MTGNexus

Alright with more shrines that can now be my sub-theme in my spirit tribal deck

WizardMN wrote: ↑

3 years ago

Wallycaine wrote: ↑

3 years ago

For a Standard or Historic deck, turning those extra copies into Shocks or Bolts (or better) is pretty solid.

Against creatures and Planeswalkers sure. Maybe they though hitting players would be too good but it is disappointing that you can't throw those Shrines at the opponent.

That would almost certainly be too good, yeah. Considering how careful they have to be with stuff like Seismic Assault and the like, I'm not at all surprised to see it only hit dudes. It still works as "turn extra shrines and lands into removal", which is very relevant.

Myllior wrote: ↑

3 years ago

Slam dunking all of these into Sisay the moment I can get them, as well as the Paradox Haze

Unfortunately the new Shrines are during precombat main phase so will not get the bonuses. But of course you'll still get additional triggers from the old lot.

darrenhabib wrote: ↑

3 years ago

Unfortunately the new Shrines are during precombat main phase so will not get the bonuses. But of course you'll still get additional triggers from the old lot.

Thanks for catching that! I wonder why they chose to go for main phase over upkeep? Regardless, that's potentially two fewer cuts I need to find, so I'm happy about that.

Myllior wrote: ↑

3 years ago

darrenhabib wrote: ↑

3 years ago

Unfortunately the new Shrines are during precombat main phase so will not get the bonuses. But of course you'll still get additional triggers from the old lot.

Thanks for catching that! I wonder why they chose to go for main phase over upkeep? Regardless, that's potentially two fewer cuts I need to find, so I'm happy about that.

Sanctum of Fruitful Harvest creates mana, so without a clunky "this mana doesn't empty from your pool until end of turn" clause, it needed to trigger in the main phase to be useful. Additionally, it's a small but positive change for Sanctum of Calm Waters, as you get to draw your normal card before you loot with the Sanctum. So with 2 out of the 3 that trigger wanting to do so in the main phase, it was easiest to just make all three do so.

Wallycaine wrote: ↑

3 years ago

Myllior wrote: ↑

3 years ago

darrenhabib wrote: ↑

3 years ago

Unfortunately the new Shrines are during precombat main phase so will not get the bonuses. But of course you'll still get additional triggers from the old lot.

Thanks for catching that! I wonder why they chose to go for main phase over upkeep? Regardless, that's potentially two fewer cuts I need to find, so I'm happy about that.

Sanctum of Fruitful Harvest creates mana, so without a clunky "this mana doesn't empty from your pool until end of turn" clause, it needed to trigger in the main phase to be useful. Additionally, it's a small but positive change for Sanctum of Calm Waters, as you get to draw your normal card before you loot with the Sanctum. So with 2 out of the 3 that trigger wanting to do so in the main phase, it was easiest to just make all three do so.

Another thing is that Sanctum of All does actually fire in the upkeep, and with main phase you'd get the trigger that turn for the Shrine you freshly searched for. Sanctum of All is quite slow for the old Shrines as you have to wait an entire turn to get the effects of them.

On a more meme note you can draw a Shrine and then cast it in your draw step with a flash enabler like Leyline of Anticipation, Raff Capashen, Ship's Mage, Alchemist's Refuge, etc, to then get the triggers, which you can't do with the older ones.

If you are looking to build a Shrine deck I'd look at Land Tax to fuel Sanctum of Shattered Heights if possible.

I recently dropped Honden of Life's Web from my Freyalise creature card-less deck because it was simply way too underwhelming, but now with Sanctum of Fruitful Harvest I might consider rewinding that, 2 tokens and 2 mana per turn is a pretty snazzy deal. Sure, I need to get them both out, but Sanctum on its own is practically ramp, a secondary weaker copy of Frontier Siege that I can make slightly better if I put Honden back in.

It's still generally weaker than frontier siege (ignoring the mana cost) since frontier siege adds mana on both your main phases (including the postcombat one on the turn it's played, if you play it precombat).

Yeah, Frontier Siege is significantly better than Sanctum of Fruitful Harvest, even discarding it theoretically having a second mode - Sanctum produces 1 mana per turn, Siege generates 4. If you can get Sanctum to 2+ mana, it looks pretty reasonable - it's a slightly better, sorcery-speed-mana-only Cultivate. But if you don't consistently have a second Shrine, I'd pass.

