[mtgnexus] Random Card of the Day - Samwise the Stouthearted

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Post by 3drinks » 2 years ago

Tuesday, May 11th, 2021; Adriana, Captain of the Guard



So...just how good is melee actually?

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Post by Lifeless » 2 years ago

I can't really explain why but I love this card. We have a Conspiracy cube and I've frequently dumpstered my draft to pivot into her colors when I can. Melee is exceptional in limited on smaller creatures or tokens, particularly in a lower powered limited environment like Conspiracy. That being said it's otherwise pretty underwhelming and I can't imagine many people dropping this lovely lady on the table in EDH.

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Post by Sinis » 2 years ago

3drinks wrote:
2 years ago
Tuesday, May 11th, 2021; Adriana, Captain of the Guard

So...just how good is melee actually?
Adriana actually headed up a moderately successful deck I had right after Conspiracy 2 was released. My tables at the time were consistently 4 players, so I could consistently get +3/+3. It demands a wide board (so you can attack everyone) and scales with said wide board. The more dudes you could put on the table with any power and toughness value, the better.

Melee is pretty tame most of the time, but having it on all your guys is another story. If you're willing to commit to attacking everybody, it was like an Overrun minus trample every turn. If the card also had melee, it was pretty exciting; Wings of the Guard was typically a 7/7 flying for 1W.

It breathed (more) life into cards like Kher Keep since those Kobolds could easily be 3/4s at a good rate, and felt very good with canned armies like Secure the Wastes or Martial Coup.

So, I guess, blah blah blah, white's canned armies, Elspeth, Sun's Champion shines here (like she doesn't shine elsewhere?), Legion's Landing // Adanto, the First Fort, Windbrisk Heights, Odric, Master Tactician, and a weirdly specific home for Militant Angel which I haven't played since Adriana.

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Post by Lifeless » 2 years ago

I'll also add that Melee increases the value of multiple combat steps quite nicely.

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Post by JWK » 2 years ago

I have an knight tribal deck headed by Adriana. It does okay, the small boost provided by melee + the preponerence of first strike among knights can eliminate a lot of blockers. It isn't one of my strongest decks by any means, but it has pulled out its share of wins.
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Post by hyalopterouslemur » 2 years ago

Melee depends on how useful combat is to you. Mostly melee is a blanket +1/+1 when attacking, but having evasive creatures helps make it more But it does benefit from tings and the like. All in all, I'd rank her south of anthems but north of battle cry. But I'd rank melee in general lower, looking for evasive creatures or utility to benefit fron it.

Bear in mind melee is more efficient. Wings of the Guard is effectively at least a flying bear when attacking. Though Adriana's value compared to Kongming, "Sleeping Dragon" is debatable.
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Post by EonAon » 2 years ago

As someone who loves a good creature deck in commander, while I like the card the issue is spreading resources too thin. This card feels like you should be using alot of tokens/low CC drops which is mightily possible. But usually its the mid to technical style creatures that will get the most out of this.

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Post by duducrash » 2 years ago

Hum... I don't know how to elaborate on this but my brain has 100% tricked me here. Ive seen her a few times. I've even played against her once. And I've ALWAYS read her ability as Mentor. Like the boros ability. Kinda scared about my cognitive abilities, not gonna lie.

It wouldnt be a bad hit out of Winota, Joiner of Forces

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Post by Mookie » 2 years ago

duducrash wrote:
2 years ago
It wouldnt be a bad hit out of Winota, Joiner of Forces
Melee is a triggered ability, so you wouldn't get any pump from her if she enters off a Winota trigger. That said, she is one of the larger humans available in terms of raw stats - most humans are pretty small.

In general, I think Adriana, Captain of the Guard is fine. She suffers greatly from Boros having a surplus of combat-oriented commanders. I do appreciate that melee as a mechanic allows aggro decks to scale to multiplayer, but it's hard to say whether it is a stronger combat buff than Agrus Kos, Wojek Veteran or Jor Kadeen, the Prevailer. It does work well with multiple combat steps, but I also feel like Adriana doesn't really do anything special or exciting.

....still, +3/+3 to your entire board is pretty strong on a 5-drop, and works pretty well with a go-wide strategy. Boros's anthem effects are usually just +1/+1, with +2/+2 being somewhat rare and larger being extremely difficult to find outside one-shot effects.

