[mtgnexus] Random Card of the Day - Runechanter's Pike

[Mookie]

....I'm somewhat tempted to wax poetic about Darksteel Sentinel now, but I'll agree that it isn't a particularly interesting card. It's not bad as a surprise blocker, and indestructible is certainly relevant.... but there are other ways to spread indestructible around to your team without using it alongside Odric, Lunarch Marshal or a similar effect. Now, if it were Darksteel Myr on the other hand.... that's a spicy card.

...speaking of ways to give your board indestructible, Kindred Boon is an interesting option. I'm not convinced that it is actually a good card though. I'm not going to say that granting your team indestructible is bad, but the default use case I see for this card is to protect your aggressive, go-wide tribal deck (ex: soldiers or cats) from board wipes. The issue is that the rate on this is... pretty medium. Four mana base, plus another two mana per creature really adds up. There's also the question of how much removal this is going to ward off. Simultaneously, if Kindred Boon gets removed, the indestructibility also vanishes, which means this is definitely open to blowouts.

If I wanted to protect my team, I'd favor a cheaper one-shot effect like Teferi's Protection, Heroic Intervention, Flawless Maneuver, or Boros Charm - they're both cheaper and harder for opponents to play around. Also worth consideration are tribal options like Knight Exemplar and Sliver Hivelord.

The one place I could see Kindred Boon being played is alongside cards like Myojin of Seeing Winds that use divinity counters. I'll also call out That Which Was Taken as a similar effect.

[Sinis]

Monday, July 6th, 2020; Kindred Boon

I think this card suffers from being too narrow while too costly. Usually, a narrow card is discounted for its narrowness, and broad or modal cards end up costing a premium (looking at you Insidious Will). But this one... eh.

In terms of measuring its actual effectiveness, there's a couple of questions (with answers!).

How many times do you have to activate it to be worthwhile? Probably twice. At just one target, it's probably more effective to play Indestructibility. You can make arguments about Indestructibility going to the graveyard when your target finds its way there, but, realistically, this is supposed to prevent that (yes, yes, Exile and Edict effects do exist, I know...).

How good do the targets have to be? Tough question to answer in concrete terms. You probably want your general to be the matching tribe, but then you're looking at the next best representation if you need two activations for it to be worthwhile. While a low end creature (like 1/1 or 2/2) with indestructible can be a reasonable blocker, it's not exactly the game ending play we'd want to make. If you had two Indestructibilitys, you would play one on your general and one on something decent.

I think it's probably playable in a couple of decks, maybe ones that aren't even explicitly tribal (like Shalai, Voice of Plenty or Sigarda, Host of Herons), but I would say the main thing this card suffers from is that Avacyn, Angel of Hope exists. If you activate it twice, you're at 8 mana, and you may as well have played Avacyn (because it's an 8/8 beater with vigilance and flying and Kindred Boons every tribe you have and your lands and everything else under the sun).

So, basically I think it's caught between being less efficient than Indestructibility and less comprehensive than Avacyn, Angel of Hope. I guess it's wild in Myojin tribal.

[BeneTleilax]

flash indestructible and vigilance are all good for blocking he is super blocker lol. just needs reach.

[Hawk]

At 3WWW before it protects a single creature, this is extremely expensive for what it does.

- One can make a single target into a hard target with Darksteel Plate or Indestructibility (and the second of those is generally bad).

- At 4WWWW before it starts really cracking by protecting two permanents, it is now competing with Avacyn, Angel of Hope.

- This card also requires a lot of hoops (as you need to be tribal with a heavy white component); since it does, one could and should always see if Eldrazi Monument, Elspeth, Knight-Errant, Knight Exemplar, or Crested Sunmare, or Sephara, Sky's Blade are "just as good" or better with the rest of the deck.

I get why this card is so expensive; it is unfun to play against for Red and or Black decks and can make the game gind to a crawl. It's at that awkward spot where it probably would have been fine at 1WW up front but I understand why WotC was scared of it there - it's just that at four up front, it's basically unplayable outside of Myojin tribal or some sort of other really narrow and weak tribe like Unicorns.

re: Darksteel Sentinel I expect to see a lot more of him in Kathril, Aspect Warper since he's Vigilance and Indestructible on one card and he's less wildly unplayable alone than Darksteel Gargoyle thanks to that Flash.

