[mtgnexus] Random Card of the Day - Jetfire, Ingenious Scientist

[TheAmericanSpirit]

Totally disproportionate cost to utility ratio. I'll personally never purchase these and never feel bad about it either. I'd rather pay my rent on time than throw bills at cardboard with only marginal upside over shocks.

Futhermore, I've creamed so many tricked out decks with thousand dollar manabases using monogreen selvala brostorm (my marquee top end deck for several years) that I can't imagine needing them to play competively or otherwise. What a waste of money IMHO.

[materpillar]

Let's be honest, fetches aren't so good because ABUs exist. There's still tangos, bicycles, and now triomes, and hey don't forget they can find basics too!

Everything you listed except for the triomes are basically strictly worse ABUs. Money aside, if you're playing fetches you should be playing ABUs. Fetching basics isn't that relevant unless you're in a more cut-throat Back to Basics/Blood Moon meta. I mean the difference between Scalding Tarn and Fabled Passage is massive.

It's kind of a parasitic loop ABUs get dramatically less impressive without fetchlands and fetchlands get dramatically less impressive without type lands.

Huh... I wonder if I should cut all the basics out of my Ur-Dragon deck and put in a fetch suite instead just to make that deck functional more often. Man I hate playing with fetch suites though.

[JWK]

I run ABUR duals in many of my decks. I own at least 4 of each one, and several more copies of some of them. Most of them, I had from back when you could get them in packs; a few more picked up after I got back into Magic, and into Commander, by trading in other things or on PucaTrade back when people on Puca were willing to trade valuable stuff like that. Since then the prices have skyrocketed, and I think it unlikely I will be getting any more.

They are obviously great, but they are far from necessary, and the current prices make purchasing them a questionable decision at this point. But I don't feel bad about playing them, either. I got into Commander in part because it allows for the use of old cards. They provide a small advantage over other duals, but I don't think I've ever won a game just because I had a more expensive mana base than another player.

[WolfWhoWanders]

Not much to be said that hasn't. I myself am starting to lean away from using them on paper in more casual builds because of the political attention they can attract and the amount of time it takes to fetch lands out. Stronger decks will probably keep them, as will 4 and 5 color decks (which I tend to avoid anyway). On modo it makes more sense to use an optimized mana base all the time then to invest in other lands. Feels weird at casual tables sometimes, but I don't think a decent mana base should be giving you THAT much of an advantage. I really do hate having sub optimal mana tho...

[RxPhantom]

I own a single ABUR dual that I got in a trade back in the 90's. Back then, fourth edition was still new-ish, and these lands were gone. 12 year-old me was all like "I'm not paying $10 for a land!" Anyway, I've never had a manabase suffer for lack of them. There are so many awesome options for lands, plenty of which have basic land types for fetchability. ABUR duals are great, and I'd run them if I had them, but I don't really care otherwise.

[Hawk]

I've made near endless disaster trades in my MtG playing history, but about 4 years ago I traded a Rishadan Port + a few high-end foils + some random stuff (I think Spell Snare and Spell Pierce and a Prismatic Omen?) for a very, very battered revised Plateau and Savannah. The trade was roughly even value at the time, as battered white border ABU Duals (especially non-blue ones) were going for ~$70-75, and Port was still at an even $100 or so pre-reprint.

Fastfoward four years and the duals have more than doubled while Port tanked thanks to a reprint. I'll probably never own any other ABU Duals, given the pricetag, but they definitely make a difference and an impression. One can live off of Shocks + Fetches + maybe tangos (or Triomes, if available) but it's definitely noticeably stronger to have an ABU dual around.

As a different but related question - anyone else get anxiety running expensive cards? I took my Kaladesh Invention version of Sol Ring out of a deck as it continued to climb (it sits on my mantle now in the living room as an art piece), but now these cards and my Serra's Sanctum and Wheel of Fortune are getting similarly pricey. Makes me really uncomfortable to have a card worth that much in a deck.

