Personal Sanctuary actually interests me most out of this list... Legacy White Stax has a problem eating half it's own life total with its own lands, this solves the problem with tomb, nomad stadium, etc, though oddly not Horizon Canopy, while even opening up lands like City of Brass to usefulness. Not only does this mess with the tempo of red decks that like to shoot you EOT, but makes Sulfuric Vortex wonderfully one-sided. This seems to scream RW of some sort, but I can't think of anything else that it breaks so far. Most of the things I'd really want to prevent the 'damage' from during my turn (Dark Confidant, Sylvan Library, Fetchlands, etc) are life loss rather than damage, but I'm sure there are some big opportunities out there.
Flame Rift. Not sure it's good enough, though, given the curve, situational-ness (yes, I worded that) and number of cards. But that and things like Earthquake are probably what you'd want to look for.
Regarding Flayer Husk, one thing to note is that the germ token is a black creature and therefore can chump opposing Sword of War and Peace creatures while bouncing with Glint Hawk to reset. Along the way, it also happens to be a one mana cantrip with Puresteel.
I haven't tested this deck yet and hope to soon, but I would also suggest that hitting metalcraft pretty fast and having lots of options for one and two turn drops is pretty important. Flayer Husk also fits both those roles pretty well, simultaneously.
I'm not sure how I feel about Kemba in the main deck. I think you want it for more grindy matches, but it's awkard on the curve and a bit slow for an aggro deck pre-board. Also, getting stuck with multiples is pretty rotten and I'm not sure how I would feel having it main deck against other players with Kemba in game 1. Just some thoughts.
Anyone know against what you bring in White Sun's Zenith? Decks with a lot of sweepers? I would love to see well developed side-boarding notes for this.
To be honest, as a hardcore EDH player, I already have all the cards that are interesting in these decks, except the new ones, obviously.
Yeah, hence my new dilemma on seeing these lists. Do I want to pay $40 or whatever for:
Command Tower
Mimeoplasm
Damia
Spell Crumple
I guess so, since I like EDH and getting them as singles seems like it will be a non-starter. But that smarts, haha. Mind you, not enough to spend hours of my day complaining about it on a forum, though. I'm pretty sure the goal of this is expansion of the format first, profit second, since they can build a massive player base and sell new casual stuff into it in a more effective way than Planechase and Archenemy while still generating sales for singles dealers on old stuff they haven't re-printed.
Should have sold my Solemn Simulacrum yesterday, though :-P
I'd take a different approach. I'd go with Mimeoplasm because it costs five and Damia costs somewhere in the neighborhood of seventeen. You can tweak the deck to make it easy to find and play Damia (reanimator is good at that anyway) without having to worry about playing your commander once or twice, getting it axed before you get value and then it being out of reasonable casting range the rest of the game. Also, if you can bin Damia, you can play Mimeoplasm for five as a copy of an even larger Damia, compensating for the fact that a 4/4 general at that cost is pretty squish against FTK and so on.
I ran this deck at SCG Charlotte just to kill time until Legacy started. I started out 2-0 with no game lossess, trouncing an RDW and a Goblins deck and then hit Drew Levin (probably had two byes, so it was his first game) lost the die roll, fought the Caw and the Caw won.
One thing I was doing constantly was siding out Thrummingbird. Against decks with Squadron Hawks and Motarpods, it will basically never connect and is nearly dead. That represents roughly 75% of the metagame. Wondering if anyone else has thoughts on this. Maybe you just get to play bad FNM decks all the time. But how often have you gotten value out of Thrummingbird in the Caw match against a competent pilot? I think I'd just play Spellskite there.
Re: Gideon's -2 ability, if you have Grand Architect out, you can arbitrarily tap Spellskite to generate mana. For those of us planning to use it to protect the Architect, that's likely relevant.
Re: Tezzeret's 5/5 ability, awesome. Unfortunately, I don't see enough in the spoilers to make a consistently good Tezzeret deck, but hopefully I'm wrong and just being a pessimist.
Just thought I'd point out (and edit in your post), it's phrexian blue, not black.
You know, I was making the classic mistake wherein Blue starts with a b ;-)
Thanks for the correction. Of course, the fun thing about Phyrexian mana is that in about half the actual play situations, it all means the same thing: paying shockmana.
I was trying to think of the role this would play in a deck in terms of coming up with a comparison and here's what I have, for those of you who have played with or against Fish in Legacy: Spellskite feels to me like a mini-Kira, Great Glass-Spinner. Obviously not that insane, but similar in that while it's on the battlefield, your first attempt to target and deal with something is always subject to challenge.
Thats what I thought also. Means you cannot divert a Condemn unless you attack with it, and Gideon's assassinate wouldn't work unless the spellskite is tapped.
The spellskite is certainly has a neat ability to really pester the opponent.
