WaveLightGames
Neo Member
wow ... soul-scar mage is awesome. Can't believe that's just costs 1 red.
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Magic: the Gathering |OT11| Amonkhet - Have you ever had decks with a Pharaoh?
- Thread starter SigmasonicX
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Frankie Williamson
Member
Yup.
this
Damn. There goes that plan.
Oh well, I guess I'll have to play Always Watching before I attack with Rhonas. Oh the humanity.
Imperfected
Member
You can use Rhonas to buff the Initiate to 5 Power before declaring attackers so that Rhonas is active. His ability lasts until end of turn.
You also don't need the creature to be attacking, just to have it. I had a couple of games where I kept Rhonas up the entire time with Channeler Initiate + Consuming Fervor, which was some jank-ass Limited tech.
Simply Sarah
Member
I strongly disagree. Sure, it's asymmetrical and instant but it's also about the only remotely reasonable mono-blue sweeping option.
Yeah, that's true. 6 power with Lifelink and Trample when exerted is no joke. Certainly an option if I don't have anything else to play that would turn on Rhonas.
Looks like I've got a deck to brew!
Imperfected
Member
What's wrong with Devastation Tide?
In EDH? It's undercosted for 7 mana because it literally wipes all your opponents. Plus most blue decks worth their salt will recur it. It's miserable and awful and you know what? If you want sweepers in blue? Branch into a different color. Every color shouldn't have every ability.
To the posters credit they did just reprint all the miracle cards and top in the last year which gave miracle players a false sense of security.
History points to that not being a safe line of thought with examples like Splinter Twin being reprinted right before its ban as well.
Deck dominates a main format for 3 years without question and people are surprised it sees a nerf? C'mon guys.
I would be happier to play legacy if they also banned deathrite shaman. The card has been a bigger issue than miracles imho in terms of how oppressive it is.
Yeah, channelfireball just did an article on that exact issue.
https://www.channelfireball.com/articles/deathrite-is-next/
But they didn't just reprint top, they have reprinted every miracle card for the deck minus counterbalance. They didn't do this with twin/any other deck as they didn't reprint snap/deceiver/etc as well as twin prior to the banning. Even though I agree with the ban I can understand the frustration.
To be fair, Counterbalance DID just see a reprint with the Invocations haha
Simply Sarah
Member
Unlike most sweepers or Upheaval, Devastation Tide generally hurts you more than it hurts your opponents since you're down 5 mana to recast your stuff compared to them.
I admit that being an instant may be a bit much but I feel this is a case of having very different metas with very different concerns. A lot of the decks I play with/against just replay most everything the next turn.
I have a friend who built a Kruphix deck and every game he plays it reduces to one of two scenarios:
1. Everyone attacks him early and hard and he dies but whines.
2. He plays his deck and wins handily and everyone else is annoyed.
It's one of my least favorite decks in the format. In fact I have a UG Kruphix deck that I never play because it's so annoying. I should probably dismantle it.
It's a matter of when not if.
death2sarge
Neo Member
Just did a Pre-Amonkhet casual draft, ended up getting 3 Glory-Bound Initiate, pack 1 pick 1, pack 2 pick 1, and pack 3 pick 2. Such an awesome card for draft.
Imperfected
Member
You're usually casting it as a Miracle in EDH (unless you have such a powerful card draw engine online that no one should have sympathy for you anyway), and it's not like you don't put yourself behind tempo with other sweepers if that's the justification. If I blow out a board with WoG I'm still trying to rebuild it with less mana than my opponents are going to have to rebuild their board on their turns.
If what you're actually arguing is that Blue should be able to sit there and continuously have advantageous board wipes so that Blue players never have to commit and can just run combo engines, well, that's a different matter entirely.
If all you need is a board state reset Blue has plenty of options.
ShadowSoldier89
Member
Cyclonic Rift and Deadeye Navigator are the two cards I hate seeing the most in commander
pelicansurf
Needs a Holiday on Gallifrey
Deadeye Navigator isn't bad. Infinite mana / infinite purphoros damage is fun.
Fuck cyclonic rift though. The worst wrath.
The worst part is they all play the fucking same. Ramp and card draw and ramp and card draw and oh you used a wrath but it doesn't matter because I have ten cards in my hand and a bajillion mana and here are the Green and Blue value cards you've seen a thousand times already.
You gotta love how WotC made a commander that counters extra card drawing bullshit... And made it Sultai colors and kept the ability asymmetrical and gave it another ability that lets you draw even more extra cards.
I have a friend who love UG good stuff and very smug about it.
I just build stax and make him target number one. He switch to reanimator now. LOL
Yeah, you can swap Kruphix, Rashmi, Zegana, Thrasios+Kydele and Momir and the deck can stay the exact same.
Simply Sarah
Member
Playing it as a miracle is pretty narrow, though. And WoG is different because their stuff is dead so you can spend your mana to play a threat you've saved while they may end up with nothing remaining. At minimum, you've generally removed the threats.
As for myself, I'm not even sure Rift deserves its place in my PW Teferi deck over a more versatile bounce spell. But that's because I'm generally playing against decks with a few creatures and a lot of artifact mana.
divisionbyzorro
Member
I tested a deck on the beta that I called Temur Kibler, which was basically a RG monsters deck splashing for Nissa. Ramping into Glorybringer is big game, and Vizier + Chandra/Nissa is stupid AF.
I tend to agree. I personally enjoy playing the card, but it really shouldn't be an instant.
Cyclonic Rift is the card that fucks up the game for everybody else while the game continues to draft out. Deadeye Navigator is one of a bajillion different ways available to combo off and win the game instantly, so I'm okay with it - I see no reason why it should get any more hate than any number of other cards.
