Cardboard rehab: TCG/CCG thread

[commandercool]

Played my Scorpion God deck a few times earlier and it ran great. I was drawing tons of cards and making huge plays every turn. The downside was that even though I run a ton of mana rocks mana was very tight, meaning I rarely go to use my commander's ability to spread counters around, and my board presence was usually concentrated in just a few huge cards.

Not sure I would really make any big changes at this point honestly. There are a few cards I'd like to add but nothing really felt like it underperformed.

[MatsuriSakuragi]

God, I love my Queen Marchesa deck. It works so well.

...meanwhile, I'm incredibly stoked for Inalla. She's fucking amazing and synergistic and I'm excited to build around her. One word: Panharmonicon.

If Inalla is on the battlefield, she gets 2 triggers. Cast a Wizard with an ETB effect. 2 triggers. Get 2 more of that wizard. 2 more ETBs each. 6 fucking ETBs for an extra 2 mana per Wizard cast.
(If she's not on the battlefield, Panharmonicon doesn't trigger her, but it still triggers the Wizard's ETBs and its copy's ETBs, so 4 triggers with her in the command zone.)

Consider Champion of Wits, 6 times. Draw a ton of cards and yeah, you'll have to discard a bunch, but that's okay. You want your graveyard filled with wizards in the endgame anyway.
Anathemancer, 6 times. Damage equal to number of nonbasic lands on target opponent. Times 6.
Aether Adept, 6 times. Bounce 6 creatures.
Archaeomancer, 6 times. Get 6 instants or sorceries back.
Dualcaster Mage, 6 times. Copy a spell 6 times.
Master of Waves, 6 times. Get your devotion to blue in elementals. Times 6. This deck is primarily blue. Just let that sink in.
Sower of Temptation, 6 times. Steal 6 of your opponents' creatures. (And sac them to Ashnod's Altar and cast more stuff.)
Puppeteer Clique, 6 times. Get 6 creatures from your opponents' graveyards, swing with them, and then sac them or let them get exiled. (Also infinite ETBs if you run Ashnod's Altar + Nim Deathmantle)
Aven Fogbringer, 6 times. Bounce 6 of your opponent's lands.
Venser, Shaper Savant, 6 times. Bounce 5 of your opponents' permanents, and then the original Venser back to your hand. Repeat. Yes, it's legend rule restricted so the copies can't stay, but he's essentially an instant that reads 2UU: Return 5 target spells or permanents to their owners' hands, buyback 2.
Trinket/Trophy/Treasure Mage, 6 times. Grab 6 artifacts of qualifying CMCs.
Noggle Hedge-Mage, 6 times. Tap 12 permanents or deal 2 damage 6 times as you please to target player(s).
Faerie/Merrow Harbinger, 6 times. Fetch 6 faeries or merfolk, if you have them. Not really necessary, but they let you grab...
Mistbind Clique, 6 times.  Champion the second copy to the first copy, tap two opponents out, then champion that to the original, tap another out... I think? How would the stack work on that... anyway that or
Wanderwine Prophets, swing into extra turns.
Dack's Duplicate, 6 times. Copy any 6 creatures. Whether or not you get to duplicate copied Wizards, I'm not sure. But ridiculous either way.

And finally,
Bloodline Necromancer, 6 times. Remember when I said we're okay with Champion of Wits filling the graveyard? Bring 6 Wizards back to the battlefield, trigger Inalla 2 times for each, just dominate the game. Best with Ashnod's Altar. Keep in mind you can bounce the Necromancer back with Venser or Aether Adept, sac EVERYTHING to the Altar, recast the Necromancer, DO IT ALL OVER AGAIN. Repeat the process and bounce all of your opponents' permanents and swing for kill or just bounce everything but their lands and kill with Anathemancer or Noggle Hedge-Mage damage.

