[mtgnexus] Random Card of the Day - North Star

[Moonlighter]

Also: Feldon's lore is well worth reading, and can be found here.

How wonderful. There are lamentations in the chat threads here about the nature of the lore these days. Read this story - it's short. This is a story about a card game which causes nerds to flips tables on some occasions. The writer here took an opportunity to take a game about world-ending wizards to tell us a beautiful little myth about grief, loss, and understanding.

I genuinely don't know - has there been a moment of character complexity in any of the Gatewatch stories that can match this?

I have Feldon in Alesha, Who Smiles at Death, where he serves as some redundancy to the plan, but I feel for the little old man every time I draw his card. I agree - flavor, mechanics, usability - all gold for this guy.

[JWK]

Feldon continues to be a fantastic card. Powerful without being overpowering, great flavor win, and a really neat effect for R to have access to. All-star card. If I didn't already have two monored decks, I'd probably make a Feldon one.

[hyalopterouslemur]

His name implies the existence of Feldon of the first Path and Feldon of the Second Path

The First Path is the Second Path, and those of us on the Third Path say it while secretly favoring the Second Path because screw the First Path.

Political satire aside, I like this "temporary" space being divided between red and white, as it is. (red being impulsive, white getting things like Memory Lapse and the Masques Parallax cycle) This one also feels very red, just his grief.

And yeah, calling them the Jacetice League is officially an insult to comics. DC has made grief a theme to many of their Crisis events. Flashpoint is just "I can save her! I can save the only non-Martha Mom!" Zero Hour, Infinite Crisis, and Dark Nights have former heroes saying "Why doesn't everyone just die?" Convergence has one, Arak, forcing all the others to fight to survive.

[TheAmericanSpirit]

His name implies the existence of Feldon of the first Path and Feldon of the Second Path

The First Path is the Second Path, and those of us on the Third Path say it while secretly favoring the Second Path because screw the First Path.

That is some A-tier satire though. Seems true no matter where you stand and just ambiguous enough to fly over the politically uninnoculated. Well done.👏

[onering]

His name implies the existence of Feldon of the first Path and Feldon of the Second Path

There are, Urza and Mishra. The Third Path was a group of artificers united to find a way to survive the war, and potentially even resist both brothers, because they recognized that the war was an existential threat to the civilizations of the continent and that neither Mishra nor Urza could defeat the other conventionally nor would be willing to accept anything less than total victory, which would lead to an ever increasing range and intensity to the war and total devastation of the continent. They got beat by Mishra, but Hurkyl cast Hurkyl's Recall and unsummoned most of Mishra's artifact creatures, allowing most of the Third Path to flee. They then delved into magic, inspired by Hurkyl.

[3drinks]

Monday, May 17th, 2021; Scrap Mastery

[Outcryqq]

Scrap Mastery: a Living Death for artifacts. I don't have a deck that uses it, but I've been dunked by this card quite a few times. I have one and should probably use it somewhere. I just recently jammed the Strixhaven precons against each other (after my group not getting together for 6 months) and the Lorehold commander...brb...Osgir, the Reconstructor, was really impressive and powerful, and might have inspired me to build him. Obviously Scrap Mastery would be a bomb in that deck.

[Dunharrow]

A lot of these cards of the day remind me how little I like playing decks themed around artifacts or enchantments. I know this is a great card, but I have never done anything with it.

[Sinis]

Monday, May 17th, 2021; Scrap Mastery

If artifacts had as powerful ETB triggers as creatures, this card would be as popular as Living Death. As is, it's kind of a let down in my books. The value from Mycosynth Wellspring or Ichor Wellspring is just... okay, I guess?

Anyway, it suffices as a mass artifact resurrection which is functionally rare in Magic, still, so it has that going for it.

[illakunsaa]

I'm honestly surprised to see how little play this card sees. Only 2% at edhrec.