You can basically put Animar in the same category, just with more value creatures than spells.
I play a borderline UG Animar deck. I have no shame.
Welp Protean Hulk saw a spike and is now $20+. There goes me grabbing a copy lol.
Excited to try out standard actually. Gonna run mb Manglehorn in my Temur Marvelwork deck as it hoses the big 2 boogeymen and I have a lot of looks with a Marvel activation. Gonna also throw in random Lay Claim just for fun lol. I wanna steal their Gideon so bad!
Excited to try out standard actually. Gonna run mb Manglehorn in my Temur Marvelwork deck as it hoses the big 2 boogeymen and I have a lot of looks with a Marvel activation. Gonna also throw in random Lay Claim just for fun lol. I wanna steal their Gideon so bad!
Oh yeah for sure. I give it 6 months.
Manglehorn seems pretty good against Marvel as well though.
Grab a playset yesterday.lol
Give it like a week or two it will crash down to $10
Megalosaro
Banned
I'm pretty sure that I'm going to go Black/Red for commander.
Is sarkhan the mad a decent choice for a commander?
Is sarkhan the mad a decent choice for a commander?
Planeswalkers can't be commanders unless they have "This card can be your commander" printed on them. Sorry.
SigmasonicX
Member
Unless it says so on the card, planeswalkers can't be used as commanders. Of course, it's a casual format, so you can use house rules to allow it, but you have to make it clear up front.
charlequin
Banned
Sure, I'm just saying that's literally the exact opposite of an optics decision. This was a choice that makes them look super bad collectively, pissed off a ton of their fanbase, and has a non-zero chance of getting someone in serious trouble with their bosses. That's not optics, that's just generic cowardice or oblivousness, take your pick.
I will reiterate Grimace's answer here and say that yes, I am surprised they made a decision this stupid because it is actually very rare for them to make a decision this stupid (as opposed to, say, fuck up on playtesting) for balance purposes.
This is a really, really high standard (ugh, pun not intended when I started this sentence.) We've had four-color BFZ standard, and then three consecutive seasons (and counting, apparently!) of EMN -> KLD -> AER and still none of these is a serious contender for worst standard ever.
They literally posted a photo of the "Ban Top!" sign someone left outside their office a week in advance, lol.
I won't lie, if I were on the EDH RC I would 100% exploit this.
Curious to see how this Official Duel Commander rules thing works out. WotC are creating their own banlist rather than leveraging the French one, so I'm curious how popular this gets and whether it has any effect on how the RC do business.
If it were in a Commander set it would be a pretty major failhorn, but I think it's actually a pretty well-designed card for Legacy and Vintage.
Megalosaro
Banned
Well damn. No worries. What would be a good alternative?
These are all the choices https://edhrec.com/commanders/br/
For a good alternative, it depends on what you want the deck to do.
Simply Sarah
Member
It really depends. Using it optimally, where it wins the game as soon as it dies, it's really just another combo starting option to the existing Boonweaver decks. If playing it more fairly (i.e. not combo) then I think it's not nearly as scary since the mana cost limit helps make it just high value rather than utterly disruptive. But I'll admit it's hard for me to think of how you'd use Hulk fairly because it's an inherently unfair and broken card.
I think Leovold was likely designed with Tiny Leaders in mind with Legacy and Vintage as a fallback.
Imperfected
Member
I dunno, man, I haven't got much sympathy for it. To me, a board wipe in EDH is something you use because there's an intractable board state (oh look, it's Kozilek + Archetype of Endurance Turn 5), or because you're getting blown out and need to reset the board. Blue needs to be able to do that, and blue can do that. Blue doesn't "need" to generate big one-sided card advantage board wipes, that's just something blue players want to do, because well duh doesn't everyone?
The only color that honestly should be doing asymmetric sweeps without engineering a very specific board state (Crux of Fate, All is Dust, Dusk // Dawn, etc.) is red, and even red should be paying out the nose for it.
UGGGGGGGGGH People complaining about UGx in EDH is so tired. I'm not sorry that your Boros wall tribal deck couldn't keep up and your 7 card combo was interrupted. Either ramp up the power level to meet your playgroup or find another group. I'm not hyper competitive by any means but be realistic people. Calling for Cyclonic Rift to be banned for what? I can admit that a lot of things that are on the banned list are problematic but wanting something gone just because you don't know how to play around it and it sets you back? Why not just ban every board wipe and targeted removal spell while were at it.
I like how Leovold is still going up in price. Hard to find $50 copies now, and the $40-45 panic sells are all being snapped up instantly.
I know Legacy players are more likely to pay attention to the market, but EDH has to be more played than legacy by a factor of like fifty, right? Does not seem like a smart buyout target at all.
UGx is obnoxious in EDH because so many groups consider it 'unfun' to fuck with manabases, attack players early on, or take out a player with no board state who's doing nothing but ramp. It's not the archtype's fault, but it's miserable to play against. The only ways you can interact with it cause too much whining.
I'm sure there are groups where this is not the case. I never found one.
EDIT: That said, I don't believe in EDH bans period, so ¯\_(ツ
_/¯
Just let me play Shahrazad ffs
I know Legacy players are more likely to pay attention to the market, but EDH has to be more played than legacy by a factor of like fifty, right? Does not seem like a smart buyout target at all.
UGx is obnoxious in EDH because so many groups consider it 'unfun' to fuck with manabases, attack players early on, or take out a player with no board state who's doing nothing but ramp. It's not the archtype's fault, but it's miserable to play against. The only ways you can interact with it cause too much whining.
I'm sure there are groups where this is not the case. I never found one.
EDIT: That said, I don't believe in EDH bans period, so ¯\_(ツ
_/¯Just let me play Shahrazad ffs
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