Stuff like that. Then fill your deck with flicker and reanimation spells. And Marchesa, the Black Rose, because recursion is amazing and lets you be aggressive. Also, Havengul Lich. Also, Corpse Dance/Dawn of the Dead with sac outlets to allow you to keep using the wizards you bring back.
Also, Azami, Lady of Scrolls. Tap those wizards that will just be exiled anyway and draw cards, or tap them with Inalla if she's on the battlefield and do damage.
Paradox Engine to keep using Azami every time you cast something. Or your Sol Ring. Free double Inalla payment for every Wizard you cast.
Arcanis the Omnipotent, copied twice. Tap the second copy, draw 3, destroy it to legend rule. Tap the first copy, draw 3, destroy it to legend rule.

My GOD she's cool. I need to get in on this.


...does Sundial of the Infinite let you keep the copied wizards that would be exiled at the beginning of the next end step? Like, let the end step begin, exile triggers on the stack, end the turn with the Sundial to exile triggers on the stack? Because holy shit.

[commandercool]

I've been tinkering with my Pauper deck a lot, and it's got a crazy roller coaster of a record where it tends to only first-place events or not win a single game all night, but currently it's at a peak. I've started the perverse process of foiling out my Pauper deck with some nice foil Ravnica basics, and I'm keeping an eye out for foil copies of some of the key cards (I would love to have some original foil Rancors, but that's obviously an enormous waste of money).

Our Pauper group is badly warped toward hardcore permission which is kind of letting the few very aggressive decks in the metagame to run rampant. And has the unfortunate downside of dragging out events because at least one game goes to time every single round. It's still a ton of fun though. Playing against 36/36 possible Counterspells in nine matches is rough, but I feel like aggro still remains very viable despite lower overall creature quality and higher overall permission and card filter quality than in Modern.

Edit:  Matsuri, I know you love Gift Of Orzhova, and I just realized that I think it's amazing in my B/G Aristocrats sideboard. I've struggled with strong creature matchups in the past (Slivers and Stompy tend to beat me, and I've only squeaked past Bushwhacker because the guy who used to run it isn't very good).

I'm running Sylvok Lifestaff right now for aggressive matchups, but I think Gift puts me just as far out of reach while also racing faster, and I'm not really worried about it being removed against any of those decks. And if Slivers wants to bring in Ray Of Revelation against me to deal with it then they're welcome to do so. A Carrion Feeder with Gifts seems terrifying. And it turns out foil Modern Masters ones are $0.39. Score!

[MatsuriSakuragi]

The stained glass wings are valid!

[commandercool]

So I have a Nekusar The Mindrazer Commander deck that I think I'm going to take apart because my group seems to hate playing against it. Thinking of making it Mairsil The Pretender instead since he's very build-aroundable. Finding really solid combos with him has been tricky. Can anyone think of any super sweet Mairsil tech?

Here's what I got so far:

-Aetherling: Gives him the ability to supercharge his theft ability by blinking into play during each turn while also providing protection and making him a legit threat for commander damage kills.

-Chainer, Dementia Master: Stealing his activated ability lets you skip the drawback. Seems pretty legit.

-Arcanis The Omnipotent: A really powerful activated ability plus an emergency protection ability.

-Grenzo, Dungeon Warden: Mairsil has decent power and odds are your deck is already playing a lot of creatures and graveyard synergies.

-Twisted Abomination: Swampcycle and then exile for decent-ish value and protection.

-Nevinyrral's Disk: Any regeneration or indestructible effect makes this the most obnoxious lockdown ever. Probably not actually going to play this because it seems too shitty, which sucks because Disk is a valuable means of removing enchantments in these colors.

I haven't really been able to come up with many cool artifacts to use. There are a few expensive artifacts with activated abilities that I could cheat in early, but most of them (Aladdin's Lamp, Summoning Station) seem pretty underwhelming for one reason or another.

I also have a few rules questions with him. If I steal Nezumi Graverobber's abilities can I also use the Nighteyes The Desecrator ability? His Gatherer page answers my question about what happens if I try to equip him to something (nothing), and hilariously he can be crewed (to little effect), but I'm not clear on how split cards work.

[MatsuriSakuragi]

Not sure how it works with flip cards. I wanna say no by default, but who knows?

I haven't done much theorycrafting on Mairsil, but some other ones I've been hearing about are Quicksilver Elemental (takes away the "once per turn" limit on activated abilities. And maybe I'm just an asshole, but I would so chain Nevinyrral's Disk and Aetherling and just keep the board nice and tidy.

