MTG Salvation

I took a photo of my board as best as I could. I've got Mishra's Toy Workshop, Scrying Sheets, Mouth of Ronom, and all five of the snow duals (Tresserhorn Sinks/etc.) cut off on the left. (You can also see the corner of my Sol Ring on the left.) The two face-down unsleeved cards on the left are Elf Warrior tokens from Rhys the Redeemed. The nontoken Ulvenwald Hydra can just barely be seen behind Applejack's head, and the face-down unsleeved card under it is a 6th Ulvenwald Hydra token (created by Supplant Form). My library and graveyard are cut off on the right (you can see the corner of Rite of Replication in my grave). The pile of face-down sleeved cards in the top left is my hand.

The entire deck is in fact foil, for Super Secret Tech. Even the lands, in case they get animated by something (even though the list can't animate lands on its own). My biggest frustration is that Infernal Spawn of Evil doesn't come in foil, though I do have Infernal Spawn of Infernal Spawn of Evil.

Christmas in Dominaria

It mostly ends up playing like a token deck, with a little bit of chaos and group-hugginess thrown in thanks to the Happy Holiday promos (don't yet own a Decorated Knight // Present Arms, although it's probably the worst of the HHO cards when it comes to a themed deck like this). The meanest thing I can do is Evil Presents with Phage the Untouchable (though I also like putting Fruitcake Elemental in an Evil Present). That said, Urza can occasionally be mean too; one game on Sunday, I played T5 Doubling Season followed by T6 Urza, Academy Headmaster, using his -6 and getting the ultimate of Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker. Both of my opponents had 6 or fewer cards in hand and 6 permanents. Trying to be slightly nice, I targeted the guy who had played Academy Rector the previous turn, so that at least he could get an enchantment into play after losing everything else.

Naughty // Nice and Gifts Given tend to be tutors for answers to a problematic board state. Princess Luna's wishboard includes narrow answers, removal, card draw, and recursion. Spirit Link and friends can do lots of work with Fruitcake Elemental.

When I play this deck, I bring with me:

• Chocolates, for Thopter Pie Network and Yule Ooze
• A Barrel of Monkeys (actually two Barrels with all the pieces fitting into one container, giving me two colors of monkey to choose from), for Mishra's Toy Workshop
• A set of My Little Pony toys, for Rarity and for combining Mishra's Toy Workshop with Princess Twilight Sparkle (specifically, the toys are the "Rainbow Tail Surprise" set, which have tails that change colors when wet)
• Several packs of cards (currently using Modern Horizons, in large part because it's got snow cards), for Stocking Tiger
• My phone (not that I'd be running around without it anyway), for Urza himself

On top of my normal MTG accessories, of course. I also only play during the month of December, for Some Disassembly Required.

Quote from Macabre »

buffing junk utility to get some early damage, ward off early aggression by making a junk utility creature a bit bigger to block

6 mana isn't normally considered "early".

I've normally seen her cast as a creature, along with a deck running lots of cheap auras to turn any creatures into not-quite-Ophidians.

Yesterday, I was playing my silver-bordered Happy Holiday deck, which I recently added the Ponies: the Galloping charity cards to.

Princess Twilight Sparkle's activated ability wants you to "control" the rest of the Mane Six, not control "cards named" or "creatures named".

Mishra's Toy Workshop requires using toys to represent the tokens created by a spell/ability cast/activated with its mana.

I think you know where I'm going with this.

I cast a kicked Rite of Replication with Toy Workshop mana, and started pulling a series of Pony toys out of my pocket; the table started laughing, since I hadn't used them at all earlier in the day (I had never drawn Rarity, and previous uses of Toy Workshop I had used a Barrel of Monkeys). I didn't also have the mana to activate Twilight's ability on the same turn, but the RoR had targeted an Ulvenwald Hydra, so it was a good play even if I got board-wiped.

