MTG Salvation

Here's the cards I'm currently testing in my five color deck because of War of the Spark:

• Spark Double
  
• Ignite the Beacon
  
• Karn's Bastion
  
• Interplanar Beacon
  
• Ashiok, Dream Render
  
• Liliana, Dreadhorde General
  
• Narset, Parter of Veils
  
• Ugin, the Ineffable
  
• Nicol Bolas, Dragon-God
  
• Jace, Cunning Castaway

Some quick explanations for the less obvious cards:
Ignite the Beacon is an instant. That's why I'm testing it.

Ashiok is a hate walker. I've learned over the years that grave hate is one of the best hates, so I'm willing to give them a shot because they also works on Tutors.

Narset is similar to Ashiok, except she also works for digging for our stuff. While keeping blue in check is a good reason to run her, her Azcanta ability will determine whether or not she stays.

Ugin, the Ineffable produces tokens that we don't care if they die. I'm curious if that's worth the space. The spot removal isn't half bad either (but it also isn't great).

Jace, Cunning Castaway is not in this set, but he gives superfriends a degenerate combo of their own with Nicol Bolas, Dragon-God. If you have both walkers out with any of the following cards already on the field when Nicol Bolas enters the battlefield, you win on the spot if your opponents don't disrupt:

• Doubling Season
  
• Pir, Imaginative Rascal
  
• The Chain Veil
  
• Oath of Gideon

What happens is that these cards give Nicol Bolas at least five loyalty counters to activate Jace, Cunning Castaway's -5 ability and the copies enter able to activate that ability as well. Those copies will be Nicol Bolas, Dragon Gods, which means when go to -5 them, you don't have to stop doing that until you have large enough arbitrary number of Nicol Bolases. You can then proceed to use their own +1. All of them. If you have Doubling Season, one of them can even ult after the mass exodus of their hands and boards. Otherwise anyone who doesn't scoop to being locked out of cards is deluding themselves.

All that being said, this isn't final, part of this will involve that Jace, Cunning Castaway isn't that good on his own.

Here's a list of other cards I'm considering down the line:

• The Elderspell
  
• Command the Dreadhorde
  
• Flux Channeler
  
• Evolution Sage
  
• Saheeli, Sublime Artificer
  
• Kiora, Behemoth Beckoner
  
• Kasmina, Enigmatic Mentor
  
• Teferi, Time Raveler
  
• Karn, the Great Creator

But yeah, the biggest thing to come out of this set is that we now got at least one degenerate combo we don't have to splash for, and even without that, we've gotten way too many new and exciting things.

Edit: I also really want to like Tamiyo, Collector of Tales, but I feel she's best in Muldrotha where her awful +1 becomes arguably a much better toolbox enabler or one of those cards that says you can have any number of them in a deck.

I'm testing going significantly into Karn Wishboard. I'll probably scale down as we figure it the new Karn, but for now this is what I've brewed.

If an opponent can kill Karn or Mycosynth Lattice while under that lock, then the player that made the lock is doing the lock wrong.

Quote from Trav_Ragnar »

Karn, the Great Creator - Shuts down mana rocks and equipments, which is interesting to think of. Unfortunately, his plus is too artifact centric. On top of that, the effectiveness of his minus working in EDH depends on your playgroup, according to the rules (tutoring outside of the game).

Ugin, the Ineffable – I was really hoping for Ugin to be good, because I love his 8 version. That said, this one just doesn’t fit this deck. This is mainly because his static ability doesn’t work all that well with our deck. His plus is okay, as it provides a little chump blocker that becomes a draw, and his minus isn’t terrible. He’s also 6, which isn’t particularly cheap.

The Wanderer – This card could be relevant if you have a lot of burn in your meta, but that isn’t much of a thing in EDH. The minus is pretty strong, as well. But overall, this card isn’t strong enough to fit in the 99.


Kasmina, Enigmatic Mentor – The passive ability isn’t terrible, but isn’t amazing either. The same goes for the minus. Another uncommon that just can’t justify itself in the 99.

Narset, Parter of Veils – Ah, finally a good uncommon planeswalker. Converted mana cost is three, passive ability is very relevant in the format, and the minus is alright. I wish this card had a super simple plus, like “Scry 1.” as it would make the card much justified in the 99. Even as the best uncommon planesewalker (in my opinion) it still has a hard time justifying itself against other cards.