Also, Gilded Lotus and Basalt Monolith seem like good cards to cage. Anthroplasm + Sage of Hours gives you basically 5 mana for an extra turn every turn. Voidmage Prodigy may seem like a conditionally good card to cage-- you can pay 2 and sac a Wizard (or Mairsil himself) to counter a spell. Caging Torchling will let you redirect spells targeting Mairsil. Caging Cavern Harpy lets you pay 1 life to bounce Mairsil back to your hand in a pinch instead of the command zone. Hateflayer gives you a damaging UNTAP ability, which will let you do another tap ability. Caging Dralnu, Lich Lord gives you a Snapcaster effect when tapping. Caging Jace's Archivist lets you tap and force everyone to discard and redraw their whole hand, gives you more fuel and messes with opponent hands. Razaketh and Scarab God seem good as well, as does Havengul Lich.

Basically, a lot of the creatures and artifacts here: https://edhrec.com/commanders/mairsil-the-pretender

[commandercool]

Ooh, Shauku, Endbringer and Patron Of The Moon are spicy.

Definitely playing a few untap-as-cost abilities I think. Knacksaw Clique is probably a little too expensive to be good but it sounds nice on paper.

Cavern Harpy is definitely on my list. I just think it's a cool card in general. Been trying to build a pauper deck around it for a while.

Scarab God seems great but it's probably a bit too pricey right now. If I come across one it's definitely going in but I can't see myself paying that much for it directly.

Phyrexian Ingester is hilarious but also weirdly expensive.

So yeah, it definitely seems like there's enough here for a deck. Slightly concerned it's going to end up being way too linear, but if it does then I probably won't have invested much in it and I can just default back to Nekusar if it gets boring.

Edit: Ooh, Mirage Mirror seems like a good one. Dodges board wipes and removal by changing card types, becomes copies of big creatures while retaining the ability to do commander damage, and you can use your other activated abilities and then transform once they're spent.

[Tamer Anode/Cathode]

Got the Vampire C17 deck just before my store sold out, managed to get a game in against the other three decks. Got facerolled by the Cat and Wizard player teaming up on me but did manage to knock out the Dragon placer with a pumped-up Licia. Also managed to cast Teferi's Protection during a boardwipe so that was fun

Stuff I want to swap in from what I have on hand:
Always Watching
Bloodbond Vampire
Bloodline Keeper/Lord of Lineage
Cliffhaven Vampire
Defiant Bloodlord
Drana's Emissary
Indulgent Aristocrat
Sorin, Grim Nemesis
Stensia Masquerade

[commandercool]

Bought a vampire deck because why not. There's definitely some good stuff in there.

Ordered like ten copies of Path of Ancestry as well, since it's strictly better than the tri-lands which makes it a must-have in 3+ color decks, and it's probably playable in a lot of one and two color lists as well. Looking forward to trying it in my Scorpion God deck even though it only contains a single god (Mr. Scorpion) because he ends up in my hand a lot.

[Tamer Anode/Cathode]

Path of Ancestry looks like it solves a problem I was having with the Tazri deck I was theorycrafting, namely "how do I get a good multicolor manabase without completely breaking my budget". The fact the scry bonus works perfectly with what Ally decks typically want to do is a bonus, really

[commandercool]

I mean, one card isn't going to fix your problem by itself. But you can have a decent five-color mana base on a budget, yeah. Transguild Promenade and Rupture Spire are very acceptable, the vivid lands are solid, and even the Shimmering Grotto variants should get the job done. Cap that off with Command Tower, Path of Ancestry, some high-quality, low-value colored mana rocks (Commander's Sphere, Darksteel Ingot, Felwar Stone), a handful of basics, and both hard and soft land tutors (Cultivate, Kodama's Reach, Evolving Wilds, Expedition Map, and Sylvan Scrying) and you should be in business for just a few dollars. It won't be perfect, but it should be very usable.

