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

[bobthefunny]

Mono-color? Usually even most multicolor decks will have a commonality of color you can name, especially with multicolor creatures across blockers. More so as wide boards are often tokens. You can activate it more than once, as well.

[DirkGently]

Varina player here, and not so much.

Thing is, it doesn't really fit into any of the metrics that my iteration wants.

Esper is tight for mana generally so holding up this much for incidentals isn't ideal. There's better things to have in your yard, and my build runs 3 different mass reanimation spells so there's every chance I can't keep it in the yard.

The other side is that as a general rule there's almost nothing I play that deserves targeted removal. By that I mean any army I build is more than the sum of its parts, and there's no single piece that's a linchpin of the deck, so removing anything is a waste of time. I don't advertise that mid game, but I also don't waste resources protecting my stuff or countering these spells.

There's also a few aristocrats, and a few cards that benefit from my stuff either dying or sitting in my 'yard, so I don't generally mind my stuff getting blown up. Not gonna lie, it's a nice place to have your deck where you can just benefit from any interaction thrown at you.

So yeah, this doesn't do anything to justify itself a place, at least in my build. I could see it in other places, but Varina isn't one of them.

I feel like that might depend a lot on how you're building Varina. Your version is tribal/midrangy with some control elements, so you presumably way to tap out a decent amount of the time, but a straight-up draw-go control build would easily be able to hold up mana for protection, and Varina even provides an outlet for mana eot in addition to a discard outlet, and even a way to sort-of-hedge against grave hate. And then you can use it to make your army unblockable for the alpha strike as well.

Idk, as a card that does something without costing a card, that seems pretty strong to me. But I also haven't played it for a long time so maybe I'm overvaluing it because it's so cooooool.

[toctheyounger]

I feel like that might depend a lot on how you're building Varina. Your version is tribal/midrangy with some control elements, so you presumably way to tap out a decent amount of the time, but a straight-up draw-go control build would easily be able to hold up mana for protection, and Varina even provides an outlet for mana eot in addition to a discard outlet, and even a way to sort-of-hedge against grave hate. And then you can use it to make your army unblockable for the alpha strike as well.

Idk, as a card that does something without costing a card, that seems pretty strong to me. But I also haven't played it for a long time so maybe I'm overvaluing it because it's so cooooool.

Yeah that is a pretty accurate take on my build. And you're right, Varina can build a lot of ways so there's every chance that Glory does fit into some of them. I just don't see the need in mine, personally. I sort of cover most of what it can do with Eldrazi Monument and Zombie Master for some protection and alpha striking. Most of what I cast doesn't matter if it gets fired at, but I have a couple options nonetheless and this just doesn't cover any of those bases cheaper or better.

I feel like it could fit in a more combo oriented build (maybe for Mike/Trike or Lab Man protection), where you do need your various pieces to have some measure of protection available and want a fairly minimal set up for said protection.

[Mookie]

Glory is an interesting card. Protection on demand is pretty powerful, since it shuts off spot removal and can let you force attacks past blockers. Three mana is pretty steep though, so you'll probably be relying more on threat of activation than an intent to actually activate it. I think I would generally favor Mother of Runes from an efficiency standpoint, but I suppose it depends somewhat on the exact makeup of your deck. White doesn't have many good ways to fill its graveyard though, so would probably be part of a multicolor deck with a heavier graveyard focus like Karador, Ghost Chieftain.

Sidenote: Glory is a counterpart to Genesis, and both were elements of Judgment's heavy green / white focus - it also brought us cards like Krosan Verge, Nantuko Monastery, and Mirari's Wake. This theme was the reverse of Torment's heavy black focus (which gave us the Tainted Isle cycle and Cabal Coffers).

[3drinks]

Thursday, December 12th, 2019; Bribery

Is this still the powerhouse that this was back in the day? And if so, why is this generally seen as way more powerful than the similar Acquire?

[RxPhantom]

Question, is this thread truly random? All I ever see discussed are format staples and/or higher rarities. You'd think total worthless jank like...I don't know...Teferi's Drake would show up once in a while.

[DirkGently]

Next rcotd: Teferi's drake.

I've always felt this was kind of a boring goodstuff card that doesn't have much synergy. It's funny with Uyo and other spell copiers, though.