Yes. I like to take cards to FNM which are both good and which allow my opponent many ways to misplay. This seems like a good one. Hard to track how broadly applicable it's ability will be, so easy to catch people off guard, force misplays, waste cards, etc. A good skill card and not too shabby as a blocker either. I already have a list together, haha.
I don't think you can because that would mean the equipment is targeting an illegal creature. You COULD however redirect your own equipment. Case: You try to equip a heavy arbalest or something to a mana myr or something and they ping the myr to kill it. Ordinarily, the equipment stays where it was and you just wasted four mana, but I THINK this would allow you to instantly redirect the equip, although if you were going to do that, you might as well have equipped to the skite to begin with.
Yes, I don't believe the rules would allow you to re-direct in illegal ways. For example, you can't really divert Go for the Throat, since the Spellskite is an artifact. You could grab Teetering Peeks landfall, though, for example.
{pB}: Change a target of target spell or ability to Spellskite.
({pB} may be paid for with either or 2 life.)
0/4
"Let's show Vorinclex that progress doesn't always need teeth or claws."
-Malcator, Executor of Syntheses
Illus. Chippy #159/175
--
A small list of relevant things that this interacts with in the current standard:
- Jace bounce.
- Gideon assassinate.
- Doom Blade, but not Go for the Throat (due to non-artifact clause?)
- Oust
- Condemn
- All artifact removal, such as Nature's Claim, Viridan Zealot, Crush, Manic Vandal, Oxida Scrapmelter, Slice in Twain, etc.
- Lightning Bolt, Galvanic Blast, Staggershock, other burn.
- Into the Roil
- Tumble Magnet
- Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle (not the best, but can knock two or more damage off of two triggers--probably too situational)
Plus all kinds of new things like Beast from Within. It also seems like it totally screws pump-based Infect. I would pay two life any day to redirect the opponent's Groundswell from their Glistening Elf to my pseudo-wall. That's like a 19-for-1 or something. It also makes Hex Parasite and Vampire Hexmage totally suck, protecting your Planeswalker as both a "wall" and a counter-answer.
The card is less effective at preventing burn damage due to the situational cost of life to activate, but seems very good at protecting combo pieces or win conditions from removal or other interference that requires a single target. It will also trip players up in many situations because the interactions are so diverse and can be paid for from life totals. It seems like a good fit in Architect decks where it can accelerate out on turn 3 and protect the Architect, as well as begin to generate some additional mana on the following turn.
I think this card is amazing for blue-based combo decks (aside from Shape Anew, frown) or control-ish decks that want to make use of non-Titan creatures that currently auto-fail the Jace test. No guarantee it fills a key role, but it certainly looks like a role player. Thoughts? Will we see more Twisted Image in future sideboards? :-P
Jin Gitaxias is weird. The Flash effect is very blue, of course, but that doesn't actually accelerate his effect or make it more surprising as far as I can tell. Also, by the time you cast (assuming you don't cheat) him out, you probably have enough cards in your library that he actually decks and kills you in ~5-6 turns (7 in Reanimator, assuming turn 2 Reanimate). Maybe this signals an Elixir of Immortality reprint ;-)
It's actually a play on Elephant + Hurtle. It's probably like this:
3RG
Sorcery
Choose two: Put a 3/3 Green Elephant Creature token onto the battlefield; Sacrifice a 3/3 Green Elephant Creature token: deal 3 damage to target creature and to that creature's controller.
"Although an elephant never forgets, my elephants never have much time to form memories in the first place." - Sachiderm the Hill Giant
can someone tell me if you blow up your lands with terastodon or your opponents?
I like Hapless Researcher because he chump blocks, pitches to Force of Will, digs a card deeper than Putrid Imp and provides an easy way to blow up Bridge from Below.
I usually reserve Terastodon for problem cards like Ensnaring Bridge, Moat, Jace, etc. unless I can either:
- Mana screw my opponent by blowing up two lands of theirs, take out one of mine to make sure they can't just triple block and kill the 'don, then put pressure on them OR
- Blow up all of my lands and then clock them really easily.
But in most situations I rely on other fatties with evasion/protection abilities to lock the game state down and as I said reserve Terastodon for handling outs that my opponent presents. I have recently hit:
- AEther Vial on 4 when I had Iona on Blue as a way to stop my opponent's singleton Sower of Temptation.
- Chalice of the Void on 1, via Exhume, to re-activate the other 50% of my deck.
- Ensnaring Bridge to open up my attacks again.
Terastodon is a bit of a judgment call, so you'll have to get some practice with that. But I'd say unless he's your only option at a given point, consider him Plan B to deal with outs your opponent might present after you already have an appropriate finisher for a given match out (e.g. Inkwell Leviathan against CounterTop Thopter).
