[SCD] Reliquary Tower

[Myllior]

Like any card, its place in your deck needs to be earned, but popularity begets popularity and so Reliquary Tower's place in decks is essentially a self-fulfilling prophecy.

In my own experience with the card, I used to jam it in pretty much every deck I built. But then I noticed that I either wasn't exceeding my hand size by any significant amount or, if I was, the additional cards offered by the Tower were extraneous. Extra cards in hand are useless if you haven't the resources to deploy them. So I slowly removed it from my decks; I don't even run it in Kefnet anymore, and he's really happy if he can have extra cards in hand.

So yeah, the card will continue to be run in more decks than it should. But it's not a big deal and as players grow in experience they may reduce how much they use it to a greater or lesser degree. As long as its place in your deck is considered, then all's well.

[Sharpened]

Honestly, the card makes me think of Starcraft (or other Real Time Strategy games).

When you think about the concepts behind success in the real time strategy games, there are a lot of parallels with magic. Not perfect parallels, but still. Regardless, not surprisingly, in both games, resource advantage is huge, The thing is, it's not just about collecting more resources. In fact, in Starcraft and games like it, if you see a player amassing resources, they likely have a problem. A good player is usually spending their resources as fast as they come in. If you aren't getting the message of "Not enough Vespene Gas", you likely are doing something wrong.

This makes sense. Your bank doesn't win you the game. Money in the bank is doing nothing. Units (and upgrades for those units) are what win, and if you can't effectively convert the resources into units, then your resource advantage is meaningless.

Likewise, in magic, cards in hand (in most cases) are not winning the game for you. If you cannot translate those cards into actions, it doesn't matter how many of them you have. In the vast majority of cases, Reliquary Tower is simply providing you the ability to hold excess resources which don't matter, as you lack the ability to convert them into something meaningful.

Look, I'm not saying you want to be deploying your cards as fast as you draw them (although there are plenty of decks that do), but if you are drawing cards faster than you can deploy them so often that you regularly need to hold onto more than 7, your problem is not that you can only hold 7.

If your deck is wanting the Reliquary Tower effect, you could add it and likely improve your deck. However, your deck would likely be improved even further by making changes that would mean you would almost never benefit from Reliquary Tower

[pokken]

I have found the maxim in 2-player magic someone figured out that ~"the person who spends the most mana almost always wins" to be fairly true in commander too Can't remember who said that, maybe Chapin?

It's often pretty fair that if you need to pass the turn with 15 cards you did something wrong with your mana production - but it can also be that you are winning the game on the board and it's incorrect to deploy more.

That's been my experience with decks like Goreclaw, Terror of Qal Sisma - sometimes those decks just don't want to put any more power on board because it invites a sweeper. Me, I live in fear of a Windfall when I pass the turn with a giant hand

One time my buddy Praetor's Counsel'd and had like 30 cards in hand, opponent plays labman and windfall spams us to death.

Anyway that's another small point I forgot which is that if you're not in blue, passing with a huge hand can be a liability in a wheel world.

[RxPhantom]

There have been myriad good points made here. I forgot to mention in the OP why I brought it up again: I find myself wanting to put the tower in more decks again. The aforementioned Merieke deck can't handle another colorless source, but prior to COVID-19 ruining everything, I found myself drawing a bunch of cards, not being able to keep them, and thinking I could really use a Reliquary Tower. When things go back to some semblance or normality, I may try and document when this happens to try and rule out confirmation bias.

Side note, according to EDHrec, 22% of Muldrotha, the Gravetide decks run Reliquary Tower. WHY?!?!?!

[pokken]

Ah muldrotha, gotta keep those cards in hand I guess

[ZenN]

Probably the same reason it's in 39% of Damia, Sage of Stone decks.

Because people don't know any better. Because they read a 9 year old EDH article that said Reliquary Tower goes in every single deck, along with Solemn Simulacrum and Sensei's Divining Top, and they've taken it as gospel, despite it not even having been good advice back then.

I actually think that's probably got a lot to do with a lot of the poor card choices many people have made.

[Wallycaine]

Probably the same reason it's in 39% of Damia, Sage of Stone decks.

Because people don't know any better. Because they read a 9 year old EDH article that said Reliquary Tower goes in every single deck, along with Solemn Simulacrum and Sensei's Divining Top, and they've taken it as gospel, despite it not even having been good advice back then.

I actually think that's probably got a lot to do with a lot of the poor card choices many people have made.

I can almost see it in Damia? Mostly on the basis of "If your Damia deck is having to discard due to hand size, something has already gone badly off the rails, so maybe this will help".

[RxPhantom]

At least with Damia it doesn't overtly work against the commander. I wonder how many of those Muldrotha players were ever actively screwed by it but didn't take it out. Like, "Nah bro, cards in hand are good. Duh."

[ISBPathfinder]

I think that Reliquary Tower resembles Seedborn Muse. Most people put it too many places and I don't think it holds its weight most of the time but it leaves people kind of terrified from those times where it seemed to do everything. I think that unless your deck is designed to move a LOT of cards often, most of the time maximum hand size isn't really that big of a deal. If you constantly plan to push up to 15+ cards it makes more sense.

Newer players tend to see discarding down to handsize being a huge thing. They also tend to see someone use a tower to good effect once and try to replicate that. I think that Reliquary Tower is a reasonable card, I just think that too often its pushed into a list because players don't understand when to run it vs when to run something else. Tuning a landbase and choosing the correct utility lands is something that a lot of players don't grasp well until they are quite proficient at commander.

[Inkeyes22]

Probably more than anything it falls under the "It's in the precon" bias. It could also be that some people just don't think much about their mana base either. They lose and it is because of some Eldrazi or Craterhoof, not that they have 10 taplands and 7 colorless utility lands so they are casting all their spells much slower.