I think Mystical Teachings is worth testing in here. It tutors up harvest, zenith, counterspells, snapcaster, and even dictate itself. The flashback doesn't have to be splashed for but is an option. And it curves out well with turn 3/4 mystical turn 4/5 dictate
Fair points everyone. I guess modern doesn't really need any more nonbasic land hate than I already has. I mostly made this thread to try and provide a constructive answer to people who want Wasteland itself reprinted in modern (which I think would be horrible).
I think one thing people might ignore here is the possibility of colored mana being used without the land tapping for a color inherently. I think a land that taps for colorless and has R, tap, sac: destroy target nonbasic land is at least worth talking about (or 1R or RR). Modern has very greedy manabases and I think something viable landwise to punish that might add an interesting component to the metagame.
And yes, I know Tectonic Edge is a thing, but I still feel that people don't really take any lands into consideration when designing manabases. Something that hates on greedy manabases but doesn't take up a spell slot and can't easily be countered is something I think merits discussion. And of course you can also answer that Tec Edge is enough, because it might be. I'm just spitballing here.
I guess I wasn't thinking of the turn four rule. Darn, that could have been a cool reprint.
Cursed Scroll could make straight Pox a thing. Exploration could make Modern Lands a thing, which I really want to be a thing. Also, Return to Zendikar is the place for it if it's going to show up. Helm of Obedience could give decks that run Rest in Peace a new win con.
First and foremost, I will ask that you don't flame each other for having different definitions of "viable." I really just want to hear some ideas here.
So, as both a lover of spicy brews and wishful thinking, I was wondering in the shower earlier what possible answers there could be to the following question: What cards could get feasibly reprinted into modern in the future that would take a modern deck in the works that could use some help beating top decks and actually get it there?
Best example I can think of: Elvish Spirit Guide could team up with its Simian buddy and make decks like the Oops All Spells Modern Woo Brew or the 7 Land Belcher deck work a lot better. It could enable wacky combo decks in general by providing redundancy with Simian Spirit Guide.
Take this with a grain of salt because I haven't played these, only played against. But I think the most fun is Daretti, and Krenko is the most powerful.
My playgroup always known Krenko to be the one mono-red commander that you have to tuck on sight. Now that tuck is gone, he can do some dirty stuff, especially if you can give him haste.
Daretti can also be very powerful, however, if you build him as stax. You don't need mana to activate him, you can recycle your Tangle Wire when it has too few counters on it and bring it back next turn. Plus, when you Jokulhaups or the like with him out, you pretty much just win since he doesn't get hit by those cards. You end up with a huge advantage as you can loot every turn to draw into mana and sac small artifacts you cast to get back bigger, more oppressive artifacts from your grave which would be filled with them after the Jokulhaups. My friend cast that card with Wurmcoil Engine out, then sacced a token he got to get Wurmcoil back. It was pretty much over after that. The biggest disadvantage to Daretti is that, being a planeswalker, he can easily get removed by just being attacked with creatures, but stax shouldn't have a huge problem with creatures anyway.
Rules question: if you activate scion twice, responding to the first with the second by holding priority, after you get Molten Steel (with the one you technically activated second) can you still activate Molten's ability a bunch of times before the other one getting Skithiryx resolves? Not to nitpick at your post, I'm sure you were talking about doing both at sorcery speed since it's on your turn, but I was thinking and I actually don't know the answer to this. Because the way I thought it worked was the stack resolves all at once in (reverse) order, which would mean that by the time he's resolved the ability as becoming a copy of Molten, the one making him Skithiryx is already coming off the stack and he can't respond to it. But when I thought about it I realized I really wasn't sure.
As a Karn player, I was just like, "are you frickin' kidding me!?"
Yeah, when I saw this thread the only thing I could think of was Wave of Vitriol for my friend, our group's Kozilek player. Maybe if they do create Barry's land and do make it typed as basic it'll be slightly better? It might still be an auto-scoop card honestly.
They just announced promo Dualcaster! It's a judge promo. Also wasteland and damnation. Also feldon. Can't link cause I'm on my phone but it's an official wotc announcement. Hopefully it makes my wasteland foil easier to procure.
I like the idea of just proxying what you already have in other decks and telling everyone at the beginning of the game "I provably own the cards, if you want me to switch to this deck I can." When my friends have done this it's been no switching requested, no problem to deal with. Basically what bigbearlyke said, but I would like to add that you should limit the number of decks you have proxies in. It just makes it easier to play with people who really hate proxies without switching out. For instance, if you have a blue black deck and a five color deck, keep your blue black mana fixing in the blue black deck and proxy stuff in your five color deck, which would be more likely to have proxies from other decks anyway.
