have you guys thought of crystal chimes? seems like it would fit in an enchantress deck even if they wipe the board you can get it all right back
Never heard of it! A nice alternative to Creeping Renaissance/Replenish/Open the Vaults/etc. The only thing it has going against it is that it's an artifact with an activated ability, which I like to shut off from time to time for my opponents with Stony Silence. I do play Phyrexian Processor already but only because the Trostani synergy with it is way too juicy to ignore (pay 38 life, make a 38/38, get 38 life back, repeat until fat and happy). Thanks for turning me on to it.
There is black in every game in my local group, so compost is rarely a dead card if ever and the payoff is huge. With this and Runed Halo, there's less risk associated with these types of cards than usual because having an enchantress out will make it at least replace itself and add to Serra's Sanctum's mana output. In short, it's great for me, but not for everyone.
Similarly, Runed Halo is a nice way to prevent getting voltron'd by a huge Wrexial or Grimgrin or Karona. It's good in my meta, but not necessarily for everyone. I like it when my opponents see something like Runed Halo come out and rather than destroy it or tutor for an answer, they just kill someone else instead. It's exactly what I want to happen in a multiplayer game. It count easily be subbed out for something else though. It's up to your personal preference.
It's within a few cards. It's very current. It doesn't have any Theros goodies yet but I think Spear of Heliod is going to make a nice addition. Maybe Commune with the Gods but I'm not sure about that one yet.
Commandeer and Spin into Myth seem the weakest. Commandeer is too expensive for a sometimes-useful effect and Spin into Myth is starting to get outclassed by other blue removal. Shoot I would replace it with Submerge right now.
Out of curiosity, why did you select Trostani as the general over, say, Rhys the Redeemed?
Rhys is way too easy. He's the best token general these colors can probably ever hope to have... but in my personal opinion you gotta have have some style points in this format. I get more out of making "meh" Commanders into good and fun decks than just playing with the best ones.
Fabled Hero was killing people all day at my prerelease.
1 poor guy was going 2-0 and then gets 2 matches in a row where he gets insta-gibbed by this guy. All downhill from there...
White/blue was one of the most popular combos for the heroic deck at my prerelease, and it is one hell of groan test when they get this guy out and play Aqueous Form on him.
May have 4-0'd if not for a t4 instagib from this guy (T1 1/2 heroic T2 2/1 T3 Hero T4 double +2/+2 pump spell, blew me the hell out). I opened him AND Agent of the Fates but with a blue core it was too difficult to play both so my pool dictated I played just the Agent in a UB tempo/heroic deck. They both seem pretty good but IMO the Hero seems like the harder card to deal with after having seen a lot of both.
Are you worried about getting two-for-one'd when using enchantments like Overgrowth?
It seems like people running Sylvan Primordial would target enchanted lands first.
Playing enchantress rigs the exchange in your favor almost every time. If you draw a card off Argothian Enchantress when you first play the enchantment it's a one-for-one, not a two-for-one (this is the reason we play enchantment-based ramp-- I'll take a cantrip Overgrowth over a Kodama's Reach every time... guess which one also buffs up Serra's Sanctum?). And it's probably better they killed that than my Enchantress's Presence. More likely than not the ramp enchants are going to be ignored while the more annoying ones like Rest in Peace or Luminarch Ascension or Mana Reflection are the ones that will be hit with targeted removal.
Maybe Luminarch's Accord should be cut. It is really good, but not very political. People will not want you to get any quest counters on that, and your life might not get high enough. Don't necessarily take it out, but if your playgroup can get kinda irrational about biggish threats that they can try to stop just by attacking, then you might want to omit it.
I have used the card enough to know when to run it out and when to hang on to it. If you run it out turn 2 with no defenses, depending on the speed of the other players' decks you can still make out all right if you are pumping angel tokens out by turn 4. However if you run it out under a Privileged Position and suddenly it easier for the other players to kill you than it is to deal with the enchantment... then it may not be a very good play. Luminarch Ascension is a skill-testing card both for you and your opponents and frankly with the defensive elements of the deck in place (between fogs, Ghostly Prisons and incidental lifegain), it's mostly just a good play. I recommend everyone who run pillowfort-y enchantress play it and gain experience using the card.
(As a bonus interaction, I do a lot of cool things with 4/4 angel tokens in this deck so I try to play most of those generators... obviously a few didn't make the cut but for the most part good things tend to happen when they're around.)
The only way to copy the storm trigger is using Strionic Resonator so the casted copy would have 2 instances of "Storm"
Remand is even better. You can basically cycle it for 1U to take back your own storm spell, but keep the storm copies... then cast your storm spell again! And it's good at stopping your opponents from going off or blowing up your key pieces.
