This one feels like a staple in a lot of green deck.
Huge, evasive, protect itself, easy to splash, can attack on most board situation or play defence when your behind.
He has a immediate effect on the board, protect your other creature and give them evasion for a final swing or to start attacking when the board is clogged.
Easy to tutor for in green and reanimate in black.
And you can even use a wrath effect at your second main phase for a one-sided wipe.
if you are not a combo type player, I've been playing Bant enchantress with Rubinia at the helm for a while. In addition of the classic enchantment matters engine, I run all the aura variant of "control magic" to try to finish the game. If I can’t find my win condition, I can try to use theirs.
When the deck durdles too much, takes too much time to get going or some of the engines get removed, the B plan is to act as a “steal your stuff” deck, with rubinia as supports role. You still get reward to play those auras when you have at least one engine online, and if often happens that the opponent can’t take them back using removal when I got one the enchantment that protects other enchantments. Also play well with replenish effects that you are already probably running in these type of deck. I also run all the artifact hate… while it’s not a win condition, it can screw a lot of popular deck.
Not saying is the perfect solution for a competitive deck, but it feels highly synergistic and fun to play, and for me is a good alternative way of finishing game.
Fenrir is right, It should not read "at turn 3", but "From turn 3 and at each following turn, at the beginning of your upkeep, take the top card from your land deck and put it in your hand”. The goal is to start with what most people would call a balanced hand, to avoid hands that have only one or zero land. Then, once your lands are depleted from Turn 3, you can start put lands in your hand. You still can mulligan is you don’t like your starting lands. I edited in the main post to avoid further confusion!
and it doesn't cap at 10, so at turn 17, you will likely have 17 or more lands on the battlefield.
Seems like a good idea, maybe 30 life would be better. We play tested only 1 vs 1, and it definitely feels like it could give more chance to aggro! thanks!
I tried with a friend a variant to change some part of the game we didn’t like.
-We don’t like being mana screw.
-We don’t like top deck mode and drawing a land and pass, or having no more gas in commander. We like when there is a lot of action.
-Some of us are on a budget, and 3 to 5 colors deck are harder to make for some friends. We would like to make that easier to build.
We do like the fact that fives colors spells are harder to cast and the randomness of having to draw different lands in order to get there.
We liked the +1 mana each turn from hearstone, so we tried a hybrid mana system that ended up really fun.
This variant doesn’t require particular deck build, you should be able to try it just with your regular decks.
----
New rules:
-Before the game, separate the deck in two piles.
A deck made of 60 spells (no lands), and one of 40 lands.
-When you start the game, draw four cards from spell deck, and three cards from land deck.
Each turn, draw a card from your spell deck. From turn 3 and at each following turn, at the beginning of your upkeep, take the top card from your land deck and put it in your hand. (doesn’t count as a draw to avoid weird stuff happening)
Whenever you spell of ability would make you search for a card in your deck, you can search in either deck.
-----
Consequences and effects we saw on the game from testing so far:
-Drawing cards feels a bit more powerful, as you only draw spells.
-Control deck seems to benefits more that aggro, because they always have gas and land drops.
-Color fixing is slightly less useful as you have more chance of hitting you colors. Ramping is still good thought.
5 colors decks are easier to build on a budget.
-Land destruction is less powerful as you recover quicker. Mass land destruction like Armageddon became a bit more acceptable, as everybody recover more at the same pace.
-For milling, we tried 2 cards from spells and 1 from land deck. Mill 5 = 2 spells, 1 land, 2 spells. This might need a change.
-Since we are milling more spells than lands, i think that graveyard strategy can get slightly stronger.
-landfall is stronger. A lot stronger.
-Discards spells can be stronger as it doesn’t often hits lands. On a other hand, you always draw a spell each turn, so...
-Stuff that care about lands in your hands seems to be less good. Cards like Exploration, Azusa, Oracle of Mul daya are less good since you usually won’t have a lot of land in hand unless you are not putting them on the battlefield for some reasons.
-You will always have a LOT of mana. This benefits bigger spells, X spells, or late-game gameplans.
---
So, I would really enjoy that somebody tries it out and give me their feedback on how it was. So far, we have seen less anger coming out from mana screw situation, and we had epic game state and a lot of action.
