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

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Post by Hawk » 3 years ago

This card's competitive pedigree can't be understated - this thing was disgusting in limited, format-defining in Standard, and even saw play at the dawn of Modern in Jeskai control builds. When it's on, it's on - a 2-for-1 for three at instant speed is really, really good (just ask Kolaghan's Command), and the highroll potential of catching an opponent with two X/1s is enough to make this truly fearsome and special.

But like other constructed, competitive all-stars (Smother, Inquisition of Kozilek, Mana Leak) it's tough to see this card making the jump into Commander and being worth its slot. When I did my meta-analysis of removal, I didn't even look at what a Shock or Forked Bolt was worth, because Lightning Bolt is already so sketchy to hit anything of significance in an average game of EDH. And unlike other cards like the three I aforementioned, this doesn't get better in more cutthroat metas as three mana is a big ask for a value card like this.

If you are running this, it's likely for theme or because your commander can either add another card to it by default (Jori En, Ruin Diver, Ludevic, Necro-Alchemist) or has a way to hedge the bets in terms of this being true removal (Tibor and Lumia, Niv-Mizzet, the Firemind), and even then I suspect this will often be one of the weaker cards in your 99.

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Post by 3drinks » 3 years ago

Wednesday, August 12th, 2020; Taranika, Akroan Veteran



Wow this guy has gotten lost and buried in the new cards we've had in the last year plus. That's crazy given how strong and pure upside it is. Kinda reminds me of a gideon, battle-forged. I think he gets slept on because he appears to be a Trained Armodon, and too many people don't assign enough value to the combat step, but this is sizable. But what do you think, am I an old man yelling at the clouds with a shaking fist about a previous time?

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Post by tstorm823 » 3 years ago

Zedruu: "This deck is not only able to go crazy - it also needs to do so."

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Post by DirkGently » 3 years ago

As a commander, pumping another creature while you send this into the red zone is pretty clunky. Add to that mono-white and it's not going to be a popular choice.

In the 99 I guess it's passable for an aggressive deck, but being forced to put this into combat as a vulnerable 3/3, and requiring the setup of having another small creature, is a lot of risk for not a ton of reward. Sure, potentially this fights like a 6/6 for 3, but we've got that for one with more upside. Mostly, though, it just doesn't really have a lot of synergy with anything. I guess it's ok with Aurelia, the Warleader? But otherwise it's just a decent beater that's not good enough to break into "best beaters ever" territory and not synergistic enough to do anything else.
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Post by Sinis » 3 years ago

3drinks wrote:
3 years ago
Wednesday, August 12th, 2020; Taranika, Akroan Veteran
I really like it; there's a bunch of weird options that are good with Taranika, like Cold-Eyed Selkie. It might die, but, I think it's worth playing.

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Post by Dunharrow » 3 years ago

Taranika is best in a deck with a lot of 0/0 creatures that have +1/+1 counters. You can always play Reconnaissance to protect it. Maybe a mono-white modular artifact deck could be pretty aggressive?

In the 99, it is great with Dreamstealer, Spikeshot Goblin, Needle Specter, Cold-Eyed Selkie and Cephalid Constable.
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Post by Mookie » 3 years ago

Taranika, Akroan Veteran is a pretty new legend that I forgot existed - sort of got buried by all the other, spicier stuff that has come out in the last year. A 3/3 creature for 3 isn't that exciting as a commander by itself, so it really depends on how valuable you can make the combat trigger.

Unfortunately, the biggest advantage I can think of for buffing a creature is to enable saboteur effects like Cold-Eyed Selkie, but there aren't many of those in mono-white. Best-case scenario, you're granting +4/+4, which is... fine for an aggressive deck, but lacks utility. I suppose if you're buffing something with double strike it can represent a decent chunk of damage, but the fact that it sets power and toughness directly makes it a bit awkward alongside creatures that happen to be larger, like Sun Titan.

Still, there are a few other interesting tidbits. Making a creature indestructible makes it easy to get attack triggers off, which is relevant if you don't have good attacks. You can also do the classic trick of indestructible creatures + board wipes. Also works pretty well with extra combat steps.

Still, the thing that appeals most to me is the fact that the other creature doesn't have to be attacking, and that the creature also gets untapped. This means that Taranika can potentially be used as an untap engine for cards like Bloom Tender and Kamahl, Pit Fighter. Still, Taranika is a bit fragile itself - if you can't safely attack with a 3/3, that defeats the purpose of enabling an attack with another creature. I'd sort of like to run it in my Samut deck because untaps are so valuable there, but safely attacking multiple times looks to be pretty difficult there.