[Wallycaine]

For comparisons to Avacyn, it's worth pointing out that Kindred can be paid in installments, so I'd consider Kindred's 4WWWW mode to be cheaper than Avacyn, since you don't have to wait to have 8 mana to deploy it. On the flip side, it's also harder to cheat on Kindred's cost, since Avacyn can be reanimated. It's rough, and probably could have benefitted a lot from having a "as this comes into play, choose a creature type and put a divinity counter on a creature of that type" type thing, so the first one was free.

[3drinks]

I'm pleasantly surprised to see as much interesting discussion on the sentinel as there has been. Now I don't feel so bad about the number of times I've been blown out by this thing over the years. (You'd think I'd be expecting it by now 😂)

[onering]

Sometimes you just gotta go with what the wheel lands on 3drinks. Darksteel Sentinel is a fine card for discussion, no need to curate so aggressively. Most vanillas and french vanillas are fine to reroll on, but plenty of cards that seem like limited fodder are ripe for discussion here.

Darksteel Sentinel has some neat abilities that combine strongly with each other. Its over costed, but its colorless and an artifact so it has plenty of way to have its cost brought down significantly and can even be free in certain decks. Both flash and vigilance are beginning to get mechanical support, so it will be interesting to see what this looks like once those decks become viable. I think flash is already there and have built a flash tribal Chromium New deck that includes this. Its OK there, paying 6 for it isn't great but once its on the board an indestructible vigilant 3/3 gets in for chip damage and stops a lot, and being colorless blanks swords, though the surprise blocker utility is lessened in a deck where everything is a surprise blocker, including the 7/7 that everyone can see in the command zone and plays around.

Kindred Boon is probably about the same as Darksteel Sentinel in terms of power. Its got a higher ceiling but requires more investment and more deck building restrictions. You really want to be tribal, or at least have a lot of dudes with the same type as your commander, to run it. Just using it to make your commander indestructible makes it a bad darksteel plate. Even when protecting your team, its usually a bad Avacyn. Its strong suit is protecting multiple targets for before you hit 8 mana, so you need multiple potential targets reliably, so you need to be tribal. Its nice that you can wait to put the counter on in response, so you can play somewhat reactive. Tribal doesn't usually play like that, but the ones that do benefit. Its ok when you're playing a tribe of heavies, but I'd usually rather have Avacyn. Still, redundancy.

But lets stop kidding ourselves, Kindred Boon is pretty mediocre as an indestructibility granter, but using it for that is rookie crap. Its Galaxy Brain use is to put divinity counters on reanimated Myojin so you can activate their abilities repeatedly. Its about dumping Night's Reach and Cleansing Fire into your yard and rezzing them with victimize or living death then putting divinity counters on them with kindred boon and keeping your opponents locked out of hands and creatures forever while you beat them down with ghost gods.

[3drinks]

Kindred Boon is probably about the same as Darksteel Sentinel in terms of power. Its got a higher ceiling but requires more investment and more deck building restrictions. You really want to be tribal, or at least have a lot of dudes with the same type as your commander, to run it. Just using it to make your commander indestructible makes it a bad darksteel plate. Even when protecting your team, its usually a bad Avacyn. Its strong suit is protecting multiple targets for before you hit 8 mana, so you need multiple potential targets reliably, so you need to be tribal. Its nice that you can wait to put the counter on in response, so you can play somewhat reactive. Tribal doesn't usually play like that, but the ones that do benefit. Its ok when you're playing a tribe of heavies, but I'd usually rather have Avacyn. Still, redundancy.

What i keep coming back to on this is it's vulnerable to Disenchant and, like That Which Was Taken before it, still doesn't actually give meaning to divinity counters. Without the source in play, these counters mean nothing. And, both will maintain a heightened sense of awareness from players because of what they do.