[DirkGently]

As a different but related question - anyone else get anxiety running expensive cards? I took my Kaladesh Invention version of Sol Ring out of a deck as it continued to climb (it sits on my mantle now in the living room as an art piece), but now these cards and my Serra's Sanctum and Wheel of Fortune are getting similarly pricey. Makes me really uncomfortable to have a card worth that much in a deck.

I did get some anxiety when I put my duals in my commander cube and handed it around to relative strangers (along with some other expensive stuff, though none of my priciest cards made the cut for the list). I did request everyone keeps their drinks off the table (we usually played at a bar). But nothing bad happened.

Just running them in decks, though, nah not really. I don't think I've ever really damaged a card playing magic - but I have bent up one or two while they were sitting on my couch, lol. Still, I've got a lot of cards, not many of them are legitimately pricey. So the odds of a card getting damaged AND being really valuable are slim.

[ISBPathfinder]

They are amazing, run them wherever you can. Anyone who is new to magic / owning or considering an ABU duel I usually tell them to have maxed out the fetchlands and fetchable duals first before they do that because the real power of an ABU duel is the fetchable nature of it. Maxing out the fetchable targets after getting all the fetchlands will let them see if they feel they need the power of an ABU duel given how many other fetchable duals exist at this point.

I actually question if ABU duels will be necessary once they finish off one or more of the current ally fetchable sets that hasn't been printed for enemy colors. They also just printed tri colored cycling fetchable lands. Its actually possible that the need for ABU duels in commander will just become a thing for the most tuned of commander decks in the future. If I didn't own ABU duels right now, I would actually probably not start buying into them. If they give us one of the two cycles for enemy color that we have for allied colors right now I feel like the need for ABU duels might just be for cEDH or highly tuned non comp decks.

[JWK]

I don't worry a lot about possibly badly damaging a card in play. That said, if concern like that interferes with one's comfort, I think that's an absolutely fantastic reason to play with proxies of valuable cards rather than the actual cards, which you might keep in a sturdy binder to show you actually owe them if someone isn't cool with proxies.

[Myllior]

Philosophically, fetches already represent a superfluous level of investment to me, especially in commander, so my immediate reaction to the duals is that they are just so unnecessary; their cost is simply ludicrous.

For gameplay, go nuts if you happen to have them, but you're not getting much more out of them than a mana base that eschews them. This is why I have this weird contrast where I'd happily delete these cards from Magic's history, but in practice I have no reaction one way or another when I see them; they don't confer any significant advantage to create a power disparity, as you can build entirely functional and smooth mana bases without them (or even fetches), so they're just overpriced cardboard. (This is probably helped by my playgroup being at a middling power level).

Certainly there is significant benefit to playing the duals in cEDH, but if I played at that level I'd fully expect everyone to proxy every card they wanted, so again there would be no power disparity due to the duals themselves.

Just so unnecessary.

[bobthefunny]

Fetch+dual is by far one of the strongest manabases you can have. However, unless you're playing topend Commander, it's not necessary. I find myself holding back, and running sub-par fetches and new duals, to bring the budget more inline with my playgroup, and they're plenty fine.

[Sinis]

Tuesday, December 1st, 2020; The ABU Duals

I kind of don't play my revised copies all that much anymore, despite having a singleton set, plus a temur wedge and extra scrublands and plateaus. Part of it is not wanting them to leave the house (before the pandemic) on sheer monetary value. But, I find they're unnecessary? I might sell them at some point.

Anyway, tango lands, and shocklands are my go-to at this point. I also like bicycle lands in the right kind of deck. Realistically, we don't often need better than those. There's a million duals without basic types that I have varying fondness for. The only issue is that there are still, in this day and age, only ABU duals and shocklands for enemy land types that could come into play untapped (side-eye at those triomes).

[Mookie]

If you want to completely optimize a deck, you'll want to run a full fetch / shock / dual manabase. But if you're not doing cEDH, I'd say it's much more efficient to spend you money elsewhere - the marginal utility of upgrading a triome or tango land to a dual is certainly significant, but unlikely to actually be worth the cost.

