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hippieghost · 15 days

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@that-sure-is-a-person

Hope you don't mind me making this it's own post but I wanted to go more in depth than a comment would make. I'm breaking this into two parts: deck building and obtaining cards

Part 1 - deck building and what to build around

If you're just starting to get into MTG, the biggest advice I can give for deck building is to focus more on card synergy than on building a big collection.

What I mean is this - there's a lot of strategies that work really well in mtg, but it can be really overwhelming building a deck when there's so many options available. The best way to counter this is to pick one strategy and make sure your deck does it well.

For this example I'm gonna turn to the current set, and find a card that we can use to build around. Bloomburrow (the most recent set at the time of this writing) is mostly focused on kindred decks, meaning decks that do well when you have a lot of the same creature type. For this example, I'm going to use this guy:

Squirrels. Sure. Why not?

We're gonna kill our opponent with squirrels.

So the above creature has a power and times of 2/2, with it's ability, if another squirrel is on the field, it becomes a 3/3, and so on. He's a rare, so might be a bit tougher to come across, but easier to get our hands on than a mythic rare card.

Let's see what cards work well with him.

Ah, here we go.

Notice how each card here synergizes with squirrels. Our dreyleader is uncommon, and arguably better than the rare we built the deck around. It doesn't have a constant +1/+1, but it starts out with counters that functionally give the same thing, and it keeps those counters if your creatures start to die. It also gets another every time a squirrel or food enters the battlefield under your control.

Squirrel nest and chitterspitter will be great for pumping out more squirrels, but chitterspitter has the extra benefit of giving your squirrels a buff by sacrificing one. All of these buffs stack, so having squirrel horde and chitterspitter both out will give the horde +2/+2 for every squirrel.

From here you can throw in more cards to pump out tokens, or other squirrels that have other effects. There's a few ways this can go, but finding 2 or 3 cards to base your deck around helps alot.

A few other notes -

In most formats you can have a max of 4 of any card. You have to have a minimum of 60 cards in a standard deck.

But Cece? You say, what if I want more than 60?

That's the devil talking. The closer you are to 60 cards, the more likely it is you'll draw one of the cards you actually need.

What about land?

This really depends on the deck. Arena uses 24 as the default, but if you have a lot of cards with low mana cost, you can go fewer. If you have a lot of resource heavy cards, you need to go higher. This deck seems to revolve around cards with a mana cost of 3, which is fairly low. We can probably get away with running fewer lands.

My suggestion: count the man's symbols in the top right of every card. You should start off with about half of the total number of mana symbols for your lands, and then adjust from there.

Part 2: obtaining cards

Since you're playing arena, you get a chance to practice already. The easiest way I find to get cards both in arena and irl is by doing drafts.

Drafting is fairly simple. You open a pack, pick a card you want, and pass the pack to the left. At the end, you use all of the cards you've picked and some lands to build a 40-card draft deck. You then compete against other drafters in best of 3 matches to potentially win more packs of cards.

Best case scenario you get the top prize, but most players will usually come home with an extra pack or two.

In the worst case scenario, so long as you picked cards that work with each other, you go home with the same amount of cards that you would have by spending the same amount on booster packs, and all the cards you picked out are cards you chose yourself instead of random ones.

MTG arena has a quick draft that's pretty easy to get into, and is good practice for the real deal. Don't bother spending gems on the deluxe draft. Just save your coins from playing until you can quick draft.

If you don't have drafts near you, then I'd suggest getting the larger packs that come with lands. You can usually get at least a couple decks built out of it. Most sets usually also have starter decks that you can just buy outright and tweak as you go.

A few other points -

1. Multi color decks are fun, but generally more difficult to build in a balanced way because you have to rely more heavily on balancing your lands to get the cards you need. I suggest no more than 2 colors per deck if you're a newer player until you get used to seeing how they mesh with each other.

2. Rarer doesn't always mean better. Some of the best cards in the game are commons. Focus on how they talk to each other instead of how valuable they are when building. That super rare card you pulled is useless if it doesn't have anything to work with!

3. Try every strategy at least once. My least favorite color in magic was black when I started. Now it's the color I personally do best with.

4. If all else fails, my fallback strategy is to take all my red "burn" spells (anything that does direct damage), mix em with some cheap creatures with high attack and low defense, and play super aggressive. This is called "red deck wins" and is a great way to make people mad at you.

Any questions let me know! I'm always happy to help new players get their feet wet!

#magic the gathering #mtg #mtg tips

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goqmir · 1 year

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omg what is ur favorite commander !!!! (asking in a cool and gay way 😎)

i personally love my isshin samurai tribal and my hammers equipment deck that has as many bare minimum playable cards with hammers in the name or art

hammer equipment is such a sick idea!! i love when decks are held together by floating concepts rather than ingame mechanics :)

im gonna talk at length about my favorite commanders and decks below this cut!!!!!

ive already talked about zirda which is probably my favorite deck so ill say my go-to deck to pull out when i play in a new group or i want to start simple, which is this guy of course

as a resident robot girl object thing i fuck so heavily with artifacts especially big cool artifacts so i love this guy so much. when i get enough mana and a high mana value artifact on the field, usually around turn 5 or 6, i spend a solid turn to "spin" muzzio, and i have a pretty good chance to hit some bangers. my favorite card (and the one i almost always tutor out with [[long term plans]] is my beloved

not only do they just threaten to end games immediately but theyre cute and fun and difficult to play anywhere else :3

my other favorite deck im hyperfixating on at the moment is with these two gay boys

sidar kondo and ravos (notably boyfriends) are partner commanders to my 1 power tribal deck that abuses a mixture of

sidar kondo makes creatures with power 2 or less unblockable

1 power creatures have low casting cost, which allows me to build up a gross board presence with sufficient card draw

ravos buffs all my 1 power creatures to 2 power

ravos also lets me return them constantly when they die, especially because they are so cheap

1/4 is my favorite statline and so im addicted to playing all of my favorite little boys like [[annex sentry]], [[stonehorn dignitary]], [[old rutstein]], [[generous patron]], etc.

the deck also starts going off if i draw a card that allows all of my creatures to assign combat damage equal to their toughness; i can have a whole board of 8 or so creatures swinging 4-6 each unblockable at a player and it's so addicting.

#mtg #magic the gathering #edh #blyo asks

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elendsessor · 4 months

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no fusion run mini update

the demifiend’s ex girlfriend gets beaten up by a trans archangel, woman with nails so long it’s scary, and monke, more details at 7.

had to put some skill points into vitality because i was kinda getting nearly murdered in the sea of random encounters before getting to baal.

now with chiaki dead, i’m actually doing a bit of a revision to my team because of how luci’s fight works. going to have to use raidou as my second damage dealer no matter what because the only demons of mine that have focus aren’t going to do well, he’s the only one with pierce, pierce can’t be mutated into, the only way i can get pierce on everyone else even through fusion is via metatron, etc. luci is one big dps check because he can, at any given point, bust out diarahan, something the people who got dante from the devil may cry series never get to worry about. whatever sadist at atlus decided to give the hardest boss in the game a full heal better have gotten a raise because they’ve probably crushed many dreams.

but i also need a better healer. i love titania but i can’t get her to null ailments and she’s very squishy. the only demon i can recruit that can null ailments, has no weakness to the elemental attacks luci has, and have set up in the compendium to mutate a couple skills to get better ones… is suparna.

yeah the bird with the stupidly annoying death cry? actually op if you put in the time and effort.

there’s a couple problems though.

first, they’re insanely underleveled right now. no real issue because merciful’s exp wield can cut down grinding time but it’s still grinding time. i have a ton of unused incenses sitting in my inventory so i can boost some of the stats quicker, plus the chance for incenses to be gifts are amazing.

second, the unchangeable stuff. stone hunt is a garbage skill outside of low level runs and garuda gets generally better skills. wind cutter is the best wind element skill that isn’t tornado, plus he gets endure at level 67—a skill my team is lacking. there’s also an unused skill slot they have just sitting there. taunting me.

the goal is to have bufula change to dekaja and diarahan to mutate into megidola before chaining into prayer. the dekaja is so i can set up provoke without luci getting the attack buff and just in case of emergencies to begin with, and prayer because luci loves status ailments.

not sure about keeping zandyne or what i would even aim for. suparna is going to be a fully support-based demon, so i technically don’t need an attacking move, and i can’t get rid of mazandyne which is a good alternative. i’m considering debilitate but i already have debuffing moves across the entire team that cover the bases so having fog breath + debilitate feels repetitive. then again, i haven’t used any of those skills outside of provoke in ages, mainly because provoke recovers mp, and i could be out-dekunda’d. mana surge is the other option since prayer costs a ton of mp, with each time used to recover it being one less bit of damage. it definitely could be remedied with a maxed out magic stat though. still torn, but i’m likely going to go the debilitate route if i decide i absolutely have to.

of course i’m gonna be training up the rest of the team too. need some emergency switch-ins and a good group to knock out kagutsuchi first and foremost since luci is a back to back fight. gay snake and uber pixie are the primary revivers and are tanks at heart. don’t know how that’ll work for everyone else. lilith has life drain so if i have to go the stall route she can take some hits.

because of the lack of pierce, i do need to max out strength and vitality on the boyfriends asap.

decided in the meantime to go for a personal goal in the upcoming grinding session: try and fully master as many magatama as possible. yippee.

at least this is the final push before i’m free from playing megaten games until smt 5 vengeance where i’ll probably get beaten to death by something.

#shantien rambles #smt nocturne #smt #megaten

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plaindangan · 4 months

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What kind of Himiko headcanons you have?

Disclaimer: R18 material! If not to your liking then please do not view!

In terms of sex drive, Himiko is of the lower scale of V3 girls, but when she is in the mood expect her to be pretty brazen with what she wants.

For instance, she would walk around without wearing a skirt or even panties - replacing those with fishnet leggings that hug her shortstack bottom.

She claims its because she made her skirt and panties 'invisible' to those with low mana.

In bed, she's an extreme sub that wishes to be 'filled with so much mana' that can hardly hope to stand.

She's an avid roleplayer and often hopes her lovers join in as well. Typically, she favors bad end fantasy scenarios where she - the Ultimate Mage - is bested. Typically by some muscular orcs who must ravish her body, or 'lowly bandits' who took her wand...and have her clean there's instead.

When not in bad end mode, she acts like she's under a 'lovesick' spell, using that as an excuse to worship her lover 's body with her kisses and specialty in oral sex, be a big dick or slickest of pussies.

As you can also imagine she's very much into being tied up in 'magic bindings'. Especially if it involves stripping her down to her underwear first and even blindfolding her before her lover has her way with her.

When it comes to her grimoire, you know damn well that she has used it to increase her own drive, make herself even more desirable to what her lover likes and especially enhance her partner more to their specifications.

Do they want to be a futa? Have a clone to help fuck Himiko? Make Himiko into a supermodel on par with Miu or Junko? Swap genders so Himiko can be a femboy and know what its like to be a Chihiro in this situation?

She can do that any more (at a cost, and God help her whenever it backfires).

Is it an abuse of very complex and dangerous magic? Yes.

Does she give a shit. Nope!

#DRyumeno-R18

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inventors-fair · 1 year

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You Came, You Saw, You Innovated

GREAT stuff this week, folks! It was a tough prompt, but y'all knocked it out of the park. I have heard you, and my next one will definitely be a lot less complex, but for now, revel in the glory that you all very much gave me what I wanted to see this week.

Here's the commentary!

Abyssal Rebuttal by @nicolbolas96 **JUDGE PICK**

Starting it off strong with Dandan, a format that has approximately 3 fans worldwide. For those wondering, the format centers around a shared deck with multiple copies of a single creature, and other cards that interact with it. The original version of this deck involved, you might have guessed, Dandan as the central creature. I do think a Dandan set would be a little tricky logistically, but that’s not what I’m judging. This card is simple and clean, but the reason it deserves to be a judge pick is because of how effectively it conveys information. The reminder text is short but every inch of it is crucial and easy to parse, and once you read it you go back to the effect to understand it with new eyes. I also think the strongest design choice here is not limiting “the Dandan” of the deck to only be Dandan, which would allow for a much more healthy variety in play. It obviously brings up questions of “how do players decide what the Dandan is” and “how are those cards distributed”, but this card is a brilliant example of showing AND telling in all the right amounts.