[pokken]

Seems we're on a recurring theme of trying to use bad cards to protect your good cards instead of just playing more good cards or figuring out how to use good protection cards. I just almost always dislike it. This one especially is really expensive.

The myojin interaction is a pretty big brain play but otherwise this card is mega boring.

I'd rather play efficient stuff that's reactive vs. wasting mana up front to preemptively interact with something very likely won't happen. This would never come before Eerie Interlude and Ghostway for me and I'd usually try to think of a way to use white's recursion capability instead as well (e.g. Return to the Ranks.

[Outcryqq]

I play Kindred Boon in my 5c spirits deck with myojin. It's worked maybe once?

[onering]

I also like to talk about other cards in a cycle to see where the rcotd card stands in comparison. Kindred Boon is the worst of the cycle.

Kindred Summons is also pretty rough, but has potential. You're going to dig deeper in go wide tribes, but getting the creatures into play for free is stronger in big fatty tribes that you won't have many of in play. I see this as useful in big fat tribes that can stack there library, as if you can ensure the top 3 are relevant your going to get a lot of value from it and it starts to compare well to broader versions of the effect, and in certain go wide tribes, particularly elves and merfolk, where puking out a dozen is a worthwhile play.

Kindred Dominance is solid. If you're tribal its generally going to be a plague wind that is more realistic to cast. Its a strong effect if still a bit pricey at 7 mana, but if your playing tribal your also probably in a meta where 7 mana is reasonable.

Kindred Charge does real work. Its stupid good in tribes with lots of etbs, in go wide tribes, and even in fatty tribes. At 6 mana its definitely castable and its ceiling is a game ending play. Sometimes you just cast it for value off of multiple etbs, sometimes it wins the game.

Kindred Discovery is just great. At 5 mana its got a lot of competition in the draw department, but in a tribal deck it will draw a bunch of cards and can do so almost immediately. Triggering on both etb and attack gives you plenty of ways to keep a full grip, and curving into this and attacking with a few dudes is sweet. If you have a go wide tribe, it draws a ton of cards. If you have a big fatty tribe it doesn't draw as much but even making all your fatties cantrip and then draw when they attack is solid. Even if you are just casting and attacking with your commander its 1 card per turn, which isn't great for the mana but not bad either for what is a bad situation in a tribal deck, and will help you rebuild.

[lyonhaert]

Kindred Summons is also pretty rough, but has potential. You're going to dig deeper in go wide tribes, but getting the creatures into play for free is stronger in big fatty tribes that you won't have many of in play. I see this as useful in big fat tribes that can stack there library, as if you can ensure the top 3 are relevant your going to get a lot of value from it and it starts to compare well to broader versions of the effect, and in certain go wide tribes, particularly elves and merfolk, where puking out a dozen is a worthwhile play.

I've used this for a single card, too. An instant-speed Vigor out of my Ayula deck when I had Soul of the Harvest on the battlefield was a fun play.

[3drinks]

Tuesday, July 7th, 2020; Breathstealer's Crypt

Hmm. I wonder. How good is this, if it's even good?

[Mookie]

I'm not going to discount Breathstealer's Crypt entirely, but it does look pretty suspect. Better than Breathstealer, at least. The absolute best-case scenario I can envision is you're somehow able to get your opponents to low life totals, at which point it will lock them out of drawing more creature cards. Alternatively, if they're on a very creature-heavy deck, the life loss could be significant over time. That said, neither scenario sounds particularly exciting - punisher cards that tax life totals are pretty ineffective when everyone starts with 40 life.

Another way to make use of it is to make use of the information. But in that case, I'd probably run a different Telepathy variant first - this only reveals cards drawn, and not cards in hand (or tutored, for that matter). It's also symmetric, which is a major downside (especially if you're also running creatures).

If you squint a bit, this says 'whenever an opponent draws a card, they lose 3 life' (with a bunch of asterisks), which is pretty attractive for a Nekusar, the Mindrazer deck. Your opponents can just discard the creature cards to not lose life, so not as effective, but still worth consideration.

....but yeah, looks pretty bad to me.