Please let me know if you see any problematic cards or situation happening, or if you feel it unbalanced too much some effect or strategy. I think a banned list could be a good thing if some things we did not think about get out of hands!
Thanks!
EDIT: It should read not at turn 3, but "From turn 3 and at each following turn, at the beginning of your upkeep, take the top card from your land deck and put it in your hand"
when i play with my casual group, we agreed LD is ok as long as it's for destroying utility lands or problematic lands like coffer, maze, gaeas cradle, etc. we don't destroy regular mana producing lands, basic or not.
i don't expect to draw that much hate as we usually talk about what we are trying to do with the deck anyway even before beginning.
any other good reasons to go with red as a third color?
adding a dragon subtheme maybe?
I was toying with the idea of a flying matters deck. I was going to go blue/white since most moat effects and flying matters card are in those colors, but then I thought that adding a third color like red might bring some additional synergies like earthquake-like effect that only affects non-flyer. With Numot at the helm, I guess I would end up with a artifact-ramp/controlish deck that focus on clearing the board with earthquakes, defend with moat effects, than winning through big flyers.
I would need some helps looking for some flying matters card in red to see if adding more colors would worth it, or in black or green if you have any other ideas.
Also, any problems or weakness you could see with the concept of a deck like that?
I've been playing a lot of mtgo and lately, I played against a lot of monoblue counterspell or control decks.
My deck are usually midrange (often a mix a green, black, or white), and i'm having a real hard time playing against them. It became very frustrating and now I concede every time the matchup is a monoblue commander.
When I try to cast my hand really quick, it usually end up being countered three to four times in a row and not having enough gas for the late game, and when I wait to get enough mana to cast multiple spell in a turn hoping to resolve one, it usually end up by a cyclonic rift, or my creature steal or bounce, then countered or whatever.
So my questions are, in a context of edh 1 vs 1:
-Any tips for playing against monoblue counterspell deck? (don't want to just pack my decks with blue hate just in case in run into those decks)
-Any general tips for playing against control deck? (blue/white, or things like Damia)
WOW, thanks, i never saw this card before! I play at least three blinking deck, and never saw this one.
How does it works when creature come back? do i stack them the way i want? like am i gonna stack like wall of omens first then flickerwisp? If they all come in to play at the same times, what is the best way to use it if i have in play let's say, a two flickerswip, and two wall of omens?
"Normally, the creatures will return to the battlefield at the end of the same turn they were exiled. But if they're exiled during the End step, it's too late to return them this turn. They have to wait to return to the battlefield until the next End step."
Does this mean i can exile a opponent's permanent for his next turn with flickerwisp? Could be useful!
hey, i wanted to share with you a deck i really enjoyed playing. One of my all-time favorite card is wall of blossom. With the printing of wall of omen, i can now play 8, and with GSZ, 12. I made a deck around abusing their ETB.
With the blinkers and GSZ, the deck can play something like 20 cantrip. The obvious target for GSZ second turn is Overgrown Battlement, giving your absurd amount of mana to play a finisher.
I prefered Faith's letter than oblivion since i can get life with the blinkers. Same thing for acidic slime vs qasali pridemage. 1 Pelakka Wurm can gain some pretty absurd amount of life with the blinkers. Terrastodon is good against some deck, and the 3/3 are mostly irrevelant since you got tons of 0/4 walls.
My finisher of choice for now would be steel hellkite, because i can dump all my mana left for Overgrown Battlement in it, destroying many permanents or +1/+0. I wanted a finisher with green colors, so i added two Nishoba Phantoms.
There is a lot of way i could go with this deck, adding blue for Venser, Mulldrifter, Momentary blink, Reveillark... i would be interested to see what are your variation you could think.
There is not a lot of combo deck in my meta so it doesn't really matters.
My main problem is protecting my Overgrown Battlement, when they kill it it slows me a lot. Wrath effect could also give me some problems, but a least i get all my value for my ETB creatures. Some suggestions?
I would like all my finisher to be tutorable with GSZ, any good beater with ETB i could use? or something more resiliant.
I made a similar list, did you ever tried dungrove in this kind of build? If you play 4 rancor it might be a good late game. I approve your opinion for the geist, and i think you could tried the ooze, but i think that baloth is better is a straight aggro mode.
