Sorry, my initial question wasn't clear. I mean the draw trigger from Toothy leaving play. So Toothy gets Swordsed or some such when he has 2 +1/+1 counters. Toothy goes to your command zone, draw 2 goes on the stack. Can you respond to the draw 2 from Toothy leaving by playing Toothy, thus getting his counters right back?
Edit: Never mind, looks like that got answered while I was typing. Thanks all.
Also, thanks for the explanations. I didn't realize counters negating each other was a state based effect, I had thought the negating counters were never placed.
Oh, wait, I get the second one. Toothy doesn't trigger when a spell causes you to draw cards, he tiggers when you draw a card. So each card drawn is a separate trigger, regardless of what caused the draw.
First question seems like something I should know, but I'm a bit fuzzy on. If Toothy, Imaginary Friend leaves play while you have a Vedalken Orrery or Leyline of Anticipation, can you respond to the draw trigger by recasting him? Ex: if he got bounced or returned to the command zone, would he already be there to cast again, or would the draw effect need to resolve first?
But I went to gatherer looking for an answer to that, and two rulings there seem to contradict my understanding, so I'm hoping someone can explain.
First: "If you draw multiple cards, Toothy’s middle ability triggers that many times. If your team also controls Pir, Imaginative Rascal each of those resolving triggered abilities puts two +1/+1 counters on Toothy."
-This seems wrong, if you draw multiple cards off one trigger, wouldn't Pir only trigger once and add one extra, not one extra per card drawn?
Second: "If enough -1/-1 counters are put on Toothy at the same time to make its toughness 0 or less, the number of +1/+1 counters on it before it got any -1/-1 counters will be used to determine how many cards you draw. For example, if there are two +1/+1 counters on Toothy and it gets three -1/-1 counters, you’ll draw two cards."
-My understanding is that -1/-1 counters first negate +1/+1 counters. So if Toothy had two +1/+1 counters and then got three -1/-1 counters I thought the proper way to handle that would be remove the two counters, then the third one causes him to die with no counters.
Took this to FNM, really wished I had playtested more. Don't care for the duelists, very poor card if you don't have equipment on him. All in all, I feel like my build was much too dependent on the quest, which I only saw in one opening hand, out of 5 rounds and 8 muligans.
Poor luck, but still, I need a better alternate strategy than "hope they don't have 2+ removal." B or R means I can't search up the armor, because it'll get stuck in hand if they kill the Stoneforge. And nothing else had the punch to end it fast enough.
I honestly have little clue how i am going to do this..... IDK much about sideboarding simply cause i am much more comfortable with the Main Deck.
As far as your equipment package goes, why 1 trusty machete and 1 adventuring gear? Seems like you should be running 2 of one or the other. Also, I feel like 6 is a good number if you're running 4 mystics. If you draw an equipment, 2 mystics and a skyfisher I don't want to run out of relevant equipment to fetch.
As for sideboard, I'm having the same problem. Pretty much everything in the deck has a reason, and not much of it is reactive. Leaves very little room to remove stuff post board.
I haven't had a lot of time to test yet, but in theory I agree with Knuckles about splash and hawks. 2 for a 1/1 flyer is slow for this deck. Doing it 4 times is still slow, even if it does net you CA. My personal pet addition to the deck is Nim Deathmantle for CA though, so that kind of fills in for it. As for splash, I think going all out white gives you more advantages than splashing does. Single color lets you not worry about WW casting costs, and lets you run low land count without needing to worry about getting the right land.
I'm still really conflicted on what to run sideboard. I feel like blinding mage might be a solid addition, as it can slow down creature based ramp, Titans and Eldrazi. And it's a creature, so it can double as an equip target. Being more removable than Journey hurts though. Not sure how else to handle a creature ramp deck. Oust maybe?
Need to do more playtesting to get a feel for the deck, but I'm wondering if going light allies could be valid. 4 Hada Freeblade and 4 Kazandu Blademasters gives you a pretty fair shot of dropping more than one ally a game, and you have the skyfisher to recast the Freeblade. And Blademaster is solid all by himself. I feel like the vigilance is especially relevant when racing another agro deck.
What do you guys think about adding sun titan to the list? Do you think it has a place?
My first instinct was to use him as a 2 of, but the more I look at it the less I like him. I'd rather focus on agro in the main, and in sideboard he's probably a poor choice because he only goes in against control. And Ascension is a much better sideboard choice for control.
I'm conflicted on squadron hawks. Great card advantage, but 2 for a 1/1 flyer feels slow for a deck that's running very little mana accel and hoping to explode quickly.
