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

[plushpenguin]

Paying so much just to not lose.

[3drinks]

Also worth noting, Platinum Emperion is pretty awful when you're rely on effects such as Greed|7ed or Necropotence|dkm

edit: Whoa.....is my Necro really worth $130? Maybe that's worth selling..........................

CotD Note: Scryfall is returning a cloudflare error on the host side, so Monday's card is delayed for now.

[3drinks]

Wow, that was a quick outage. it's already back.

Monday, July 12th, 2021; Hanna, Ship's Navigator|j14

I like her, but people get nervous when they see me playing around with artifacts, Hesitations and Standstills................

[Ruiner]

I'm a fan. In my local playgroup whenever I break out my Hanna deck I expect to eventually become the archenemy at the table and embrace it. I'm sure there are more casual ways to build around her as well but she is a good control/prison commander. I don't play this deck a ton but it is fun to try to set up a strong enough prison as people try to kill me. My deck also isn't super abusive (okay, it has Stasis, but it doesn't run the usual orbs).

I could see her as useful in the 99 of some other UWx decks that are heavy on artifacts or enchantments but I only have experience with her as the commander for a deck.

[Hermes_]

love all the different art, not sure if i have a favorite.

[Serenade]

Hated the original art.
Loved the second piece but disdain the artist.
Third art is the one I am using!

Do any other legends from this block/era see play? I feel like only Hanna is unique (colors, ability) enough to have survived to see occasional EDH play to this day.

[cheonice]

Do any other legends from this block/era see play? I feel like only Hanna is unique (colors, ability) enough to have survived to see occasional EDH play to this day.

Captain Sisay would like to have a word with you.

I had a Hanna deck once, which I really liked, but the deck worked well without her. I also disliked her best iteration to be a staxx deck.

Nontheless I really like her charakter! She's not focussed on war, but interested in creating new things. And her flavour text is just one of the best ever written:
"I never thought I'd spend my life fighting. I'm a maker, not a destroyer."

Maybe she weill get a new version someday!

[DirkGently]

Hanna [...] survived

I'd say that's overstating it a bit. She's got a few hundred decks on rec, sure, but that still barely puts her in the top 500 commanders. Only Sisay is doing better from invasion specifically, but freaking Kangee, Aerie Keeper has more than 2/3 of her score and I'm pretty sure people only build him because he's a joke.

[onering]

Hanna [...] survived

I'd say that's overstating it a bit. She's got a few hundred decks on rec, sure, but that still barely puts her in the top 500 commanders. Only Sisay is doing better from invasion specifically, but freaking Kangee, Aerie Keeper has more than 2/3 of her score and I'm pretty sure people only build him because he's a joke.

She sees significantly more play in the 99 than as a commander. 5k decks.

[Dragonlover]

My wife's first Commander deck, and the reason I try to make sure I can kill enchantments. So many Arrest variants.

Dragonlover

[umtiger]

With regards to RCofD, I typically do not post replies about the "goodness/badness" of a card because I believe that power level should not be the primary driver of inclusion.

However, for this one, I got to firmly say that it's "bad." Hanna, Ship's Navigator is bad. It's always been bad. 1WU costs too much to cast and use for what you're getting. If you see Hanna, you should not be going RED ALERT!

I have to get this off my chest. I'm sick of showing up to the LGS and playing against unknown opponents with Hanna where inevitably someone goes, "Oh, that's a stax deck. I've seen it somewhere before. WE BETTER KILL THEM FIRST!!!"

I smile but on the inside, I'm just calmly going to myself, "Shut up, dude!"
#1. You don't know what's in my deck. You've probably played against one other Hanna deck you're entire life.
#2. You're playing Yuriko and you're playing Narset, Enlightened Master and you're playing Prossh.
#3. I wonder when the coast will be clear for me to Enchanted Evening + attack you with a 10/10 Omniscience.

[hyalopterouslemur]

Ertai (both of them) see some play, but there's just so much you can do with Hanna. Seals and capsules and the like being the biggie. I'm fond of Wizard Replica besides the aforementioned enchantments.

[BeneTleilax]

Oddly, the building of her I've seen wasn't stax or answer/value recursion, but all-in artifact voltron weirdness. Didn't last too long because the player realized what a glass cannon it was and took it apart. Ganked a couple people with Blightsteel before it went, though.

[Mookie]

Hanna, Ship's Navigator has always seemed a bit clunky to me. Three mana and a tap activation is a pretty high cost for repeatable card advantage. Just one or the other is acceptable - see Emry, Lurker of the Loch and Tasigur, the Golden Fang - but both in conjunction tends to be awkward. Hanna also suffers a bit in that artifacts and enchantments tend to not naturally end up in the graveyard, unlike instants and sorceries. You can run things that sacrifice themselves (ex: Seal of Cleansing), but you do need to put extra work in to enable her. I'll also call out that she's vulnerable to grave hate, and it's very easy for her to draw hate if you have something scary in your graveyard.