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Post by capitacommunist » 2 years ago

Her buff is quite powerful, and you don't need to go very wide to be able to get mileage out of the melee boost. I think the best is to have a couple of other (strong) creatures, which see boosts up further, rather than going on a token plan that falls apart if she's removed (as a commander). Melee synergizes very well with extra combats and double strike, so playing it with creatures like Combat Celebrant, Aurelia, the Warleader and Silverblade Paladin generates a lot of damage.
As a commander (as with most other Boros aggro generals), she struggles with being on the high impact/high cmc/no haste side, which means you need to dedicate a lot of slots to ramp and you will likely only be able to play her once or twice in a game. That makes me think she is better in the 99 than as a commander. In the high cmc Boros range, I also think Aurelia has the more powerful buff to have in the command zone, and she also benefits a lot from having haste.

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Post by RxPhantom » 2 years ago

I've made an Adriana, Captain of the Guard deck, but I haven't played it too much. I'm trying to find enough cool stuff to drop opponents' shields, like Disrupt Decorum, Bond of Discipline and Cosmotronic Wave. I feel like it's close working, but not quite.
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Post by 3drinks » 2 years ago

Wednesday, May 12th, 2021; Grim Tutor|s99



We've seen demonic tutour on here. How much more (or less?!) playable is it @ an extra pip raising it's mana value by 1.0, and adding a whole other not insignificant cost? Taking off all of t3 to tutour, especially in heads up is often a death knell.

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Post by pokken » 2 years ago

Ah yes, very slightly better Diabolic Tutor.

This card's a big fat nope from me. If I ever find myself playing a deck so boring that Vampiric Tutor Demonic Tutor and whatever specialized tutors like Expedition Map or Diabolic Intent or Beseech the Queen aren't enough, I will scrap that deck before playing Grim Tutor

I have a bit of a horrible bias against 3 mana do nothing tutors anyway. You won't catch me playing Idyllic Tutor Search for Glory or Fabricate for the most part. I feel like the potential for you to just waste your game spending all your mana and game time searching for stuff is pretty high.

Weirdly I also frigging love Trophy Mage and Recruiter of the Guard but I that's the 1) bodies are good and 2) narrower tutors are more fun because of the restriction.

Only 3 mana tutor spell tutor I ever play is Intuition and I could write a frigging novel on that card and all the sweet stuff you can do with it.

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Post by DirkGently » 2 years ago

3drinks wrote:
2 years ago
Taking off all of t3 to tutour, especially in heads up is often a death knell.
Jesus, where are you playing?

Dtutor and Vtutor are kinda just auto-includes. I don't throw that phrase around lightly - for basically any strategy you want to do, they don't distract from it, they'll just make you do it more effectively. If you're not including them, it's probably either a self-imposed restriction or a budget issue.

Grim tutor I would say is fair. If you've got the sort of deck that wants a tutor - not "I'd take a tutor if it was at an incredible rate", but actively wanting a tutor - then it's a fine card. I run it frequently in decks that want specific pieces/effects to function. Beyond grim tutor cost-wise, most of the tutors are kinda bad, and you've gotta be pretty desperate.
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Post by Lifeless » 2 years ago

Grim is always on the edge of inclusion for me. I don't play cutthroat enough to want more than a handful of tutors and if I do I'm probably in another color that can get what I need more efficiently.

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Post by 3drinks » 2 years ago

DirkGently wrote:
2 years ago
3drinks wrote:
2 years ago
Taking off all of t3 to tutour, especially in heads up is often a death knell.
Jesus, where are you playing?
I've sleeved up a lot of grims in my time. And I still run it in Korvold but yeah, it's not a safe early play. Full tapping on t3 to let someone drop their t4 combo unchecked is a recipe for disaster. It's better latre on when you can search unrestricted and have mana up, but that early cast from this, at that spot on the curve, is a big yikes.

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Post by Gamazson » 2 years ago

I use it in Greven, Predator Captain, but in that deck it doubles as a combat buff late in the game.