Cathar Challenger by @horsecrash

Horde magic is also a very cool direction to take this week’s prompt, and also makes me realize that I could have simplified the prompt into making a card for a “weird” format. It’s tough to evaluate the power on this one, since Horde can vary wildly depending on what variation of the rules you use. It’s obviously calling to Cathar’s Crusade, but doing it on attack and tacking on the lifegain might make it a touch too strong. On the other hand, it not affecting your own board is pretty big, so it definitely depends how many teammates you have. This one is just really tough to evaluate in a vacuum, I think a cheaper version that scaled less strongly could definitely have been a strong contender.

Deep Water Scavenger by @i-am-the-one-who-wololoes

This is definitely a tricky one, but it’s very fun to parse with the information I’ve been given. This being an uncommon helps contextualise a few things- it does have a mill ability, but fifteen cards is such a low threshold that we’re likely talking draft deck (40 cards), or potentially even smaller. Also, since it’s such a small library, and because there’s an ability that cares about cards leaving your grave without any way to make that happen, I’m going to guess that this format involves you shuffling your grave into library instead of losing when you draw from an empty library. It’s a fun card, though the pieces seem a bit disjointed until you fit them together. The shroud is a bit of a sticking point for me- they don’t use it anymore, and for good reasons. Hexproof or ward would serve this design much better. It definitely makes me curious to see the other cards in this set, so well done.

Dreadraven by @wolkemesser

Ahh, the classic “change the name of the design last minute and forget to update.” We’ve all been there. For what it’s worth, I like dreadraven a lot better. The mana cost almost got me for a sec, I was ready to comment that mono blue doesn’t get deathtouch or lifelink, but that little black pip saves me from being all pedantic. This card doesn’t tell me much except that it’s made for a best-of-three format (or maybe even more), but a draft environment built around snowballing one win into another, or coming back from a nasty game 1 loss could make for some really interesting designs. I would be curious to see if this is something they would allow in black-border magic, since they typically seem to want every game to be a totally fresh start. Anyways, you pushed the envelope, and that’s what I asked for this week, so thanks!

Guardian Seacat by @piccadilly-blue

Whoof. I’ll admit, this one I had to look up, because I spent ages puzzling over what this could be for, and I say this as someone who’s played some Judge Tower. I honestly totally forgot about the “X is always 3” rule, but this takes an interesting spin on it. The main issue I see here is that Judge Tower is fundamentally not a format designed for fun, it’s designed as a training exercise. Add draft to that, plus the aspect of a shared library, and you’re left in a confusing spot. Plus, this just tanks a free loss, which either means there are more cards that do this, or this is the strongest card in the set. It’s definitely one of the most creative designs this week, and kudos to that, but I just don’t see how the format would work.

Hekara, Rakdos Emissary by @deg99 - **JUDGE PICK**

It is interesting that those who submitted for Commander Legends-esque sets all tackled the color identity problem. I mean, it makes sense- that’s the biggest obstacle by far, and it’s fun to see all the different angles on it. Emissary threw me for a loop for a second, but once I grokked it, I saw the possibilities. You can run her as a Rakdos commander, or you can pick up another Emissary and go with pretty much any other color combo except Azorius, Simic, or Selesnya. I also like that you tried to include incentive to play her on her own, but I think the ability comes off a bit awkward and too heavy-handed on the idea. I think the mechanic already takes care of that, as you can’t make her a rakdos deck unless you have a black or red Emissary to pair with her, so already there’s some incentive to play her alone if you’ve been pulling good Rakdos cards. That being said, I like that vein of abilities, I just think they could be a bit more subtle. Also, I don’t love the epithet considering it copies the name of the mechanic, so a shakeup there would improve the flavor immensely.

Imperial Protection by @nine-effing-hells

Ahh, emperor. The solution to “Well, we have six players and eight hours, what are we going to do?” This one is cool, again following the philosophy of not making the card useless if you aren’t the emperor, but making it just a bit better if you are. I do think hybrid is a bit iffy here because white anthems and green anthems don’t really overlap in size or function, but it’s a bend at most, so eh. Just like the archenemy cards though, I’m curious how you envisioned the actual drafting experience. Is it a shared pool like 2HG? Do teams draft 3 at a time or separately? Do teammates sit consecutively or staggered? The fact that I’m asking these questions is a sign you’ve piqued my interest, and now I want to go play more emperor, so... good card?

Isrun, Gravewhisperer by @real-aspen-hours

More identity fixing! Last one was limited to two colors, this one to three, both with a very clever take on how to do it. This one has a more strict limit, but allows you to double up on partners with the same colors, and also allows you (the designer) to put a solid mix of 1 and 2 colour commanders for some mixing and matching. The creative element is going over my head a bit I think, since the mechanic is clearly alara-themed, but the flavor text says Tarkir. Is it a mashup of all the 3-color faction sets? If so, neat, but maybe the mechanic deserves a more general name that isn’t tied to only one of the 4 (or 5) planes you’re giving some love to. The card itself is fun, playing into some abzan graveyard themes and their whole “fury of the small” kinda thing.

Logistics Accountant by @hypexion - **JUDGE PICK**

Oh man, Coup in magic. That... honestly, I kinda wanna do that now. Seems like a lot of fun. Seems like these are more public roles though, since the treasurer would have to be public information. I want to know how big these teams are. Is there a set number of roles that are distributed? Are they chosen from a pool at random? Do players get to choose their roles before the game begins? Can you have more than one role? The second ability would seem to suggest so, and also that they would have various activated abilities. I can see the Treasurer having an ability that (obviously) lets them spend coin counters, which is very clever. Whatever this format is, I want to play more of it, and if you invented it, I demand a full write-up of the rules immediately. Anyways, uh... yeah. Good card.

Loyal Toadie by @helloijustreadyourpost

Scheeeeeemes. It’s a fun word to say. Anyways, another take on archenemy, and this one comes at a different angle than the others. While the other submissions had one effect for the archenemy and one for the team, this one wraps it up into a single effect, basically allowing you to scry or fateseal, either to pull a better scheme or avoid a nasty one. Unfortunately, I’m not quite sure it works as intended, since “setting a scheme in motion” refers to the act of revealing it and triggering the ability all in one go. That being said, it’s a fairly easy fix to make it just counter the scheme ability in exchange for allowing them to set another one in motion. Alas, nitpicky rules are nitpicky. Apart from that it seems very fun, and I love how this can be a competent henchman who supports your evilest plans, or a bumbling buffoon that ruins your moment of greatness. Excellent flavor.

Malack, Butcher of Worlds by @certification-wizard

Much like one of our examples this week, this submission implies a long, drawn-out event over the course of multiple days, since it both asks you to defeat five or more players, and it references prize packs that are also drafted, implying that you can add to your pool post-construction- as well as a “campaign”, which carries its own weight. What’s interesting to me is the typal element, and the specific commander callout. This is some form of draft league event with commanders, which sounds like a very interesting premise. However, being so reliant on your opponents to be playing different decks is pretty rough, and the ability is ambiguous enough that I don’t know if it would count defeating U, B, and UB commanders as two or three for the count. Finally, the last aspect here is how heavily typal it is. What does the set environment look like, where you can expect to see two demons per pack? Also, if you’re drafting, that messes up card parity, which is a no-no. See cards like Cogwork Librarian, who always keep the same number of cards in the pack to avoid this issue. This is a really cool idea, but the elements feel a little scrambled, and hard to unify into a single idea.

Mask of Elesh Norn by @lanabutnotdelray

Eugh, who would want that mask? Creepy. Also no eye holes. I’ve already made commentary on the idea of an archenemy set, so let’s look at the card instead. More dual effects like this, where one functions as the archenemy and one functions on the team (and in other formats), are definitely a cool way to address the idea of Limited. However, I... don’t know how this would work? Is it subtracting from each “kind” of token (which I’m not sure is an actually rules term for tokens), or just one overall? If your opponent has a Tireless Provisioner, would they choose which one they make, would you, or would they make none? The idea is really clever, but it seems there’s a reason they haven’t tried to implement this effect before. Definitely a cool premise, and I’m right up there with Maro in my love for token doublers, but this one gives me a bit of a rules headache.

Mercenary Auction by @flightyquinn

Hoo boy, okay. This is WILD, and I think I mean that in a good way. This card reads to me as one that was designed for a specific format, but also made ambiguous so it could be played in other formats, and so I say to that... what the hell happens if I make my commander opponent into my teammate? Is it all of a sudden one 2HG team vs two individual opponents? Do the other two team up? Is this meant to be a signifier with no rules baggage like “friend or foe”? It makes my head spin. For that matter, even in the format this was made for, is that really... fair to your teammate? Like in a social sense? You and your buddy are all excited to go to this new draft event, then your opponent says “nope, you’re with me for the rest of the day, or until I play this again.” It’s possible I might be wildly misinterpreting this card, but teammate does have actual rules meaning, so y’know. As for the rest of the card, I LOVE the bidding aspect, where they’re incentivized to show good stuff so they don’t have to discard. However, you’re likely not gonna have much mana left over after paying 5 for this, so I think you could even play it for free without being too busted.

Omenpath Reveler by @salamileg

...Funny enough, I am literally about 2/3rds of the way through making a planechase draft cube built around the idea of omenpaths. That’s pretty funny, though admittedly it’s an easy idea to go for. This one is simple, but encourages planechase on a few different levels. It wants you to get chaos, obviously, but also wants you to roll as much as possible first. It definitely wants you to be able to roll at instant speed, but too bad so sad for the poor little satyr. The flavor text is great, though the use of the word chaos is a bit on the nose. Obviously there would be some logistics issues with trying to draft oversized cards, but we can assume the business people will figure that out. Nothing much else to say, this is a solid uncommon with a lot going for it.

Radar Bauble by @sparkyyoungupstart

Okay, so originally I had only a vague idea what this did (and to be fair, the card does a fairly good job of conveying some of the information), but, like a vision from the heavens, my phone saw fit to grant me a clip of TCC playing what I can only assume is the format this was made for. Now I must ask, in your set made for this format- can you only submit cards with the Treasure subtype? Any artifacts? Is there a minimum and maximum submission, or can you just mooch off of your opponent’s artifacts? The rest of the card became fairly clear, though I don’t think that’s quite how the second one would be worded. I think this would definitely be a fun one to explore more, maybe with the classic caveat of “one guaranteed treasure in every pack” for logistic’s sake.

Ranger’s Axe by @bergdg

And so we reach our last commander card. I built something similar to this a while back, but I think mine had a key difference- namely, it functioned like Backgrounds, where you could only run the equipment if your creature commander had the appropriate keyword. This seems to say that you can add green to the color identity of any commander you want, with no downsides, drawbacks or punishments. As you can imagine, that gets pretty scary, and is probably something best to be avoided. However, if we move on and assume that it’s meant to be restricted to a specific subset of commanders, the rest of the card is great! You can run it in the 99 for a decent buff, but if you have it in the command zone, it’ll automatically start by giving +2/+2 and trample, and scales really nicely if you have a cheap commander. I do think it could stand to be a touch cheaper either on the mana cost or equip cost, but dealer’s choice.

Waters of Wisdom by @squeezyboi

Framing it almost perfectly as the first and last cards, here is our second of two Dandan submissions. Normally, I try to avoid comparing cards, but it’s hard not to here. The card itself is a nice functional uncommon, but some parts of this confuse me. One of the key features of Dandan is the shared library, so does your format do away with that aspect? It’s not a terrible idea to make it work in draft, but then it does change the format significantly. In the second half, this card falls into a bit of a trap that the other one avoided- forcing the singular creature to ALWAYS be Dandan means that the decks always have to have blue, there’s no variation in the creature aspects, and it severely limits what the rest of the set can look like. I think to make this design work, you want to give yourself more freedom.