I recently embarked the process of foiling out my Azusa lands control deck. I took inspiration from a few of my buddies pimping out their favorite EDH decks in the last couple months. Not including the few foils I picked up in trade for the deck (just because I could), I've been aggressively ordering, trading for, and otherwise purchasing foils for the deck for the past couple weeks. Once the rest of my mail arrives, I will have 36/100 foils for the deck. They are mostly the cheaper ones, but a few are actually decently expensive.
So for the people who haven't yet made it to the end where all possible cards to be foiled/altered/"pimped," I would like to begin a discussion on what the process is like. I will start with some questions to the people they apply to.
Questions: (Don't feel bound by these. This can just be general discussion of the process of pimping. If you feel you need guidance to help organize your thoughts, these might help. Also feel free to propose your own questions.)
1. How many cards out of 100 are you in ownership of pimped versions currently?
2. When did you decide to really go for the full 100/how long have you been at it in general?
3. How hard are you going? All foil? All altered? All original foil? All signed? All foreign? Any combination of the former five?
4. Are you just trading, just ordering, or doing a combination of both?
5. What are the hardest to find pimped cards for your deck?
6. What is the most expensive card you must get?
7. If you're foiling, will you be doing anything for the cards that don't come in foil? If so, what?
8. Why are you pimping your deck?
9. What are you basics going to be?
10. Are there any cards you're waiting on acquiring?
My personal answers:
1. 36.
2. Very recently, though I've been finding random foils as long as I've had the deck.
3. I'm going to foil everything that can be foiled.
4. I'm mostly ordering, but if I see any in trade (or for sale personally) I will try really hard to get them.
5. I think I will find out about this one as I go to try and order more of the expensive ones.
6. Wasteland, with Dark Depths in close second.. Ugh.
7. This I'm not sure about yet. I'm a little OCD so I don't think I'd like having some foiled some altered. I might just have to leave them be.
8. This deck is my favorite. Azusa was my first general ever, and I went in a much different direction with this deck in its recent re-up but it's everything I love about magic.
9. My basics are currently full art Zendikar Veronique Forests. I might see if I can foil them out, or go for all of my favorite Arena land.
10. Many. Mostly for Modern Masters 2015, but also for Return to Zendikar a little bit (especially the enemy fetches).
Also, feel free to post pictures of what you have in foil as you progress. I love seeing pretty foils and alters, and I'm sure there are some other folks here who would as well.
I agree with Lou. Another iteration of the True-Name fiasco is something WOTC would most likely take great precaution to avoid. Whether or not we like it, the Commander Decks are something Wizards seems to do primarily to get new people into EDH, and secondarily to create product for Commander players. I think if we were going to see extremely expensive reprints we would've seen them already. And, with the TNN issue, we probably won't see very overpowered new cards either (for the same reason - so the decks aren't gutted and put on a shelf to rot).
I personally love the idea of bicolored decks since two-color legends are my favorite to build around. I think we would more likely see allied-colored legends rather than enemy since we did technically get a set of enemy legends in the initial Commander printing. That being said, I would prefer enemy because I like to build around those color combinations more but I think I would be very happy with either. One thing I feel like Wizards did really right with the recent mono-colored could have been incidental - that the mana base wasn't hindering the power of the decks like the other two sets which had half the mana base come into play tapped since there were three colors. Using fewer colors allows for more potential basics in a budget mana base (which, historically I'm assuming they will be), which means fewer lands for fixing that have to come into play tapped.
I think Eternity Vessel might be a little counterproductive, since this deck will optimally be showing increase in life every turn, and it competes in mana slot with Felidar Sovereign who is a very likely win con. I'd suggest removing it, and maybe two other things, for 4 Rest for the Weary. It's a truly amazing card, especially for early-game lifegain, while Wall of Omens is still keeping the opponent at bay. I was about to suggest Survival Cache too, and now I've just noticed your "Considering" part, I'm glad we're on the same page. Does Wall of Reverence really help much? I haven't used it but it seems like Transcendent Master could better use one of its slots, and then maybe the other two could go to making Rest for the Weary a playset. I like how in a few months when the rotation is complete, despite losing Cradle of Vitality and Knight of the White Orchid, you get Ajani's Pridemate and Goldenglow Moth, which is a pretty damn good tradeoff.
And yes, I know Tectonic Edge is a thing, but I still feel that people don't really take any lands into consideration when designing manabases. Something that hates on greedy manabases but doesn't take up a spell slot and can't easily be countered is something I think merits discussion. And of course you can also answer that Tec Edge is enough, because it might be. I'm just spitballing here.