[folding_music]

I love Breathstealer's Crypt and Wand of Denial and Zur's Weirding and all that. Anything that adds a minigame layer to magic makes it more entertaining to me. Cards like these don't have a hope against the rising power of edh decks but I'm still happy they exist and will probably continue to attempt to find ways they can be forced to fit into the format. it's funny because when they DO make a card of this type that's good enough for the format - Narset, Parter of Veils - everyone immediately resents it :)))))

looking at all this stuff kinda makes me wanna make a clumsy Nebuchadnezzar deck. does kinda gear you towards victimizing a single player and then getting wrecked by everyone else, though.

[Treamayne]

I run this in Sygg, River Cutthroat, where either option is good for me. Discarding the creature means less blockers; paying the life turns Sygg on for the turn. I also like pairing it with Sweep Away effects (Is that creature double-cost, pay-6-life good?)

I could also see it being better in decks that steal creatures from the yard; as well as decks that use Oversold Cemetery effects for themselves, or exile from graveyard effects for opponents (e.g. Tymaret, Chosen from Death).

[Hawk]

It reminds me a lot of Zur's Weirding and I'd expect to try to run it in some sort of "Lantern Control" deck, perhaps - but in a vacuum it seems bad. 4 mana to do nothing, and when it works it is a punisher effect with one option being the most freely flowing resource in EDH (3 damage). Wand of Denial and Zur's Weirding and Codex Shredder + Lantern of Insight are all effective because you decide what they draw, but with this they decide if what they draw is worth 3 life, which means they can freely pitch stuff they don't need or dodge the final few "bolts" if they're in single digits, and easily burn life if they really need that Craterhoof Behemoth to kill you.

[Sinis]

Tuesday, July 7th, 2020; Breathstealer's Crypt

This card is atrociously bad.

Realistically, your opponent might be playing, at the absolute upper limit for some non-Shadowborn Apostle deck, 30 creatures. That means, this does nothing for 70% of your opponent's draws. It's a 4 mana brick. Most casual decks will probably play 15-20 creatures, so, it's even worse for the ones that aren't creature-heavy outliers.

Then, even if it does trigger, they can lose 3 life (which seems... trivial? Ineffective?), or worse, they might actually want it in the yard so it can be cheated into play. I guess it could be amusing if someone drew like 10 cards, and then a bunch were creatures, but, like, would that even matter if they had 3 triggers? 4? 5? Don't they just keep the most relevant ones and lose 3-6 life?

It reminds me of other early designs like Soul Barrier where there was some sort of 'stick' applied to a regular game action, but the stick was irrelevant, or didn't jive with a deck that would want to play that card in the first place. Soul Barrier sucked in control because the life total of the aggro deck you were trying to slow down didn't matter, and it sucked in aggro because your worst matchups didn't bother to play a number of creatures sufficient to make Soul Barrier do enough for cost.

[Hawk]

Tuesday, July 7th, 2020; Breathstealer's Crypt

This card is atrociously bad.

Realistically, your opponent might be playing, at the absolute upper limit for some non-Shadowborn Apostle deck, 30 creatures. That means, this does nothing for 70% of your opponent's draws. It's a 4 mana brick. Most casual decks will probably play 15-20 creatures, so, it's even worse for the ones that aren't creature-heavy outliers.

Then, even if it does trigger, they can lose 3 life (which seems... trivial? Ineffective?), or worse, they might actually want it in the yard so it can be cheated into play. I guess it could be amusing if someone drew like 10 cards, and then a bunch were creatures, but, like, would that even matter if they had 3 triggers? 4? 5? Don't they just keep the most relevant ones and lose 3-6 life?

It reminds me of other early designs like Soul Barrier where there was some sort of 'stick' applied to a regular game action, but the stick was irrelevant, or didn't jive with a deck that would want to play that card in the first place. Soul Barrier sucked in control because the life total of the aggro deck you were trying to slow down didn't matter, and it sucked in aggro because your worst matchups didn't bother to play a number of creatures sufficient to make Soul Barrier do enough for cost.