Yulius, the Protean Shadow by @spooky-bard **JUDGE PICK**

2 headed giant? In my commander? It’s more likely than you think. This one plays really well, and honestly it was hard to not give it a podium spot. Point is a neat ability, though admittedly not hugely impactful on most designs, and it makes me curious to see what anchor would be. Going off of fighting game terms that my friend had to teach me, the point is the first one you send out, and the anchor brings up the rear. With that in mind, I assume it’s some kind of protection or survivability, but I’m not sure what’s small enough to match up with +1/+1. Anyways, the battlebond-esque flavor is off the charts, the draftplay and gameplay here seem lots of fun (as long as you use the 2HG rules of being able to pick two cards at a time and have a shared team pool), and altogether this appeals to my personal sensibilities quite a lot. Nicely done!

So long, thanks for the engagement, and I'll see you all in a few weeks!

~judge @naban-dean-of-irritation

#mtg #magic the gathering #custom magic card #inventor's fair #commentary #innovation nation

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talenlee · 2 months

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MTG: Signposted Decks

Hey, this is a magic article about budget decks! I’m playing on Arena a lot these days, which means mythics and rares are things I accumulate through opening boosters. To that end, when I look at decks, I try to look at the decks in terms of what I have and what’s worth spending wildcards on. Any conversation after this point is probably going to avoid talking about incorporating rares into decks, which will almost always make decks better if you got ’em. My advice for any Arena free-to-player is to spend your wildcards on rare lands in the most recent set in the colours you want because they’ll go into every deck that uses those cards.

Signpost uncommons are a ‘recent’ addition to the game. Of course I say recent in that I know I first heard about them in Dragons of Tarkir, a set that’s almost ten years old. Anyway, they’re a design tool so that limited environments for each new set has some uncommon that either when you open them up in pack 1 give you a clear direction for what you want to pick, or, later, cards that nobody wants except the decks where it’s great, rewarding you for a consistent or clear drafting strategy.

These cards are limited cards, first and foremost, they exist to have an impact in the limited environment and do something relevant there. Almost always they are creatures or typal enablers, they’re usually priced well for limited. That’s important because limited is a place where a 4 mana 3/3 that flies is probably pretty good, but in constructed formats, there’s no reason to use anything but the best of the best.

Thing is, these cards are cool! These cards are cool and they often are designed to work within the set’s limited environment. Thing is, there are some times when those cards can be played alongside other cards they’d normally get to hang around and the result can be very satisfying, in a rhythmos sort of way. This isn’t how top tier standard decks get made, but there are some fun decks lurking around with these pieces that are interesting and, as a matter of playing in the limited environment, you’ll probably wind up having them in your collection to make decks with.

First up, I’ve written about one of these signpost uncommons and a deck that forms around them in the form of Insidious Roots. My Roots deck draws in cards from other Standard sets, particularly Tyvar, Jubilant Brawler and Undead Butler.

This deck is fun and I like how over time it’s evolved into a lot of different versions for me. For example, one version I’m using uses Honest Rutstein — two of these dance back and forth with one another cheaply and generate a lot of plant tokens. It doesn’t work well with Snarling Gorehound, which has pushed that card out of the deck.

But moving on.

Baron Bertram Greywater is an interesting card in that it costs just enough that you can’t put it in a low land count deck, but it doesn’t on its own support a big expensive deck. You want things like wraths or board sweepers to go with it. There aren’t a lot of recurrent token creators that aren’t vulnerable to the cheap sweepers, like Malicious Eclipse.

I got to play with Bertram alongside Kambal, Profiteering Mayor and Boneyard Desecrator in a limited pool and it was captivating. Every turn I was spending mana to sacrifice the rogues Bertram made that gave me a counter on the Desecrator, a treasure, and then, another rogue, and then all the while Kambal was draining my opponent. This trick was cool but just using that in constructed involves getting three permanents on the battlefield in a world where everyone’s trying to get the best mileage they can out of their Sunfalls. What I’d rather run alongside Bertram is treasure or blood creation that can expand reasonably well on its own.

One example of cards that can go into a deck would be Voldaren Estate, Restless Bloodseeker, Hall of Tagsin and even Collecter's Vault. Now, I’m not sure if that’s enough – you don’t want to make spot removal too good, and if your deck relies on exactly one big creature on the battlefield, that’s a potential problem.

Bertram also works with roles! I’ve tried him alongside my copies of Spellbook Vendor and Not Dead After All! That’s not so bad, and I even got to work it alongside Devouring Sugarmaw. I think that’s a really cool card, and I’m glad to get to attack with a big stompy underpriced creature.

At Knifepoint is a card that feels like it’s challenging to ever make it good even in draft. My impulse for this card, with a once-a-turn crime stipulation, is to try and find a way to maximise the ways I can use it on my turn and on someone else’s. It can generate creatures and benefits from having outlaws. That all works reasonably easily. But that implies a deck that wants to be slower, and then that presents me with the same problem as Baron Bertram.

After some combing through cards, the synergy I want out of At Knifepoint is a way to clog the board, fill the world with little tokens, commit crimes regularly and maybe keep as few creatures of my own on the board as possible. Specifically, I like the idea of building this deck to slowly take advantage of Choking Miasma, and Rakish Crew. A Deadeye Duelist is a common level crime machine that survives the Miasma, and Gnawing Vermin commits a crime coming and going. Swashbuckler's Whip can do crimes off-turn repeatedly, and Ballista Watcher, while expensive, survives miasma, commits crime, and even becomes an off-turn crime committer once you have mana invested in it.

And what you get out of this is a steady flow of creatures that you can throw under the bus, can pump up one another to attack with first strike, and all while the Rakish Crew bleeds them out.

… of course, that whole ‘two toughness’ does bring up the question of wondering what this deck looks like if it’s instead using Vial Smasher, Gleeful Grenadier. It benefits from At Knifepoint, being a 3 power creature, it pings opponents, then it makes all the tokens Knifepoint creates into pinging damage as well. You cast an outlaw, Vial Smasher commits a crime, At Knifepoint creates a token. That could all be done with commons and uncommons, without a lot of mana-expensive cards.

Ertha Jo, Frontier Mentor is the latest puzzle for me to glare at. Sure, she’s a 4/4 for 4 on her own pretty solidly, but the question lingers of what exactly you can get double effects out of, in a budget deck in standard.

Problem: The most obvious thing she works with is planeswalkers. There aren’t any of those below rare in standard right now. Obviously. If you have them, there are some cool synergies – like Lilliana of the Veil can make someone sacrifice two creatures. Neat! Chandra, Dressed to Kill fires off a shock at your opponent’s face and makes 2 red mana.

Sandstorm Verge works with her to turn off two blockers at a time, which is more affordable than normal; mothrider patrol lets you tap two creatures, Traveling Minister lets you gain… two life and buff two attackers? Deadly Dancer becomes 2 mana for 4 power across two creatures? And Touch the Spirit Realm‘s channel splits across two creatures, just like Trumpeting Carnosaur.

Oh, and I suppose I should mention that Ertha Jo makes High Noon deal ten damage to your opponent’s face. If that’s a thing that you care about.

There’s always more. Signpost uncommons excite me! But here’s just three from recent standard sets that I think have enough juice to be worth chucking your draft cards around and see what you can play in the format. These cards feel like they’re just waiting to be some extremely pet cards, after all.

Check it out on PRESS.exe to see it with images and links!

#Games #Magic: The Gathering

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stephenminiotis · 3 months

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COPY BIG BEASTS BIG EGG "BREAKFAST" HUNTER

26 June 2024 - Yes To The Deck! Status: Copy 6+ Mana Big Beasts Deck (Their copies cost FIVE less); Big Beasts and their copies have Rush or Charge; Egg Deck: Nerubian Egg + Mystery Egg; Yelling Yodeller + Mystery Egg win-con! Each Yelling Yodeller can get TWO copied+reduced Big Beasts per Mystery Egg, plus TWO from the Egg+Mini cards themselves. That's up to EIGHT Reduced Big Beasts, all with Rush or Charge! Bestial Madness Buffs everything including all eggs so that they can attack with +1 (Seen here first); This also buffs Fable Stablehand, which has Rush too, so that it buffs itself, too! www.twitch.tv/NeutralG - Live 10pm EST for a few matches

Mini’s Big Breakfast

Class: Hunter

Format: Standard

Year of the Pegasus

2x (1) Awakening Tremors

2x (1) Thornmantle Musician

2x (1) Tracking

2x (2) Bait and Switch

2x (2) Barrel of Monkeys

2x (2) Bestial Madness

2x (2) Nerubian Egg

2x (3) Fable Stablehand

2x (4) Yelling Yodeler

2x (5) Mystery Egg

2x (5) Star Power

1x (6) Mister Mukla

1x (0) Zilliax Deluxe 3000

1x (2) Power Module

1x (4) Twin Module

2x (7) Toyrannosaurus

1x (8) Stranglethorn Heart

1x (9) King Plush

2x (10) Banjosaur

AAECAYoWBOrKBdP4BcekBv6lBg2pnwTRoATmygWo0QXw6AXz8gWb9gXI9gXS+AX9lAbtmwbopQb6pQYAAQPyswbHpAb1swbHpAbr3gbHpAYAAA==

To use this deck, copy it to your clipboard and create a new deck in Hearthstone

---

NOTES:

Assets: Big Beasts Copied via Mystery Egg + Yelling Yodeller and COST FIVE LESS; Nerubian Egg and Toyrannosaurus can be yodelled too in a pinch! PLUS: ALL the big beasts (AND their copies) have Rush or Charge TOO! So does Fable Stablehand! PLUS Bestial Madness buff allows eggs to attack with +1 (SEEN here first); AND buffs Fable Stablehand to buff itself! (Ain't nobody runnin' dese tyngs but Mini!) Mulligan: X all the big minions 6+ other than zilliax. You're looking for Yelling Yodeller, or Mystery Egg (or Tracking). As always, you want to start the game WITHOUT any big minions in hand, you'll want to Mulligan for a LOW CURVE which means YES to LOW MANA cards in the mulligan! My decks are ALL built this way. Yours should be too. If you get a few low-cost cards in your hand to start the game, and/or land a Worms/Tremors or Barrel Of Monkeys, you're probably going to be okay for the first few turns, until you see what cards you have by mid-game. I consider this an Intermediate to Advanced deck, it’s not entirely Aggro friendly. You’ll want to Yelling Yodeler a Mystery Egg whenever possible which is probably turn 5+6; If you don't draw them you could be in trouble. update: Been Smashing in low Diamond with this deck. Is it nearly unbeatable to Legend? Stay tuned! twitch.tv/NeutralG - Live 10pm EST most nights for a few games. 3.0: update: Restored Fable Stablehand to her proper place in this Big Beast deck. I realize it's not a Tar Creeper or Taunt; But it does seem to have it's place. Bestial Madness makes Fable Stablehand proc it's own buff. It's also a rush minion; so are all the beasts and their copies. Zilliax could be switched to taste. Maybe 9-banger twin lifesteal zilly for yet another closer card and late game health boon; or alternately you could 4-mana pain double attack zilly and try to cheat out some early games - and get out Fable Stablehand down the next turn, since he'll have 4+ attack so that she buffs herself. Personally, I don't mind him the way I left him: 6-mana twin zilly, which is a pre-reno win-con. I find two zillies are hard to deal with on turn 6. But I Might put him in the 4-slot. We'll see.

#hearthstone #tcg #world of warcraft #schizophrenia #hearingvoices #targeted individual #neutralg #stevemini6ix #toronto #ontario #canada

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dravid-writes · 10 months

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"So..." Alice holds up a card. "Does my crasher resolve~?"

Rose pretends to think, as if she isn't out of blue mana. "... Yes."

"Alright, go to attacks-"

"I cast Dismember on your Ahn-Crop Crasher."

"Agh, if only I had a-" They reveal a card "-Undying Evil~"

Rose sighs and scoops up her cards. "Well played. Your refusal to play your important spells on curve was INCREDIBLY frustrating."