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Post by Serenade » 3 years ago

Use with manlands for an extra mana?
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Post by Hawk » 3 years ago

This card was in my maybeboard for my new Samut deck, but lost out - the deck is light on white and WW on turn 3 or 4 is a rough sell. My Samut deck is a bit more of a stompy/ramp deck, and she wasn't shaking out to be awesome anyhow, although in a more traditional Samut deck she seems like she'd be good. Maybe if I owned Bloom Tender or had acquired Faeburrow Elder?

She's obviously pretty good curving a random 2-drop into her, but the other huge, major problem is that she has to attack and a 3/3 is pretty fragile and quickly outclassed in EDH. Competition in white is also pretty stiff:

- If you want a 3-drop that makes your other creatures better, Silverblade Paladin, Bastion Protector, Benalish Marshal, Archetype of Courage, and Mirror Entity all exist and all have more immediate impact and/or scale better in the lategame. There's also Frontline Medic who protects all your creatures and itself.

- If you are just looking to brawl, you might want more self-sufficient or scalable creatures like Danitha Capashen, Paragon, Brimaz, King of Oreskos, Resplendent Angel, Aerial Responder, or Mirran Crusader.

That means she is at her best untapping Dorks (especially dorks like Tender, Elder, or Krosan Restorer who make more than one mana) or untapping creatures with really powerful tap abilities - but the decks running those sort of effects seem like they rarely want a fragile 3/3 for three that needs to enter combat to work.

Still, for all that I just talked about why she's not great I was a little shocked to see how poorly she rated on EDHRECs - 12 decks as Commander, and under 500 decks played. As a Human Soldier she feels like a poor Commander but a great member of the 99, even allowing for the fact that most of the cards I listed are Humans and/or Soldiers. Seeing Crusader of Odric be more played than her is very sad. Hopefully with more time, she'll find her niche which is tribal decks and GWx rampy decks like Selvala, Explorer Returned.

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Post by onering » 3 years ago

Theres just so much this card could do, but it's pretty unreliable. There is one big reason her ability matters in a vacuum, you want to send a creature at one person who isn't open so you send Taranika at a person who IS open and the other creature at someone else. Or you wombo combo with taunting elf effects. Just so many neat little value plays are possible, but I just don't see it being worth the slot in most decks. I'd probably want it in a fires style deck though. There you want to be attacking early and often, but also want a lot of Mana dorks. This lady let's you swing with birds as an indestructible 4/4 that STILL gets to make Mana in your second main phase, giving you ramp and beats together.

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Post by Dunharrow » 3 years ago

Oh wait what about with Helm of the Host ! Attack with an army of indestructible 4/4s.
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Post by 3drinks » 3 years ago

Dunharrow wrote:
3 years ago
Oh wait what about with Helm of the Host ! Attack with an army of indestructible 4/4s.
"Combos with helm of the host" is gonna become the new "good in commander" lmao.

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Post by 3drinks » 3 years ago

Thursday, August 13th, 2020; Augury adept



Kinda like a reverse bob, if bob had to attack to draw a card. But I don't think that's truly comparable, what do you think?

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Post by folding_music » 3 years ago

there's so many of these saboteur card-drawers at 3 mana that it's hard to know which is best. Outside of commander you can run this in a mono-white deck which is kinda unique but it doesn't have much point in this format. Shadowmage Infiltrator evades (as does Ohran Viper, kinda). Dimir Cutpurse is more brutal, Surrakar Spellblade is trickier... I think this is a better card in a political sense, but political multiplayer has so much scorn poured on it these days. also Howling Golem exists and people would clearly be less irritated about being attacked by that :)))

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Post by Mookie » 3 years ago

Augury Adept is fine. Somewhat mixed compared to other Curiosity effects - lifegain is good, but revealing the cards you draw is bad. I probably wouldn't run it unless I were running a dedicated saboteur deck and could consistently get in for damage with it. Otherwise, an evasive creature like Shadowmage Infiltrator or Thada Adel, Acquisitor will perform better. And even then, I'm not a huge fan of this base effect - best-case scenario, you draw an extra card each turn, which is certainly good.... but blue has a lot of other options that aren't nearly as conditional.

I'll also call out the inevitable hybrid mana discussion, since this is a card that frequently gets mentioned. This card is a color break in both mono-white (because it can repeatably draw cards) and mono-blue (because it gains life). It really ought to have been printed as a gold card.

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Post by DirkGently » 3 years ago

The lifegain is pretty meh, and you have to reveal the card which is a bit of a bummer. If you flip a low cmc card it probably doesn't matter either way. If you flip a big bomb, you might rather no one knew you had it, rather than gain the life.

Mostly this just seems like a very minor upgrade over any of the many 3 cmc damage = draw saboteurs, which are already niche cards, and this has a significantly more restrictive CI. If you don't draw at least 2 cards, on average, these things aren't worth it, and that's a dicey proposition without reliably having the ability to grant evasion, which is not a common function of most decks. And most of those decks aren't white.