I think this is probably a super accurate take, but those numbers seem off in more casual places where a slow-grind like this would be at its best; we have a fair chunk of tribal or dredg-y decks with 35-40 creatures maindeck around these parts.

Even so, that's on the high end and that still makes this dead 60% of the time. Even in a bizarre case, like "oops all creature" Primal Surge decks or Shadowborn Apostle decks, you're paying four mana to hit maybe 60% of the time and miss 40% of the time.

It's only "Good" versus Simic Tribal decks that are both creature-dense (35+) AND will be utilizing stuff like Distant Melody to draw a billion cards per turn. And for every opponent like that, there will be more "normal" decks with 25ish creatures and no massive draw engines that make this dangerous to them.

Oh, and note that for a lot of these creature-heavy decks that are elfballing out or Animar, Soul of Elements vommiting stuff...they may not necessarily be drawing if their payoff is Primal Surge or Genesis Wave or Kindred Summons or Gishath, Sun's Avatar or Evolutionary Leap or whatever. Yeah, the more I think about it, the more I think this card is pretty bad even in some sort of Lantern Control list.

[Sinis]

Even so, that's on the high end and that still makes this dead 60% of the time. Even in a bizarre case, like "oops all creature" Primal Surge decks or Shadowborn Apostle decks, you're paying four mana to hit maybe 60% of the time and miss 40% of the time.

If you're curious, I play a Shadowborn Apostles deck (the very first one posted on Nexus!). Your hit rate is 44%, and realistically, I don't care since there's a lot of payoffs in the form of recursion (like Rally the Ancestors) or something like Crypt of Agadeem.

Now that I think of it, this could be bad. I've lost to Underworld Dreams before, and if I pay for every apostle, Breathstealer's Crypt is more deadly than UD. But, I believe this is an extreme case, and that it's an exception that proves how bad BC is in the course of ordinary gameplay. You wouldn't want to play Breathstealer's Crypt unless your environment was rife with decks like this one, and I think that's probably exceedingly rare.

[3drinks]

I'd like to know why a card like this rests in the $4 - $5 range. And don't say reserve list, because there's reserve cards that are still $1 do nothings.

[onering]

I think because it's reserve list and intriguing. It's a punisher card, and there's a certain kind of player that's drawn to that. It's also a puzzle asking to be solved. It does have some niche uses. As someone mentioned earlier, it's ok in Sygg since if they pay it triggers him (making the payoff better) and if they don't pay the life they have less blockers to throw in front of the UB aggro onslaught. If you're only hitting 1/3 of the time, but have 3 opponents, it's good for about a card a turn plus some life loss for an opponent. Which is just ok. I imagine there's someone out there who got their kicks building with this and bounce to the library effects.

[3drinks]

Oh, I guess there's Puzzle Box decks too...

[3drinks]

Wednesday, July 8th, 2020; Boldwyr Intimidator

Lmaooooo I love that line. cowards can't block warriors. How fun. Swear this card saw fringe play in it's time due to it's interaction with Chameleon Colossus, but boy has it not aged well even if it were good.

[Mookie]

"Cowards can't block Warriors" is some absolutely amazing text. Not quite flavor text, but certainly flavorful.

As for the card itself... Boldwyr Intimidator is essentially inefficient evasion. Assuming sufficient mana (or all your creatures are warriors), it can turn all of an opponent's creatures into cowards and let you alpha strike. This is, however, pretty mana-intensive - not only do you need to pay 5 mana for Intimidator in the first place, but you also need to spend a bunch of mana on ability activations. And if you have any non-warrior creatures, it gets even more expensive. ....and that's before we get into Eight-and-a-Half-Tails doing the same thing, but better and cheaper.

Another niche usage is alongside cards like Engineered Plague or Peer Pressure - turn your opponents' creatures into cowards, then have other anti-coward tech. Or just use as a hate piece against tribal decks in general, since cowards also lose their other creature types. Artificial Evolution probably also opens up some janky synergies. Finally a reason to run Tivadar's Crusade?

In a vacuum though, as a 7 mana 5/5, I'd usually pass.