"Sorry, but you can only hold up counterspell mana so many times before I start catching on."

Compass walks in, holding a deck. "Oh, perfect, you guys already have your cards out! I just finished fixing my deck, can I play against one of you?"

"Sure! Hang on a sec..." Alice reaches into their bag for a different deck; Compass is a good player, but being more used to board games, their deckbuilding skills are... bad. Their first deck was less of a deck and more just a pile of random strong-looking cards with no synergy. Then they decided to make a lifegain deck, but they figured that having a theme was the same as having synergy, and just put a bunch of lifegain-related cards together without a plan. The best way to have fun with a bad deck is to play it against another bad deck, so Alice grabs their werewolf deck-

"Actually, I was hoping to try it against your aggro deck. I did some testing, and this deck is really strong!"

"... Well, if you say so!"

The game lasted longer than usual, thanks to Compass's life total being constantly pushed up out of reach of Alice's aggressive attacks. But then, just as Alice's hand ran empty, Compass started their turn 6 with three cards in hand... and passed.

Alice, having learned from Rose to fear cards like Settle the Wreckage, made a safer, low-commitment attack to whittle down Compass's life total. Compass let it through, and started their next turn with only 5 life left. They play a land, and pay 6 mana to play a big flashy Nykthos Paragon!.. then sigh and pass the turn, knowing they've already lost.

"... Huh. Okay, yeah, attack with everything for lethal. GG, that was a lot better than last time."

"Thanks. If I just had one more turn, I would've been able to survive..."

"Speaking of, what was left in your hand?"

"Well..." Compass reveals their last 2 cards: 2 more copies of Nykthos Paragon.

"Oof, that's unlucky."

"Yeah. It would've won me the game, but your deck is just too fast... Wait, that's it! Rose, let me play against your control deck!"

During the next game, Compass sets up their creatures to prepare their plan, but removal and counterspells from Rose hinders them and stalls out the game. But on turn 6, Compass plays their Nykthos Paragon!

Then Rose Murders it on the very next turn.

The rest of the game is a slow grind as Rose sets her plan into motion, until eventually she has 5 cards in hand while Compass has none, and they concede.

"I just don't get it, my deck did so well in testing. Why didn't it finally work..?"

"Here, let me take a look," Rose says.

Then, with Compass's deck spread out on the table before them, Alice and Rose exchange a glance before turning toward Compass. "You're too optimistic."

"What?"

Alice points to the 8 high-cost cards the deck runs. "These right here. These cards work really well with your lifegain plan, but they're too slow, and running so many copies of them clogs up your hand. That's why you ran out of steam against my aggro deck. Well, that plus the fact that you don't have any removal to defend yourself. You need more blockers and removal, or else your opponent can just kill you before you get going."

"But then why couldn't I beat Rose's deck?"

"Because of your protection spells and backup plan," Rose says.

"I... don't have either of those?"

"Exactly. Your deck relies entirely on these big spells to make everything work. If the opponent, for example, casts a removal spell on one, the plan falls apart. You need to make sure your strategy is robust, by either protecting your key cards or having backup plans. Some card draw or other value-generating cards would also help you keep up the pressure in the late game. You were testing alone, right?"

"Yeah..."

"That's why your deck worked so well in testing. There was no opponent interfering with your plan, and you didn't have to defend yourself against your opponent's plan."

"So I need to counter my opponent... But, protection and card draw wouldn't help against Alice's aggro deck. And blockers wouldn't help against your control deck. It seems like I'll always have some of my cards be useless if I build my deck like that..."

Alice shrugs. "Just don't draw the cards that are bad in the matchup."

"That's... not how drawing cards works."

"Skill issue."

Rose slaps them. "Stop it, you're confusing them. But Compass, you're right, trying to counter both aggressive decks and control decks at the same time is futile. Your deck is in an awkward midpoint between fast and slow, so you should commit to being either one or the other."

"But... Hmm... Well, for now, can I borrow one of your decks again?"

The rest of the session was much more back-and-forth, with Compass's skill shining through when they wield a well-built deck. They also play their lifegain deck against the others' weaker and more gimmicky decks, either winning gloriously when their plan comes together uninterrupted, or failing miserably when their key creature gets removed or their hand gets clogged with expensive cards.

Later that day, Compass lays out their deck and the available cards. They manage to build two versions of the deck, one that can defend itself against aggression, and one that can remain robust against control, but they can't do both at the same time. If they build an aggro deck of their own, then they can just focus on countering control, and vice versa, but they like their deck's speed as it is. They read through the deckbuilding section of the rulebook, hoping to find some advice...

The next day, Alice enters the base to find Compass reading a book, waiting for them. "Hey, Thorn! I upgraded my deck again, and I want to try a proper best of 3 match against your aggro deck."

"'Proper'? What, have we been playing the game wrong the whole time?"

"Yeah!"

"Huh. Sure, alright." Alice shuffles up their deck. "So, did you settle on aggro or control?"

"Actually, I looked it up, and my deck's style is called midrange."

"Oh, you're still going with that? I though it was impossible to counter both aggro and control."

"It is!"

"... Okay..."

The first game is a tough back and forth, the closest game between their decks so far. With some decent blockers and a few cheap removal spells, Compass holds off Alice's assault... for a while. Eventually, Alice manages to make one last push past the blockers and finish Compass off.

"Wow, okay, you really almost won that time. But those cards left in your hand..."

Compass reveals their remaining cards, a Nykthos Paragon and a pair of protection spells. "Yeah, I drew some bad cards."

"Dang. You really can't counter both. Hope you can draw better cards in game 2."

Compass nods. "I will."

Rose walks in to find Alice scooping up their cards in defeat. "Oh wow. What happened here?"

"Compass made a deck that counters both aggro and control."

"Oh. And they managed to not draw the wrong cards this game?"

"Two games in a row, actually! I just lost the best of 3."

Compass nods. "I learned how to draw the right cards!"

"You... That's not how drawing cards works."

Compass giggles. "Want to play a match? I want to see if it works on control too."

"Alright, I'm curious to see if this actually works."

The game starts off badly for Rose; she drew too many lands, but at least Compass's defensive cards and blockers couldn't put much pressure on her, and she even had a counterspell for when Compass played their paragon. But on their next turn, they draw a Griffin Aerie, and the steady stream of griffins it creates gradually overwhelms Rose. Rose accepts the loss in stride, counting on better luck in the next game; Compass's deck has all those cards intended to counter aggro, after all. But as she shuffles her deck to prepare for game 2-

"Whoa whoa whoa, what are you doing Compass?" Alice asks. During their match, Alice had been too busy shuffling their deck to notice, but now they catch Compass swapping out cards from their deck with ones from a small separate pile.

"I'm sideboarding."

"What?"

"In a best of 3 match, you're allowed to swap cards from your deck with cards from a 15 card sideboard. So I'm taking out my defensive cards and putting in more protection and value."

"You mean... You learned how to draw cards better!?"

"Yup! Now I won't have any useless cards in my deck. I don't have to counter aggro and control at the same time!"

"Interesting..." Rose says. "And here I thought your devotion to following rules was a weakness."

"Rules exist for a reason. Everyone knows that."

"Alright then..." Rose grabs some cards from her deck box, not a true sideboard but just a handful of leftover cards that she had been considering for her deck. "Proper rules it is."

#my writing #rtr short

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turn-1-sol-ring · 1 year

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First Contact: My DeckTechs

Hello Reader (Presumably, anyway). If you got here, you most likely enjoy Magic: The Gathering, and specifically EDH/Commander.

I love talking about Magic. I love playing Magic (Less these days, but any parent of young children will understand, I'm sure). I have a Magic-shaped hole in my life. And, as I'm sure someone once said: If you can't do something, might as well write about it.

Today, I want to talk about my Commander decks, but there is a lot of them. In the Spirit of the 32 Challenge, I'll start at the beginning: White.

The genesis of my White EDH deck starts, funnily enough, with a Red deck. The 2014 Red Preconstructed, Daretti-led Built From Scratch deck. My first introduction to Artifact decks, I quickly, despite the power of the commander, changed the helm with something I was more familliar with: Burn, through the power of Pia and Kiraan Nalaar.

This created a deck where Goblin Wielder, Mycosynth Lattice and Furnace of Rath all worked in harmony to either generate overwhelming value, or dome your opponents to death. I kept that deck for many years, until the release of the Adventure in the Forgotten Realms Set. See, far too often did I suffer the commonplace issue of "Drawing the wrong half of the deck", and mixing the artifact Sacrifice Fodder with the aggressive robots and burn caused too many non-competitive games. Then I saw him, with his Mutton Chops, low Mana cost, and type line not unlike some of my own DnD characters. It was time to split my Pia and Kiraan Nalaar deck in half, one going to the world of Boros, which we'll talk about another day, and the Value-generating, Sacrifice-worthy half landing in White, under the guidance of Oswald Fiddlebender.

Story time over, let's jump into the deck.

Oswald Fiddlebender is, essentially, a Birthing Pod for Artifacts. It means that, for our deck, our curve is essential to ensure we get plenty of value to go up our artifact ladder (Something I failed because there is way too many cool artifacts at MV 4). Let's discuss the play patterns of the deck, the paths to victory, and what might make you enjoy this type of decks.

First of all, Oswald is an Enabler-type commander. You will often play him on turn 2 (Maybe on turn 1 if you have that kind of budget) except in Removal-Heavy pods, and many of your cards are heavily enhanced by having him around. A lot of the low-MV artifacts generate value when coming or going, such as Ichor Wellspring and Prized Treasure, so we can get some things out of going up the chain.

From MV 3 to 5, we're mostly looking at value engines and combo pieces, and over that, we're going for either haymakers and win-conditions, or just Value if we don't find an artifact in that MV slot that fulfills that purpose.

For our Win Conditions, this deck primarily functions as a Combo deck. We have a few ways to get there, so let's look at those.

One of the most straightforward, and least likely to happen, is Darksteel Reactor.

Just wait 20 turns and win. Easy, obviously. In all seriousness, we have a few options that plan on stalling the game as long as possible, and Contagion Engine as our main way to proliferate. It's expensive and clunky, but that's kind of the point of the deck, in a sense.

Most of our other win conditions are tied to Krark-Clan Ironworks, a staple of artifact-centric combo decks.

One of the easiest combo to achieve is, using our Commander'a ability, Myr Retriever > Junk Diver > Krark-Clan Ironworks. While this, by itself, is not a combo yet, this sets up multitude of way to achieve infinite mana with cards like Cloud Key, Semblance Anvil or Slagstone Refinery. You can then use that infinite mana to win in a couple ways, like blowing up the board with infinite castings of Spine of Ish Sah, Darksteel Forge + Nevinyrral's Disk + Mycosynth Lattice, or using your infinite sacrifice loop for a infinite tokens with Summoner's Station or infinitely big dork with Daring Archeologist.

Another Combo-y path is Untappers and Ability doublers for our Fiddlebender. While I don't have Rings of Brightheart in the deck, it would feel right at home here. Using cards like Illusionist's Bracers to double our artifact yield, and untappers like Umbral Mantle and Thousand-Year Elixir to more rapidly progress through our artifact ladder will provide more explosive turns and faster combos. Knoe, however, that the deck can struggle to produce the colored mana necessary for those explosive turns, so focus on Mana Rocks that produce colored mana

Now, my version of the deck is not optimal. There is plenty of cards that would work great in that deck, so let's list a few of my favorite ones.

Mishra's Self-Replicator is another win condition for when we reach infinite mana, and by providing expendable copies of a 5-mana artifact, it allows us to easily reach the top of oir artifact curve through Oswald.

Rings of Brighthearth is a powerful combo enabler, is easily tutorable by our wide selection of 2-drop artifacts, and allows us to spend more colorless mana for more artifacts.

Portal to Phyrexia is a pretty hot addition to our top line, currently dominated by Darksteel Forge.