So combine the narrow CI with narrow utility and you've got a very narrow card. I don't think I've played mine in any decks thus far.
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Post by Serenade » 3 years ago

In my early EDH days I remember getting rekt by this into a Rafiq. Or this with a sword. Forced me to get better about my curve.

Unless your very cheap general grants haste and/or evasion, I don't think it holds much value these days. At 3cmc in blue you have every ETB effect stapled to a creature!
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Post by Dunharrow » 3 years ago

I always compare this to Daxos of Meletis. You are more likely to want cards from your library, but daxos has some evasion built in.
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Post by not-a-cube » 3 years ago

it's fine, but I wouldn't run it, there are just better options available. I don't like depending on a creature attackig for carddraw. At least not if that condition is stappled on that creature. The monarch mechanic or creatures like Ohran Frostfang are a lot better.
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Post by materpillar » 3 years ago

I have a high CMC golos deck that runs Grozoth and a huge host of 9+ drops with stuff like Mindshrieker. This card didn't seem good enough for me there and that deck is literally designed around triggers like this one. I have a hard time imagining if it didn't make the cut in that deck specifically designed around maximizing its trigger it isn't going to make the cut many places.

You'd want to be some weird Edric, Spymaster of Trest deck with lots of Coastal Piracy cards and random evation granting stuff like Levitation except not G or B since that opens you up to a ton of different better options that other people have mentioned.

It might be good in Daxos of Meletis as pseudo-second daxos.

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Post by Hawk » 3 years ago

I loved this card on release - another in a long, proud line of Ophidians and in that day and age the effect was rare. Like, literally rare, with Ninja of the Deep Hours being a lone exception for getting this effect out any sooner than turn 4 and at any lower rarity than rare (and technically, Ninja is CMC 4 - you can just sneak him out a bit sooner). It'd be a few years into the future that we'd see Scroll Thief and they'd start printing this effect at common again, largely because cards like Shadowmage Infiltrator and Ohran Viper and Vedalken Heretic that they hyped during preview season ended up being not nearly good enough for competitive Magic.

Generally speaking in Commander, this isn't where you want to be. Most folks seem to prefer using cards like Edric, Spymaster of Trest, Seafloor Oracle, Synapse Sliver Ingenious Infiltrator, Bident of Thassa, Kindred Discovery, and Tandem Lookout among others to make token swarms of evasive dorks into Ophidians, rather than run Ophidian-style creatures themselves. Conventional wisdom is that you want your "Ophidian"s to have in-built evasion (like Cold-Eyed Selkie and Shadowmage Infiltrator), and one is frequently willing to pay more (Sturmgeist, Broodbirth Viper, Lu Xun, Scholar General) to hedge their bets on getting a card. Or, they take a debatablely worse "stealing" effect (as seen on Daxos of Meletis, Thada Adel, Acquisitor, Nightveil Specter, or Thief of Sanity) or a "looting" effect (as seen on Looter il-Kor, Tomebound Lich, Daring Saboteur, and Wharf Infiltrator) to ensure you get a card at all. When one is running a evasion-less looter, often they have some surprise value (the aforementioned Ninja, Sea-Dasher Octopus to get at least one guaranteed hit.

All of those have more "plays" according to EDHREcs than our card of the day and are where most of us will look first. Even if we are willing to look further...
  • Neurok Commando, Eternal of Harsh Truths, and Scroll Thief have the advantage of a lower toughness or power - an advantage because that means they can use Tetsuko Umezawa, Fugitive to sneak in for cards. Further, Commando has Shroud which isn't nothing, and Thief has a generally better and more relevant typing for various tribal builds. Eternal's Afflict is terrible pseudo-evasion, but again, not nothing.
  • Surrakar Spellblade is also more popular due to its high-roll potential and combination with Proliferate as well as its positive interaction with Tetsuko.
  • Deadeye Brawler is more popular which really surprises me - I imagine due to typing, ability to defend well, and pseudo-evasion.
  • Finally, Dimir Cutpurse is more popular - a bit of that might be color or the "double advantage", but some of that might also be as Dirk pointed out that revealing is sort of a drawback compared to a raw draw.
So supposedly this is like the 25th best version of this effect, leaving it only really playable in decks like Daxos or Geist of Saint Traft sabotage.

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Post by 3drinks » 3 years ago

Friday, August 14th, 2020; Ashnod's Altar and, I suppose, extremely similar functionality, Phyrexian Altar


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Post by Mookie » 3 years ago

Ashnod's Altar and Phyrexian Altar are two of the best sacrifice outlets available in the format. Colorless, so they can go in any deck. As artifacts, they're relatively hard to kill. And because they're mana abilities, you can even use them in response to split-second spells like Krosan Grip. Free sac outlets are always pretty good, and these two actually generate mana.