It has bothered me in the past how poorly we have treated some of these guys. I wish more of us would understand that
A) The rules committee is just doing what they think is best. They play the game too.
B) They're not some secret cabal in a LGS out for your blood. They've made it clear that every group should enjoy the game in their own way.
C) They're not out to get you. No actions or comments about the game are personal in nature.
D) It's still just a game in the end. No need to lose your common decency over it.
We're on the same team. If you/we want to be angry, at least keep it to the decisions they've made or their opinions, not the people behind them.
I guess I wouldn't equate blink with "live", since it's mostly for triggering etb and ltb abilities. And it doesn't dodge mass removal, sacrifice, etc either. I would think regeneration would make more sense with live. Although honestly I have a hard time with the flavor of blinking anyway. And also, to some extent, most etb abilities. I guess I'd figure blink ~= teleport, but that doesn't super make sense with the fates either.
and sure, exile = die (sorta) but the draw 2 is still unexplained imo.
They're both limited in that way due to balance issues. If it was just SAVE and DIE there would be fewer difficult decisions to make. The right play would be to kill the biggest thing your opponents have, unless you think you can save something more important.
Again consider Nin. Does it make sense that your opponents draw the cards if you torture their guy? Not really, because you should be the one gaining the information. And if you draw the cards for killing your own guy, why didn't he just offer up the information freely? So that doesn't really make sense either. But the card still gets the point across- you cause pain, which brings knowledge (cards). If you don't kill your target but merely hurt it, you can repeat the process next turn for even more secrets. So mechanically it's a bit of a cluster, but you totally get what the card is trying to convey anyway. Imagine if Nin, the Pain Artist let you draw the cards no matter whose creature you burned. She'd have to cost at least 4UR to be remotely fair.
I think the Triad is really similar. The temporary blink doesn't stop wraths or sacrifice as you said, and why would you give you opponents cards if you can help it with the bottom ability? But if you just look at the balance reasons for those limitations, even though they're a little off mechanically, the whole "live/die" thing, combined with the intended tension of fate counters making the Fates wait a turn to make up their mind... it is pretty dang flavorful to me, and I'd say the message comes across well. If you want to have those abilities without restrictions (whole-turn blink on top, Unmake on bottom), you probably have to cost the thing out of playability.
There was a guy who made a storm deck with Melek. He played it once, won, then never played it again. Said that Storm took too long and wasn't very EDH friendly. Very little interaction with other players. And it was true, from the start of him going off to the end of the game took 45 minutes of just him doing things. One guy actually timed him.
With practice the whole storm thing can happen a lot faster. The problem is when people don't ever goldfish these things, or are just not good enough at Magic to play storm, they don't see more clearly what the path to victory is and just kind of flail around aimlessly hoping to flop into a wincon. It's something that should be taken into account whenever this is tried, but frankly it's no more difficult than resolving a big Genesis Wave if they have put a little practice into it.
I often encourage new players to Melek to work on making a bunch of mana with Mana Geyser and Turnabout and Comet Storm for the win instead. It's much quicker to pull off and doesn't require as much thought to get it going.
OK, so here's something that bugs me - how are they flavorful exactly? I mean, ok, sure, they're the fates and they put out fate counters. But what does blinking have to do with fates? What action is that supposed to represent? Same, to some extent, with the draw 2. I think of the fates determining who dies, so the exile effect makes a certain amount of sense, but why are they letting the controller draw 2 cards?
I dunno, I don't consider a card flavorful unless I can understand why the mechanics match the card. like hundred-handed giant or whatever, the mechanics 100% match the card. These guys? ehh, sorta?
Blink = dodge removal, live, costs white mana
Exile = see ya later buddy, die, costs black mana
Fates = literally decided whether you lived or died
I don't see what's so difficult to understand about this card. Frankly, it's brilliant. White has long been able to "save" creatures and blinking is a bit more fun than preventing damage. For the black side, the drawing of two cards is simply a balance issue a la Nin, the Pain Artist. If you are abusing it on your opponents, you should have to pay for it eventually. If you use it on your own guys, you can make them useful even when they are no longer useful on their own. If you didn't give the controller cards, would you ever use the white ability?
1 mana is a really big deal for the first like 8 or 9 turns of the game as everyone is trying to get value out of all their cards in hand. I'll take the Swan Song any day, knowing it's pretty to deal with artifacts and planeswalkers post-resolution compared to, say, enchantments or instants/sorceries.