That said, I really hope we get more lands with basic land types in the future. I'll call out that enemy-colored decks currently only have shocks and duals, compared to ally-colored decks also having the bi-cycling lands and tangos. The value of adding a dual when you only have a shock is much higher than when you already have three fetchable lands.

...of course, as a budget player, I'm already not running many fetchlands, so the value of duals goes way down for me. Speaking more broadly, I don't actually think a fetch/shock/dual manabase is that necessary for decks running three or less colors - there are enough duals available that making all your fetchlands into trilands isn't that necessary. More necessary if you're doing a 4+ color deck though, since pretty much every land that taps for every color enters tapped or has a significant cost associated with it, which makes hitting 4+ colors off a fetchland way more valuable.

[onering]

Playing on mtgo you can get a full playset of each for about $30. One of the few ways online is better.

[3drinks]

Tuesday, December 1st, 2020; The ABU Duals

I kind of don't play my revised copies all that much anymore, despite having a singleton set, plus a temur wedge and extra scrublands and plateaus. Part of it is not wanting them to leave the house (before the pandemic) on sheer monetary value. But, I find they're unnecessary? I might sell them at some point.

Right? Like I'm gonna take my Mishra's Workshop to a random pickup game? Or The Abyss, or certainly The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale? That's why high end "creative alters" should be embraced. I use them frequently, especially once I own one card and I have multiple decks.

[illakunsaa]

I think these cards are so good that they need to be banned. A big reason why basic lands are still very good is because no land is really better than them except for abu duals. I think even wotc have said they don't want to print lands that are better basics for game balance reasons.

I don't run these even in online because they just remove all thinking in deck construction. No longer you need think about the colored costs of your cards when you got fetch+abu+shock land base.

[WizardMN]

I think the ABUR duals are great but I echo others sentiments that it isn't required. I have one deck that doesn't run them though, to be honest, it is because I originally built it for a specific budget and have been too lazy to update it since scrapping that limitation. I really should put the duals in there because there is no reason not to.

Fetches are easily the more powerful lands anyway just based on the number of things they enable. If I had to choose between ABUR duals without fetches and fetches without ABUR duals, the latter is definitely the way I would go. Especially with Wizards lightening up with printing lands with basic land types.

They allow for people to play their decks which is what is more important to me. I don't want to face off against someone who built a sweet Colfenor, the Last Yew deck and then gets stuck because their mana base is failing them. Again, plenty of ways to work a mana base without ABUR duals, but there is nothing wrong with having them in there as well to help facilitate a little consistency so the rest of the deck can work.

[Yatsufusa]

As everyone already pointed out, the play-value of ABUR duals soars because of the fetches. If fetches themselves are out-of-budget/consideration, then the advantages of ABUR duals over all other CIP Untapped duals are minimal/niche. The price gap between fetches and ABUR duals is also larger (and expanding further much faster) than the gap between fetches and the rest of the pack, due to reasons I think we all here know. For newer/budget players who bided their time/savings/budget and finally reached the Fetch-layer, honestly don't bother with ABUR duals, any climb in that direction would make the Fetch one look like a complete joke.

Even in cEDH, they're arguably the smallest of the optimizations, especially in regards to price ratio. A LGS of mine has some Legacy/cEDH players whom mostly tune down the win-conditions of their decks when they hit the multiplayer "casual" (well honestly with the base clique and over the years of arms-racing that particular LGS's definitions might still be a notch higher) and when you see them assembling up, it's not the ABUR duals you can't keep up with, as long as you had Fetch-Shock it makes virtually no difference. It's mostly the quality of ramp/mana rocks (followed by draws) that makes the bulk of difference.