Twinblade Assassins is interesting. I'm not a fan of Deathreap Ritual because it doesn't trigger as often as I would like - most removal spells are thrown around during the end step, so the trigger doesn't track all those deaths. However, stapling it to a reasonably-sized body makes it look a lot better. I still don't think it's great, but Ritual does see some play, so seems like a reasonable upgrade.

Unleash Fury is another Berserk variant, which seems fun for the decks that want it.

Twinblade assassins doesn't trigger on enemy endsteps, Deathreap ritual does.

Honestly I'd prefer an enchantment to a creature too, even a moderately-sized one. Someone casts a board wipe - probably the most common non-endstep removal outside of combat - ritual triggers. Twinblade assassins won't.

In summary and in conclusion, Twinblade Assassins looks great for limited but probably not commander.

Mookie wrote: ↑

3 years ago

Yeah, Frontier Siege is significantly better than Sanctum of Fruitful Harvest, even discarding it theoretically having a second mode - Sanctum produces 1 mana per turn, Siege generates 4. If you can get Sanctum to 2+ mana, it looks pretty reasonable - it's a slightly better, sorcery-speed-mana-only Cultivate. But if you don't consistently have a second Shrine, I'd pass.

To be fair in my case, I'm running it as the secondary redundancy copy of Frontier Siege. The only reason I even ran Honden (with no other shrines in monocolor) was because it turns out finding enchantments (or any noncreature card type) that churns out tokens every turn without mana input isn't exactly easy, especially on the lower end of the curve. It used to be Awakening Zone and Honden, but over the years From Beyond and Wolfcaller's Howl up'ed the quality, making Honden weaker and weaker.

Before Frontier Siege, I had to rely on things like Druids' Repository/Nature's Will to generate mana from tokens, which wasn't always easy, sometimes attacking isn't a wise decision. Even After Siege, Cryptolith Rite did usurp the position anyway.

At this point of time it's true that having both shrines together still gets overshadowed by the likes of Frontier Siege and Wolfcaller's Howl, but the potential of them working as the second-best alternative to both of those cards if I do get them out still has some appeal. At the end of the day, I already have a foil Honden and the sanctum is unlikely a costly card, might as well acquire it, it might even escalate better if they ever print a third shrine.

Whelp, now that all the rares are spoiled, I can confirm that this set looks pretty tame compared to the nonsense we've had recently. The biggest standouts power-wise are the red mythics, imo. None of the legends interest me at all, although Niambi is ok.

I'm fine with all that btw, the power creep recently has gotten annoying.

Yatsufusa wrote: ↑

3 years ago

over the years From Beyond and Wolfcaller's Howl up'ed the quality

Lol, wasn't wolfcaller's howl in the same precon your commander came in? Why wouldn't that already be in there?

Barrin and Jolrael seem like my thing, Barrin as a commander for my already pronounced mono-blue recursion tendencies and Jolrael to be slotted into whatever enchantress deck I'm currently on.

I generally like the recent core sets. starting with M19 I'm noticing "condensed power", ie nothing is insanely pushed (although I'm not sure about the new Teferi planeswalker, cards like that are really hard to assay) but nothing seems unnecessarily slack either; there's lots of free extra points of toughness, reasonable casting costs and the occasional enchantment that isn't boring as all hell. not creep but just realistic buffing of the standard so that it catches up with chase rares of the past.

darrenhabib wrote: ↑

3 years ago

Wallycaine wrote: ↑

3 years ago

Myllior wrote: ↑

3 years ago

Thanks for catching that! I wonder why they chose to go for main phase over upkeep? Regardless, that's potentially two fewer cuts I need to find, so I'm happy about that.

Sanctum of Fruitful Harvest creates mana, so without a clunky "this mana doesn't empty from your pool until end of turn" clause, it needed to trigger in the main phase to be useful. Additionally, it's a small but positive change for Sanctum of Calm Waters, as you get to draw your normal card before you loot with the Sanctum. So with 2 out of the 3 that trigger wanting to do so in the main phase, it was easiest to just make all three do so.

Another thing is that Sanctum of All does actually fire in the upkeep, and with main phase you'd get the trigger that turn for the Shrine you freshly searched for. Sanctum of All is quite slow for the old Shrines as you have to wait an entire turn to get the effects of them.

On a more meme note you can draw a Shrine and then cast it in your draw step with a flash enabler like Leyline of Anticipation, Raff Capashen, Ship's Mage, Alchemist's Refuge, etc, to then get the triggers, which you can't do with the older ones.