[Dunharrow]

Bribery is not as good any more, since there are more ways to win without big creatures and many decks may not have any creatures worth 5 mana.
Acquire is still unplayable in comparison because most decks do not have any artifacts other than mana rocks. Most decks will have a few creatures in the 5+ mana range, and if anyone is playing a graveyard or ramp deck you are guaranteed a haymaker.

Still, I have considered Bribery to get Birthing Pod into play for Marchesa, the black rose.

[Serenade]

Good thing you didn't go through with Bribery in that case. =P


Better if you know all the cards in their decks.

[3drinks]

Question, is this thread truly random? All I ever see discussed are format staples and/or higher rarities. You'd think total worthless jank like...I don't know...Teferi's Drake would show up once in a while.

It is, but I "throw back" when I hit random and come up with basic lands, UN cards (they're not legal), and draft fodder like glory hole seeker since the discussion generated by every iteration of grizzly bears is uninteresting. There has been a number of non-staples to come through this thread too though (the incarnations a few days ago come to mind, various flavour of removal and counterspells).

You can go back about three months through this thread if you wish to check the validity of random - whatever that definition that actually means in the scope of things.

[pokken]

Very interestingly, Bribery was a mega staple in my group when the format started (for us, in 2011 or some odd?). It discouraged people from playing sylvan primordial/prime time/eldrazi with annihilator/etc to an extent. The relentless drive toward efficiency has lowered curves so much over the years I almost never play it anymore and when I do I wind up with an eternal witness or something. It's too situational.

The place I would probably play it is in something where I thought the odds of being able to use it to find combo pieces was fairly high, things like E-wit, kiki-Jiki, resto, felidar guardian, palinchron, etc., see enough play. So paradoxically it used to be an anti-creature strategy and how for me it's more to enable creature combo decks

[3drinks]

Very interestingly, Bribery was a mega staple in my group when the format started (for us, in 2011 or some odd?). It discouraged people from playing sylvan primordial/prime time/eldrazi with annihilator/etc to an extent. The relentless drive toward efficiency has lowered curves so much over the years I almost never play it anymore and when I do I wind up with an eternal witness or something. It's too situational.

The place I would probably play it is in something where I thought the odds of being able to use it to find combo pieces was fairly high, things like E-wit, kiki-Jiki, resto, felidar guardian, palinchron, etc., see enough play. So paradoxically it used to be an anti-creature strategy and how for me it's more to enable creature combo decks

I think I'd play it if I ever got around to getting the U white borders and finally reporting my old OG Bolas classic control. And that's just, like...out of necessity in getting enough bombs.

[Mookie]

Bribery is a card that I've heard good things about in the past, but haven't really seen in action recently. That may tie in to a general theme of people building their decks more for synergy and less for generic goodstuff, which has a side effect of making stolen cards somewhat worse. It does depend a lot on the decks you expect to be playing against though - if you're playing in a known meta and have some knowledge of what your are opponents are running, you're more likely to get something useful.

Of my own decks, I know that some (ex: Animar) have very strong Bribery targets, while others have very weak ones (ex: Mizzix).

To contrast with Acquire... I know from playing my Thada deck that a surprising number of decks have pretty weak artifacts to steal, mostly green-based ones. Using a five mana spell to steal a Sol Ring isn't really worth the investment. Occasionally you'll steal something like Blightsteel Colossus or Wurmcoil Engine, but it feels like most of the best artifact targets are creatures you can hit off Bribery anyway. What super-spicy noncreature artifacts are there to steal anyway? All I can think of is Bolas's Citadel, and some miscellaneous draw engines like The Immortal Sun. After that, things start to fall off to mid-tier stuff like Thran Dynamo.

[RxPhantom]

I only run Bribery in a single deck, which is Yarok, the Desecrated. I run it for two reasons:

1. It's pretty likely to get, at minimum, decent value out of it with Yarok on the field.
2. I bought a copy of the judge foil from a judge a few years back, and I feel that I must.

[ISBPathfinder]

Very interestingly, Bribery was a mega staple in my group when the format started (for us, in 2011 or some odd?). It discouraged people from playing sylvan primordial/prime time/eldrazi with annihilator/etc to an extent. The relentless drive toward efficiency has lowered curves so much over the years I almost never play it anymore and when I do I wind up with an eternal witness or something. It's too situational.