Coupled with a lousy Arcane Melee or other cost reducer(s), my Melek deck doesn't really have a problem going off with a few Mana Geysers and Ignite Memories for about 30. I used to think it would be hard but when one spell casts lots of other spells (Mind's Desire, Epic Experiment), you tend to just walk into awesomeness.
If I cared more about winning, I'd probably replace it with Temporal Fissure. But why do that when you can BURN THEM AT RANDOM?
In decks without cost reducers or plans to play a lot of spells in a turn, I probably wouldn't run any storm cards. They can do a little work but I prefer to use them when they're completely unfair. You know, like my opponents do with junk like Karador and Rooftop Storm.
It would make much more sense to teach people how to deal with these kinds of cards or at least open their minds to the possibility of playing against something other than G/X/Y high-five stompy than it would to suggest as a person of authority in the scene that these cards just shouldn't be played with (this has repercussions beyond a weekly article).
The former encourages strategic innovation and entirely new ways to play and/or see the game, enriching the experience for everyone involved (eventually). The latter encourages people to keep doing what they're doing and ostracize metagame-shifting decks and players, bringing about stagnation in the format as people get bored of games going the same way every time.
It may be awesome the first time you cast Sylvan Primordial, but isn't just as fun to counter it on turn 4 to save your board?
I would love to read this follow-up "tolerance" article. I think it will be much more interesting than more of the same "this card is not fun for me" declarations we frankly get enough of around here.
Never heard of it! A nice alternative to Creeping Renaissance/Replenish/Open the Vaults/etc. The only thing it has going against it is that it's an artifact with an activated ability, which I like to shut off from time to time for my opponents with Stony Silence. I do play Phyrexian Processor already but only because the Trostani synergy with it is way too juicy to ignore (pay 38 life, make a 38/38, get 38 life back, repeat until fat and happy). Thanks for turning me on to it.
There is black in every game in my local group, so compost is rarely a dead card if ever and the payoff is huge. With this and Runed Halo, there's less risk associated with these types of cards than usual because having an enchantress out will make it at least replace itself and add to Serra's Sanctum's mana output. In short, it's great for me, but not for everyone.
Similarly, Runed Halo is a nice way to prevent getting voltron'd by a huge Wrexial or Grimgrin or Karona. It's good in my meta, but not necessarily for everyone. I like it when my opponents see something like Runed Halo come out and rather than destroy it or tutor for an answer, they just kill someone else instead. It's exactly what I want to happen in a multiplayer game. It count easily be subbed out for something else though. It's up to your personal preference.
It's within a few cards. It's very current. It doesn't have any Theros goodies yet but I think Spear of Heliod is going to make a nice addition. Maybe Commune with the Gods but I'm not sure about that one yet.
On the way in- Cyclonic Rift for sure
Rhys is way too easy. He's the best token general these colors can probably ever hope to have... but in my personal opinion you gotta have have some style points in this format. I get more out of making "meh" Commanders into good and fun decks than just playing with the best ones.
May have 4-0'd if not for a t4 instagib from this guy (T1 1/2 heroic T2 2/1 T3 Hero T4 double +2/+2 pump spell, blew me the hell out). I opened him AND Agent of the Fates but with a blue core it was too difficult to play both so my pool dictated I played just the Agent in a UB tempo/heroic deck. They both seem pretty good but IMO the Hero seems like the harder card to deal with after having seen a lot of both.
Playing enchantress rigs the exchange in your favor almost every time. If you draw a card off Argothian Enchantress when you first play the enchantment it's a one-for-one, not a two-for-one (this is the reason we play enchantment-based ramp-- I'll take a cantrip Overgrowth over a Kodama's Reach every time... guess which one also buffs up Serra's Sanctum?). And it's probably better they killed that than my Enchantress's Presence. More likely than not the ramp enchants are going to be ignored while the more annoying ones like Rest in Peace or Luminarch Ascension or Mana Reflection are the ones that will be hit with targeted removal.
As for enchantment sweepers, can't do much about that except bring 'em all back with Replenish/Faith's Reward/Creeping Renaissance. Or have Avacyn handy.
I have used the card enough to know when to run it out and when to hang on to it. If you run it out turn 2 with no defenses, depending on the speed of the other players' decks you can still make out all right if you are pumping angel tokens out by turn 4. However if you run it out under a Privileged Position and suddenly it easier for the other players to kill you than it is to deal with the enchantment... then it may not be a very good play. Luminarch Ascension is a skill-testing card both for you and your opponents and frankly with the defensive elements of the deck in place (between fogs, Ghostly Prisons and incidental lifegain), it's mostly just a good play. I recommend everyone who run pillowfort-y enchantress play it and gain experience using the card.
