[mtgnexus] Random Card of the Day - Rishkar, Peema Renegade

[Dunharrow]

This would be a great card in Glissa, the Traitor.
Discard a card, return an artifact to your hand by killing a creature. Good way to get dredgers in the graveyard too.

[Sinis]

Sunday, April 25th, 2021; Armix, Filigree Thrasher

Has the dubious honour of being one of the only mono-black legendary that cares about artifacts. Maybe I'll partner it with Ich-Tekik, Salvage Splicer for some sweet Golem action.

[hyalopterouslemur]

Remove a creature every turn. It reminds of Inferno Titan in that way. Of course, I always gave him some jewelry or a boa. Here I don't have such tricks, but I can even take put indestructible creatures. And he just costs 2b

[Guardman]

Armix, Filigree Thrasher was and still is my favorite legends from Commander Legends. And I keep trying to find a home for it, but each deck I try to put together for it has at least one of three problems:

1. Another black partner would be better.
2. The deck is very linear, and seems like it would get old fast.
3. The deck lacks artifact synergies to really take advantage of it.

I do think the it does have some fun potential, but it is just so hard to figure out where that potential is.

[Mookie]

Armix, Filigree Thrasher seems sweet - it shouldn't be difficult to get enough artifacts to kill things consistently, at which point you have a pretty reliable source of removal in the command zone. That said, discarding is a pretty significant cost, and doesn't necessarily have much synergy with artifacts - there aren't many artifacts with madness. I suppose if you're a dedicated artifact reanimator deck (ex: Sharuum the Hegemon), it could be good. At the very least, having creature removal always available provides a lot of flexibility. Hmmm... it feels like Armix does a lot of good things, but I'm not sure what deck wants all the boxes it ticks.

Well, as always, I'll shill for Salvaging Station - if you discard 1-mana artifacts, you can just reanimate them.

[Gamazson]

When I look at Armix, Filigree Thrasher, I think of how my Grimgrin, Corpse-Born deck plays. The abilities are not directly comparable, but I do use Grimgrin's attack trigger to police the battlefield, which is how I would use Armix. In this case, I would choose one of the partners for a Grixis deck. I'm thinking he needs artifact reanimation & looting support from Red and win con's like Mirrodin Besieged from Blue.

[3drinks]

Monday, April 26th, 2021; Explosive Vegetation

After a dozen respins to get...something... I end up with this. "It's just average".

[onering]

Its not bad. Paying 1 more for cultivate isn't great, but actually ramping both lands is solid. Its a solid budget option, not because the competition is expensive but because the cards they fetch tend to be.

The competition: Skyshroud Claim and its strictly worse Ranger's Path, as well as Kodama's Reach and Cultivate.

Its not strictly worse than Kodama's Reach and Cultivate, though it is generally worse. Actually ramping both lands is relevant, just usually not as relevant as the extra mana to cast it. The key is usually, and there are decks that actually do care more about real ramp than an extra mana to cast, as well as decks that are fine with going deeper into ramp and so they'd want this in addition to the Cultivates,

Skyshroud and Ranger's Path are also both better, but not strictly so. If you have duals, you want Skyshroud, period. Even if you want a swamp and a plains, you just tutor up the relevant forest duals, same for Ranger's Path. Explosive Vegetation has the ETB tapped drawback of Ranger's Path, without the ability to fetch duals, so its generally worse, but being able to fetch any basic has its upsides. A player without duals can get more use out of this than either Skyshroud Claim or its weaker cousin, as can a player in a meta with a lot of nonbasic hate, or who is using non basic hate themselves. It plays a lot better with Ruination or Back to Basics than either of the Forest fetchers. The "player without duals" is less common these days with the proliferation of budget duals, especially now with the snow duals, but they still exist (and honestly, running Elfhame Palace just because its dual typed still sucks if you draw it, so even with the budget options you might not want to).

So while its USUALLY outclassed, this is a card that matters to the budget end of the format and should still be considered situationally for most of the format. It has relevance in certain decks like landfall and with nonbasic hate.



Also, thread meta suggestion, when you hit something that you decide to skip (that isn't a repeat), post it along with the main card. Sometimes even limited chaff generates discussion, and seeing some of those random vanillas can be nostalgia inducing.

[Sinis]

Monday, April 26th, 2021; Explosive Vegetation

I find these cards really good when you ramp on 2. Rampant Growth, Sakura Tribe Elder, etc. The more analogues they print, the more reliable it gets, and I think we're either at, or almost at saturation.