The goblin tribal player had a Sulfuric Vortex out, and was able to knock me down to 1 life on his turn. Of course, Twilight's ability can be activated in response to the Vortex upkeep trigger. Everypony wins!

(Side note: I have so far cast Nightmare Moon with this deck three times. Every single time, she dies before I even untap with her. )

It also makes the point of mass land destruction -- resource denial -- useless.

So your suggestion ruins the strategy you're trying to make acceptable, opens up exploits you've acknowledged already exist, and likely gets tangentially related cards banned that are critical in other strategies, effectively cutting those strategies down to size, as well.

Why would anyone want to implement this, again?

Quote from peteroupc »

However, after Orb of Dreams and Urabrask enter, Warp World will bring all enchantment cards it revealed onto the battlefield, and Orb of Dreams will make those permanents enter the battlefield tapped, since with Warp World, first "all artifact, creature, and land cards revealed this way" are put onto the battlefield, then all "enchantment cards" revealed this way are.

Urabrask will only make an enchantment enter tapped if its also a creature, and an enchantment creature will enter at the same time as other creatures. In this situation, Urabrask will only tap a noncreature enchantment that becomes a creature due to a continuous effect as it enters the battlefield (example: Mirrormade entering as a copy of an artifact creature).

This is the price lookup someone set up in a Google Sheet a while back at work when attempting to set up a in-office trading community (that never took off):

=IF(F6<>"",vlookup(E6&"*",importhtml(F6,"table",0),2,FALSE),"")

Where E# is "Normal" or "Foil" and F# is:

=IF(A6<>"",IMPORTJSON("https://api.scryfall.com/cards/named?fuzzy="&A6&"&set="&D6, "purchase_uris/tcgplayer"),"")

Where A# is a card name and D# is the card's set abbreviation.

Quote from Haile Selassie II »

A lot of cards used to say "successfully casts", which has been errata'd into just "casts". A good one-word replacement would be changing casts to resolves.

"Successfully casts" has always meant the same thing that "casts" means today. Failing to cast a spell doesn't mean it got countered, it means you were unable to cast it in the first place; for example, if you cast a spell relying on the mana obtained from Selvala, Explorer Returned's mana ability and didn't get the requisite mana to finish casting.

Quote from NightWatch »

Am I correct in assuming that turning the card over for its CMC rather than its Morph cost (For cards such as Skinthinner this would be extremely advantageous.) is only an option if the card is manifested, or played face down using a rule other than Morph?

You can only turn Skinthinner face up for 1B (note: not its cmc, which is just "2", not even 2) if it was manifested, period. If Skinthinner is on the battlefield face-down for a reason other than being manifested or being cast as a morph (eg, Ixidron, Illusionary Mask), you cannot pay 1B, you can only pay 3BB (or in the case of Illusionary Mask, you could turn it face up by making it become tapped, getting it to deal damage, or dealing damage to it).

TIL that there are only 8 actual Goat creature cards, and 6 of them are red. 3 of those 6 are 1/1s with Mountainwalk (1 of those 3 is cmc 3 with firebreathing, the other two are cmc 1).

Quote from peteroupc »

If you control Tomorrow while an effect says you "can't draw cards" (e.g., Maralen of the Mornsong), you can't apply Tomorrow's effect.

Importantly, "you can't draw cards" (Maralen) is different from "if you would draw a card, instead skip it" (Possessed Portal)

Quote from Randuir »

Ninjas might be another possibility? Yuriko, the tiger's shadow makes for a very agressive commander if you build around getting her ability to trigger. she can hit the field as early as turn 2 if you get a 1-drop creature, and this deck wants to run a bunch of cheap, hard to block creatures anyway to get your ninjas in.

Yuriko tends to be a glass cannon against aggro decks. Yes, she come in hard and fast, bringing your opponents' life totals low by flipping things like eldrazi and split cards... but she also tends to have just a few small creatures on the board at any given time until late game (when those eldrazi can actually be cast), and those small creatures tend to be tapped. Yuriko is very vulnerable to crack back.