That said, my experience is primarily with Ashnod's Altar due to Phyrexian Altar's cost. I'm certainly glad it got a reprint in UMA, but could really use another.... anyway, I usually see it more often as a combo piece than as a mana rock - one or two mana per creature sacrificed isn't a great rate, given how much mana it costs to generate most tokens. Turning Bitterblossom into a Mind Stone isn't particularly impressive, nor is using Mobilization to generate tokens only to get a fraction of the mana back. Still, if you have a particularly potent token producer like Dragonlair Spider, Prossh, Skyraider of Kher, this can represent a ton of mana. It's honestly not that hard to go infinite with it - Sliver Queen goes trivially infinite, for example.

Speaking specifically Teysa, my only deck I'm actually running Ashnod's Altar in, it can be a bit awkward due to me not having a lot of ways to use a large amount of colorless mana in that deck. Phyrexian Altar would actually be a pretty significant improvement - I have a lot of spells and abilities that require colored mana, such as Reassembling Skeleton. As a result, even if I have effectively limitless colorless mana, I'm still strictly limited by how much colored mana I can produce. Still, would be sweet if I had some expensive finishers like Torment of Hailfire or Debt to the Deathless. Honestly though, even if I don't have always have a use for the mana, it's still a fundamentally broken effect. Turning every token into a Lotus Petal or mini-Mana Vault is an incredibly powerful ability, since generating massive amounts of mana is so useful.

Anyway, I wouldn't say that the cards will go in every deck, but they are worth running in almost every deck that wants a free sacrifice outlet.

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Post by MeowZeDung » 3 years ago

I used to love Ashnod's when I played Saffi Eriksdotter and Ghave, Guru of Spores several years ago and first started messing around with combo in commander. The problem is, after you win that way three or four times the shine really starts to wear off. That, and you start finding random infinite loops in your deck that you had no idea existed. "Free" mana is good.

I ran it again in The Locust God alongside Skullclamp for the "oops, drew my whole deck" trick, but again, with tutors like Fabricate and Whir of Invention in the list it became very linear and played out the same most games.

I currently run it in Daxos, Blessed by the Sun because I don't mind the extra oomph in monowhite, and I have it in Gadrak, the Crown-Scourge for instant speed sac value and a combo with Wurmcoil Engine/Pia and Kiran Nalaar + Nim Deathmantle, but I'm not tutoring the altar in either case. IMO it's just too spikey and un-fun if I do.

Don't get me wrong, I love "sac a thing, get mana" effects; Kykar, Wind's Fury is my #1 for crying out loud. It just seems that a free activation at instant speed with a payoff of 2 mana is a bit too much to preserve fun factor unless there's some self-regulation involved *in my opinion*. You just can't beat that effect on the stack, so unless it is countered or the owner played it before they had a combo on board, the game's over. Edit: Ok, ok, I guess there's Krosan Grip. Edit again: errrr... does it count as a mana ability given that there's a sacrifice as a cost? How have I never run into this?
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Post by not-a-cube » 3 years ago

Best free sac outlets in the format if you ask me. They are colorless, sacrifice as mana ability and sacrifice for free.

Some other good free sac outlets I like are:

Altar of Dementia: lower cmc, in the correct deck this payoff can be very good, but against the wrong deck it might be dangerous.
Spawning Pit: lower cmc, not a mana ability but it's never a bad payoff either, although a bit underwhelming.
Goblin Bombardment: Red, lower cmc, decent payoff, will probably do some good work. It's an enchantment so it's a bit harder to remove.
Greater Good: Green, higher cmc, good payoff, but only when sacrificing creatures with sufficient power.
Viscera Seer: Black, 1 cmc, decent payoff, it's a creature so it's going to be removed easier, but it can always sac itself if necessary.
Carrion Feeder: Black, 1cmc, payoff might matter, but mainly a 1cmc free sac.
Yawgmoth, Thran Physician: Black, higher cmc, extra cost of 1 life, very good payoff, this guy does alot!
Sadistic Hypnotist: Black, higher cmc, very strong payoff, but it'll make ppl hate you, only sorc speed, so you can't use him to respond to stuff.
Martyr's Cause: Have recently aquired this one, haven't tried but the payoff seems nice.

If I need a sac outlet, i'll probably look at the altars first. But generally the payoff for these is the fact that they sacrifice for free, without tapping, so most of these other outlets are just as good. I must admit sometimes I leave the altars out because I think they combo too easy.

Currently running all 3 altars, viscera seer and yawgmoth in my Chainer, Dementia Master deck.
EDH Decks:
Queen Marchesa
Chainer, Dementia Master
Will Kenrith
Bruna, the fading light

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