hope it turns up!

it did. Turns out one of the people i played with turned it into the store, but the guy they turned it into forgot to put it in the lost and found. I got it back tonight so i am happy.

Hello again fellow cube enthusiasts!

This is my 25th (how perfectly fitting!) installment of the "top 20" set preview articles! Just like the previous reviews, it will be in a spoiled top X countdown format, with each section having an image, a brief summary/description, and my verdict on what cubes I think it could potentially see some play in. I got a lot of positive feedback on the format from the last few articles, so I’m going to keep the “what I like” and “what I don’t like” sections.


I want to preface this article by saying that Dominaria is hands-down my favorite Magic set in recent memory. I love the return to familiar mechanics, places and characters. But even more than that, I love the return to the classic fantasy world. The art feels classically Magical in nature. The high fantasy themes, the heroes and the knights and the monsters and the wizards …it feels like a genuine return to the best things about Magic that made me fall in love with the game over 20 years ago. Unfortunately, the set isn’t fantastic for smaller cubes, so this won’t be the format for me to eternalize the new cards in all their glory, but it didn’t stop me from fawning over the card image gallery when it dropped. There are some gems in here for our format though, and very likely some diamonds in the rough that are worth exploring.

Without further ado, I can start the countdown!





















Thanks for reading! Please comment below and we can discuss any and all things Dominaria and the cube! Cheers, and happy cubing.

Thrull Parasite


The counter removal ability is certainly what it's trying to sell you on, but extort has always outperformed my expectations, an extort 1-drop is not undesirable.

Might sound clichée, but...



In detail this means:

• There's no such thing as a finished deck. - Even without the release of new cards for it there will always be change. There maybe new players in your meta, new decks/archetypes at the table, new threats to deal with, new ways of disruption coming your way, ... Being aware of these effects and adapting to them accordingly is crucial to stay up-to-date.
• There's always room for improvement. - When playing your deck keep an eye on how smooth it runs. Are you hitting your land drops? How efficient is your color fixing? Is your creature count high enough? Do you run out of gas a lot? Are you able to react in a flexible way? What type of effects render your deck tech useless and what are you running to avoid that? How well do certain card( type)s perform?
• There's no such thing as bad feedback. - Ask your opponents about your deck. Was it fun/challenging to play against it? What card choices did they find questionable/interesting? How well did it do against the other decks? I for one started loaning out my decks to play against them regularly. Others might come up with lines within your decks you never even though of.
• Set your own goals and guidelines. - What are you in it for? Winning at all cost or a fun ride for everyone at the table? How important is flavor for you? Do you have a bigger set of fitting artworks in mind? Do you want sleek and low on the curve interactions or big splashy spells?
• Be thorough and creative. - There's no definite list for any commander out there. Decklists on tappedout, mtgs and toplists on EDHrec can give you a rough to good idea what to run, but a thorough research via magiccards.info, scryfall and gatherer will give you an extended amount of info to base your card choices on. Find your own hidden gems!
• Tailor your deck around your commander. - While there are cards that can never be strictly bad there might be cards that synergize better with your commander. Does your commander profit from creature based ramp, artifacts or land ramp? Naturalize or Reclamation Sage? Eternal Witness or Noxious Revival? Blinding Angel or Stonehorn Dignitary? Sidisi, Undead Vizier or Dark Petition?
• Give it some time and testing. - Even with extensive research and brewing no deck will be close to finished out of the box. Nothing replaces deck testing in your usual meta. Don't give up early. I've seen tons of scrapped deck ideas that turned up doing well on another side of the table later on.

I certainly forgot a few points, but i guess these are a solid starting point if i had to give advice on the topic.