If you are looking to build a Shrine deck I'd look at Land Tax to fuel Sanctum of Shattered Heights if possible.

I'm thinking of making a shrines.dec with new Sisay on the helm and an enchantments subtheme. I am wondering whether any theros gods could be useful there as well!

Seeing the set

2 spirit tribal support cards


Dang it wizards make a 5-color spirit tribal legend already

DirkGently wrote: ↑

3 years ago

Lol, wasn't wolfcaller's howl in the same precon your commander came in? Why wouldn't that already be in there?

Admittedly I forgot about it, after I played the 2014 decks out-of-the-box I had everything dismantled, then I started the 8-deck suite project only in late-2015 (which by itself took months of planning). I won't be surprised at some point of iteration past that I had a strict adherence to not play cards that didn't have foils (excluding the Commander & planeswalkers) and forgot about the card following that.

I put so much random restrictions that only make sense to myself. Recently, I finally relented to allowing myself to play multiple copies of the same card across my decks if they had different art (and I had them foiled), so it didn't look stupid I owned but never used the New Phyrexia/Conspiracy 2 Beast Withins and Graveborn/Eternal Master Entombs, all foils (and except for the Graveborn, I actually lucked into those from boosters/limited games). For years I basically never sold them because I kept rationalizing "I could swap the art", except I never did.

Back to 2021, it feels like a pretty solid core set, but a core set is still a core set at the end of the day, nothing beyond sniping the few foils I have my sights set on. The showcase frames don't impress me this set (I liked the Ikoria Comic-style, I'm not averse to the general idea itself), so I'm likely to just hit the normal foils.

I was happy with my Sai, Master Thopterist deck on its first outing. The deck is beatdown but also the Crystal Shard + Trinket Mage toolbox deck, combining my two favorite things in MtG: bouncing my own EtB cards for fun and profit, and building a narrow, overly-specific, but powerful toolbox of silver bullets.

But Barrin, Tolarian Archmage may just take over the spot - he has no artifact synergy which means less incentive to be trinket'ing up Stonecoil Serpent or Skullclamp or Signal Pest, but he is an awesome payoff to picking up my mages and mulldrifters over and over.

Double Vision, New Teferi, Teferi's Ageless Insight, and Jolrael are all going in my wacky Kalamax brew.

Aven Gagglemaster

Finally, some representation.

Why oh why couldn't Thriving Moor have had a land type. It would have been a lovely cycle

Perhaps Kels, Fight Fixer has a twin brother who is the exact same card but with red instead of blue.

Because that feels like a very, very Rakdos card. Compare/contrast to Greven, Predator Captain (heavier on saccing and lighter on drawing cards). We just got BR menace support. Keep getting "whenever you sac a permanent" in red or Rakdos. Azra has been RB so far. Feels like the hydra/snake thing in C20.

worse korvold

Rumpy5897 wrote: ↑

3 years ago

Why oh why couldn't Thriving Moor have had a land type. It would have been a lovely cycle

I love me some land typed cards - but that might be a bit too good! :p I wonder how having a single land type, but choosing your second color would stack vs traditional dual typed lands? My gut feeling is that it would still be better - while you lose out on how many fetches can get it - the fetches that do get it immediately get you whatever you need (though arguably, regular duals do that already... interesting thought).

Even now, it reminds me of the 'Tainted Isle' cycle of lands, which actually do remain quite strong.

I am also just still salty that the battlebond "if you control 2 or more opponents" weren't typed. That was an excellent template to give EDH players the duals that no one else would fight for/use.

BeneTleilax wrote: ↑

3 years ago

worse korvold

You know... I'm ok with less Korvold, Fae-Cursed Kings and Chulane, Teller of Taless...

Some of the new legends are so generically good that they're boring.

Serenade wrote: ↑

3 years ago

Perhaps Kels, Fight Fixer has a twin brother who is the exact same card but with red instead of blue.

Because that feels like a very, very Rakdos card. Compare/contrast to Greven, Predator Captain (heavier on saccing and lighter on drawing cards). We just got BR menace support. Keep getting "whenever you sac a permanent" in red or Rakdos. Azra has been RB so far. Feels like the hydra/snake thing in C20.

While the sacrifice aspect is very Rakdos, the fact that the reward is drawing a card is very much not red. And with the ability having a hybrid cost, it needs to be in pie for both colors.

That's a good point. Hybrid flavor FTW!