I was thinking to use Green sun zenith in this build and the ooze as a one-of, in case you need that indestructible against control or Day of judgement.
While you ramp by sacrifing your spawns token, you activate morbid effect, you boost your unruly mob, triggers Falkenrath Noble... you could add some grave pact or foster, Bequeathal...
Good idea for the proliferate, probably i would try some gambit for some draws i dont have any. As you said, Noble Hiearch would be nice, but expensive for my budget right now. I asking myself if i could try some beast tribal cards like Contested Cliffs or Wirewood Savage
I think that Melira, Sylvok Outcast would be a very fit! and it's a human!
This one feels like a staple in a lot of green deck.
Huge, evasive, protect itself, easy to splash, can attack on most board situation or play defence when your behind.
He has a immediate effect on the board, protect your other creature and give them evasion for a final swing or to start attacking when the board is clogged.
Easy to tutor for in green and reanimate in black.
And you can even use a wrath effect at your second main phase for a one-sided wipe.
Animar, mayael, xenagos… Will see play!
When the deck durdles too much, takes too much time to get going or some of the engines get removed, the B plan is to act as a “steal your stuff” deck, with rubinia as supports role. You still get reward to play those auras when you have at least one engine online, and if often happens that the opponent can’t take them back using removal when I got one the enchantment that protects other enchantments. Also play well with replenish effects that you are already probably running in these type of deck. I also run all the artifact hate… while it’s not a win condition, it can screw a lot of popular deck.
Not saying is the perfect solution for a competitive deck, but it feels highly synergistic and fun to play, and for me is a good alternative way of finishing game.
and it doesn't cap at 10, so at turn 17, you will likely have 17 or more lands on the battlefield.
I tried with a friend a variant to change some part of the game we didn’t like.
-We don’t like being mana screw.
-We don’t like top deck mode and drawing a land and pass, or having no more gas in commander. We like when there is a lot of action.
-Some of us are on a budget, and 3 to 5 colors deck are harder to make for some friends. We would like to make that easier to build.
We do like the fact that fives colors spells are harder to cast and the randomness of having to draw different lands in order to get there.
We liked the +1 mana each turn from hearstone, so we tried a hybrid mana system that ended up really fun.
This variant doesn’t require particular deck build, you should be able to try it just with your regular decks.
----
New rules:
-Before the game, separate the deck in two piles.
A deck made of 60 spells (no lands), and one of 40 lands.
-When you start the game, draw four cards from spell deck, and three cards from land deck.
Each turn, draw a card from your spell deck. From turn 3 and at each following turn, at the beginning of your upkeep, take the top card from your land deck and put it in your hand. (doesn’t count as a draw to avoid weird stuff happening)
Whenever you spell of ability would make you search for a card in your deck, you can search in either deck.
-----
Consequences and effects we saw on the game from testing so far:
-Drawing cards feels a bit more powerful, as you only draw spells.
-Control deck seems to benefits more that aggro, because they always have gas and land drops.
-Color fixing is slightly less useful as you have more chance of hitting you colors. Ramping is still good thought.
5 colors decks are easier to build on a budget.
-Land destruction is less powerful as you recover quicker. Mass land destruction like Armageddon became a bit more acceptable, as everybody recover more at the same pace.
-For milling, we tried 2 cards from spells and 1 from land deck. Mill 5 = 2 spells, 1 land, 2 spells. This might need a change.
-Since we are milling more spells than lands, i think that graveyard strategy can get slightly stronger.
-landfall is stronger. A lot stronger.
-Discards spells can be stronger as it doesn’t often hits lands. On a other hand, you always draw a spell each turn, so...
-Stuff that care about lands in your hands seems to be less good. Cards like Exploration, Azusa, Oracle of Mul daya are less good since you usually won’t have a lot of land in hand unless you are not putting them on the battlefield for some reasons.
-You will always have a LOT of mana. This benefits bigger spells, X spells, or late-game gameplans.
---
So, I would really enjoy that somebody tries it out and give me their feedback on how it was. So far, we have seen less anger coming out from mana screw situation, and we had epic game state and a lot of action.
Please let me know if you see any problematic cards or situation happening, or if you feel it unbalanced too much some effect or strategy. I think a banned list could be a good thing if some things we did not think about get out of hands!