Liliana, Dreadhorde General – Liliana’s beefiest form, and justifiably. Her passive ability is strong, just not that strong in this deck unfortunately. That being said, it works well with her plus as well as the many other forms of generating tokens in this deck. Her minus is almost a board wipe, and handles indestructible and hexproof, which is a plus. Her ultimate probably is going to win you the game. Overall, I like her a lot and I’m considering finding her a spot in the deck. That being said, I’m trying to avoid stacking up high cmc in this deck.

Sarkhan the Masterless – The static ability is not very effective, that being said, his plus is a possible win condition, and could add some needed pressure to our opponents. That being said, it also turns paints a big Doom Blade target and your planeswalkers’s heads.


Nicol Bolas, Dragon-God – Grand daddy planeswalker. I’ll wait until testing, but I can almost confirm this is the strongest planeswalker card for a superfriends deck, bar none. His static ability is going to be insane for this deck. This means he can come down with a Doubling Season and either activate his ultimate, OR activate an ultimate of another planeswalker on the battlefield with a cost of 8 loyalty. His plus is nothing to scoff at, his minus is just good removal and his ultimate can literally win the game on the spot. I can’t wait to run this card.

Tamiyo, Colllector of Tales – This card isn’t bad, but it’s tough to evaluate otherwise. Her static ability is good, as it protects us from eldrazi and other sacrifice/discard effects, and her minus is a Regrowth, which I get a lot of mileage out of. That being said, her plus is pretty iffy, even with her minus working alongside it. Since commnader is a singleton format, you literally can’t draw more than one card, and you have to hope that you either guess correctly or have a Sensei's Divining Top.

Teferi, Time Raveler – I do love me some 3 converted mana cost planeswalkers, but I’m not sure if Teferi is powerful enough to warrant a spot in the deck. His static ability isn’t bad, his plus can give us some instant speed wraths, which isn’t bad. I think his minus just costs a little too much, and overall I would rather be drawing something else than Teferi.

Ashiok, Dream Render – Shutting off tutors/fetchlands is probably one of, if not the best static ability of all these planeswalkers. And she’s only three mana. Her minus really isn’t that valuable, so I’m not sure if she warrants a spot.

Dovin, Hand of Control – This is another good static ability, and his minus isn’t bad. I would say I’ll keep an eye on this card, as his 3 converted mana cost is appealing. Just not sure where he would fit exactly.

Saheeli, Sublime Artificer – If we had more powerful artifacts, this card might be good. Generating chump blockers for each planeswalker you cast is pretty good, especially at 3 mana.

Ignite the Beacon – Similar to Call the Gatewatch, just a little more expensive and two planeswalkers. Overall, I don’t think this is worth it compared to running another black, catch-all tutor. That being said, I think this is better than Call the Gatewatch. EDIT: Just realized this is an instant. That may change things. I'm keeping an eye on this and will consider it for the list.

The Elderspell – Well this is problematic for this deck, right? One reason we might want to run this is because we can pick off our own planeswalkers (and a few of our opponents) and just ult on the spot. This is a dangerous approach. I would rather leave this card out of my graveyard, as I don’t want it to be the target of an opponent’s Spelltwine or something similar.

Interplanar Beacon – The lifegain on this card isn’t crazy, but could possibly add up over the game. I’m not sure if this is worth a spot or not, though. Filtering mana for planeswalkers is good, but is it worth replacing any of our current lands?

Karn's Bastion – So this card I think we should run. I think it pushes our planeswalkers enough to make them that much more likely to ultimate, and make the overall flow of the deck much better. This works very well with something like Ral Zarek as well.

These are the ones that I'm currently looking at, and I've already started adding a few.

The one's I'm trying:
Karn's Bastion is basically any card. Having a Contagion Clasp in our lands lets us get an effect we want in our mana base, which opens up our non-lands for either another card or proliferation redundancy.

Interplanar Beacon is a lot more flexible than it looks at first glance. The life gain looks nice, but the important thing is the color filtering ability has a generic cost attached to it. The fact it's not any two color combination is a bit of a drawback, but getting colors off of Reliquary Tower seems tempting enough to me to give it a shot.

Ignite the Beacon is an instant. I'm testing it because it looks like it can help assemble a new infinite combo with Nicol Bolas, Dragon-God (will go into that will Nicol Bolas).

Ashiok, Dream Render is probably the best hate card we got in this set. Killing their search effects is powerful. And as someone who's played their fair share of Muldrotha, you can never hate on their graveyards hard enough. Being stuck on sorcery speed is a drawback, but it's leagues better than nothing. My dream is to ult Teferi, Temporal Archmage someday and use this card's minus after a Vampiric Tutor resolves on someone that doesn't know how much trouble they're in.