[Hawk]

One of the best cards in my Daretti deck, naturally - since I can easily sacrifice my board to Krark-Clan Ironworks or some other effects before flipping it all back into play. Stuff like Sol Ring, Gilded Lotus, and other EtB untapped rocks mean I sometimes come out mana positive on the cast, and even "meh" EtB/LtB triggers like on Solemn Simulacrum and Ichor Wellspring are fun, especially since this also wrecks opposing rocks and swords.

[3drinks]

Waiting for the enchantment version tbh. No, Replenish is NOT the same thing.

[Mookie]

Scrap Mastery is a sweet card, but it needs some support to be good. It's a lot harder to sacrifice artifacts than it is to sacrifice creatures for Living Death. There certainly are artifact sac outlets available, but the lower number of payoffs means there is a lower incentive to run them. Krark-Clan Ironworks is the only one I see regularly, with most other artifact sac effects being a bit more limited, like Trading Post. Still, if you can dump a bunch of artifacts in your graveyard and reanimate them, that's a very strong ability, and can represent a ton of value.

I'll also note that this is a pretty unique effect - I can't think of any other red mass reanimation effects, artifact-only or otherwise. I suppose it has Mizzix's Mastery and Underworld Breach effects, but those aren't quite the same. If you branch out to white, you get stuff like Open the Vaults and Roar of Reclamation, but the discount on Scrap Mastery is quite relevant.

.....wish I could run it in my Sharuum deck. *shakes fist at Breya*

[onering]

I'm honestly surprised to see how little play this card sees. Only 2% at edhrec.

Its not a card that is just universally good, it requires a specific build of deck even more so than Open the Vaults or other mass reanimation cards, even more so than Living Death.

Living Death is good in a wider variety of decks for a number of reasons. First, its in the best color to take advantage of every facet of its effect. Second, its easier to set up plays where Living Death works as a one sided board wipe stapled to one sided mass reanimation. These two feed into each other, as being in black enables you to fill your yard and nuke your opponent's yards to set up the blowout. Even without building around it, Living Death is still often a bomb play, just because there will be many times where casting it will put you in a better board state and your opponent's in a worse one. Effecting creatures makes it easier to take advantage of, and makes its effect more impactful. There are more cards that care about creatures leaving play than artifacts, more cards that care about creatures entering the battlefield than artifacts, and more and better ETB and LTB abilities on creatures than on artifacts.

Scrap Mastery, being in red, has fewer ways to take advantage of the effect. You can add another color to make it easier, but you can also do that for Living Death. There are fewer occasions in regular play where you will want to nuke all your opponents artifacts AND be able to return a bunch of your own than there are with creatures. If your running an artifact deck that doesn't build around the gy, then you will usually have more artifacts you care about in play than in the yard, whereas if your running a creature deck that isn't built around the gy your going to see you gy fill with dudes over time just based on regular gameplay. While Living Death is good in any black deck with creatures, and only gets better when built around, Scrap Master doesn't just require a red artifact deck (which is more rare than a black creature deck), but the subset of Red artifact decks that are built around either sacrificing artifacts or the gy. Its basically an auto include in those decks, but those decks are fairly rare, so as a result Scrap Mastery ends up being ran only as often as the decks it works in.

[Mookie]

Some other data points re: Scrap Mastery vs Living Death:

• There are 68 cards with the text "sacrifice an artifact", compared to 261 with the text "sacrifice a creature".
• There are 34 artifacts with the text "when put into graveyard from battlefield", compared to 538 creatures with the text "when dies". I'll note that the fact that dies is literally a keyworded event is a big sign that it's a more relevant / commonly-referenced event.
• Creatures naturally end up in graveyards through combat, while artifacts do not. Mass creature removal is also much more common than mass artifact removal.
• The average creature-based deck is probably running more creatures than the average artifact-based deck is running artifacts (my brief look at the top 5 commanders for artifact / aristocrats decks points to ~25 artifacts vs ~30 creatures, respectively)

All of this results in Living Death being easier to both set up and generate value from than Scrap Mastery, and that's before we consider the relative value in reanimating a bunch of random creatures compared to reanimating a bunch of random artifacts. I will note the counterpoint that you can run a bunch of artifact creatures though. Using Scrap Mastery as an asymmetric Living Death in an Alibou, Ancient Witness artifact beatdown deck actually sounds pretty sweet.