Thanks!
EDIT: It should read not at turn 3, but "From turn 3 and at each following turn, at the beginning of your upkeep, take the top card from your land deck and put it in your hand"
i don't expect to draw that much hate as we usually talk about what we are trying to do with the deck anyway even before beginning.
any other good reasons to go with red as a third color?
adding a dragon subtheme maybe?
I was toying with the idea of a flying matters deck. I was going to go blue/white since most moat effects and flying matters card are in those colors, but then I thought that adding a third color like red might bring some additional synergies like earthquake-like effect that only affects non-flyer. With Numot at the helm, I guess I would end up with a artifact-ramp/controlish deck that focus on clearing the board with earthquakes, defend with moat effects, than winning through big flyers.
I would need some helps looking for some flying matters card in red to see if adding more colors would worth it, or in black or green if you have any other ideas.
Also, any problems or weakness you could see with the concept of a deck like that?
I've been playing a lot of mtgo and lately, I played against a lot of monoblue counterspell or control decks.
My deck are usually midrange (often a mix a green, black, or white), and i'm having a real hard time playing against them. It became very frustrating and now I concede every time the matchup is a monoblue commander.
When I try to cast my hand really quick, it usually end up being countered three to four times in a row and not having enough gas for the late game, and when I wait to get enough mana to cast multiple spell in a turn hoping to resolve one, it usually end up by a cyclonic rift, or my creature steal or bounce, then countered or whatever.
So my questions are, in a context of edh 1 vs 1:
-Any tips for playing against monoblue counterspell deck? (don't want to just pack my decks with blue hate just in case in run into those decks)
-Any general tips for playing against control deck? (blue/white, or things like Damia)
Thanks!
For reveillark mull and stuff, i have an other deck using all of them and works pretty well as such, but thanks!
good call for finks and witness! i'll try to fit some.
anyone has suggestion for finisher?
How does it works when creature come back? do i stack them the way i want? like am i gonna stack like wall of omens first then flickerwisp? If they all come in to play at the same times, what is the best way to use it if i have in play let's say, a two flickerswip, and two wall of omens?
"Normally, the creatures will return to the battlefield at the end of the same turn they were exiled. But if they're exiled during the End step, it's too late to return them this turn. They have to wait to return to the battlefield until the next End step."
Does this mean i can exile a opponent's permanent for his next turn with flickerwisp? Could be useful!
4 Wall of blossoms
4 Overgrown Battlement
4 Flickerwisp
4 Glimmerpoint Stag
2 Phantom Nishoba
4 Steel Hellkite
1 Terastodon
1 Pelakka wurm
3 Acidic Slime
4 Faith's Fetters
10 Forest
8 Plain
4 Graypelt Refuge
With the blinkers and GSZ, the deck can play something like 20 cantrip. The obvious target for GSZ second turn is Overgrown Battlement, giving your absurd amount of mana to play a finisher.
I prefered Faith's letter than oblivion since i can get life with the blinkers. Same thing for acidic slime vs qasali pridemage. 1 Pelakka Wurm can gain some pretty absurd amount of life with the blinkers. Terrastodon is good against some deck, and the 3/3 are mostly irrevelant since you got tons of 0/4 walls.
My finisher of choice for now would be steel hellkite, because i can dump all my mana left for Overgrown Battlement in it, destroying many permanents or +1/+0. I wanted a finisher with green colors, so i added two Nishoba Phantoms.
There is a lot of way i could go with this deck, adding blue for Venser, Mulldrifter, Momentary blink, Reveillark... i would be interested to see what are your variation you could think.
There is not a lot of combo deck in my meta so it doesn't really matters.
My main problem is protecting my Overgrown Battlement, when they kill it it slows me a lot. Wrath effect could also give me some problems, but a least i get all my value for my ETB creatures. Some suggestions?
I would like all my finisher to be tutorable with GSZ, any good beater with ETB i could use? or something more resiliant.
I was thinking to use Green sun zenith in this build and the ooze as a one-of, in case you need that indestructible against control or Day of judgement.
While you ramp by sacrifing your spawns token, you activate morbid effect, you boost your unruly mob, triggers Falkenrath Noble... you could add some grave pact or foster, Bequeathal...
fun stuff!
Contested Cliffs or Wirewood Savage