Messages

46

General Magic / Re: what cards can double this effect.

« on: August 12, 2022, 05:08:48 pm »

Conversely, if Mathas triggers twice he can give the effect to the same creature twice. That creature will get a second bounty counter, but it doesn't actually matter; one of them could be removed and it would make no difference, you'd still get two cards when it died.

I completely missed that; the second portion of his ability text (the death trigger) specifies that as long as the creature has a (i.e. at least one) bounty counter on it, opponents draw one and gain two life when it dies.  It doesn't matter how many counters are on it, as the death trigger only occurs once.

That being said, duplicating the death trigger that actually draws cards is much more difficult because you don't actually control it; Mathas's ability specifically states that the creature with the bounty counter on it has the ability, "When this creature dies..."  Since the opponent's creature and not Mathas is the source of that trigger, you don't control it, so things like Teysa Karlov, Lithoform Engine, and Strionic Resonator would not copy it.  You can copy the end step trigger that puts bounty counters on things, but not the draw triggers.

Also, Chevill, Bane of Monsters or anything else that uses bounty counters does not work with Mathas.  Ruling on 08/25/2017: "Creatures that receive a bounty counter other than from Mathas’s ability resolving won’t gain the triggered ability. Creatures that receive more than one bounty counter as Mathas’s ability resolves (most likely due to Doubling Season) won’t have the ability multiple times."  The reverse is not true, however; Chevill's ability does not care where the bounty counters came from, so his ability would trigger off counters placed by Mathas.

47

General Magic / Re: Cards you refuse to use

« on: August 03, 2022, 06:15:22 am »

Forests

48

General Magic / Re: what cards can double this effect.

« on: July 28, 2022, 11:13:31 pm »

It's a one-off, but Radiant Performer would do this in a brilliant way.  It has Flash, so you can cast it in response to Mathas's ability triggering, thereby putting a bounty counter on all creatures your opponents control (provided they are legal targets, of course).  Otherwise, I do believe Strionic Resonator and Lithoform Engine are the only cards in that color identity that can copy triggered abilities.

You might also consider making clones of Mathas.  Again, it's harder in Mardu (mostly a blue thing), but something like Helm of the Host would give you multiple copies of him, thereby giving you multiple triggers.  If you use Mirror Box or Mirror Gallery to get around the legend rule, there are a number of cards in red that can create token copies of creatures.  Unfortunately, the tokens they make typically go away at the end of combat (and therefor wouldn't trigger) or at the beginning of the next end step, in which case you'd only get one trigger off each copy.  It's not at all practical or advisable, but it would technically do what you want.

49

Commander Discussion / Re: Frank Karsten's article: optimal land/ramp count for Commander

« on: July 28, 2022, 02:56:32 am »

After going back through and fully reading the article, I'm not sure it's even worth analyzing. The model abstracts away too much to be useful in real context. It's like the physics homework questions in college that start with "Assume gravity = 10 m/s^2, Pi is equal to 3, e is equal to 2, and all other forces are negligible. Now, solve the problem." Sure, it's modeling something. That something just isn't a normal EDH deck. Pretending that all cards aside from lands and insert basic rock here are vanilla permanents is too simplified to be applicable. The author mentions the difficulties of multivariate analysis, but I don't think throwing our hands up and saying "a good model is impossible, but here are some numbers anyway" is a good solution.

Very well articulated.  I never thought I'd see (much less read) a full-blown statistical analysis of how many lands to put in a commander deck.  I admire the effort, and I'm not knowledgeable in the field of statistics to assess whether Frank's analysis is good, but I'm pretty sure I can safely say that I don't think you can scientifically conclude what constitues an "optimal" number of lands in a deck because it is wholly dependent on how the rest of the deck is constructed and what it aims to accomplish.

That being said, his conclusion is incredibly close to what I've believed for quite some time. I don't play EDH competitively, but because of the core play group that got me into Magic, my stronger decks are in a weird position where they're too strong to be considered casual but far too weak to be competitive... and then I just have fun jank decks.  Regardless of category or power level of my decks, I seem to find myself settling on 36 plus or minus one, only varying from that in edge cases.

An interesting heuristic I've seen is 30 + CMC of commander + number of colors in commander's identity.  It seems to fall apart a bit on the far ends of the scale (cheap mono-colored commanders or most four and five-colored commanders), but otherwise it's about right.  For instance, I have a Karlov deck that's running 35 but could probably function with the 34 of the heuristic.  My Jared deck is right at 36, and my Liesa angel tribal is right at 37 as well.  On the other hand, my non-competitively built Breya deck is still at 36 (heuristic says 38), and my janky "deck out Karona and pass her around the table for everyone else to kill themselves" deck is also only at 36 (with a number of dorks and ramp spells), whereas the heuristic says 41.  That's a heuristic by definition though: not great with edge cases, but otherwise widely applicable.