Since we already have Summoner's Station in the deck, we could go full theme and grab Grinding Station, Salvaging Station, and Blasting Station to have the full combo and win with style.

Altar of the Brood is an innocious addition that would provide us with possibly the cheapest path to victory, mana wise.

If you hate everyone at your table, Possessed Portal is a card that will make that abundantly clear (Fun Fact: It is my understanding that you can still Dredge with this card in play. Do with that information what you will).

That's mostly it for my little tour of my Mono-white Artifact Sacrifice deck, helmed by Oswald Fiddlebender. Hopefully, this will make you interested in trying the deck! I will return with another installement with my next deck in WUBRG order, skipping Blue, and going to monoblack from a Universe Beyond, thanks to The Mind Flayer.

#mtg #mtg commander #mtg edh #Oswald Fiddlebender

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senstless · 1 year

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Splinterlands Monster Highlights - Xenith Monk powered up by 4 Martyr!

Featuring Bronze League Summoner and Monsters in Action!

Very excited to share this battle with you. When I set this lineup up before the game I was excited with the idea and possibility of adding rebirth with Marta cards and trying to super boost one card as much as possible. This is a great example of how powerful a regular common card can become if it receives a four martyr boost.

Weekly Highlight -XENITH MONK

Born Again

All units receive the Rebirth ability which allows them to self resurrect once.

Edition: CHAOS LEGION Rarity: RARE Element: NEUTRAL Attack: MELEE Abilities: HEAL Abilities" Health: 6 Speed: 3 Attack: 1 Armor:

Reasons Why I like it.

I like Xenith Monk because it has a decent three speed to start as a baseline of level 2, along with healing. This is fairly rare for a lower mana card only costing for mana. It's downfalls are it only does one damage, and it only has six health to which heal from. This means it will get maybe to hell her heel and is usually eliminated by a high attack card. But this gives a great baseline for what the card can turn into if it gets a few boosts along the way.

The Born again rule set is nice because it gives every month to rebirth. This means cards with martyr are born again to provide yet another boost, monsters with high void armor are brought back and given a chance to be healed by a tank killer, cards with self heal I brought back and have a chance to protect themselves. Overall it's a very unique rule set that can change dynamic quite a bit.

The Matchup - Where Rules Sets, Splinters and Mana Collide

The Rule Sets

Watch the Match Here

MANA: 34

Ruleset: Born Again: All Monsters have the Rebirth ability.

Ruleset: Little League: Only monsters and summoners which have a mana cost of 4 or less may be used.

SPLINTERS: Fire, Water, Earth, Life,

Initial Rule Set and Mana Gameplay Thoughts

Rulesets Obviously I think cards with martyr will be heavily used to provide multiple boosts to the big hitters.

The other issue is that it's a little league match meaning only smaller cards can be used. The bonus is that you can use one or two mortar cards, but the cards they'll be boosting are not the traditional heavy hitter self healing cards

Mana 44 mana almost doesn't matter since this is a little league game and we can only use carts with four men are less.

Splinters

I don't see too much of an issue by losing dragon and death here, they're not my favorite Little League splinters. Death can be a solid choice from time to time but I typically favor Earth or fire more often.

Summoner MYLOR I had it rented for some brawl usage and it's exceptionally useful. It provides another bonus in games like little league where so many cards have such few health to start with receiving additional Thorn damage can be devastating

First Position HILL GIANT My favorite three minute card on the earth team. It just provides so much health to get through for only three mana. It does have a two attack but the big bonus for me is having seven health

Second Position GOBLIN THIEF Not a bad choice for little league, while it's health is low it has a two melee sneak attack and two speed.

Third Position VENARI MARKSRAT Clearly playing this for the Martyr boost. When it's knocked out and brought back it will provide two Martyrs to the cards closest to it

Fourth Position XENITH MONK A bit strange to be in the middle of your lineup, but I'm truly hoping that it gets attacked from both ends and ends up being boosted four times by my cards

Fifth Position FUNGUS FLINGER Yet another martyr here, just praying there is a sneak attack to take it out and that it gives the boost to monk before monk dies

Sixth Position QUEEN MYCELIA Usually not the place I would play it, I wanted to be attacked and I first so that when it's resurrected it reapplies a armor to every monster. This will help my thorns give extra damage if they're using a lot of money

Opponent Lineup & Match Play

Summoner KEYLA FRENDUL Solid play, the extra speed and armor boost are always welcome in Little League games

CRUEL SETHROPOD One of my two go to cards for tank position in little league. It's high armor and decent health make it a solid choice

TIDE BITE It's speed plus to melee attack make it a great choice for second position with reach. Between the tank and the second card you're now dealing for melee damage to start around.

VENARI MARKSRAT Not surprised, we're all going to be playing Marta cards in this rule set.

MUSA SALINE Interesting choice here, but scavenger will be extra powerful in a rule set that has rebirth and reborn. Every time a monster dies over and over again it gets to add lots of health.

PELACOR BANDIT Another great choice. Level 4 boosts it to four-speed into melee on it's a sneak attack high speed and flying make it devastating.

URAEUS Another great sneak attack card choice. They'll be doing a lot of damage to my cards.

Round 1

Before the round starts I'm quite happy I picked mylar for the thorn damage as they are heavy melee and it will definitely help me. It's just a question of whether or not I will have enough power to survive their attacks.

Has round one starts off and progresses everyone is dealing and taking a lot of damage. I do score the first knockout of Ureas for the first time. Other than that I think it's mostly uneventful

Round 2

Round two starts off in much the same way. Queen micilla gets knocked out but as a bonus comes back and reapplies armor to itself and help giant. It is uneventful for Hill giant but it does die on an extern via magic attack. But as we know rebirth brings it back and reapplies those same two armor. As round two plays out we're both going to end up losing cards. I lose Hill giant. Quickly followed by knocking out sethropod for the first time, before the round ends.

Round 3

Round three gets interesting as I start off by knocking out tide biter for the first time, then quickly losing Queen Mycelia. The thing that I have noticed now is that Musa saline is up to 11 health already and that's a little concerning. Before the round ends I knock out Ureas and cruel sethropodfor the final time and lose goblin thief.

Round 4

Ground floor starts off and things don't look great on paper. They have four monsters left, one with 15 health, and I'm down to a couple of monsters all of which are going to get devastated quickly. But this is where the magic starts to happen. Markscrat gets knocked out and reborn providing a quick boost to zenith monk. I then have fungus flinger knocked out providing another boost to the Monk, before Markscrat it's knocked out for the second time providing the third boost to the Monk. The Monk is now boosted quite heavily and has four melee damage, 6 speed and 8 health. It's becoming a devastating monster.

Round 5

Things are looking a bit better for me. I knock out tied biter to start the round before fungus flinger is quickly knocked out giving me my fourth and final boost to the monk. It now has five damage, seven speed, and 10 health. While my opponent still has two cards, I have a self-healing fast damage Wheeling Monk

Round 6

Things are looking interesting, not much happens in round 6 other than a little bit of armor reduction and moving on to around 7:00

Round 7

In around 7:00 it dawns on me that they're only dealing one damage at this point and I can heal one damage, and I can heal two damage from 10 health. This means I've already won the game even though Musa has 21 health. After knocking out Mark Scranton

Round 8

Round 9

Even after the second boost in route 9 and it gets three magic damage I can heal three magic damage every round with the base of 10 health. It's now just a matter of time before I wear them down and knock them out. Who would have thought that monk could be so powerful.

Round 10

Round 11

Round 12

Round 13

Round 14

Round 15

Man do I love quad boosting this monk, it is an absolute self-healing reckoning machine. It would be hard to hit for a lot of melee and arrow monsters, but it also is impressive to be dealing out five damage.

Thoughts

I definitely think I will try to quad boost monk any chance I get. Well this is going to be hard to do due to needing the perfect rule set and splinter lineups, I think that it can lead to an impressive show of power and elimination especially considering this was a little league match. I feel like I played about the perfect lineup given all the real sets and options and would love to do it again. In fact I may have to go out and run to myself Mylor at the start of next season just to help me get through some of those matches.

~~@senstless

#splinterlands #play2earn #playtoearn #nft #gaming

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canadaterri · 2 years

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Dungeons of dredmor mods steam

Dungeons of dredmor mods steam free#

Accumulate lockpicks since you now only need them for chests. I keep a stack topped up at about 25 for chests, and another stack with the overflow to be turned into lutefisk on the lower levels.

Use all this experience to keep abreast of the difficulty.

Turn all locked chests into a source of experience and loot rather than obstacles and frustration.

Turn all locked doors into a source of experience rather than noise and damage.

Keeping your burglary skill up to keep your traps affinity (and traps sight radius) ahead of most traps, turning them into a source of experience and money rather than death.

Once you have a good melee weapon (say, a spear), you can activate Asp. You’ll be taking on most isolated monsters using melee for a while, and Narco will stop being as important. You start with it. Normally, starting with this build would be rough as you have no melee weapon and only so many wooden bolts. So don’t activate the Asp Glyph right away, and make Narco your primary weapon early on. It costs little mana, you can spam it, and it’s great at kiting. Take the skills in the following order: Narcosomatic induction With this build, your priorities are mana regen, spell power, life, life regen, trap affinity – in *roughly* that order. The rainbow graffitis allow you to access Wizardlands, which are mini-dungeons. Monsters are generally easy there. Just don’t pull any lever (unlike with the real dungeon) if you have a choice, and be aware that some (properly labelled) traps can be of much higher level than in the real dungeon. Don’t monkey with them. Learn the innumerable icons – this is the main UI issue. Whenever you pick an item, look up the icons on your character sheet to understand what they are. Also spot the difference between damage boosts and resistance boosts. The latter have the same icon, but with more rounded edges. The low-end drinks can be kept in a stack to be turned into lutefisk later on. This is done using the horadric cube, which normally drops on level 1 (sometimes 2) of the dungeon. If it doesn’t keep an eye on crafts vending machines.

Dungeons of dredmor mods steam free#

You can slam some doors shut when chased by something that’s too big for you and need to recover for a while before you resume chipping at their health. You can also use traps you disarmed and picked up. In both cases you’ll need to have a free space between you and the monsters though.īolas might also work, as well as some wands creating obstacles or pushback. Special-purpose consumables such as potions of purity.Potions and wands that are components for bolts (check the DoD sites).Cheese and bread to make omelets and sandwiches in the ingots machine.Powders and the like (salt, brimstone, gunpowder, salpeter…).Tinkering parts (mechanisms, stems, wires, pressure plates…).Ingots (and ores that you’ve turned into ingots).Keep stashes of tinkering equipment in your pocket dimension (you will find the relevant gadget on level 1 of the dungeon). Such as : So at any point you may run into an unfairly deadly, randomly generated predicament. Proceed cautiously, especially if your Trap Sight Radius is low.ĭon’t forget to burglarize all vending machines. Since you’re not much of a melee person, make sure to always attack first by letting the monsters close in. Keep in mind that this is not DooM but a roguelike. You can use any melee weapon. You don’t have melee skills anyway so they all get the same lack of bonuses. But early on go for max damage per blow. You absolutely want to kill quickly, because you can’t take much damage.

#Dungeons of dredmor mods steam

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theothin · 2 years

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MTG Math: Dealing massive finite damage with 10 cards on turn 1

MTG can hit some pretty big numbers. There are a lot of ways to create infinite loops, as well as ways to hit strikingly large non-infinite numbers.

Perhaps the best-known example of the latter is the Turn 1 megacombo posted in 2015. Using 60 carefully chosen cards, it sets up a complicated chain of token generation that spirals out into unimaginably huge numbers, while avoiding unbounded loops to keep the achievable damage finite.

Following some recent discussions about it, I decided to try my hand at something a bit more compact, to see what we could accomplish with a smaller number of cards. In particular, I wanted to try avoiding some elements I've seen objections to: the inclusion of Omniscience, and the use of "nearly infinite" loops that only fall short of infinite due to unusual downsides some of the cards were specifically selected for. Personally, I've never been bothered by those things, but it got me thinking about ways to deal massive damage on turn 1 that wouldn't use them.