[The_Hittite]

I'm having trouble grokking the stack and triggered abilities right now but Arcbound Ravager is either really good with this or only useful as a sac outlet in response. I can't seem to find confirmation on whether the Modular trigger waits for the spell to fully resolve or if it would fizzle from lack of targets.

[DirkGently]

I'm having trouble grokking the stack and triggered abilities right now but Arcbound Ravager is either really good with this or only useful as a sac outlet in response. I can't seem to find confirmation on whether the Modular trigger waits for the spell to fully resolve or if it would fizzle from lack of targets.

It works just fine. You don't need to declare targets (can't declare any targets) during the resolution of an effect. Ofc you'd need to let your ravager get sacked to the mastery, if you did it in advance to return it to play with mastery you wouldn't get to keep the counters (unless you put them on another modular creature with then got sacked to mastery).

[capitacommunist]

Scrap Mastery is one of the best cards in my Mardu Shops deck. As others have mentioned, it fits into a limited number of decks. But if you have artifact sacrifice outlets and ETB/LTB triggers it becomes very strong. Since it requires a bit more hoops to go through than Living Death, it also means it's difficult for opponents to play around, making it a very good artifact wipe as well.

[3drinks]

Tuesday, May 18th, 2021; Fractured Loyalty

[TheAmericanSpirit]

Seems bad outside of zada or feather. Most single target spells in the format are lethal, therefore cannot actually give you the creature with this.

Edit: wtf is the art on this supposed to mean? I see a big weird guy carrying a santa sack while wading through lava. Is he disgruntled by his floor-is-lava working conditions? What's in the sack? Who is this guy? How does this convey "fractured loyalty"? Look at Custody Battle, that's pretty obvious in what's occurring there in form and function. This one... not so much.

[Gamazson]

If you wanted to be cute you could use Fractured Loyalty plus Infiltrate in a Shu Yun, the Silent Tempest build to steal an opponents high powered commander and kill them with it. Fractured Loyalty is more mana efficient than traditional theft effects as long it is a deck with lots of buff spells.

[pokken]

Too narrow for me to really even think about

[MeowZeDung]

This is super narrow and, from a power level and format/meta standpoint, it's not a "good" card. That said, I have often thought about building a janky Dismiss into Dream/Willbreaker deck that Fractured Loyalty would fit in. I think the key is that targeted abilities work with it, so something like Nin, the Pain Artist.dec maybe. For this card specifically you'd probably want ways to bounce it too, so it's asking a lot of you. Easier to just pilot Yasova Dragonclaw or something.

[Moonlighter]

Edit: wtf is the art on this supposed to mean? I see a big weird guy carrying a santa sack while wading through lava. Is he disgruntled by his floor-is-lava working conditions? What's in the sack? Who is this guy? How does this convey "fractured loyalty"? Look at Custody Battle, that's pretty obvious in what's occurring there in form and function. This one... not so much.

A dozen times this. There are some cards where the art does not make any sense. Sometimes, you can get a glimpse of the art direction an artist was given, and I just wonder what on earth they were asked to create. In short, I want someone to blame!

Also way too edge case to play in anything I've literally ever made.

[TheAmericanSpirit]

Edit: wtf is the art on this supposed to mean? I see a big weird guy carrying a santa sack while wading through lava. Is he disgruntled by his floor-is-lava working conditions? What's in the sack? Who is this guy? How does this convey "fractured loyalty"? Look at Custody Battle, that's pretty obvious in what's occurring there in form and function. This one... not so much.

A dozen times this. There are some cards where the art does not make any sense. Sometimes, you can get a glimpse of the art direction an artist was given, and I just wonder what on earth they were asked to create. In short, I want someone to blame!

Also way too edge case to play in anything I've literally ever made.

I know exactly who to blame: Greg Staples. I don't care what bizarre depiction the art director demanded, if there was ever a time to go rogue, this was it.