50

General Magic / Re: Games you've enjoyed

« on: January 27, 2022, 08:05:51 am »

My most memorable game ocurred shortly after a couple of my friends first got me into MTG.  I hadn't built one of my own decks quite yet, so I was playing one of theirs (we almost exclusively play EDH).  The deck I was playing was a Norin the Wary chaos deck.  Its entire purpose was to just make everything stupid and ran all the cards like Scrambleverse, Thieves' Auction, Possibility Storm, etc.  The other friend was playing his Maelstrom Wanderer deck.

Long story short, Maelstrom Wanderer was cast and cascaded into all sorts of spicy things.  He swung out and killed the only other player left at the table with something like 30+ damage, which meant I was next.  On my next turn, I attempted to cast a Blasphemous Act to wipe the board and save myself for at least one more turn.  The problem was that I had forgotten that Possibility Storm was in play, and I realized that the trigger had to be resolved.  I started exiling cards knowing that I'd probably hit something completely useless and end up dying.  By some miracle, the first Sorcery I exiled was an Insurrection, so I stole all of his creatures and swung back at him for the win.  It was by no means the craziest of MTG interactions I've ever seen, but everyone at the table was laughing and thoroughly enjoying the fact that the jank chaos deck won by complete chance.

And then of course there was the time I killed myself with Phyrexian Arena.  I was playing my Karlov of the Ghost Council deck.  With two other people at the table, I bolted one of them with Aetherflux Reservoir to take him out of the game on his turn because he was in the process of doing some shenanigans that I didn't like.  I wasn't paying close enough attention to my life total though... I brought myself down to 1 life from the Reservoir activation and then remembered I had Phyrexian Arena out so I died on my upkeep and the third player won.  It was a fun game and I still claimed the moral victory; it's not always about the win - it's about sending a message. 

51

General Magic / Re: How do you pronounce "Aether"

« on: January 27, 2022, 07:41:31 am »

TL;DR: Thank ancient Greek and Latin for the confusion, but I pronounce it "ee-ther" because that is actually the correct way.

Although it has almost entirely fallen out of use in the last century, you might have seen the pairs of letters Ae/ae and Oe/oe written as Æ/æ or Œ/œ, respectively (these are called ligatures).  This was to indicate a connection to an ancient Greek or Latin word from which the Enlish word was derived.  In some cases, the ligatures are simply split into the two separate letters like in the word phœnix/phoenix.  In others, the spelling is changed altogether and the word looks closer to the way it is actually pronounced, as in the word dæmon/daemon, which is almost always written nowadays as demon.  However, there are words that are written with ae or oe cannot use the ligatures because they do not have Greek or Latin origins (like maelstrom, which is borrowed from Dutch).

Writing aside, the pronunciation varies when you see these letters depending on how it was pronounced in the original Greek and Latin.  In the case of æther/aether, the correct pronunciation is with the "e" sound (like "ee-ther").  In these cases where the word does come from Greek or Latin and can be written with the ligatures, ae/oe will never sound like "air," "ay," or "eye" (so "ay-ther" is incorrect).

52

Commander Discussion / Re: Are 3-mana rocks still used?

« on: January 02, 2022, 06:28:27 am »

TL;DR: Yes, but only situationally.  If you have access to green, play a fast deck, and/or have a commander that costs 3 or less, it's probably not in your best interest to run them.

I'll echo what everyone else has said in that it depends on how many colors you run in the deck, but what I'm seeing overlooked is that it depends on the CMC of your commander and how fast the deck is.  For example, if your commander has a high CMC - say five or more - then I'd consider running some regardless of how many colors the deck is - especially in decks that don't have green and consequently have fewer reliable ramp sources.  However, if your commander costs three or less, I probably wouldn't run them.  Ideally if your commander costs three, you're tyring to consistently cast it on turn three and not a 3-cost rock.  If your commander costs 1 or 2 and you're casting a rock turn three instead of spells that further your gameplan (or at least cheaper/more efficient ramp), you're already falling behind.  Even in a four or five-color deck, I'd sooner run things like Fellwar Stone or Ornithopter of Paradise than a Commander's Sphere.  If that's not enough, I'd still look at the Talismans first.  In my Breya deck, my mana cost distribution is 45% blue spells with none of the other colors being higher than 21%.  I just run the three Talismans that produce blue and one of my other colors instead of running 3-cost rocks.

Chromatic Lantern is probably the most worthwile 3-mana rock to run since it perfectly fixes all your colors and can itself tap for one mana of any color, but only in non-green three-color decks and four or five-color decks.  I think Coalition Relic is grossly underrated in this category, as it can get you two additional mana of any color the turn after you cast it as opposed to only one (tap for a charge counter, untap at beginning of next turn, then tap for another charge counter prior to precombat main phase).  Skyclave Relic is a strictly better Darksteel Ingot because it has the kicker option.  These three are really the only ones I'd consider using universally (and yes, Commander's Sphere is not in that list).  There are others that are useful, but only in certain decks (i.e. Altar of the Lost in Flashback decks, Basalt Monolith as a combo piece, Dragon's Hoard in Dragon tribal decks, Elementalist's Palette in X-spell decks, Strixhaven Stadium in go-wide combat-focused decks, etc.).

