MTG Salvation

I feel like people are being overly harsh. Having a card that dodges board wipes and provides card advantage (not just card quality like copter, but actual CA) has potential, especially at only 2 cmc. Imagine playing a fairly creature-light control deck with lots of wipes - this could be a good way to swing in and get cards after a wipe, while putting on some pressure. And there are a lot of wipes in standard right now...

Not saying it's amazing, but I wouldn't say it's terrible.

Quote from Guardman »

First off this is just a straight limited bomb. And with all the french vanilla keywords she is almost like a mini Akroma. Second I really hope the mention of Feather (along with all the other long-time requested legendaries) finally mean we are getting a Feather card.

I mean...is it better than serra angel? First strike is pretty meaningless on a mid-sized flyer, and +1/+1 is comparable to lifelink on a flyer of this size...If they were the same cost I'd rather have this, but for a full mana more? Pretty sure Serra angel is significantly better.

Not that this is terrible but it's no bomb, imo. Especially not with how efficient the removal is around here.

Quote from Ph03niX »

Not sure about your view, but I don't think 36% of players can be called a minority.

Quote from the muthaflipping dictionary »

Minority, noun: the smaller number or part, especially a number or part representing less than half of the whole.

Huh? How else would you define a minority?

I think the main reason to do away with the banned-as-commander rule was that it applied to so few cards. Rules simplicity has value. The stack can't really be simplified more than it is.

And while mtg has complex rules, formats generally don't. That way it's easy for people to move around between formats without needing to learn a bunch of new stuff.

Well, to play devil's advocate a bit, Brion stoutarm also doesn't involve combat, nor does Gisela, blade of goldnight (she often does, but doesn't have to), Munda (he's crap though), Razia, boros archangel(also crap), and Tiana, ship's caretaker(also crap). So...yeah, adding one more crap commander to the pile doesn't seem like it'd make a big difference.

If you want to play planeswalker commanders, that seems like a totally fine thing to talk about with your playgroup. And I don't have anything against discussing a global rules change, either, I'm personally kind of undecided on the issue - naturally most planeswalkers make cool commanders since they usually have 3+ abilities (at least until now), but I also don't know that there's good justification for it, and restrictions breed creativity.

But the boros problem is 100% separate from the planeswalker discussion. Both things worth discussing, to be sure. But separately. Everything you've posted reads like you just really want nahiri available because it's your pet planeswalker - which is fine, but it's not a good justification for legalizing them just because she happens to be boros.

Only if you've never heard of tithe or stoneforge mystic or stonehewer giant or vance's blasting cannons or sun titan or like a million other cards. Anyway I don't think you can make much argument that an ult giving you +1 card is much in the way of "card advantage".

I'll grant that she'd be different than what we've currently got, but she wouldn't be better. Boros has 2 problems, one being that their commanders are frequently similar in strategy, but the other being that it just generally sucks. Nahiri does next to nothing to help the latter. She does help the former a bit, but there ARE existing boros commanders that don't focus around combat, like FS+SS and Depala. Could we use more? Yes, definitely. Should we drastically change the rules of the entire format in order to give boros a few new ones? Uh......no. The fault for boros' suckitude rests on the shoulders of wotc, who keep printing trash-tier boros commanders even in supplemental products. The solution is to keep whining about it until they pay attention.

Anyway as long as we're massively restructuring the format in order to make boros more fun, I'd rather play path of mettle than any RW planeswalkers. It's ramp, it has a fresh build-around, and it's super cool. Come on, RC! Why won't you listen to the will of the people and make legendary enchantments legal commanders?!?! /sarcasm

Ok, someone really needs to explain to me why Nahiri, the harbinger - a planeswalker with less play on edhrec than dovin baan (the original one? The one that sucks horribly and deserves no play at all?) - would be the savior that would save boros from suckitude. Her +2 is just a worse daretti ability. Her -2 is fine but much worse when it's predictable out of the command zone. And her ult is fine, but this isn't a format like modern where one eldrazi attack is going to shut someone out of the game forever. Honestly I'd go so far as to say her ult is one of the worst of all the walkers for this format.

What's so special about nahiri? Almost every other color combination has better walkers available for commanders. If anything it would probably make boros even worse.

If you want walkers as commanders then cool, ask your playgroup about it, but this "help boros" excuse is flimsy as all hell.