I figured I'd share it here, since I've already shared in a few other places online.

For anyone that wants to play Nightmare Moon // Princess Luna in the 99 of a deck, and prefers using checklist cards over taking DFCs out of sleeves when they transform, here's a high-res checklist card I've made for Nightmare Moon (using the Nicol Bolas, the Ravager checklist as a base design):

Coffers is a mana doubler, much like Gauntlet of Power and Caged Sun are. In fact, it's doubling the mana from all of your swamps, like Crypt Ghast or Nirkana Revenant.

When you activate Coffers, you get one mana for each swamp you control, and then those swamps can also each tap for one mana, effectively getting you 2 mana per swamp.

It costs no mana to play Coffers (though it does cost your land drop), which is one of its strengths. On the other hand, it doesn't have to cost mana to destroy Coffers either (using cards like Strip Mine, Ghost Quarter, etc.)

Outside mono-black (and even in some mono-black decks), Coffers is actually often weaker than its reputation suggests if it doesn't have Urborg backup. Because it does not tap for mana on its own and costs 2 mana to activate its ability, you need three swamps to just break even (making Coffers act as a "bad swamp" in that case). With 4 swamps, Coffers is only producing 1 more mana than you would have if it had been a basic Swamp instead. You need 6 swamps plus Coffers to hit double-digit mana (6 from Coffers plus 4 from the swamps not used to activate Coffers).

Urborg makes things easier, since both Urborg and Coffers itself get to be swamps, but that just means you can branch out from basics and fetchable duals, and then you're just getting 1 more mana from Coffers than if Urborg had been a basic Swamp. It still takes 7 lands (including Coffers+Urborg) to reach double-digit mana, since Coffers taps to produce its mass of black mana.

Quote from peteroupc »

I am not aware of any case in which that rule applies at the time of this writing; see also this thread.

https://boardgames.stackexchange.com/a/27297

Quote from murgatroid99 »

Alice has no cards in her library or graveyard. Nathan has no cards in his graveyard.

Alice controls the following:

• Laboratory Maniac equipped with Sword of Fire and Ice.
• Nefarious Lich

Nathan controls the following:

• Grizzly Bears enchanted with Ward of Piety.
• Nefarious Lich

Then the following happens:

1. Alice attacks with Laboratory Maniac
2. Nathan chooses not to block
3. The Sword's ability triggers. Alice chooses to target the Grizzly Bears
4. While the Sword's ability is on the stack, Nathan activates Ward of Piety's ability twice: once targeting Alice and once targeting Nathan.
5. Both Ward activations resolve.
6. Sword of Fire and Ice's ability resolves. The original text of the effect is

   Sword of Fire and Ice deals 2 damage to target creature or player and you draw a card.

• After we apply the Ward of Piety replacement and Laboratory Maniac replacement to that effect, it becomes

  Sword of Fire and Ice deals 1 damage to Alice and Sword of Fire and Ice deals 1 damage to Nathan and Alice wins the game.

• At this point, we apply the relevant Nefarious Lich effects. The result is

  (Alice exiles 1 card from her graveyard. If she can't, she loses the game) and (Nathan exiles 1 card from his graveyard. If he can't, he loses the game) and (Alice wins the game).

7. There are no more applicable replacement effects, so the ability finishes resolving. Neither Alice nor Nathan can exile a card from their graveyard, so the end result of this effect is

   Alice loses the game and Nathan loses the game and Alice wins the game.

From 104.3f, Alice winning and losing the game simultaneously is a loss. Since Alice and Nathan are thus losing simultaneously, the game is a draw (per 104.4a).

Quote from Tales19 »

Btw, the condition for activation can be satisfied with "_____"

Note that Twilight does not say "cards named" or "creatures named".

Therefore, use Mishra's Toy Workshop and MLP toys.