The place I would probably play it is in something where I thought the odds of being able to use it to find combo pieces was fairly high, things like E-wit, kiki-Jiki, resto, felidar guardian, palinchron, etc., see enough play. So paradoxically it used to be an anti-creature strategy and how for me it's more to enable creature combo decks

Back then we had commander tuck and clone legend kills though too. It was a far more hostile place to try to have a commander centric deck. It forced a lot of decks to play good cards rather than rely on the commander as a build aground strategy. I think its a good thing we changed but it also made ETB goodstuff tactics a lot worse.

The loss of Primeval Titan, clone kills, and commander tuck all contributed to the loss of popularity of the card. It can still be really good, but its a lot harder to pull out sweet creatures from a spellslinger deck (something that was much harder to do back then).

There is also the fact that Homeward Path was introduced around the time that Bribery started to see a decline. I think homeward came out somewhat closeish in the timeline to primeval's ban.

[toctheyounger]

For what it's worth I see no issue with skipping some of the dross that clearly isn't ever going to have a place in the format. What more can actually be said about Gray Ogre? Those sort of cards speak for themselves, and when I see them come up I just don't see a need to chip in with any sort of opinion, so we might as well skip em.

I was hiatused when Bribery dropped (for all printings to date) so I don't have a copy. That being said I think it was probably more useful in a time long past than it is now. We're in a bit of a golden era for the format where there's enough synergy about for most builds that finding something from someone else's deck that's good for both their build and yours isn't a regular occurrence. You might find a praetor, elder dinosaur, gearhulk, OG Avacyn, Selvala sequel or something, but there's no real guarantee.

I do really like the idea of ripping someone's win con out from underneath them though. Like snatching a lab man or a Mike/trike/ballista out of the deck and leaving someone having to resort to whatever else is left to get over the line.

I feel like the perfect place for this is somewhere like Riku or Mizzix, where you can cast it for cheap or copy the hell out of it.

[hyalopterouslemur]

Very interestingly, Bribery was a mega staple in my group when the format started (for us, in 2011 or some odd?). It discouraged people from playing sylvan primordial/prime time/eldrazi with annihilator/etc to an extent. The relentless drive toward efficiency has lowered curves so much over the years I almost never play it anymore and when I do I wind up with an eternal witness or something. It's too situational.

The place I would probably play it is in something where I thought the odds of being able to use it to find combo pieces was fairly high, things like E-wit, kiki-Jiki, resto, felidar guardian, palinchron, etc., see enough play. So paradoxically it used to be an anti-creature strategy and how for me it's more to enable creature combo decks

Back then we had commander tuck and clone legend kills though too. It was a far more hostile place to try to have a commander centric deck. It forced a lot of decks to play good cards rather than rely on the commander as a build aground strategy. I think its a good thing we changed but it also made ETB goodstuff tactics a lot worse.

The loss of Primeval Titan, clone kills, and commander tuck all contributed to the loss of popularity of the card. It can still be really good, but its a lot harder to pull out sweet creatures from a spellslinger deck (something that was much harder to do back then).

There is also the fact that Homeward Path was introduced around the time that Bribery started to see a decline. I think homeward came out somewhat closeish in the timeline to primeval's ban.

A year or so before Primeval's ban, IIRC.

It can be good, but you have to read a room. If a spellslinger deck has creatures, they're going to help with mana or card draw. And it feels anticlimactic to grab a Horned Kavu (used for a specific Animar storm build) or a Mulldrifter. Obviously in multiplayer, it's different. You pick who you search there.

Acquire is probably a better card, TBH. At worst you get some kind of mana rock or a spellbomb or something.

[Myllior]

Battlecruiser, durdle and goodstuff; if any of these describe a decent chunk of your meta then you're going to have a lot of fun with Bribery, and probably win a not-insignificant number of games because of it as well. (Getting to Progenitor Mimic the Utvara Hellkite you just pulled out of someone else's deck is pretty great, although it still takes 10 turns to get over a million dragons). Even in these metas, Bribery's place is more in decks that are less defined in their win conditions, since streamlined and focused decks will find it dilutes their game plans.

Of the other two Bribery-like effects, Acquire is really underwhelming and Knowledge Exploitation is a little more flexible than Bribery but pays for it with a higher CMC, although its interaction with Eye of the Storm is entertaining.

[Dunharrow]

Wasn't there a thing on Sally about RCotD needing to be A) not something previously selected and B) not a vanilla creature or creature with only evergreen keywords?