(As a bonus interaction, I do a lot of cool things with 4/4 angel tokens in this deck so I try to play most of those generators... obviously a few didn't make the cut but for the most part good things tend to happen when they're around.)
Remand is even better. You can basically cycle it for 1U to take back your own storm spell, but keep the storm copies... then cast your storm spell again! And it's good at stopping your opponents from going off or blowing up your key pieces.
I really have to start running this card.
A) The rules committee is just doing what they think is best. They play the game too.
B) They're not some secret cabal in a LGS out for your blood. They've made it clear that every group should enjoy the game in their own way.
C) They're not out to get you. No actions or comments about the game are personal in nature.
D) It's still just a game in the end. No need to lose your common decency over it.
We're on the same team. If you/we want to be angry, at least keep it to the decisions they've made or their opinions, not the people behind them.
They're both limited in that way due to balance issues. If it was just SAVE and DIE there would be fewer difficult decisions to make. The right play would be to kill the biggest thing your opponents have, unless you think you can save something more important.
Again consider Nin. Does it make sense that your opponents draw the cards if you torture their guy? Not really, because you should be the one gaining the information. And if you draw the cards for killing your own guy, why didn't he just offer up the information freely? So that doesn't really make sense either. But the card still gets the point across- you cause pain, which brings knowledge (cards). If you don't kill your target but merely hurt it, you can repeat the process next turn for even more secrets. So mechanically it's a bit of a cluster, but you totally get what the card is trying to convey anyway. Imagine if Nin, the Pain Artist let you draw the cards no matter whose creature you burned. She'd have to cost at least 4UR to be remotely fair.
I think the Triad is really similar. The temporary blink doesn't stop wraths or sacrifice as you said, and why would you give you opponents cards if you can help it with the bottom ability? But if you just look at the balance reasons for those limitations, even though they're a little off mechanically, the whole "live/die" thing, combined with the intended tension of fate counters making the Fates wait a turn to make up their mind... it is pretty dang flavorful to me, and I'd say the message comes across well. If you want to have those abilities without restrictions (whole-turn blink on top, Unmake on bottom), you probably have to cost the thing out of playability.
With practice the whole storm thing can happen a lot faster. The problem is when people don't ever goldfish these things, or are just not good enough at Magic to play storm, they don't see more clearly what the path to victory is and just kind of flail around aimlessly hoping to flop into a wincon. It's something that should be taken into account whenever this is tried, but frankly it's no more difficult than resolving a big Genesis Wave if they have put a little practice into it.
I often encourage new players to Melek to work on making a bunch of mana with Mana Geyser and Turnabout and Comet Storm for the win instead. It's much quicker to pull off and doesn't require as much thought to get it going.
Blink = dodge removal, live, costs white mana
Exile = see ya later buddy, die, costs black mana
Fates = literally decided whether you lived or died
I don't see what's so difficult to understand about this card. Frankly, it's brilliant. White has long been able to "save" creatures and blinking is a bit more fun than preventing damage. For the black side, the drawing of two cards is simply a balance issue a la Nin, the Pain Artist. If you are abusing it on your opponents, you should have to pay for it eventually. If you use it on your own guys, you can make them useful even when they are no longer useful on their own. If you didn't give the controller cards, would you ever use the white ability?
1 mana is a really big deal for the first like 8 or 9 turns of the game as everyone is trying to get value out of all their cards in hand. I'll take the Swan Song any day, knowing it's pretty to deal with artifacts and planeswalkers post-resolution compared to, say, enchantments or instants/sorceries.
Lock: Sol Ring returns, much to my chagrin.
Lock: New multiplayer mechanic a la Join Forces
Wishful Thinking: New multiplayer mechanic is a bit better than Join Forces
Maybe: Enchantress commander in Bant.
If I cared more about winning, I'd probably replace it with Temporal Fissure. But why do that when you can BURN THEM AT RANDOM?
In decks without cost reducers or plans to play a lot of spells in a turn, I probably wouldn't run any storm cards. They can do a little work but I prefer to use them when they're completely unfair. You know, like my opponents do with junk like Karador and Rooftop Storm.
The former encourages strategic innovation and entirely new ways to play and/or see the game, enriching the experience for everyone involved (eventually). The latter encourages people to keep doing what they're doing and ostracize metagame-shifting decks and players, bringing about stagnation in the format as people get bored of games going the same way every time.
It may be awesome the first time you cast Sylvan Primordial, but isn't just as fun to counter it on turn 4 to save your board?
I would love to read this follow-up "tolerance" article. I think it will be much more interesting than more of the same "this card is not fun for me" declarations we frankly get enough of around here.