Meanwhile, has anyone considered Nym Deathmantle for card advantage? Gives you something to do if you run out of cards, gives you protection against over extending. Admittedly, kind of pricey for the deck.
Also, what about Livewire Lash in place of Trusty Machete? One more to cast, it trades one toughness for punishing the opponent for using spell removal. Might be worth considering depending on the meta.
I think it looks like a fun deck, it's certainly fast enough to be a threat, but I'm pretty skeptical about it doing well in tournaments. On the one hand, creature control doesn't stop it very well if it runs Kor Outfitter. On the other hand, anything that disrupts the artifact is going to ruin it, and it seems like it's very susceptible to bad draws.
Neat idea. You could probably go with something like
4x explore
4x sylvan ranger (synergy with queller)
4x oracal
for ramp/card advantage. Possibly 4 cobra or cultivate, as that would guarantee you a fast ramp. I like vines, as otherwise you're extremely vulnerable to jund or control. I also like the idea of both queller and acidic slime. Garruk would allow you to keep producing mana with less land, also provide a win condition on 3/3s or overrun if you've kept them locked down. Gideon and Elspeth would both be scary in this one, if you're not looking at budget issues. If you are you might cut PWs altogether so you can use queller to kill them. Obviously green titan would synergize well with the deck, again if budget isn't an issue.
Going 3 color for blue might be worth it, you get Jace to stack your deck, bounce to keep mana pressure on, and mana leak to counter DoJ or other critical spells.
If you don't want to do that you can still use crystal ball to make sure you can always play land off your deck, although holding off sweepers might be problematic without counters. Use dauntless escort? Since you're wanting to kill their mana base probably use condemn over path for creature control.
I like the idea a lot, I've always though queller was a strong creature, just needs a deck to go in. And green ramp is great right now.
that does work the way you think, but its kinda limited in scope because its REALLY UNUSUAL for an opponent to ever tap mana before you've attacked unless that mana is being tapped to kill your attacker. so it kinda doesn't work ever.
it also lets your opponent choose when your cards work, which is inherently terrible strategy. what does that have to do with Fling anyway? Chandra's Spitfire itself might be kinda interesting if there was a good way of getting persistent non-combat damage going against your opponent. but really its just SOOOO weak to do stuff like burn their face before combat then swing (pray they don't have removal) then Fling. thats alot of combo interaction for a lower payoff than what you can get with other stuff. i get that the idea is to wait for them to tap out to cast a big guy and then just blow their face off with a Fling in response but....thats win-more. the mana barbs is already winning the game for you. Fling has nothing to do with this.
i don't mean to be shooting down ideas here, because i like the creativity and want to see some wacky stuff, but lets try to keep focused.
FLING people. this is about FLING. preferably in a deck thats pretty powerful even without Flign but can really go over the top with such a strong finisher.
...
So you have spitfire and manabards on the table. They tap 5 mana, take 5 damage. Then you fling the spitfire. Game. I haven't played with manabarbs much, so maybe you're right about the win more. But it doesn't seem that unlikely that they could recover from a manabarbs, especially if they play a baneslayer or something similar.
No Kiln Fiend wouldn't get any bonus if he's the creature you fling since sacrificing is part of the cost. This also means that instant speed removal can't prevent the damage from fling so your opponent can't path, terminate, bolt, w/e your creature in response.
Glad to see the card reprinted used to have a lot of fun with it in legacy Affinity.
Ah, should have checked the text, forgot that it was a cost. Yeah, that's kind of key to it being playable. Ah well, still goes well together.
Act of treason is sub par by itself, but pretty awesome with fling. Goes well if you trigger Chandra's Spitfire or Kiln Fiend. Oh, would Kiln fiend get its bonus from Fling before dying? That could be pretty great.
I see it being amazing in Eldrazi ramp, other than that I'm kind of skeptical. It's a ramp card you have to ramp into. It's strong, but outside of Eldrazi I'm concerned that to consistently drop him before turn 5 you're going to have a deck with a lot of ramp that ends up being dead draws after you play him.
Edit: Never mind, looks like that got answered while I was typing. Thanks all.
Also, thanks for the explanations. I didn't realize counters negating each other was a state based effect, I had thought the negating counters were never placed.
But I went to gatherer looking for an answer to that, and two rulings there seem to contradict my understanding, so I'm hoping someone can explain.