Nicol Bolas, the Dragon-God is going to be a lynch-pin in the future. Rather than go through all the different abilities he could use, I'm going to focus on there's already a degenerate combo with him that OTK's the entire table. If you have him out with Jace, Cunning Castaway and use Jace's -5 ability to make the non-legendary clones through Bolas instead, those clones come out as Nicol Bolas, Dragon-Gods. So if you combine these two walkers with The Chain Veil, Oath of Gideon, Pir, Imaginative Rascal, or Doubling Season you can -5 Nicol Bolas Dragon indefinitely through one turn. Then after you flood the board with an arbitrary large number of Dragon-Gods, all the ones you haven't activated can exile all opposing hands and permanents. If you have Double Season, you can follow up with his own ult. to win the game on the spot (although anyone that doesn't scoop to being hardlocked by a flood of Dragon-Gods is only kidding themselves). Even without that combo, this Bolas is already in my 99... but so is cunning Castaway.

Liliana, Dreadhorde General made the cut in my 99 when I realized that her static ability triggers off creature tokens, including her own. The rest of her abilities are things we look for in a planeswalker (defense, creature removal, mass destruction). So, she's in.

Narset, Parter of Veils has an ability that got banned from commander awhile ago, so sticking it with Azcanta's digging is something that I'm at least testing at the moment. In a more dedicated deck, she can wreck a table's hand. I'm not against looking into splashing Draw 7 cards because even without her Timetwister effects are good in a deck like ours.

Ugin, the Ineffable is something I'm testing because he's spot removal and an advantage engine. Granted his Static ability isn't good for this deck, but I want to see how the mechanics of the tokens work.

The rest in the quote I haven't mentioned aren't in my deck currently, but could be tested in the future. I'm not against them at the moment.

Quote from Lectrys »

I also agree that I prefer Wurmcoil--heck, even Ugin, the Spirit Dragon--over Ugin, the Ineffable. Ugin 2.0 simply doesn't do enough for his 6 mana, especially since he cannot exile, board wipe, or hit lands, and Wurmcoil can gain enough life to race evasive aggro decks like UR Phoenix and Affinity.

Ugin 2.0 seems like he might be good in a sideboard or a different meta because he'd be great in a slow grind. Modern is not in for any kind of grind right now. I'm not sure if there's enough Control decks to even justify testing it at the moment, but that's where to see if he's any good.

So, does Nicol Bolas, God-Pharoah mean that Oath of Nissa is worth a second shot in the deck?

EDIT: The user orlouge82 pointed out in the Hours of Devastation thread that Cascading Cataracts works as well.

So... did Oath of Nissa become good in Modern Tron again?

Quote from ilovesaprolings »

The Ur-Dragon is the best but also the worst. It's the only one that encourage you to build a real dragon tribal deck. Yet he is so strong (removal magnet) and so costly that 99% of time you won't ever cast him. And wotc knows it, that's why they gave him that braindead ability where you get an advantage just by having him sitting in the command zone and doing nothing else.

People let me proxy The Ur-Dragon with Scion of the Ur-Dragon yesterday, and I can say you're off in your assessment, but not by as much as I'm about to make it sound.

The Eminence ability, as you note, is amazing. Expensive Dragons start coming in either on curve or under curve. However, getting the attack trigger rolling is not difficult at all and kind of necessary. 1. Being an attack trigger instead of a damage trigger does make a small difference. 2. It's not like the Dragon Tribal doesn't have access to a number of haste enablers or generic haste enablers. 3. The deck's going to ramp into The Ur-Dragon anyway because even with the eminence ability, there's a lot of mid-to-high range dragons along with color-fixing that also doubles as ramp needed to drop early dragons even earlier. 4. The Ur-Dragon helps mitigate over-extending.

Do I think The Ur-Dragon will be able to go toe-to-toe with Arcum Dagsson? No. But I think people are underestimating the power this (alleged) leaked commander brings dragon tribal.

Quote from Onering »

Quote from Beralt »

Wondering how interesting The Ur-Dragon might be in an Oath Deck, with Dragon Breath giving it Haste. It draws a card and puts a permanent into play with power 10 it's a 2 turn clock.

Curious as to opinions, I know it's not even an official card yet but it it's certainly intriguing.

Why not just run Blightsteel instead?