53

Commander Deck Reviews / Re: Construction advice? Jared Carthalion, True Heir

« on: December 26, 2021, 08:10:06 pm »

@The Golgari Guy -
I've been going back and forth with Geode Rager, mainly because it only usually prevents one person from attacking me and that's not super impactful in a group with three or four other players.  Things like Agitator Ant and Orzhov Advokist don't force the goad effect because other players have the option to accept the counters.  Nils, Discipline Enforcer would be the better option. Marisi requires combat damage to be done, but is definitely an include if I can rework this with more creatures.  Because I'm having trouble with consistency I prefer repeatable/constant effects as opposed to one-offs like fogs.  As far as evasive creatures, I have looked at things like Dryad Sophisticate and things with Shadow.  I just need to find space for them.

@Landale -
I do agree about the boardwipes the more I think about it.  The original thought was that they would clear the board while I'm Monarch with Jared out, so now I have an open board with a giant Jared.  Using so many wipes is why I'm so light on creatures, so I do have to pare back on those (lack of deck focus - I admit I tried too hard to shoehorn a Toralf/Taunter package in as soon as Toralf was released).

Using Jolrael or Ratter in conjunction with Monarch had never even occurred to me and I love it.  I had at one point run things like Emeria Angel and Loyal Apprentice (also Dragonlair Spider and Dragon Broodmother, but their CMC was too high) for similar effects.  I considered Lightmine Field, but unfortunately it would blow up the small flying tokens and shadow creatures before they could do damage to get Monarch back.  Strict Proctor is interesting, Domri is good, and Blackblade is probably on the chopping block since it's only a straight stat buff.

Thanks, guys!

54

Commander Deck Reviews / Construction advice? Jared Carthalion, True Heir

« on: December 26, 2021, 07:32:57 am »

I've been working on a Jared deck for some time now, and every time I create a new iteration it just doesn't quite feel right.  In the current one that I feel best about, I need to make a few cuts, but I still feel like the deck has a bit of an identity crisis (no pun intended).

The problems I keep encountering with Jared are retaining Monarch long enough to be able to pump him by dealing damage either through combat (not reliable), fighting (useless without Monarch and lackluster unless he's already relatively big), and big boardwipes (like Blasphemous Act... of course running these makes me want to throw in things like Brash Taunter and Toralf as alternative wincons); and him just dying to removal (which compounds the Monarch problem given his ETB).  Every way I try to build the deck, I find myself very light on creatures for blocking, which also necessitates a pillow for package.  Blending everything makes the deck inconsistent, but leaning too heavily into any one of those packages makes it feel like I should just pick a different commander that's better for that given mechanic.  It's intended to be more of a fun deck than a competitve or powerful one, but I'd still like some level of consistency and optimization.

Aside from which cards to cut, any further advice regarding this deck/commander in general would be greatly appreciated.  Also, please ignore the messy "Maybeboard."  It's gigantic as a side effect of how I tend to utilize the deckbuilding tool.  Thanks!

EDIT: I accidentally deleted the revision that existed when I made the post prior to any changes being made, so I had to update the link to show the most recent one.

Jared Carthalion, True Fabio

55

Deck Reviews / Re: [EDH / Commander] When Mogis Wants Green - Help with Final Cuts?

« on: September 22, 2018, 01:13:11 am »

I'd totally forgotten about Rancor and Squee. The latter is cheaper to play repeatedly than Reassembling Skeleton and is much harder to get rid of like you said, so I wouldn't have to have quite as much token generation either.

Most of the cuts you suggested are the same as the ones I was considering, so it's good to know I'm on the right track.  Certainly does help.  Thanks!

56

Deck Reviews / [EDH / Commander] When Mogis Wants Green - Help with Final Cuts?

« on: September 21, 2018, 06:49:19 am »

When Mogis Wants Green

I'm a relatively new Magic player (only really started playing EDH with friends a few months ago), but I'm not entirely foreign to TCGs like Magic (I've played quite a bit of Hearthstone, which is basically MTG for Dummies).  My biggest problem with deck construction is that I try to make the deck do too much by incorporating too many different themes.  This deck started as a Mogis/Kaervek punisher deck, but then I ran across Ruric Thar and had to get Green into the mix.  I need to cut 34 cards (I know, it's a lot) to get it down to a legal EDH deck, but I'm having trouble figuring out what to cut.  Budget should be a consideration for me, as I'm trying to keep the cost as low as possible if I were to actually buy components for the deck.  That being said, I really only play EDH casually with a small group of friends I've known for years a few times a month, so one or two proxies wouldn't be a big deal.

Cards I'm currently considering cutting:
Vicious Shadows
Chaos Warp
Vigor
Erebos, God of the Dead
Sheoldred, Whispering One
Sangromancer
Whip of Erebos
Forgotten Ancient
Managorger Hydra
Zo-Zu the Punisher
Heartwood Storyteller
Vengeful Pharaoh
Massacre Wurm
Reassembling Skeleton

Ignore the Maybeboard for the most part.  Those are essentially cards I looked at just to give me some ideas of what I could do that I cut in my first pass. Any advice, whether specific to this deck or generally, would be appreciated.