Like we don't need bears, but we also don't need to discuss Giant Spider.

[lyonhaert]

On Bribery vs Acquire, I'm probably most likely to choose whichever is best for the deck it's in. Marchesa, the Black Rose for example would like Bribery a lot more then Acquire. But either way, even if I only grab a support creature or manarock, I've at least seen my opponent's library. Although, if that was all I wanted to do and deny them one of their cards I could just run Extract instead.

[tstorm823]

Wasn't there a thing on Sally about RCotD needing to be A) not something previously selected and B) not a vanilla creature or creature with only evergreen keywords?

Like we don't need bears, but we also don't need to discuss Giant Spider.

For the most part, that's how I ran it. There were a few times I let a vanilla or french vanilla through because I felt something like literally Gray Ogre has an iconic status that might inspire some discussion, but those were very few and far between.

Question, is this thread truly random? All I ever see discussed are format staples and/or higher rarities. You'd think total worthless jank like...I don't know...Teferi's Drake would show up once in a while.

Having manned the random button, I can attest it does a bad job feeling well distributed. Some weeks you get like 5 mythic staples in a row, some weeks you get barely playables, (sometimes I secretly threw back perfectly valid random cards because there were like 6 green creatures in a row or something stupid like that and I was personally bored of it). But it's kind of like mana screw: if you only get perfectly even distributions, you can be sure you're not actually random.

[3drinks]

What super-spicy noncreature artifacts are there to steal anyway? All I can think of is Bolas's Citadel, and some miscellaneous draw engines like The Immortal Sun. After that, things start to fall off to mid-tier stuff like Thran Dynamo.

Wait, what's wrong with grabbing The Immortal Sun, anyway? I'd be pretty happy to get that from someone, haha. Or stuff like The Magic Mirror, The Great Henge...low key seems like a more blowout play but less table eye roll than a Bribery.

Having manned the random button, I can attest it does a bad job feeling well distributed. Some weeks you get like 5 mythic staples in a row, some weeks you get barely playables, (sometimes I secretly threw back perfectly valid random cards because there were like 6 green creatures in a row or something stupid like that and I was personally bored of it). But it's kind of like mana screw: if you only get perfectly even distributions, you can be sure you're not actually random.

Yep, this is the advice I got from the man himself when I took this thread over in the move to mtgnexus. I like to think I've done a pretty good job at managing it.

[Mookie]

Mookie wrote: ↑
8 hours ago
What super-spicy noncreature artifacts are there to steal anyway? All I can think of is Bolas's Citadel, and some miscellaneous draw engines like The Immortal Sun. After that, things start to fall off to mid-tier stuff like Thran Dynamo.

Wait, what's wrong with grabbing The Immortal Sun, anyway? I'd be pretty happy to get that from someone, haha. Or stuff like The Magic Mirror, The Great Henge...low key seems like a more blowout play but less table eye roll than a Bribery.

Nothing wrong with them. The Immortal Sun (and miscellaneous draw engines like The Magic Mirror and The Great Henge) are grabs I would generally be happy with. There was a reason I called them out.

My main concern with playing Acquire with the intent to steal them is that they don't show up in every deck, and the decks that are running good hits probably don't have more than one or two of them, which means that the card can drop off in value in the late game (or if you're doing it repeatedly). Gilded Lotus and Thran Dynamo can be fine if you really want the mana, but that isn't true of every deck. And if your best hit is Sol Ring or a two mana rock like Fellwar Stone, then I don't think it is worth the five mana investment for casting Acquire in the first place.

As an aside, my opinion is almost certainly colored from playing Thada Adel, Acquisitor though - there are a lot of decks I play against that have exactly Sol Ring, Swiftfoot Boots, and 2-3 two mana rocks (ex: a signet and a talisman) as the extent of all of their artifacts... which means that I attack them twice with Thada and then ignore them. Or they have more synergistic cards like Ashnod's Altar that I have no way to make use of.

[Serenade]

We got real wrathy for a while, so whatever you swiped would go to the GY...and the opponent would recur it. So that tarnished both cards for me.

Stealing AND using a wincon always feels nice, though. My loose Thada deck got a Memnarch after amassing many mana rocks.

[3drinks]

Rriday, December 13th, 2019; Reckless Spite