This strategy uses 10 cards, the smallest number I've found that can reach the scale I'm looking for. 10 in the starting hand, plus a 3 card library - or the top three cards of our library, if we assume there's a full deck under it. Both Omniscience and the "nearly infinite" loops are absent - with such a small number of cards, I'm not even sure how viable it would be to use those effectively in the first place. Here, our cards go from library to hand, hand to battlefield, hand to graveyard, battlefield to graveyard, and graveyard to exile, never reversing direction. But they'll be doing some pretty wild things as they go.

The overall goals are still the same: we're working with a Vintage-legal card pool (updated with another 7 years' worth of cards), and assuming that we draw our perfect hand, aiming to have the maximum possible turn 1 damage be huge but finite. We're not going to get numbers quite as high as the 2015 megacombo, but it should be a bit easier to follow and still deal some pretty enormous amounts of damage. In particular, we'll be taking some inspiration from this recent "3 cards + unlimited mana" strategy, but going a bit bigger.

That all said, let's begin!

---

Step 1: Black Lotus + Channel + Chromatic Orrey

We play Black Lotus for free, sacrifice it for three green mana, and spend two of it to play Channel. A classic start for doing ridiculous stuff. We'll be leaning heavily on Channel to convert life to mana, but it's all colorless, so we use our remaining mana and 6 life to play Chromatic Orrey and allow us to use the colorless mana to pay any mana costs.

This puts us at 14 life, 4 cards in hand, and 3 cards in our library.

---

Step 2: Devilish Valet + Verdant Sun's Avatar + Djinn Illuminatus + Cackling Counterpart

Now we use that life to cast the remaining cards in our hand. Devilish Valet doubles its power every time another creature enters the battlefield, which will be key for racking up our numbers. Verdant Sun's Avatar, meanwhile, gives us life equal to the toughness of each creature that enters, which we'll be feeding into Channel. Casting those two costs 10 life, then the Avatar immediately gives us 5 back, putting us at 9. We spend 7 on Djinn Illuminatus and gain 5, putting us at 7.

We're getting low on life, but Cackling Counterpart can increase our lifegain rate by copying the Avatar. Meanwhile, since it's an instant, Djinn Illuminatus gives it replicate, letting us duplicate it by paying its cost repeatedly. It costs 3, so we can afford to cast it twice, getting two more Avatars. Each one triggers all of our Avatars, so the first gives us 10 life and the second gives 15. (The replication window is at the point when we cast the original spell, so we can't just turn that additional life into more duplicates.)

We now have creatures of three colors (red, green, and blue), so with our hand empty, we can now use the Orrey to draw our last three cards. This costs 5 life, putting us at 21.

---

Step 3: Elemental Mastery + Coercive Recruiter

We pay 4 life to put Elemental Mastery on Devilish Valet, allowing it to tap to make Elemental tokens equal to its power. Then we pay another 5 to play Coercive Recruiter, which lets us untap a creature every time it or another pirate enters the battlefield. We'll point the Recruiter's trigger at the Valet, but while it's on the stack, we've got something else to take care of.

Since playing the Valet, five more creatures have entered the battlefield: three Avatars, a Djinn, and a Recruiter. This lets us double its power five times, to 32. We'll have the doubling trigger resolve first, then tap the Valet to make 32 tokens. This causes the Valet's power to double another 32 times, to 137,438,953,472.

At this point, the Recruiter's trigger resolves, untapping the Valet. We could attack for 137 billion damage and win the game instantly, but we're aiming higher than that. Instead, we tap the Valet a second time, making 137 billion more tokens and doubling its power another 137 billion times. This takes us out of the territory of numbers Wolfram Alpha will let me calculate, but what I can say is that the Valet's power is now billions of digits long. (For comparison, the number of elementary particles in the universe is less than 100 digits long.)

Meanwhile, between those two rounds of tokens and the Recruiter, our trio of Avatars has gained us a ton of life, putting us currently over 412 billion. Which is good, because we're just getting started.

---

Step 4: Djinn Illuminatus and Cackling Counterpart (again)

These two first showed up in step 2, but now it's time to see what they're really capable of.

Cackling Counterpart has flashback, so we can play it one more time from our graveyard. Djinn Illuminatus's replicate effect stacks with flashback, and while the flashback costs 7, the copies go by Counterpart's base cost of 3. So by sinking as much of our 412 billion life as possible into Counterpart, we can copy Counterpart 137 billion times, and use them all to clone Coercive Recruiter.

Every time we get a new Recruiter, all of our Recruiters trigger, letting us untap and re-tap Devilish Valet that many times. Considering that we got this far by tapping the Valet just twice, even describing the numbers in terms of how many digits they have isn't going to keep working. Like with the 2015 megacombo, we'll turn to Knuth arrows.

Tapping a Valet with power N doubles its power N times, which means multiplying it by 2^N. Multiplication is getting insignificant at this scale, so we can pretty much represent the Valet's current power as 2^2^32. 32 is a bit more than 2^2^2, so we can approximate this as 2^2^2^2^2. Repeated exponentiation is also known as tetration or superexponentiation, which Knuth arrows let us show by increasing the number of arrows. So five 2s stacked like this become 2^^5. Which is a bit of an underestimate, since 2^^5 only has 19,729 digits. But 2^^6 has 10^19,727 digits, and we're not there yet. That is, not until we tap the Valet for the third time.

Making 137 billion Recruiters gives us about 0.5*(137 billion)^2 untap triggers, which works out to a bit over 9 sextillion. Tapping the Valet 9 sextillion times puts our (lowball) estimate for its power at 2^^(9 sextillion). This also means that we've created about 2^^(9 sextillion) Elemental tokens, and gained about 2^^(9 sextillion) life from our Avatars.

This sets us up perfectly for our final card.

---

Step 5: Parallel Evolution

Parallel Evolution doubles all of our tokens - the 137 billion Recruiters we just made, the two Avatars from the first time we used Cackling Counterpart, and also the absurd number of basic elementals our Valet has made. And it's a sorcery, so like with Counterpart, we can replicate it. To double our tokens 2^^(9 sextillion) times.

To be honest, I don't actually know enough about numbers this large to have a good idea of how to represent them. I think it might involve further increasing the number of Knuth arrows, but I'm not even certain of that much.

Once the last of the copies resolve, we have about 2^2^^(9 sextillion) Avatars, about 137 billion times that many Recruiters (like all multiplication, pretty much insignificant at this scale), and the Valet has untapped an unfathomable number of times to raise its power to even more unfathomable numbers and spitting out that many elementals each time. Also, each of our tokens trigger all of our Avatars, raising our life to absurd heights.

The enormous amount of lifegain has one more chance to be significant, because Parallel Evolution also has flashback.

Our initial volley of 2^^(9 sextillion) copies of Parallel Evolution is nothing compared to the number of times we can copy it now. Again, I literally don't know enough math to even know which notation to use to keep describing this. (If you do know, please tell me.)

Whatever the numbers are, eventually the dust settles. We're left with a ridiculously huge Valet and its enormous army of elementals to swing with, far beyond any conventional definition of overkill.

As enormous as these numbers are, they're still nowhere near the ones achieved in the 2015 megacombo, let alone the more recent revisions. The 2015 megacombo's final damage count has 408 Knuth arrows compared to the handful here, and even after several attempts, I still can't fully wrap my head around half the things it does. In comparison, this is more of a tame, straightforward counterpart - but still plenty ridiculous in its own right!

I don't know if anyone has posted better strategies for this or similar conditions, but if you've seen any, let me know. Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoyed it!

#mtg #math

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samueldays · 3 years

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SR5: wagemage services

The fluff for Shadowrun frequently mentions "wage mages" (mildly derogatory), but I didn't find any crunch on what it costs to buy the services of such NPCs. So I decided to improvise some houserules which I might use in a later game for PCs who want access to magical buffs without needing to have a mage in the party.

A wagemage is generally willing to sustain the spell for 12 hours after casting. Assume the runners have paid a mage who works the appropriate shift - if they're having spells cast on them before going on a night run, they know not to hire a mage who will go to sleep during the run. No refunds will be provided if the runner is foolish enough to walk through a mana barrier or otherwise lose the spell while on a shadowrun.

Inspired by the classics, the base price for getting a sustained buff cast on you is (Hits * 100 nuyen) + (Hits^2 * 20 nuyen). The first part represents the mage's time and capex, while the second part represents the mage's opex. See Table 1-1 for common values.

Not all spells are equal. Many health spells are respectable and publicly advertised, whereas a mage sustaining an invisibility spell on a client risks getting interrogated if Lone Star notices. Apply the relevant multipliers in Table 1-2 to the base price.

Table 1-1: Base spell costs by hits

1 Hit: 120 nuyen 2 Hits: 280 3 Hits: 480 4 Hits: 720 5 Hits: 1000 6 Hits: 1320 7 Hits: 1680 8 Hits: 2080 9 Hits: 2520 10 Hits: 3000

Table 1-2: Spell cost modifiers

Antidote, Cure Disease, Detox, Oxygenate, Prophylaxis, Resist Pain: x0.3 Increase [Attribute], Increase Reflexes: x1.5 Other Health spells: x0.5 Illusion spells: x1.5 Active Detection spells: x1.2 Mage is using Long Haul and will sustain spell for two days: x2

Long rambling comments below the cut.

Antidote and Cure Disease don't work that way as written, but I strongly feel they should work more like Oxygenate and Prophylaxis in providing a sustained boost to resistance rolls, rather than having to be cast after the subject is poisoned, and I'll treat them that way since I'm making up houserules here anyway. That group of spells also have very low Drain codes, making them safe and cheap and you can mostly skip reagents.

Only corebook spells are listed in the table. Splatbook spells should be grouped the same way: Alleviate Allergy is cheap like Antidote, Growth is expensive like Increase [Attribute].

These prices are not playtested, I've only been doing theorycraft, so it's hard for me to tell if spellcasting services are too cheap or too expensive here. One of my reference points in trying to balance this was Shadowrun's drugs. (Future Cyberdrugs.) In particular, Cram, which gives +1 Reaction and +1d6 Initiative for a duration of hours, the entry-level combat drug for the cyberpunk future. Cram is cheap as hell at 10 nuyen per dose, but Cram is also addictive, and when it wears off the user takes 6 stun damage from the crash. Its big brother is Kamikaze: works faster, lasts shorter, +2d6 initiative, more stat boosts, more addictive, 100 nuyen a dose. Having a wagemage cast Increase Reflexes on you is vastly superior mechanically, so it's priced at 420 nuyen for +2+1d6 initiative and going up from there: well above drugs, still far below the permanence of Wired Reflexes.

8 Hits of Increase Reflexes will max out your iniative dice and give another +8 flat initiative, guaranteeing you three passes and often four, going first against almost anything other than a wired-up street sam. 8 Hits of Increase Reflex is also a hefty 3120 nuyen: a cost that would usually eat up a lot of your run profits, unless the Johnson is offering an unreasonable amount of money for an unreasonably dangerous run. In the long term you're probably better off with permanent initiative-enhancing cyberware or learning the spell yourself and getting a sustaining focus, depending on whether you're a mage.

Moving from relative to absolute balance, Shadowrun 5e is pretty sensible about capping characters at 5d6 initiative dice and +4 Augmented Attribute Maximum, regardless of sources, which prevents a lot of possible stacking shenanigans. Antidote, Oxygenate, etc. are uncapped but I'm fairly confident it won't break anything to add lots of expensive dice to your rolls to resist poison/disease/suffocation/etc. Invisibility can be resisted and shows up on astral perception ("detect magic" is an at-will mage skill, for those of you coming from D&D) so I figure it won't trivialize runs unless the target site had no mages on staff and you put a lot of money into making the spell difficult to resist, in which case, congratulations, enjoy the hard-earned results of your legwork and paying for a one-use specialized counter. Armor spell stacks with physical armor, but that's still dice and chance, and tanking doesn't win fights on its own.