I had a deck that reliably had a 2-mana ramp spell: Radha, Heir to Keld. The deck performed very well, very reliably getting to a ton of mana early on.

[DirkGently]

No one has mentioned that it's strictly worse than Circuitous Route, Migration Path, and Vastwood Surge yet, have they?

Still an okay spell, but eventually it will become drowned by the sea of marginally-better options as power level creeps ever upward.

[Outcryqq]

No one has mentioned that it's strictly worse than Circuitous Route, Migration Path, and Vastwood Surge yet, have they?

Still an okay spell, but eventually it will become drowned by the sea of marginally-better options as power level creeps ever upward.

Came here to say almost exactly this. It's an exciting time when Dirk and I completely agree on something!

[pokken]

I basically will not play these effects. Skyshroud Claim sometimes, but never the etb tapped ones. Just not my jam spending 4 mana. I'd much rather spend that mana setting up a Crucible of Worlds effect.

And the odds of me playing a spellslinging ramp deck are basically nonexistent, Exploration or death

[3drinks]

No one has mentioned that it's strictly worse than Circuitous Route, Migration Path, and Vastwood Surge yet, have they?

Still an okay spell, but eventually it will become drowned by the sea of marginally-better options as power level creeps ever upward.

Came here to say almost exactly this. It's an exciting time when Dirk and I completely agree on something!

It's almost as rare as he and I being in agreement, but that's just a sign of the apocalypse 🤔

[Hawk]

Folks have already mentioned that there are at least five near-strictly-better effects at the same CMC, taking what was a staple at the dawn of EDH and turning it into a rarely-played card for me.

Further for me, my feelings and strategy towards deckbuilding in the modern era of EDH mean that I rarely get excited to play a 4 CMC ramp spell to begin with. I like to envision a curve to my ramp, and I like to have that ramp support early commander deployment. So for a 4 CMC commander, that would mean I'd slam as many 1 and 2 mana ramp cards as humanly possible to try to have the option to cast it ahead of schedule. If my Commander is 5 CMC, I still like 1 and 2 mana ramp cards, but three mana ramp spells also become attractive. In both cases, a four-mana ramp spell is super awkward - in a perfect world I want to be deploying my commander or some other engines or threats, not just ramping more. I'm more game to run a 4-mana ramp spell in a 6+ CMC Commander deck, but I despise running commanders that expensive and even if I were gonna build or rebuild someone like Wort, the Raidmother, Omnath, Locus of Rage, or Beledros Witherbloom I'd likely only be running 2-3 such spells - at which point again, this faces a lot of competition.

[umtiger]

They can print better cards, but I think I'll still play my old-border foil.

[JWK]

Re: yesterday's card, Armix is an absolute powerhouse in my Rebbec/Silas deck. That deck features enough draw and recursion that I can usually afford to discard something to blow up an opponent's creature. Armix is still one of my very favorite cards from Commander Legends.

Re: today's card, others have already said all I have to say about Explosive Vegetation. I am not generally a fan of 4-cmc ramp spells, and especially not of ones that don't immediately give you some mana back, but if I was to play such a card, I would always play one of the strictly-better variants rather than ExVeg itself.

[Mookie]

Explosive Vegetation is fine. As others have already mentioned, there are a bunch of other four mana ramp options, with Skyshroud Claim generally being the best due to it fetching untapped sources, although I'm also a fan of Frontier Siege. That said, I'm not really a fan of four mana ramp spells, which, in turn, is due to them sitting at an awkward spot on the mana curve.

• If you play a one-mana accelerant on curve, that gives you a 3-drop on turn 2.
• If you play a two-mana accelerant, you get a 4-drop on turn 3.
• If you play a three-mana accelerant like Cultivate, that gets you to 5-drops on turn 4 and 6-drops on turn 5.
• If you play a four-mana accelerant, that gets you to 7-drops on turn 5.... but only if you also have a land to go with it.

Crucially, if you want to cast your 7-drop by turn five, you'll need to have drawn five lands (plus the ramp spell) out of twelve cards - in other words, half the cards you will have drawn will be mana. Additionally, it's difficult to do so based only on the knowledge of your opening hand - an opening hand with five lands and a ramp spell is usually going to be a mulligan, unlike a hand with three lands + Cultivate. As a result, I would say that any plan based around four mana acceleration is going to be somewhat inconsistent. If you do end up missing one of those five land drops, Cultivate would have allowed you to have the same amount of mana (6 mana on turn 5) while also giving you extra mana the previous turn, making it the superior option.