Personally I've never owned a ABUR dual (started during the Modern era and never got into older formats until Modern/EDH) and I do not intend to get them (every year it gets easier to not want them looking at those prices). I'd like to say because I want to foil my decks I don't get ABUR duals, but I made an exception for planeswalkers (that also gets harder to reverse yearly as old foil walkers only go one direction and most of them don't get reprinted), so yeah, it's just basically too costly for a cycle that is very unlikely to get foil treatments, I have a better chance of seeing all foil planeswalkers being reprinted in a way than that as it stands for now. The bulk of my fetch-shocks are still un-blinged, so the only way to convince me to even get nonfoil duals is if they're at most fetches-in-standard price range (in fact that's basically how I got my fetches in the first place).

[3drinks]

Wednesday, December 2nd, 2020; Horde of Notions

We've had an influx of 5c commanders lately, how does Horde hang with those, if even it does manage to keep up?

[materpillar]

We've had an influx of 5c commanders lately, how does Horde hang with those, if even it does manage to keep up?

I've always thought that Horde of Notions was a cool card. That being said, 10 years ago I built several 5 color EDH decks including Atogatog, Karona, False God and Progenitus. So I don't think that Horde of Notions was hanging with his competitors even years ago (that's not even mentioning Sliver Queen). WUBRG is just such an expensive activation cost.

He's probably still decent helming an elemental tribal deck. I imagine he's more of a late game beater with slight upside, which isn't a sentence that interests me much at all. Haste, vigiliance, trample is no joke though.

[Dunharrow]

If printed today
it would be a 7/7
It would have lifelink
and it would ETB mill 5

As it is, I would say it is too slow as a commander. If your goal is to cheat Elementals into play just use Golos, Tireless Pilgrim I guess.

[not-a-cube]

We've had an influx of 5c commanders lately, how does Horde hang with those, if even it does manage to keep up?

I've always thought that Horde of Notions was a cool card. That being said, 10 years ago I built several 5 color EDH decks including Atogatog, Karona, False God and Progenitus. So I don't think that Horde of Notions was hanging with his competitors even years ago (that's not even mentioning Sliver Queen). WUBRG is just such an expensive activation cost.

He's probably still decent helming an elemental tribal deck. I imagine he's more of a late game beater with slight upside, which isn't a sentence that interests me much at all. Haste, vigiliance, trample is no joke though.

Someone in my playgroup recently build a horde of notions deck with Jegantha, the Wellspring as a companion and I must admit, it's a pretty strong and cool deck. Had some very powerfull lines. Jagantha also somewhat fixes that annoying cost and can later be recurred by the horde itself. Crib Swap as recurrable removal is also a fun thing.

I like this cards a lot more than most 5 color commanders.

[materpillar]

We've had an influx of 5c commanders lately, how does Horde hang with those, if even it does manage to keep up?

I've always thought that Horde of Notions was a cool card. That being said, 10 years ago I built several 5 color EDH decks including Atogatog, Karona, False God and Progenitus. So I don't think that Horde of Notions was hanging with his competitors even years ago (that's not even mentioning Sliver Queen). WUBRG is just such an expensive activation cost.

He's probably still decent helming an elemental tribal deck. I imagine he's more of a late game beater with slight upside, which isn't a sentence that interests me much at all. Haste, vigiliance, trample is no joke though.

Someone in my playgroup recently build a horde of notions deck with Jegantha, the Wellspring as a companion and I must admit, it's a pretty strong and cool deck. Had some very powerfull lines. Jagantha also somewhat fixes that annoying cost and can later be recurred by the horde itself. Crib Swap as recurrable removal is also a fun thing.

I like this cards a lot more than most 5 color commanders.

Ooooh, Jegantha, the Wellspring does seem like a perfect card to couple with Horde of Notions. I can see how that'd shore up the mana cost weaknesses while being super on theme.

[not-a-cube]

Ooooh, Jegantha, the Wellspring does seem like a perfect card to couple with Horde of Notions. I can see how that'd shore up the mana cost weaknesses while being super on theme.

a match made in heaven 😄

[TheAmericanSpirit]

Always liked this card. The art is nebulous and fantastic.