Still, the GM may want to limit how many hits are available so that starting characters aren't renting ridiculous amounts of magic. Hooking into the Contacts rules is one approach: a wagemage contact can provide up to (Connection) hits on spellcasting, and long-term contacts may offer a (Loyalty*10%) discount. Treating spellcasting services as goods with an Availability of (Hits*2)R is another. Otherwise, buying magical services might be handled through the fixer.

The reason why exactly *20 in the cost formula is that one dram of reagents - the opex - costs 20 nuyen, and I imagine the wage mage is casting at Force 1 and using reagents to raise the limit for safety. (If he were doing frequent unsafe casting he wouldn't be a wagemage.) Then he needs to cast multiple times to roll well enough to get that many hits.

The table stops at 10 hits because that's what's reasonably feasible for a high-end mage with Magic 6, Spellcasting 10, Specialization 2, Power Focus 2 and ten tries to get those 20 dice to turn up 10 successes, without getting into superhuman stats or ludicrous gear. It doesn't have to end there - but think about who is selling more magical power than that. Perhaps the runners are dealing with a dragon in disguise, whether for some complicated draconic plot, or simply because the dragon is funding their current run and thinks it's funny to recoup thousands of nuyen from the runners' pay.

Most Detection spells are valid to get as a service, since they give the subject a new sense, not necessarily the caster. Keep in mind that Active Detection spells can be resisted with opposed tests.

Quickening metamagic: LA LA LA I CAN'T HEAR YOU

#all #rpg #shadowrun #houserules

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radramblog · 3 years

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Planeswalkers in Cube: Green

Another week, another set of walkers. I’m kind of undecided whether I should cheekily slot in hot takes about the new ones spoiled in Crimson Vow, but I’ll give it a bit for opinions to settle. Chandra and Sorin are both looking fine though.

Instead of those well-dressed individuals, we’re going to take a look at a bunch of nature nerds. Those fellas don’t clean up quite as well, I think.

Garruk Wildspeaker

Garruk is kind of the only one of the Lorwyn 5 to actually hold up after 14 years. In fact, not only does he hold up, he’s actively really good. Garruk has a disgustingly efficient token producing -1, is great at ramping (with untapping two lands often being enough to cast a creature to protect him with), and the ultimate, while not game breaking, is usually enough to close out a game with a good green curve, or to break a boardstall if needed. There…isn’t really a deck that Garruk isn’t good against.

And, frankly, he’s just really good in a lot of decks as well. Aggro loves the tokens or the overrun, slower decks love the ramping and tokens, and it goes great in a green Wildfires build. He’s genuinely an excellent planeswalker, and he’s lean enough that he’s still more than playable in unpowered cubes even today.

Nissa Revane

Unlike Garruk 1, Nissa 1 is very much a swing and a miss. Even if we assume you get a Nissa’s Chosen when you pick her in draft (because if you don’t, she’s awful), she’s a 4 mana walker that can at most make a single 2/3 at a time, that has 2 starting loyalty, and while she does nothing but uptick towards her ultimate it’s extremely unlikely that the ultimate wins the game and it’s really fucking slow. She…doesn’t do anything, basically. Don’t play her, even in a Tribal cube with Elves.

Garruk, Primal Hunter

He’s 1 more mana, and unfortunately, a fair bit less versatile. 3 loyalty is awkward for a 5-mana walker, especially since it means you can’t use the -3 when you play him without killing him off (and Collective Unconscious isn’t a cubeable card), not to mention the triple G cost makes it harder to play in less dedicated green decks. Granted, this might not be an issue, since most good mana dorks make G anyway, and the +1 is obviously fairly strong.

My main issue with Garruk, Primal Hunter is that for an extra mana you get a card that is kind of just going to play worse than Wildspeaker. If you want 3/3 tokens, Wildspeaker can still make 3 before he dies (and you can keep him around longer), and he has another ability you can be using across the time. The main upsides I think are the ability to draw, which is something ramp wants a lot (so that you’re less likely to miss your big threats), and the fact that he’s real cheap owing to a couple recent Commander precon reprints. Not going to act like he’s unplayable, but I wouldn’t really recommend him.

Garruk Relentless // Garruk, the Veil-Cursed

This iteration is real spicy. Either side can start producing a token army from T4 on, and while it loses some traditional green abilities it gains a lot of really interesting effects the colour doesn’t typically get so easily. The ability to have your walker pick off an opponent’s small creature is not especially common in this colour, and his backside lets ramp (or midrange) decks convert outmoded mana dorks directly into real threats- or just win the game with the -3.

Flippy Garruk is notably quite weak to removal via combat or burn spells, but it’s a fair weakness to have. His numbers are low, but that includes the negative ones! And if you do have a board advantage, he’s great at making sure you don’t stop having that advantage anytime soon. Just a couple words of advice: Don’t get the From the Vault version (it looks like shit and it’s more expensive), and good luck finding the deathtouch wolf tokens. Took me a long time, they’re always bloody out of stock.

Garruk, Caller of Beasts

This guy’s kind of a classic in my eyes, being the Garruk What Was Out When I First Played, but unfortunately, I don’t think he’s great in cube. 6 mana means only slow midrange decks and ramp decks are going to want him, and he has a real tough time protecting himself- if you want to have him -3, then he goes to 1 loyalty, and the only Green creature that’s protecting his ass well then is Hornet Queen (or Terastodon, if you blow your own lands up). The +1 is probably the best ability, and it is quite solid (like this is probably going to draw 2-3 cards most of the time, but the -7 is…probably never happening (and by the time it does, you’ve seen half your deck between +1s and drawing so there won’t be much left).

Also, Green’s high drops usually want to be creatures for various synergy purposes, much like with Black and it’s reanimates. You can’t tutor this with an Eladamri’s Call or get it back with Pulse of Murasa.

Nissa, Worldwaker

This particular Nissa is quite good, though I think it’s kind of been overshadowed by the other two 5-mana Nissas. Her twin +1s are going to keep her relatively healthy, especially since they do both protect her in a way- though both are somewhat awkward. The untap effect is going to be medium outside of Mono-Green, and the animate doesn’t do as much on T1 since it doesn’t untap the land (unlike the other Nissas). At the same time, though, she can just make a 4/4 trampler every turn, even if it is taking your manabase out to do so, and if some of those are Forests she can give them pseudo-vigilance as well. The ultimate is pretty awkward, seeing as it only affects basics, but it will win the game often enough.

The biggest problem with this Nissa, outside of there being better options, is the wording on the card. The first ability hits any land, the second only Forests, and the ultimate any basic land. It’s awkward, and it’s going to lead to people fucking it up more often than the card’s really worth. I can’t really recommend this one as a result.

Freyalise, Llanowar’s Fury

Not really feeling this one either. Making tokens is fine, but 1/1s don’t cut it at 5 mana and at that point ramping isn’t going to really do much anyway. The Naturalize ability is done better by other cards, and it’s yet another one of these where it’s left at only 1 loyalty when you use it. And while the ultimate isn’t too far off, it’s not really doing enough to justify doing effectively nothing for a couple turns beforehand. Probably just don’t bother with this one. A shame, because she looks super cool- maybe I’m biased, though, since I have it as a playmat.

Nissa, Voice of Zendikar

3 mana is a very competitive place to be in Green- everything on that slot is something you can cast turn 2 after a mana dork, so you want those to be good. And Nissa, Voice of Zendikar is…slow. She’s really slow. Her +1 is pretty weak on its own, and while it’s okay with the -2, it’s also pretty weak if the only board you have is dorks and/or Plant tokens. The ultimate…could happen, considering how early she comes down and the fact that she can keep things from killing her somewhat.

She’s okay. For a while, she was the only 3 mana green ‘walker around, which you kind of liked as a unique thing for green to have T2, but she doesn’t quite do enough for the slot in 2021. Like…imagine drawing this when you’re on, like, 5 mana. Putting a +1/+1 counter on everything is fine, but I just feel like you’d rather have another beater instead. Aggro surely doesn’t want this card, Control probably doesn’t, it’s medium in midrange…you get the idea.

Nissa, Vital Force

This Nissa is one I do whole-heartedly recommend. She makes 5/5s that can attack or block the turn you play her, and she can rebuy a lot of powerful green cards for a pretty reasonable loyalty cost. Her ultimate is one that slowly wins the game over time…but you can activate it the turn after you cast the card, and the 5/5 she animates helps keep her live for that turn you need to get there.

She does have an issue compared to other green planeswalkers where the board presence she generates is static rather than increasing. That is: she’s only ever going to make one 5/5 at a time. However, the fact that she generates card advantage in other ways makes it a worthwhile cost in my eyes. She’s slower than some of her companions at winning the game, but she’s still very good at getting you towards that win.

Vivien Reid

New year, new Green Planeswalker Character. Maybe this one will stick? Actually, maybe it will, I think this card’s quite solid. She plays like a better version of Freyalise- the -3 keeps her at 2 loyalty and can also kill flyers, something Green has a hard time keeping away from its Planeswalkers, and the +1 drawing creatures is going to hit most of the time (and I cannot imagine you’re completely whiffing very often). The emblem doesn’t impress me, but it doesn’t really need to- this just kills stuff you want killed.

This card is a great example of a card that suits the MTG Arena school of sideboard card design- that is, it has an effect (Naturalize/Plummet) that usually would come out of the sideboard, but it has enough else going on that you are totally cool just maindecking it. And while the intent with that design is to make best-of-one matches play better, it also has been a pretty good boon for Cube as well.

Arlinn, Voice of the Pack

I have no idea how this plays in Peasant. On the one hand, most of the big CMC creatures you get in that format are, well, big idiots, so this adds an alternative to those- not to mention its synergies with +1/+1 counters themes that lower power cubes often enjoy. On the other, she’s painfully slow and definitely suffers from not being a creature in the colour where that really matters. So…maybe? What else are you going to play, like the only 6-drop I think uncommon cubes get that is just better would be Great Oak Guardian.

Jiang Yanggu, Wildcrafter

A quick shoutout to the original Yanggu- I know I wasn’t covering Planeswalker deck cards, but he’s not that bad for low power formats and the Mowu token is adorable.

This card is not good. I think I’d only play it if you are heavily into +1/+1 counter/proliferate themes. You get enough better 3s at basically any power level that he’s pretty irrelevant unless you need that counter effect. I know people who’ve played Rishkar will know that he’s deceptively powerful, but Jiang Yanggu is very much no Rishkar.

Nissa, Who Shakes the World

Finally, the final Nissa (for now). I kind of think this card might be overrated? She has a lot of loyalty, but her +1 is only ever making 3/3s, and her ultimate really doesn’t do anything. The passive is powerful, but ramping past 5 when the +1 already ramps is a little silly, and outside of mono-Green you’re maybe getting like 3 or so extra mana out of it.

Maybe I’m wrong. It was very good in Standard for a while, and I know people are playing this in cubes. I know this, because I’m one of them (because I had a spare one of these and not a spare Vital Force), though I’m unconvinced that this is the best we can do. This is probably the card I’m least sure about (that I’ve actually gotten to cast) on this list, frankly.

Vivien, Champion of the Wilds

Buy this card now while it’s still 2 bucks (also maybe get WAR Nissa too, she’s cheaper than she probably should be considering). For 3 mana, this card is great- She draws cards, effectively protects herself via reach or flash, and has more loyalty than a 3 mana walker probably should. You can just use her as a draw 2, or you can uptick and keep her around as long as you want, and flash is a great way to deter attackers and mess with control decks.

I love this card. Vivien is cheap enough for cheap cubes (for now!), and gets better the better your creatures get- so she’ll stay being good even in higher power. T2ing this off a dork is very strong, although it leaves her vulnerable- she just has all these cool play patterns that I really enjoy. Would recommend.

Vivien, Arkbow Ranger

This one…less so. 1GGG is a supremely awkward casting cost, restricting her to very heavy green decks, and her abilities don’t really make up for it. Like, what are you getting with the -5 that is good enough that you wouldn’t just put it in your deck? This is not a format where you get a sideboard toolbox unless your draft is insane. The +1 is weak for 4 mana, and the -3 hitting other Planeswalkers is nice but the cost of it is really way too much. This card really needs decent sized creatures to work, and she doesn’t make her own, so. Not unseating a Garruk, basically.

