[mtgnexus] Random Card of the Day - Tymaret, the Murder King

[DirkGently]

Mastery, much like Revenge of Ravens, was unbeatable in its respective limited play.

I mean, I'd rather fight mastery than citadel siege in FRF limited, any day of the week. FRF had a lot of pretty BS rares, mastery was good but probably not even top 10 in that top-heavy set. Revenge was pretty annoying for an uncommon, but idk about unbeatable. If you're already getting beaten down, RoR probably won't save you.

Anyway, master is OK in commander but I think you'd really want to get extra value from the 2/2s before you'd want to play it. Maybe in an anthem-heavy deck, or with cathar's crusade, not that there aren't a million better ways to bust cathar's crusade.

[schweinefett]

Wow.. never seen that card before. But it seems good on the surface. So far, the only real CA engine i've seen in white is land tax and scroll rack. ANd that requires that there's another player with more lands in play than I do, and costs mana per turn.

Maybe i need to combine this with equilibrium or something to bounce non-permanent manifested cards. Does that work? manifest a card, trigger equilibrium, then bounce one of the manifested cards?

[DirkGently]

Maybe i need to combine this with equilibrium or something to bounce non-permanent manifested cards. Does that work? manifest a card, trigger equilibrium, then bounce one of the manifested cards?

No. Equilibrium triggers on cast, not etb.

If you're in blue you could just play primordial mist.

BTW even if they're permanents, you can't flip them face up unless they're creatures. Although you can blink them, if that's your intention, to put them back onto the battlefield face up.

[Outcryqq]

Mastery of the Unseen
I'm very bummed that due to color identity, I cannot run this card in my Kadena, Slinking Sorcerer deck. This card would be really good there!

[pokken]

I played this for quite a while in Ephara and it was better than I expected but really suffered from the mana cost being so high. I did some very nasty things with it, particularly manifesting hatebears but also manifesting combo pieces and then blinking them (snuck an Altar AND a reveillark onto the field at once that way once). The life gain also saved my bacon more than once.

I think it really demands a big mana deck, and the unfortunate thing is there aren't really enough manifest cards to quite make it an engine. I do think it's exceptional with earthcraft type effects where you can use creatures to partially defray the cost (cradle too).

[3drinks]

Friday, April 3rd, 2020; Tarmogoyf

We knew it was bound to hit, right? One of the most polarizing creatures of all time, while simultaneously being one of the most efficient.

[DirkGently]

Can you believe I bought one of these for my commander collection? lol. I forget what I paid for it...

Only time I've ever used it was in Varolz, the scar-striped infect deck where it was...fine. Anything with an efficient cost:power ratio. But it's not nearly as good as force of savagery. Bet that's the only time anyone has ever said force of savagery is better than tarmogoyf :laugh:

[Mookie]

Tarmogoyf is a medium-sized undercosted vanilla beater, which isn't really what EDH is usually about... especially when you can get an oversized undercosted beater with trample instead. It's not particularly exciting in comparison - unless you're playing a lot of ways to fill your graveyard, it isn't going to scale quickly enough to be relevant. My bar for considering creatures as beaters (aka 'creatures in the deck that I actually intend to attack with') is usually 6 power (5 if it's evasive), which requires a pretty big Goyf.

...I could see it being played in decks that specifically care about big creatures though, as a cheap way to trigger things. Selvala, Heart of the Wilds, Yorvo, Lord of Garenbrig, Varolz, the Scar-Striped... if you're getting more value out of it than just the body, it becomes much more attractive.

[Hermes_]

I got this as part of a trade for a JTSM from world wake, I flipped it and the other cards I got in the trade and from the booster box so I could build my first EDH deck....

[3drinks]

I'm a Goyf guy. I'm pretty happy to see a four power dude for 1G, personally. It's not going away. You can "save" your removal for percieved latre threats. It's still going to sit there, clocking you for four.

Would I pay that kind of $ for him just for this? No, not really. Not for a format with no $ on the line that isn't even a sanctioned format. But I'd play him in every XG deck that I played, if I already owned one

[DirkGently]

I'd play him in every XG deck that I played, if I already owned one

Nah, he sucks. Depending on meta, he's often not even 4 power when you start swinging with him. Land is probable, but not guaranteed, especially if your meta is pretty budget (and if your meta is high powered, good luck winning with your derpy tarmo aggro deck lol). Sorceries and instants could go either way, but are more likely the higher powered the meta is, which is a double edged sword. creatures, artifacts and enchantments unlikely but possible. Planeswalker almost certainly not. If you're swinging for 3 on turn 3 I'd say you've gotten fairly lucky.