Edit: There was also a time when I was very fond of five-color domain decks (basics only, or at least if I was playing nonbasics they would only be in play briefly before fetching a basic) and those are technically cheap and powerful if you dedicate enough of your deck to them. The problem is that the most powerful effects they enable are really awful to play against. Destructive Flow, Back To Basics, and Ruination are strong but harsh. Price Of Progress and Natural Order are less game-ruining and still strong, but those effects alone aren't really enough to justify building the deck. Virtually none of the actual keyworded Domain cards are playable in Commander with the exception of Tromp The Domains and the recently-printed Prismatic Geoscope, but if your group can/will handle the oppressive nonbasic hate then that may be the way to go. Just stock up on Rampant Growth and Traveler's Amulet effects, weight your land distribution heavily toward green, and hope that the weird effects that you now have access to are good enough to counteract the much slower rate that your mana will develop without high-quality multilands.

[Tamer Anode/Cathode]

So today we get official reveals on the Ixalan rares and mythics that were leaked a couple months ago. I was avoiding them until we saw them from WoTC themselves and woooooow there is a lot to see

[commandercool]

Seems like a lot of the set, a much higher proportion than normal, is hot garbage. But the official spoilers look interesting so the first wave of leaks was probably just the trash rares.

I LOVE the new flip frame. Not super thrilled about the significant planeswalker buff, but whatever... Also looks like we're still firmly in the "Tiny Leaders is a thing, right?!" design era...

[MatsuriSakuragi]

New Jace is garbage and so are a lot of these new cards and I'm really hoping these are the trash rares because it's kinda disappointing.

That said, explore mechanic seems pretty interesting, kinda like a cross between scry and investigate.

[commandercool]

Explore is way too complicated. It does like five distinct things. I assume it plays great though or they wouldn't have bothered with something so wordy and convoluted.

Seems weird that they called it that though since "I'll explore" already colloquially means something in Magic and that thing isn't quite what this mechanic does. It's like if they made a mechanic called Bolt but saying "I'll bolt the bird" doesn't quite mean dealing three damage.

[Tamer Anode/Cathode]

I can be fine with the planeswalker rule change if the plan from here on in is to have only one version of a given walker in Standard at any given time (and I can't think of any case where there is more than one version of a walker legal in a format that people use)

Explore looks like a neat tool for Limited , helps counteract flooding to a certain extent and helps you dig further into your library, both of which I like.

Raid and Enrage make me think this is going to be very aggro-heavy, which concerns me since Amonkhet was also a very aggro-heavy set in Limited and I'm worried about more of the same

[commandercool]

I'm curious to see if the planeswalker rules change creates some kind of oppressive superfriends list in Modern. Because while it's true that there aren't any major cases of a deck wanting two play two different planeswalkers with the same identity (that I can think of) part of that might be because they can't...

I'm particularly thinking that Gideon Jura and Zendikar Gideon seem like they both want to be in Superfriends, and this probably makes the flipwalkers a lot lower opportunity cost as well.

[commandercool]

Alright, I've got a sort-of-finalized Mairsil The Pretender deck finished. I feel like it's kind of unfocused, but the original list I was working on was way too focused with like half of the deck being specific Mairsil support with no real payoff. This version is essentially a reanimator deck with an activated ability sub-theme tied together by basically every playable looting effect. The idea is that I'll dig through my deck looking for reanimation effects while pitching creatures, and many of my creatures have activated abilities that Mairsil can pick up. So I can reanimate them the traditional way or soft-reanimate them by playing Mairsil and gaining their abilities. This means that any given reanimation target tends to be weaker than normal since I tended to lean toward creatures with activated abilities more than just the most powerful option every time, but there's still plenty of stuff that's strong enough to apply legit pressure.

I ended up kind of light on control pieces and heavier than normal on board wipes, so I may need to rework the deck to add more spot removal and counters depending on how it performs, but all of the looting effects let me go heavier on mana sources than I would normally prefer since I can just toss any excess lands and mana rocks to a Cathartic Reunion if I get flooded. This is ultimately one of those decks where I'm not sure using Mairsil as my commander is really better than a more conventional Grixis commander, but then again I feel like Grixis hasn't historically had the strongest commanders so hopefully it's fine. Hopefully the payoff ends up being worth how much I had to skew the deck to accommodate him, but I'm not really all-in on him either.