Vivien, Monster’s Advocate

I find this card awkward to play with, because who on earth keeps vigilance, reach, and trample counters around, but it’s otherwise good. The +1 and -2 would almost be good enough on their own- the +1 protects her nicely and generates an army, while the -2 is obviously very strong (depending, of course, on the deck). And then the static abilities come in, and the card gets way better.

I think this is one of the only playable Future Sight effects in cube at this point- though the original is probably still good in lower power. It’s certainly the best one in Green. And the ability to shuffle the deck inbuilt on the card with the -2 is really spicy for this kind of effect. This card is…really just kind of nuts, actually. Aggro doesn’t like it, but they really don’t like facing it either, so.

God you can -2 and then cast a creature off the top of your library! That’s nuts!!!

Garruk, Unleashed

As it turns out, the best way to make a Planeswalker that competes with Garruk Wildspeaker was just to make a really similar card. It’s a more aggressively tilted Garruk, but one that really dislikes not having that overrun effect.

Ramp decks probably don’t care about this one, but he’s much better in faster midrange and aggressive green decks that care about the +1. I’m not sure you ever care about the ultimate, but that’s fine, because a Giant Growth every turn does win games. This is card is one of those little knobs you can have around if you want to push for more aggressive green decks- or just, run both. This one is also phenomenal in budget cubes, because it’s really really cheap at time of writing. Get his ass in there.

Tyvar Kell

The passive on this bloke may as well not exist, seeing as there aren’t going to be many elves you run that don’t either already tap for mana or would be better off just attacking anyway. And I’m not convinced the other abilities make up for it at all. Tyvar’s +1 is laser-specific and has a lot of words for not a lot of value, and the 0 is just not enough for 4 mana. Elspeth Knight-Errant gets away with it because it’s a +1, and because she can also just start killing you with her other +1, but Tyvar really doesn’t have the same luxury.

Again, I’m not convinced this would make it in a tribal cube either. The +1 would be more relevant there, as would the passive, but not enough to make a significant difference in my eyes. I just don’t think this fella is worth his weight.

Ellywick Tumblestrum

I…still have no idea how good Venture into the Dungeon is as a mechanic on a planeswalker. It could be great, it could be awful, I have barely gotten to play with any AFR. Considering how good this card is is so utterly dependent on this effect (the -2 is…fine?), you kind of really need to know how much value you can get out of it. It’s definitely versatile, at least, when you first use it and can choose which dungeon you pick.

The card doesn’t seem to have much of an adoption rate, after a quick CubeCobra search. Less than 1% of Standard-Only cubes are running it, though that may change when Garruk rotates. I’m not sure whether this card is actually just bad, or people just don’t want all the baggage of the Dungeon mechanic in their cube (a lot of the Daybound cards from MID are in similar states), but I’d keep my eye on it- especially with a new D&D set coming next year. (I think it’s next year? Idk)

Freyalise, Skyshroud Partisan

This is the only Elf-specific Planeswalker I think I’d run in a tribal cube…and also one that has so much extra baggage and difficulty attached that maybe you just don’t bother. You have to do so much extra work for all 3 abilities.

With that said, maybe this is when I bring up that people are playing Arena cube drafts online. And in something like that…this card is probably really solid? If you have the Elves to support it, that is. She does a load of work for 3 mana, though there aren’t nearly as many mana dorks in those formats. I dunno. This one isn’t my specialty.

Wrenn and Seven

It would appear the breakup was rough for Wrenn, because her followup isn’t nearly as fuckbusted. This is probably a good thing. This card feels pretty specific- the -3 makes a fairly sizable token, but the other abilities really leave something to be desired. I think you need to be supporting a lands deck, a green Graveyard theme, or something similar to really benefit from having this in your cube.

I could, of course, be wrong. It’s a menace in Standard right now, and has the price tag to prove it. But I just think that this one might not be worth that investment- unless you’re already supporting this kind of archetype. Very willing to be proven wrong on this, but I’m going to have to pass for now.

And so ends Green’s walkers. It’s a colour in an awkward position where they kind of got it perfect the first time, and every card since then has been playing catch-up. I think power creep will catch up with Garruk Wildspeaker eventually, but for now, he’s been a staple for so long for a reason. It’s just sort of a shame every single card since has to be compared to this crowning achievement of design.

#ramble #cube #mtg cube #planeswalkers #mono-green

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heisen-shrine · 3 years

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So I thought of something fun yesterday while I was playing Magic with my best friend. I haven't played the game in a long time but the single match I played with him seriously sparked the idea:

What if the Lords of Resident Evil Village geeked out one night and played Magic the gathering? What would their decks be like? Why would they choose the colors they do and what sort of strategies would they use? Keep in mind this is all fan speculation and just done for fun. That being said, let's check this out!

Alcina

Colors: green, blue, and white

Pretty much to everyone's surprise she doesn't use vampires in her deck. However she has a shit load of low cost elves, just to hold you over until she can get her big stuff out. She uses green for the effects of trample, reach, and some lifelink. Enchantments are mostly for their power ups, add more mana, or to turn mana into temporary creatures.

Blue is the color of no, you're actually not gonna do that and Alcina exploits the ever loving fuck out of this. This woman has counters for days and will not hesitate to use them. She does it partly for trolling and partly to keep her opponent from attacking while she's getting her bigger monsters out on the field. She actually has a wall that if she blocks with it your creature is more or less frozen and you can't use it as long as it's on the field. As far as creatures go in blue she really likes drakes and Nagas.

As far as white, she has three uses for it: healing her points, making tokens, and power ups for her monsters. As far as monsters go in this regard, she loves flying creatures because unless you have reach or another flyer, you cant block them. This annoys ans frustrates the hell out of players.

Downside: snowballing effect. You'll see this a lot with the lords, actually with the exception of maybe one. If you can get her points down early in the game before she gets her bigger green monsters out, you should be all set. Flyers and reachers are are must have if you're gonna take her on, also don't be afraid to counter her counters to ensure victory. Good luck!

2. Donna

Colors: green and black

Donna is a little more humble of a player. Relatively new to the game, she likes her decks to be simple and effective. Of the lords she's probably the easiest to beat...but...if she let's Angie play, you better bend over and pray to whatever deity you believe in because this doll may thrash you into oblivion if you're not ready. We'll talk about her in a minute.

Black is the color of high risk and high reward. It's a color that surprised the others when she started using it, as she doesn't seem to be the ballsy type. As far effects go, she enjoys the abilities of death touch and lifelink. She'll also take any chance on trying to bring one of her precious creatures back from the dead. She is not afraid to sacrifice her own life points in order to do this, which may work in your favor.

As far green goes, she also likes elves but any creature with forest walk or swamp walk is also a good thing in her books. So if you're a fellow Green or black player, good luck with blocking. As far as enchantments go for green, power ups and square up cards for days. Donna will power up her beasts and make them fight one of your own just to reduce your numbers and will do so gladly.

Downside: it's not a necessarily powerful deck. While it can be hard to be block, her monsters tend to be on the weaker side of don't really hit hard...however...

*Angie

Colors: every. Single. One. Even colorless.

That's right: this doll is not afraid to use fucking eldrazis and will do so with the biggest smile on her face. She also collects slivers...for fun. Of course she does. Angie's deck is an absolute chaotic mess from the outside looking in. To her opponents it looks like a mess and sheer nonsense, but through sheer power of absolute will, Angie usually pulls through with a win and on top of that will take your best card for wasting her time. She has stolen cards from the other lords and will keep doing so because deep down she's a card hoarder and her switchboard is actually as big her deck. It's terrifying. She's able to change the color of most of her creatures to colorless and of course the creatures of her opponents. She also uses some artifact creatures just for flavor.

Downside: this is an absolute nightmare deck to go up against, however she's made one serious mistake: her mana. Angie has surprisingly low mana and will either mana screw or mana flood herself. As scary as it is, the deck is a snowballer and it will take a while to come to its full power.

3. Salvatore

Colors: blue, black, green

Is anyone really surprised that this dude is a blue player primarily? If you thought Alcina was a master troll when it comes to counters, oh hell no. Sal will happily give her a run for her money. Lots of counters, lots of freezing effects, and at least one card that gives him the ability to take two turns. He also likes the cards that allow him to see some cards in his deck and then allow him to shuffle if things aren't going favorably. As for creatures, he adores leviathans and krakens, but also loves the tough as nails merfolk.

Black, as we established before, is a high risk high reward color, but Sal primarily uses it for the creatures with death touch, lifelink, and flying thrown in for flavor. As for enchantments, expect a lot of life points lost and a lot of exiles/discarding. He will use these abilities without hesitation or remorse.

Green is the color of enormous and numerous and Sal lives up to that expectation. He has a few smaller animal creatures to hold his opponent off while he gets his bigger stuff out. Some of his creatures have lifelink and forest walk, and some others have reach. He powers up his creatures and floods his side of the field with token creatures. If you're not careful or fast working enough, you could be staring down a big army of beast tokens very quickly.

Downside: snowballing effect...by a long shot. This deck is big and it has big creatures in it. Sal tends to either mana screw or mana flood himself. In times like these, time is of the essence. If you have creatures with haste, you're actually at an advantage, good job. If you're gonna take a shot at Sal, make it count. Strike fast and strike hard before he gets the leviathans out.

4. Karl

Colors: all of them (used to be red primarily, then red blue and green)

I'm a little biased here admittedly because I love Karl and I want him to be great at something besides being a weapon for Miranda. That being said, he will not hesitate to wipe the floor with your ass if you come off as a snotty cock sucker. If you're new to the game he won't annihilate you as hard, but he'll still beat you. You just won't wind up in the negatives.

Karl took a look at Angie's deck and was like, well I'm gonna take this idea and tame it. And holy shit did it work.

Red is the color of aggression. It's a strike fast and strike hard color. It's the color of burn, and burn you shall indeed. All of his red creatures have haste, meaning he can hit you with them when they come out. While the other colors have summoning sickness, red for Karl absolutely does not. He doesn't have time for that mess. Enchantments will basically allow him to destroy your mana, steal it, or go after your points directly. He won't hesitate to do this. At all.

Blue is the no! Color. And damn does Karl say no a lot. He likes the sort of enchantments that allow him to see into his deck or his opponents hand so that way he knows what to do next. As far as creatures go, he exploits the ever loving fuck out of island walk, since almost everyone uses blue. This makes it very hard to block him. If you're a primary blue player good luck.

Green- green is for reachers and lifelink. It's also really good for getting mana out very quickly. He has a couple spiders with death touch and at least one huge basilisk. Enchantments are for getting more lands out, and strengthening his creatures.

White- White is the color of spam for Karl. He'll make an army of token creatures just to throw them at you until your deck no longer functions. He also has at least two flyers, and one really big wall for blocking. Enchantments are usually power ups, or healing his life points.

Black: black is mostly for death touch, and swamp walk. There's also some lifelink thrown in for flavor. He loves nightmare creatures, and even has some vampires to throw at lady super sized bitch (hey at least he's not above using them!). He's also the only lord to use a planeswalker: vraska, the scheming gorgon. And yes all the lords hate him for it.

Downside: mana. Getting mana on the field for him is actually pretty hard. If he starts with anything besides red, you may have a chance to take him down early. If you have any haste creatures or enchantments that offer haste, for God's sake use it. If you have any creatures with any of the mana walks, you're in luck, in that case he can't block you at all. It's a major weakness he didn't think of. Do not let his vraska get to ten or you're a dead man, quite literally.

So I hope you guys enjoyed that because I seriously thought that was fun. I may do one of these for Miranda or even for the Dimitrescu sisters if you really want me to. Have fun yall, and happy gaming!

#magic the gathering #resident evil 8 #the four lords #alcina dimitrescu #donna beneviento #salvatore moreau #karl heisenberg

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