Cursed Scroll could make straight Pox a thing.
Exploration could make Modern Lands a thing, which I really want to be a thing. Also, Return to Zendikar is the place for it if it's going to show up.
Helm of Obedience could give decks that run Rest in Peace a new win con.
So, as both a lover of spicy brews and wishful thinking, I was wondering in the shower earlier what possible answers there could be to the following question: What cards could get feasibly reprinted into modern in the future that would take a modern deck in the works that could use some help beating top decks and actually get it there?
Best example I can think of:
Elvish Spirit Guide could team up with its Simian buddy and make decks like the Oops All Spells Modern Woo Brew or the 7 Land Belcher deck work a lot better. It could enable wacky combo decks in general by providing redundancy with Simian Spirit Guide.
My playgroup always known Krenko to be the one mono-red commander that you have to tuck on sight. Now that tuck is gone, he can do some dirty stuff, especially if you can give him haste.
Daretti can also be very powerful, however, if you build him as stax. You don't need mana to activate him, you can recycle your Tangle Wire when it has too few counters on it and bring it back next turn. Plus, when you Jokulhaups or the like with him out, you pretty much just win since he doesn't get hit by those cards. You end up with a huge advantage as you can loot every turn to draw into mana and sac small artifacts you cast to get back bigger, more oppressive artifacts from your grave which would be filled with them after the Jokulhaups. My friend cast that card with Wurmcoil Engine out, then sacced a token he got to get Wurmcoil back. It was pretty much over after that. The biggest disadvantage to Daretti is that, being a planeswalker, he can easily get removed by just being attacked with creatures, but stax shouldn't have a huge problem with creatures anyway.
Yeah, when I saw this thread the only thing I could think of was Wave of Vitriol for my friend, our group's Kozilek player. Maybe if they do create Barry's land and do make it typed as basic it'll be slightly better? It might still be an auto-scoop card honestly.
So for the people who haven't yet made it to the end where all possible cards to be foiled/altered/"pimped," I would like to begin a discussion on what the process is like. I will start with some questions to the people they apply to.
Questions: (Don't feel bound by these. This can just be general discussion of the process of pimping. If you feel you need guidance to help organize your thoughts, these might help. Also feel free to propose your own questions.)
1. How many cards out of 100 are you in ownership of pimped versions currently?
2. When did you decide to really go for the full 100/how long have you been at it in general?
3. How hard are you going? All foil? All altered? All original foil? All signed? All foreign? Any combination of the former five?
4. Are you just trading, just ordering, or doing a combination of both?
5. What are the hardest to find pimped cards for your deck?
6. What is the most expensive card you must get?
7. If you're foiling, will you be doing anything for the cards that don't come in foil? If so, what?
8. Why are you pimping your deck?
9. What are you basics going to be?
10. Are there any cards you're waiting on acquiring?
My personal answers:
1. 36.
2. Very recently, though I've been finding random foils as long as I've had the deck.
3. I'm going to foil everything that can be foiled.
4. I'm mostly ordering, but if I see any in trade (or for sale personally) I will try really hard to get them.
5. I think I will find out about this one as I go to try and order more of the expensive ones.
6. Wasteland, with Dark Depths in close second.. Ugh.
7. This I'm not sure about yet. I'm a little OCD so I don't think I'd like having some foiled some altered. I might just have to leave them be.
8. This deck is my favorite. Azusa was my first general ever, and I went in a much different direction with this deck in its recent re-up but it's everything I love about magic.
9. My basics are currently full art Zendikar Veronique Forests. I might see if I can foil them out, or go for all of my favorite Arena land.
10. Many. Mostly for Modern Masters 2015, but also for Return to Zendikar a little bit (especially the enemy fetches).
Also, feel free to post pictures of what you have in foil as you progress. I love seeing pretty foils and alters, and I'm sure there are some other folks here who would as well.
I personally love the idea of bicolored decks since two-color legends are my favorite to build around. I think we would more likely see allied-colored legends rather than enemy since we did technically get a set of enemy legends in the initial Commander printing. That being said, I would prefer enemy because I like to build around those color combinations more but I think I would be very happy with either. One thing I feel like Wizards did really right with the recent mono-colored could have been incidental - that the mana base wasn't hindering the power of the decks like the other two sets which had half the mana base come into play tapped since there were three colors. Using fewer colors allows for more potential basics in a budget mana base (which, historically I'm assuming they will be), which means fewer lands for fixing that have to come into play tapped.