Anyway the reason he sucks isn't that he's going to get targeted, obviously, it's that he's just going to get outclassed really quickly by bigger creatures, and eventually get wiped, maybe sooner rather than later. In my experience, when you're trying to make straightforward, classic aggro work, the things that work best are low-cmc creatures with abilities that are relevant at all stages in the game, to ensure you have consistent value coming in, and creatures with haste and evasion to just keep chipping in for damage so you can keep the pressure on through blockers and wipes. Tarmogoyf does none of those things. And in a format where thoughtseize is pretty unlikely to be played, and fetches aren't even a guarantee, he really doesn't scale that quickly or reliably either.

He's just kind of...crap. The only time I'd consider him is if I cared really specifically about stat:cmc ratio for some reason, and ideally was playing some amount of dredge stuff.

[Cyberium]

Friday, April 3rd, 2020; Tarmogoyf

We knew it was bound to hit, right? One of the most polarizing creatures of all time, while simultaneously being one of the most efficient.

One reason why I'm happy that I play EDH is that I could avoid these ultra expensive tournament cards.

[plushpenguin]

Goyf isn't even as strong as Death's Shadow in this format, the latter which can act as a 13/13 in the gy that you can "discard" by paying one mana.

[TheGildedGoose]

One reason why I'm happy that I play EDH is that I could avoid these ultra expensive tournament cards.

$40 is ultra expensive?

[Cyberium]

One reason why I'm happy that I play EDH is that I could avoid these ultra expensive tournament cards.

$40 is ultra expensive?

It was around $100s in the past. Probably not much for some, but I consider it too much to pay for an EDH deck.

[DirkGently]

It was around $100s in the past. Probably not much for some, but I consider it too much to pay for an EDH deck.

Pretty sure I paid over a hundred for mine. God what a waste of money. Anyway who cares what it used to cost, it's $40 now.

Honestly it would suck even if it was a 50 cent budget card though. If you're playing it in budget you don't even have fetches, so it's even worse than it'd otherwise be.

[3drinks]

Saturday, April 4th, 2020; Burning-Tree Shaman

I like playing it to mess with Divining Tops and double up on fetchland activations. Then my mana got good and I let it go.

[DirkGently]

Boy, influx of medium-powered aggressive creatures all of a sudden.

This guy seems playable if you care about damage triggers.....which I can't find any of that are relevant. I guess he doubles up with stuff like gratuitous violence, but meh. Harsh Mentor seems a lot more scalable to multiplayer if you want to play group slug, and more flexible on the CI.

I do remember him beating the crap out of me back in ravnica standard though.

[folding_music]

burning-tree shaman is insanely cooler than tarmogoyf. the only thing goyf has going for it is that future border <3 I feel like you play this guy and Harsh Mentor together, and Cindervines and Primal Order and Overabundance and just go tribal mad-at-anyone-tapping-anything-for-any-reason

[3drinks]

Boy, influx of medium-powered aggressive creatures all of a sudden.

I think this is a bit of a trend, from just about post Kamigawa and on. These undercosted and over pumped creatures with upside, up to about three sets back when the rampant power creep really ticked up in value. So I suspect to get a result similar to this when something in a modern frame comes up.

Really, an average spin of the random button is like, basic land, un card, draft chaff ×3, token, un card, draft chaff, reasonable card. Then I hope it's a reasonable card we haven't discussed recently.

[ilovesaprolings]

Plz don't play this against my Ghave

[3drinks]

Plz don't play this against my Ghave

Lmaooooo gotem.gif

[3drinks]

Sunday, April 5th, 2020; Sphere of Safety

Hey, look, it's a modern card that's not an undercosted body with a hate effect tacked on.

...I really dislike seeing this card. Like, as if one needed more incentive to build decks around Serra's Sanctum 😐

[Rumpy5897]

My pet deck is a Serra's Sanctum deck that proudly runs this card. Fork you, fight me For the low, low price of 11 mana a swinger Act now before it doubles

The card is not without its weaknesses though. It lulls you into a sense of security, and reinforces to the table that you're untouchable. And all this time, you're one spot removal away from the floodgates opening and the whole table piling into you because your turtle shell has been cracked, exposing that soft turtle interior. This effect magnifies if you run recursion that's likely to get the Sphere back online. It's a very centralising card, makes the game revolve around it for a while. But would I stop running it because of this? Heck no.

[Mookie]

Burning-Tree Shaman makes my Samut deck cry. Pretty niche otherwise though.

Sphere of Safety is a pretty powerful pillowfort card. Obviously doesn't do anything about decks that aren't planning to attack you, but it's very feasible to scale it up to 5+ in a dedicated enchantress deck. You do need to have a pretty high enchantment count to make it better than Ghostly Prison/Propaganda though, so I wouldn't just throw it in a random deck.

....I don't really find myself playing this type of effect in decks though. It may just be the case that my decks generally have enough random creatures to block with, or are fast enough to not worry about being attacked a bit. This sort of effect is really good against go-wide token decks, but I don't run into those that often (and since tokens tend to be small, it's easy to play a bigger blocker to ward off attacks). Best-case scenario is you stop yourself from being killed by Craterhoof Behemoth pumping a wide board, I suppose.