[MatsuriSakuragi]

Holy shit iconic masters.

Mana Drain, Flusterstorm, Ancestral Vision, Grove of the Burnwillows, and more.

[commandercool]

Waiting warmly for new Pauper toys.

[MatsuriSakuragi]

I'm hearing Monastery Swiftspear is gonna be common. If so, holy shit.

EDIT: Saw a clearer picture. Nah, it's uncommon. Still.

[commandercool]

Oof, yeah, that would have wrecked us. Not sure it would be bannable, probably not, but it certainly would have warped the format.

Nothing seems major on the newly-common front yet. I'll probably be testing Ulcerate over the two Disfigures on my sideboard. Seeker Of The Way is pretty aggressive but I'm not sure there's a home for it. Dragonlord's Servant is common now but I'm not sure what it would be discounting. Dragon Egg caught my interest briefly since I've always wondered if B/R Aristocrats could be a thing, but it seems kind of slow and bad.

Meanwhile, MTGSalvation is reporting Bladewing The Risen as an uncommon. Seriously? :wat: Not that it's super powerful or anything, but you couldn't feel less uncommon than a big splashy legendary dragon. I assume that's a typo, and if not then it's a really weird choice.

[MatsuriSakuragi]

It's more weird to see a legendary creature as an uncommon. If they keep that up, it could be interesting to make some kind of no-rares EDH format or something.

[Tamer Anode/Cathode]

It's more weird to see a legendary creature as an uncommon. If they keep that up, it could be interesting to make some kind of no-rares EDH format or something.

I recall Pauper Commander being something that exists, although it lets you use a nonlegendary creature as your commander due to how limited you'd be for choices otherwise

[commandercool]

There are a small handful of non-rare legends already thanks to Kamigawa and Chronicles. None of them are GOOD, but they exist..

And yeah, I vaguely recall a Pauper or Peasant Commander format where you can use any uncommon as your commander. And everyone used Bloodbraid Elf.

[Tamer Anode/Cathode]

Well, they revealed the full list for Iconic Masters.

I thought I would be kind of meh on this set but it looks like with the uncommons and commons the draft environment is going to be very cube-like? Also it has a lot of Tarkir block stuff I liked when it was new so that's a plus

[commandercool]

Some of the new art is nice. New commands and Ancestral Vision are spicy.

Uncommon Sanguine Bond is nuts! Wasn't Sanguine Bond pretty expensive?

Wight Of Precinct Six at common might be actual legit pauper teck as a sideboard option against graveyard padding decks, but those all play Gurmag Angler so they can just delve away all the creatures...

Ivy Elemental is this set's rare-to-common.

Wow, several legendary creatures down to uncommon. That feels super wrong to me.

Guardian Idol to common seems like a big deal for Pauper. I don't know what plays that, but I imagine some control decks want to.

Ooh, Oblivion Stone reprint. Well, I dicked around for too long selling my copies...

[Tamer Anode/Cathode]

Full gallery for Ixalan appears to be up.

There's a lot of good stuff here. Plenty of stuff getting reprinted, a lot of stuff that looks like it's fun to build a deck around, a lot I'd be happy to experiment with in a limited format.

[MatsuriSakuragi]

I cashed in some of my most valuable Modern pieces for high dollar EDH staples. I now proudly own a Mana Crypt, Pact of Negation, flip!Jace, a couple fetchlands, Chrome Mox, stuff like that.

I've decided my jump into truly competitive EDH is going to be a Kess, Dissident Mage Doomsday deck. Still would really like to have a Force of Will, some more fetches/shocks, and a Lion's Eye Diamond, but that's for another time.

[Tamer Anode/Cathode]

Wound up going 1-3 at prerelease. I went GW dinos with a splash of red when I should have been splashing black (I had a Vraska in my pool and DIDN'T USE IT). I will say GW is absurd when it works well since you can have your low-cost 0/3s and 1/4s hitting for way more than they should. Kind of reminds me of the Assault Formation deck in Dragons of Tarkir, basically

Vraska's probably going in my Mazirek deck partly because she's on flavor and partly because she adds a lot of value in terms of generating fodder for the deck to use.