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Post by TheAmericanSpirit » 2 years ago

3drinks wrote:
2 years ago
DirkGently wrote:
2 years ago
3drinks wrote:
2 years ago
Taking off all of t3 to tutour, especially in heads up is often a death knell.
Jesus, where are you playing?
I've sleeved up a lot of grims in my time. And I still run it in Korvold but yeah, it's not a safe early play. Full tapping on t3 to let someone drop their t4 combo unchecked is a recipe for disaster. It's better latre on when you can search unrestricted and have mana up, but that early cast from this, at that spot on the curve, is a big yikes.
That seems like a real cedh-esque issue, and even those games usually don't end t4 because of the level of interaction (usually around 1/5 of the average, established, viable deck in cedh is just interactive spells (18-25 cards)). I don't think that grim signs your death warrant any more than wood elves in the scenario you've cited, and certainly that experience doesn't extrapolate to edh at large enough to be idiomatic.

Dude though, come try cedh proper sometime. It's a good time and viewing your game with this mentality is not ignorant nor a sin there. As PleasantKenobi on youtube aptly said "It's like legacy for people too cowardly to play 1v1" and he's not half wrong.
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Post by onering » 2 years ago

Grim is also important as an alternative to Demonic and Vampiric, because it's weaker. If you're looking to slow a deck down a little or power down a deck, but still need tutors, this does so without being barely mediocre like Diabolic. It's a good, fair tutor, probably the most reasonably costed version of the effect.

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Post by Mookie » 2 years ago

Grim Tutor is probably the fairest tutor there is - Demonic Tutor and Vampiric Tutor are too efficient, Diabolic Tutor is too slow, and Grim Tutor is, in the words of Flaxen Intruder // Welcome Home, juuuuust right. It's never going to be amazing, but if you really need another tutor, it's certainly worth consideration.

....I feel like there's a spectrum of efficiency for tutors, inverse to how tutor-focused a deck is. On one side of the spectrum, you have extremely focused combo decks that are running every tutor they can get their hands on as extra copies of combo pieces, even if those tutors are inefficient. On the opposite side of the spectrum, you have decks running only the most efficient tutors, but they could conceivably fetch a much wider percentage of their deck with those tutors. Grim and other three mana tutors generally seem to be in the middle ground - you'll probably want to have access to it if you want extra copies of something specific, but it's also reasonable to throw in a deck without a specific plan for what you're going to fetch.

Looking in other formats, I'd say Tinker and Neoform are two cards in the former category, which require a high investment and usually only have one or two targets in the entire deck. On the other side, you have stuff like Trinket Mage, Spellseeker, and Imperial Recruiter that require a much lower investment (since they're stapled to creatures and generate value), which are often used alongside a toolbox with a bunch of targets. For those specifically, I suppose you could say they have a higher cost in terms of deckbuilding, but that's true of all non-black tutors.

....anyway, Grim Tutor is fine. Three mana is expensive enough that it's mildly inconvenient to play, but not so huge of a tempo loss that you'll lose the game before you can cast what you fetch (outside extremely fast metas).

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Post by hyalopterouslemur » 2 years ago

The "fair" DTutor. It's...okay.. I'd still play it before most sorcery-speed topdeck tutors and before Diabolic. (An aside: Imperial Seal is nouveau riche personified. Sorcery-speed topdeck strictly worse than vamp BUt iTZ PORTal ThrEE kiNGDomS) Probably has a place in cEDH where you run every tutor ever printed.
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Post by JWK » 2 years ago

I have a couple of copies and I don't think I've run it yet. I have been trying to cut back on tutors, and especially on unrestricted ones, but for decks that still need tutors, there are better choices than this. Not gonna say hard pass, but it's pretty low on my list.
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Post by RxPhantom » 2 years ago

Grim Tutor is fine. I'm fortunate enough to have myriad copies of better tutors, and I have yet to build a deck in which I want that many. So it occupies a strange space in which the card itself is fine, not as good as other options, and simultaneously too expensive for me to want to buy.
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Post by TheGildedGoose » 2 years ago

The best fair tutor in the format, full stop. Three mana is the sweet spot for tutors. I'm glad they reprinted it, and while it isn't an auto-include I wouldn't fault a deck for running it.

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Post by duducrash » 2 years ago

As a rule I dislike unconditional tutors. I think it beats the purpose of singleton. The only two I even consider are Scheming Symmetry because its a thrill and all arround fun card to play in lower powered tables and Varragoth, Bloodsky Sire because there are so many hoops to jump I feel its okay. If I'm running legends I'd rather run thematic tutors such as Search for Glory and Captain Sisay . If i'm in spellslinger I'd rather runMerchant Scroll and so on. Less power but more fun imho.


that being said it's a perfectly fine card. its a slot that can be improved but overall perfectly fine to run

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