I remember there was a point where the same thing happened to me, I posted multiple decklists without getting any response. And I remember thinking "wtf, my decklists are sweet, why isn't anyone responding to them?"

And then I asked myself "How many decklists have I responded to while waiting for feedback?" The answer was zero. "Ah, ok. Makes sense."

Not sure if that's true for you as well, but something to keep in mind.

Anyway, I'll echo what others have said as well - unless it's a decklist I'm particularly knowledgeable about, or it's a total train wreck where I feel confident that my general-purpose magic knowledge will be helpful, I don't usually comment. Every once in a while I stumble upon a brew that I can tell is cool and interesting even without being familiar with the commander, and I might take an interest enough to dig into the list and offer thoughtful feedback or at least a compliment...but that's really really rare, especially since I don't usually click on lists unless it's a commander I'm familiar with or they're asking for help. Since my decklists are almost all pretty reasonably tuned, and also because I'm a hipster and rarely build the most popular commanders, feedback tends to be pretty scarce. But also, if I'm being honest, very little feedback is actually useful because 9 times out of 10 they're suggesting cards I've already thought about. Because it's really hard to offer constructive feedback in a format that has so many different decks.

Quote from Hermes_ »

Ravnica at war will certainly be meta dependent,but I don't think it's bad per say (I plan to get one if not more since we have one God deck in my meta and I feel it's a good wipe in general for what it hits.) But let's looks at Ugin's "Exile each permanent with converted mana cost X or less that's one or more colors. compared to "Exile all multicolored permanents." there's also like i said the fact that R&D is looking at more wipes that are color dependent, as it stands it's easier and less rules to keep PS banned than wait to see how the new color wipe shakes out each time one is printed. But YMMV.

Ravnica at war is not even close to problematic with PS. Even if you could guarantee that it only hit enemy stuff and never hit your stuff, a 2-card combo that wipes enemy non-artifact non-lands is completely fair and fine.

Keeping something banned on speculations of future cards is a slippery slope. Any card could end up busted because of future interactions, are we supposed to never unban anything lest something be released next set that makes it too scary?

Also I have no idea what you mean by "less rules". Nobody is adding or removing any rules. We're maybe removing a card from the banlist, but that's not a rule. And yes, you SHOULD see how things shake out each time a new powerful interaction is printed. That's how banlists are supposed to work, not preemptively banning "just in case". And R@W just weakens your argument, since it's a cares-about-color wipe that's completely fair with PS.

It does kind of help to see the decklist you're playing, but omnath is not generally considered a particularly nasty commander, and his strategy is pretty straightforward and fair.

Don't bother with the list darrenhabib gave you - for the top 2-3 tiers, that list only applies to specific (usually combo-oriented) decklists and not to the commander as a whole. i.e. tazri tribal allies is totally fine to play in any playgroup, it's only the food chain combo list that's "tier 1". If you're using that list to judge the power level of your decks you're going to get a very warped perspective (unless you're playing cEDH, and don't worry, you are not playing cEDH).

Tempering power level can be a tricky subject to tackle, but Omnath is almost certainly fine in most groups. He's really easy to handle if he ever gets out of control. But if you want to have a less competitive deck to avoid being the center of attention for a bit, picking up a precon can be a good way to go. Or borrow other peoples' decks, that's what I like to do.

Quote from BloodyWednesday »

Because running Jokulhaups is one thing and being 'forced' to cast one is another, specially when that isn't even the intent of the card in your deck (also Jokulhaups spares enchantments so you can come up on top of it). Living lands interacts badly with less cards than Servant, ie basically just boardwipes and Linvala.

Thirty Saprolings (which seems like a very likely undercount) into puprophorus or repeatably discarding peoples hands isn't particularly sweet.

painters servant:

• all is dust
  
• ugin, the spirit dragon
  
• wash out
  
• iona

living plane:

• wrath of god
  
• day of judgment
  
• fumigate
  
• austere command
  
• linvala, keeper of silence
  
• elesh norn, grand cenobite
  
• night of souls' betrayal
  
• ascendant evincar
  
• crovax, ascendant hero
  
• damping matrix
  
• cursed totem
  
• earthquake
  
• blazing volley
  
• curse of death's hold
  
• every board wipe ever printed
  
• and so much more!!!