Perhaps there will be rare Phyrexian-language cards as a crack-a-pack gimmick, sort of like uber-foils or similar to how they pimped Zendikar with these one-in-a-million old re-purchased cards.
So, for example, I could open a chase mythic in Phyrexian, there would be like a few hundred in the world, I sell it for a couple hundred $$$ and buy a bunch of dual lands and Goyfs.
This is how they support Legacy growth among Standard players. I kid.
Or they could do the buy-a-box, game day, release, etc. promos in Phyrexian with altered art, blah blah. That would limit them to specific card types, though, unless they want to go way off norm and print vertical text for Planeswalker abilities.
They may never use them on cards, but this opens up a lot of promo/value space to create total uber-geek chase versions. I guess MTG is so big now that no one's even suggesting they are jumping the Klingon shark? Hey, guys, we're just as cool as the Trekkers now!
If Elesh Norn is a template card, indicating the casting cost and style of the other Praetors, here's what I'd say:
1) The Praetors are "lords" with color flavor. Elesh is sort of a Praetor of Atlantis on an extreme scale with an "are you with me or not?" kind of vibe. Kind of a lord for me and anti-lord for you.
2) Unless the Red one has Haste as it's "color ability" they are all un-playable in standard until JTMS rotates because they all fail the Jace test. Titans pass the Jace test because they do something relevant even if they get bounced and assuming you can re-cast them, they keep doing something relevant. Elesh Norn arguably does something, in that she kills off anything small they played after bouncing her. But, come on. Irrelevant.
They feel like plants for Commander Summer. If Elesh Norn is not a template card, all bets are off. However, they also feel like the Dragon cycles. I'd bet on template. Couldn't hurt to grab a few if temporary Standard un-playability makes them cheap because eventually you will get some Commander value out of them.
Flame Rift. Not sure it's good enough, though, given the curve, situational-ness (yes, I worded that) and number of cards. But that and things like Earthquake are probably what you'd want to look for.
I haven't tested this deck yet and hope to soon, but I would also suggest that hitting metalcraft pretty fast and having lots of options for one and two turn drops is pretty important. Flayer Husk also fits both those roles pretty well, simultaneously.
I'm not sure how I feel about Kemba in the main deck. I think you want it for more grindy matches, but it's awkard on the curve and a bit slow for an aggro deck pre-board. Also, getting stuck with multiples is pretty rotten and I'm not sure how I would feel having it main deck against other players with Kemba in game 1. Just some thoughts.
Anyone know against what you bring in White Sun's Zenith? Decks with a lot of sweepers? I would love to see well developed side-boarding notes for this.
Yeah, hence my new dilemma on seeing these lists. Do I want to pay $40 or whatever for:
Command Tower
Mimeoplasm
Damia
Spell Crumple
I guess so, since I like EDH and getting them as singles seems like it will be a non-starter. But that smarts, haha. Mind you, not enough to spend hours of my day complaining about it on a forum, though. I'm pretty sure the goal of this is expansion of the format first, profit second, since they can build a massive player base and sell new casual stuff into it in a more effective way than Planechase and Archenemy while still generating sales for singles dealers on old stuff they haven't re-printed.
Should have sold my Solemn Simulacrum yesterday, though :-P
One thing I was doing constantly was siding out Thrummingbird. Against decks with Squadron Hawks and Motarpods, it will basically never connect and is nearly dead. That represents roughly 75% of the metagame. Wondering if anyone else has thoughts on this. Maybe you just get to play bad FNM decks all the time. But how often have you gotten value out of Thrummingbird in the Caw match against a competent pilot? I think I'd just play Spellskite there.
Re: Tezzeret's 5/5 ability, awesome. Unfortunately, I don't see enough in the spoilers to make a consistently good Tezzeret deck, but hopefully I'm wrong and just being a pessimist.
You know, I was making the classic mistake wherein Blue starts with a b ;-)
Thanks for the correction. Of course, the fun thing about Phyrexian mana is that in about half the actual play situations, it all means the same thing: paying shockmana.
I was trying to think of the role this would play in a deck in terms of coming up with a comparison and here's what I have, for those of you who have played with or against Fish in Legacy: Spellskite feels to me like a mini-Kira, Great Glass-Spinner. Obviously not that insane, but similar in that while it's on the battlefield, your first attempt to target and deal with something is always subject to challenge.
Yes. I like to take cards to FNM which are both good and which allow my opponent many ways to misplay. This seems like a good one. Hard to track how broadly applicable it's ability will be, so easy to catch people off guard, force misplays, waste cards, etc. A good skill card and not too shabby as a blocker either. I already have a list together, haha.
Yes, I don't believe the rules would allow you to re-direct in illegal ways. For example, you can't really divert Go for the Throat, since the Spellskite is an artifact. You could grab Teetering Peeks landfall, though, for example.
--
Spellskite
Artifact Creature - Horror
{pB}: Change a target of target spell or ability to Spellskite.