Yeah, you could put that in with The Ur-Dragon's attack trigger. [/joking]

The problem with The Ur-Dragon (outside of Commander Dragon Tribal) is that it's coming along after better things have come out, and don't get me wrong, a mini-Eureka that draws a card(s) on a 10/10 evasive dragon is good, but Emrakul, the Aeons Torn, Blightsteel, and arguably Griselbrand all either hit harder, for lethal immediately, or generate enough advantage that you can bury your opponent and effectively win on the spot.

That being said, it's not impossible for The Ur-Dragon to find it's way into the deck, but it has to find a way to synergize with an already tight decklist with other hard hitters. One thing I will give it kudos for though is that since it's all five colors, an Oath play wouldn't dread drawing it as much as the other finishers I listed because The Ur-Dragon can feed Force of Will.

I started engaging people more in my real life... I am on the lookout for another place though because I can only reach so many people.

I was here for self-reflection and personal growth. Everybody talks about how society has moved into bubbles, and I am no exception. This was a place for me to evaluate my stances, temper my believes, and be reminded that just because I don't agree with everyone doesn't make those that I disagree with monsters. In the end, I feel like these debates helped me to have a more mature viewpoint about the world.

As everyone knows, the Debate Forum is closing May 5th. It will be missed. I'm not sure what I will do with my spare time, but I'm thinking of taking up Magic: the Gathering. I've heard good things about the game.

Anyway, jokes aside, this forum itself isn't being deleted, and knowing that and being the sentimental type, for those that are looking back on this forum once it's archived, I would recommend reading through various topics. I've learned a lot in terms of raw knowledge and engaging people in disagreements. We had our ups and downs

When reading through, be sure to pay attention to the posts of Blinking Spirit, bLatch, Highroller, Jay13x, osieorb18, myself...ish (I always felt middling), and I am certain many others that I cannot remember at the moment. Offhand, I can't think of any particular topic to hyperlink at the moment, but I'm sure others will have favorite old topics to share.

And to be honest, I think what sums up the end of this forum best is Blinking Spirit's signature, which is why I copied it for the week, but if it's gone down the line...

Vive, vale. Siquid novisti rectius istis,
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.

Which translates to:

Farewell! and if a truer theory's thine,
Impart it candidly; if not, use mine.
-Horace, Epistles I.6.66-7.

But this isn't about me: this is for all our regular debaters (and observers) to chime in one last time.

Quote from Jay13x »

Quote from Kryptnyt »

It was nice to have a place to put potentially vitriolic thoughts where intelligent people could sift through it for you. I was actually trying to find the words for such a thing. It's not something I can do on Dotabuff, haha... Can you suggest any similar forums with a decent mix of political backgrounds like this one has?

I do not, but if other forum users have good ideas, please let us know. In all honesty, other gaming sites don't have debate sections like this one for some of the same reasons I mentioned above.

The irony is that the reason you guys are closing this debate site is what has made it so much better than most debate sites that I've perused: our moderators are rarely asleep at the wheel, which says a lot about Blinking Spirit and his various helpers through the years I've been here. They put in the work to keep this forum going, and more importantly, were able to discern infractions from bias triggers quite well. There probably are other decent online debate forums, but I've yet to find one better than this one. I'll be on the lookout.

Quote from from="MinaHarcourt »" url="http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/community-forums/debate/775081-north-korea?comment=28 »

Come on. I've seen you post, certainly you don't think that I think getting rid of the DMZ does not include the clear of mines and sundry ordnance? Come on...

That's not exactly an easy or timely process, and even if it was, it doesn't mean that the Northern border into China is any less tempting.


But either way, getting back to the bigger picture, everything being discussed goes to show why the region doesn't want a war with North Korea. Everything we're debating is a quagmire for the entire region. There needs to be a solution to the Kim Regime, but the surrounding countries don't want one that either literally and/or figuratively blows up in their faces.

Quote from MinaHarcourt »

You think they would rather risk North Korea having nukes?

I'm going to have to ask how much you know about North Korea because North Korea already has nukes.

What they don't have is the missile projectiles to launch them long distances, but even then, we're not certain how far they could get a device that can detonate. That's why the phrase "Seoul will glow" has been tossed around in this thread. While there's little chance that a nuclear devise could cross the Pacific to reach the United States (or Australia because they stepped in this as well for some reason), the chances are much, much higher to South Korea, China, and Japan.

So to answer your question, the answer is that the time to worry about acquisition has passed; North Korea has the technology. They don't want to risk them using it, which means they want to avoid a war.

Also as Blinking Spirit mentioned, China doesn't want the the United States to have strong ties along the entire Korean Peninsula. It would not be in China's political interests, which is one of the reasons why the Kim regime has lasted so long. So they don't want a war for a second reason as well.