You do realize "repeatedly discards people's hands" is exactly what OG nicol bolas does WITHOUT support, right? Anyone think legends nicol bolas is too strong? No?

If someone pulls off a 3-card combo for non-infinite damage then hell yeah, that's a fair way to win.

There are a few things PS is definitely unpleasant with - ugin and iona, mostly - and a fair number of things that are at least a bit annoying, like wash out and all is dust. Do those justify banning it when the same is true for a nobody card like living plane that, to the best of my knowledge, no one has ever tried to get banned? Probably not.

But staaaahhhhhhp bringing up all these completely fair combos like freaking rith the awakener and mother of runes. You're just muddying the waters by creating an infinite number of pointless discussions about non-issues. If Sheldon thinks Ugin is justification alone for keep PS banned...well, he's wrong, living lands does the same thing with like 80 cards, but fine, whatever, at least it's actually a problematic interaction.

Anyways dunno why you even bothered asking that since you've constantly dismissed everything that doesn't agree with you, but that's to be expected since it's what you've been doing across several different threads.

I've constantly dismissed everything that doesn't agree with me AND IS A BAD ARGUMENT.

I'm sorry, when you bring up mother of runes I'm under no obligation to say "oh yeah, GREAT point. Can't believe I didn't realize how 'busted' mother of runes was going to be "

Phelddagrif is my favorite commander as a character and I hate that its kind will never be a thing in magic again...

My favorite to play is The Ur-Dragon because dragon tribal is just something I really like to do for some reason and this is as true to dragon tribal as it gets, unlike Scion of the Ur-Dragon that act like its gonna be tribal but then it pins you down and shoves a combo in your face.

More useful than Chopsticks

I find DirkGently to be quite insightful. tstorm823, as you already mentioned, is also worth a look.

Get a precon?

Quote from Slushon12 »

what my deck will do is make the game more interesting with effects that effect everyone

...that's group hug. A deck that helps itself more is just pretending to be group hug.

Wow. This thread devolved in a hurry. And as is usually the case when that happens, both sides are mostly right in their positions and each is arguing past the other.

Is Magus of the Library an underrated card? Yes. Most people dismiss it out of hand without even giving it a second thought. Is it an all-star card that more people should be running? No. A lot of decks are I’ll-equipped to riding a Library and Magus being a 2-drop creature makes it so much worse than the original. The truth about the Magus is that it really depends on your Commander to earn a spot. The only place that I have found that to be the case was in Damia. Anywhere else and there are probably better options, but I wouldn’t fault someone for running it nor would I underestimate it if it hit the battlefield.

OMG so we promised our daughter that we would get her guitar lessons if she would stick with a math tutor. So I'm on the website of a local music store checking out their teachers and one of the guys was the lead guitarist for Danzig. This so needs to happen.

Quote from Sharpened »

Overused card: Eater of the Dead - Why? Do people not realize you can only hate a creature out of the grave if it is tapped?

Phenax, God of Deception. That's why.

Love the alter, and also love the deck. Have been playing my variant of it for a while now. It remains true to it's creators vision in that it's not built to appear scary. My version I designed to try and create the most interesting games of magic possible, because I was seeing an alarming discrepancy between power levels in my meta. We mostly frown on infinite shenanigans which has lead to some people making pretty optimized non infinite lists capable of bringing tables down while others are content running jank Dino tribal or something. Enter pheldy, the fun police. I've managed to sculpt some awesome games where everybody's deck gets to basically do what it wants. Except win, that's mostly for King pheldy who brings the beats. That's not to say I haven't lost yet, though the win rate is high. And most cases I lost due to my misplays. One time I negotiated a 5 card fact or fiction pile. In an attempt to be less scary I opted to still ditch the Misty tutor. Big mistake, turns out I could've reaaaaly used it. The deck is beauty. It's play style glory. I'll never break it, and I break lots of decks.

So thanks, I literally made this silly account in order to thank you. And upvote your girlfriend's alter. She's worth it, and I'm not much of a joiner so it was hard to make this account. Here I am on my phone doing this. It's irritating. But you're worth it too. I'd love to sit across a table from you one day as I believe we share similar visions of what a game of magic ought to be. One last thing. My girlfriend has been making me numerous amazing portraits of hippos doing people things to use for my tokens. I'll gladly post some when I figure this pile of crap out... All on my phone too. I'll gladly send you a set as well. In the meantime, stay magical friends.