First: "If you draw multiple cards, Toothy’s middle ability triggers that many times. If your team also controls Pir, Imaginative Rascal each of those resolving triggered abilities puts two +1/+1 counters on Toothy."
-This seems wrong, if you draw multiple cards off one trigger, wouldn't Pir only trigger once and add one extra, not one extra per card drawn?
Second: "If enough -1/-1 counters are put on Toothy at the same time to make its toughness 0 or less, the number of +1/+1 counters on it before it got any -1/-1 counters will be used to determine how many cards you draw. For example, if there are two +1/+1 counters on Toothy and it gets three -1/-1 counters, you’ll draw two cards."
-My understanding is that -1/-1 counters first negate +1/+1 counters. So if Toothy had two +1/+1 counters and then got three -1/-1 counters I thought the proper way to handle that would be remove the two counters, then the third one causes him to die with no counters.
Poor luck, but still, I need a better alternate strategy than "hope they don't have 2+ removal." B or R means I can't search up the armor, because it'll get stuck in hand if they kill the Stoneforge. And nothing else had the punch to end it fast enough.
As far as your equipment package goes, why 1 trusty machete and 1 adventuring gear? Seems like you should be running 2 of one or the other. Also, I feel like 6 is a good number if you're running 4 mystics. If you draw an equipment, 2 mystics and a skyfisher I don't want to run out of relevant equipment to fetch.
As for sideboard, I'm having the same problem. Pretty much everything in the deck has a reason, and not much of it is reactive. Leaves very little room to remove stuff post board.
I'm still really conflicted on what to run sideboard. I feel like blinding mage might be a solid addition, as it can slow down creature based ramp, Titans and Eldrazi. And it's a creature, so it can double as an equip target. Being more removable than Journey hurts though. Not sure how else to handle a creature ramp deck. Oust maybe?
Need to do more playtesting to get a feel for the deck, but I'm wondering if going light allies could be valid. 4 Hada Freeblade and 4 Kazandu Blademasters gives you a pretty fair shot of dropping more than one ally a game, and you have the skyfisher to recast the Freeblade. And Blademaster is solid all by himself. I feel like the vigilance is especially relevant when racing another agro deck.
My first instinct was to use him as a 2 of, but the more I look at it the less I like him. I'd rather focus on agro in the main, and in sideboard he's probably a poor choice because he only goes in against control. And Ascension is a much better sideboard choice for control.
Meanwhile, has anyone considered Nym Deathmantle for card advantage? Gives you something to do if you run out of cards, gives you protection against over extending. Admittedly, kind of pricey for the deck.
Also, what about Livewire Lash in place of Trusty Machete? One more to cast, it trades one toughness for punishing the opponent for using spell removal. Might be worth considering depending on the meta.
He does if you have a dauntless escort. As does oracle. Here's a thought.
4 sylvan ranger
4 explore
4 cultivate
4 oracle of mul-daya
4 condemn
4 emerge unscathed
4 dauntless escort
4 world queller
4 destructive force
4 sunpetal grove
4 raging ravine
4 plains
4 mountain
8 forest
4x explore
4x sylvan ranger (synergy with queller)
4x oracal
for ramp/card advantage. Possibly 4 cobra or cultivate, as that would guarantee you a fast ramp. I like vines, as otherwise you're extremely vulnerable to jund or control. I also like the idea of both queller and acidic slime. Garruk would allow you to keep producing mana with less land, also provide a win condition on 3/3s or overrun if you've kept them locked down. Gideon and Elspeth would both be scary in this one, if you're not looking at budget issues. If you are you might cut PWs altogether so you can use queller to kill them. Obviously green titan would synergize well with the deck, again if budget isn't an issue.
Going 3 color for blue might be worth it, you get Jace to stack your deck, bounce to keep mana pressure on, and mana leak to counter DoJ or other critical spells.
If you don't want to do that you can still use crystal ball to make sure you can always play land off your deck, although holding off sweepers might be problematic without counters. Use dauntless escort? Since you're wanting to kill their mana base probably use condemn over path for creature control.
I like the idea a lot, I've always though queller was a strong creature, just needs a deck to go in. And green ramp is great right now.
...
So you have spitfire and manabards on the table. They tap 5 mana, take 5 damage. Then you fling the spitfire. Game. I haven't played with manabarbs much, so maybe you're right about the win more. But it doesn't seem that unlikely that they could recover from a manabarbs, especially if they play a baneslayer or something similar.
Ah, should have checked the text, forgot that it was a cost. Yeah, that's kind of key to it being playable. Ah well, still goes well together.