({pB} may be paid for with either or 2 life.)
0/4
"Let's show Vorinclex that progress doesn't always need teeth or claws."
-Malcator, Executor of Syntheses
Illus. Chippy #159/175
--
A small list of relevant things that this interacts with in the current standard:
- Jace bounce.
- Gideon assassinate.
- Doom Blade, but not Go for the Throat (due to non-artifact clause?)
- Oust
- Condemn
- All artifact removal, such as Nature's Claim, Viridan Zealot, Crush, Manic Vandal, Oxida Scrapmelter, Slice in Twain, etc.
- Lightning Bolt, Galvanic Blast, Staggershock, other burn.
- Into the Roil
- Tumble Magnet
- Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle (not the best, but can knock two or more damage off of two triggers--probably too situational)
Plus all kinds of new things like Beast from Within. It also seems like it totally screws pump-based Infect. I would pay two life any day to redirect the opponent's Groundswell from their Glistening Elf to my pseudo-wall. That's like a 19-for-1 or something. It also makes Hex Parasite and Vampire Hexmage totally suck, protecting your Planeswalker as both a "wall" and a counter-answer.
The card is less effective at preventing burn damage due to the situational cost of life to activate, but seems very good at protecting combo pieces or win conditions from removal or other interference that requires a single target. It will also trip players up in many situations because the interactions are so diverse and can be paid for from life totals. It seems like a good fit in Architect decks where it can accelerate out on turn 3 and protect the Architect, as well as begin to generate some additional mana on the following turn.
I think this card is amazing for blue-based combo decks (aside from Shape Anew, frown) or control-ish decks that want to make use of non-Titan creatures that currently auto-fail the Jace test. No guarantee it fills a key role, but it certainly looks like a role player. Thoughts? Will we see more Twisted Image in future sideboards? :-P
3RG
Sorcery
Choose two: Put a 3/3 Green Elephant Creature token onto the battlefield; Sacrifice a 3/3 Green Elephant Creature token: deal 3 damage to target creature and to that creature's controller.
"Although an elephant never forgets, my elephants never have much time to form memories in the first place." - Sachiderm the Hill Giant
I like Hapless Researcher because he chump blocks, pitches to Force of Will, digs a card deeper than Putrid Imp and provides an easy way to blow up Bridge from Below.
I usually reserve Terastodon for problem cards like Ensnaring Bridge, Moat, Jace, etc. unless I can either:
- Mana screw my opponent by blowing up two lands of theirs, take out one of mine to make sure they can't just triple block and kill the 'don, then put pressure on them OR
- Blow up all of my lands and then clock them really easily.
But in most situations I rely on other fatties with evasion/protection abilities to lock the game state down and as I said reserve Terastodon for handling outs that my opponent presents. I have recently hit:
- AEther Vial on 4 when I had Iona on Blue as a way to stop my opponent's singleton Sower of Temptation.
- Chalice of the Void on 1, via Exhume, to re-activate the other 50% of my deck.
- Ensnaring Bridge to open up my attacks again.
Terastodon is a bit of a judgment call, so you'll have to get some practice with that. But I'd say unless he's your only option at a given point, consider him Plan B to deal with outs your opponent might present after you already have an appropriate finisher for a given match out (e.g. Inkwell Leviathan against CounterTop Thopter).
So, for example, I could open a chase mythic in Phyrexian, there would be like a few hundred in the world, I sell it for a couple hundred $$$ and buy a bunch of dual lands and Goyfs.
This is how they support Legacy growth among Standard players. I kid.
Or they could do the buy-a-box, game day, release, etc. promos in Phyrexian with altered art, blah blah. That would limit them to specific card types, though, unless they want to go way off norm and print vertical text for Planeswalker abilities.
They may never use them on cards, but this opens up a lot of promo/value space to create total uber-geek chase versions. I guess MTG is so big now that no one's even suggesting they are jumping the Klingon shark? Hey, guys, we're just as cool as the Trekkers now!
1) The Praetors are "lords" with color flavor. Elesh is sort of a Praetor of Atlantis on an extreme scale with an "are you with me or not?" kind of vibe. Kind of a lord for me and anti-lord for you.
2) Unless the Red one has Haste as it's "color ability" they are all un-playable in standard until JTMS rotates because they all fail the Jace test. Titans pass the Jace test because they do something relevant even if they get bounced and assuming you can re-cast them, they keep doing something relevant. Elesh Norn arguably does something, in that she kills off anything small they played after bouncing her. But, come on. Irrelevant.
They feel like plants for Commander Summer. If Elesh Norn is not a template card, all bets are off. However, they also feel like the Dragon cycles. I'd bet on template. Couldn't hurt to grab a few if temporary Standard un-playability makes them cheap because eventually you will get some Commander value out of them.