....and of course, all of this is predicated on the idea that you have a seven mana play in the first place. I could see running four mana ramp in a deck like Omnath, Locus of Rage or Beledros Witherbloom, but if you don't have a seven mana commander, it will feel a lot less necessary. I will acknowledge Radha, Heir to Keld on the flip side though, since Radha can ramp you to casting your 4-drop ramp spell (and also counts as a mana source).

[hyalopterouslemur]

Besides that, anything in the vein of Slyshroud Claim is "usually better". For 1 more you get Hour of Promise, which, while normally mana is very much about chains, you can get Gaea's Cradle or Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx; Reap and Sow also exists. Token decks might prefer Primal Growth.

[3drinks]

Tuesday, April 27th, 2021; Hammer of Nazahn

How many equipments do you really have to play to get enough live value off the trigger?

[DirkGently]

I find this to be a strong equipment on its own - +2/+0 and indestructible, for 4 mana, is certainly a better deal than Indestructibility which doesn't get the power or the equipment that sticks around if the creature leaves the battlefield or if you want to move it. That said, I most commonly run it in voltron decks where the trigger is a strong bonus on a card I'd already run.

[TheAmericanSpirit]

I find the minimum requisite amount of equipment in a deck focused on them is somewhere between 5 & 10, with the ceiling being like 30 or so in something like Sram, in addition to 5-10 relevant tutors.

This seems pretty stellar in such a deck. Sigarda's Aid is basically virtual ramp for equip costs and the hammer is the relevant bit of that plus stats and a banging keyword. I dig it.

[JWK]

This is an amazing card in my Odric keyword tribal deck, potentially letting me equip the other 7 artifacts in the deck for free but more importantly, making Odric indestructible so the rest of my creatures also gain indestructible during each combat.

[Gamazson]

I have this card in a Valduk, Keeper of the Flame deck that runs like 36 equipment. Casting a Saheeli's Directive for 7+ while Hammer of Nazahn is either on the board or among the cards revealed is one my favorite things.

[Mookie]

Hammer of Nazahn combos with Nazahn, Revered Bladesmith. /obvious

Other than that... getting free equips is a very valuable ability for an equipment deck, since equip costs really add up over time. This is especially true if you have a lot of equipment. You can use Hammer to cheat on expensive equip costs like Colossus Hammer, but even getting free equips for things that cost 2-3 mana to equip can produce a lot of tempo. Of course, Hammer only applies to the first equip cost, so you'll still need to pay mana to re-equip if the creature they're attached to dies... but fortunately, Hammer gives one of your creatures indestructible, so hopefully that won't happen.

Speaking of indestructible... there aren't that many equipment that grant it - Darksteel Plate and Shield of Kaldra are the only two that come to mind (although I'm probably forgetting some). I feel like I prefer Darksteel Plate a little due to it having its own indestructibility, but it's hard to say whether that or Hammer's equip ability is more valuable. Hmmmm.....

I'll call out Puresteel Paladin and Sigarda's Aid as two alternatives for free equips, but if you aren't running white, you'll need something like Brass Squire. There are a few cards in red that can equip things to themselves for cheap though, such as Kazuul's Toll Collector and Fervent Champion.

[Hawk]

Obviously a great card in equipment.dec. Pound for pound better than the other two indestructible-granting equipment in Darksteel Plate and Shield of Kaldra thanks to the free auto-equip once and the power boost for voltron-y decks. In terms of the original question - I'd say if I'm running 5+ equipment this gets to be very good; 0-3 other equipment and I'd say Plate is a scooch better just for the ease in which you can move it and its resilience to removal.

Also has some power to let you auto-equip really expensive but powerful equipment like Argentum Armor, Moonsilver Spear, Blackblade Reforged, and Colossus Hammer. In that role, I'd say it is generally worse than Puresteel Paladin, Sigarda's Aid, or Ardenn, Intrepid Archaeologist and in a similar vein to Stonehewer Giant which has itself gotten a lot weaker as time has gone on in this format. Now, all of those are white - but the only equipment.dec commanders that can't run them Dalakos, Crafter of Wonders and the various mono-red folks like Valduk, Keeper of the Flame. Hammer is a lot better there than it is in the white decks, but I'd still absolutely run it in any equipment deck. At $10 though, for someone buying from scratch, I'd recommend buying Aid and Paladin first.