Anyway, I'll believe she functions as a decent control / stax commander - if the game is slow enough, her own personal speed matters less than the fact that she provides repeatable card advantage. My own artifact deck already has access to recursion from Sharuum, so I've never really been interested in running Hanna in the 99. I'm less familiar with what common recursion engines people use in enchantress decks, but Hanna could definitely have a place in mixed decks like Alela, Artful Provocateur.

So.... yeah. Too slow, and too fair.

[onering]

It's a lot less about CA and a lot more about recurring specific powerful effects. There arent many repeatable enchantment recursion effects, and I'm not sure if any are strapped on a commander (that can also grab artifacts back from the yard). That's pretty important when it comes to her Stax build, as you can sac key pieces to get out from under them then get them back and recast them to keep your opponents locked, breaking the symmetry. Otherwise, especially in the 99, her value depends on the value of what you use her to get back. There are plenty of powerful enchantments that don't have many redundant versions of their effects, if any, and recursion is important if your deck needs them.

[3drinks]

Tuesday, July 13th, 2021; Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre|puma

Ulamania runnin' wild, brother.

[RedCheese]

I prefer his latest interation. But this version of graveyard shuffle is really useful and is still a Eldrazi Titan so of course is pwoerfull.

[Outcryqq]

Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre
I have a beat up old copy that's still in my Vial Smasher the Fierce/Thrasios, Triton Hero big MV deck. He hits hard and ends games, which was the point. Still, annihilator is a mean mechanic that can rub your opponents the wrong way, so use cards with that ability sparingly or with that in mind.

[materpillar]

Ulamania runnin' wild, brother.

I hate it. I think Annihilator is one of my least favorite mechanics ever printed (at least Annihilator >2 is). This attacks and instantly kills you by putting you down 4 lands, but you don't feel dead so you keep trying to slog through the game as everyone casts 2 spells for every 1 of yours, since they're so far ahead on mana. Then you slowly, painfully get ground out. Fun. That or the attack does absolutely nothing because you've got a pile of tokens sitting around. Even worse, it's big and interesting so it calls to the Timmies. Who doesn't want giant Cthulhu monster? But then it's play pattern is to attack whoever has the least board presence so it can deal maximum annihilator damage. Yaaaay. So then you've got big timmy who wants to play a giant Cthulhu monster accidentally wrecking the game for people.

Or you have people who know it is hella unfun to be on the recieving end of and tries to argue that it "isn't land destruction because you don't have to sacrifice lands". I want to choke everyone who tries that argument on me every time.

Anyway, I'm just talking about battlecruiser level. This feels totally fine to me in metas where no one is really trying to kill people slowly over multiple turns in the combat step.

[Igzex]

Fans of the Eldrazi are worthless. Anyone who identifies the Eldrazi as being cool and fun sicken me deeply. The Eldrazi were a mistake. The annihilator mechanic is nothing but trash.

[BeneTleilax]

Fans of the Eldrazi are worthless. Anyone who identifies the Eldrazi as being cool and fun sicken me deeply. The Eldrazi were a mistake. The annihilator mechanic is nothing but trash.

Well someone's feeling hostile today. For eleven mana and up, cards should be game-deciding, and the Eldrazi (with the exception of OG Emrakul, who is rightly banned) offer up a lot more opportunities for counterplay than most of the other big wincon creatures. Going after the fans rather the card just feels needlessly meanspirited.

[Igzex]

Well someone's feeling hostile today. For eleven mana and up, cards should be game-deciding, and the Eldrazi (with the exception of OG Emrakul, who is rightly banned) offer up a lot more opportunities for counterplay than most of the other big wincon creatures. Going after the fans rather the card just feels needlessly meanspirited.

Swinging Annihilator 4 at someone is needlessly mean spirited!

It's actually a reference to that Hayao Miyazaki meme and I don't really think people who play certain cards are garbage. But yeah, the mana cost is meaningless when we're dealing with the easiest type of card to cheat into play (I was on the receiving end of a turn 4 Sneak Attack Ulamog myself. Let me tell you, not great.), not to mention how easy it is to just generate big mana in EDH anyway resulting in haymakers like the eldrazi being more "Good grief..." than "Oh cool you actually managed to cast that!"

Honestly you're legitimately better off playing cards like Smokestack but nobody runs them because they look boring while the Eldrazi cards try to pretend they're not boring which is probably the biggest reason why I hate them no matter how non-competitive those cards are.

[BeneTleilax]

Swinging Annihilator 4 at someone is needlessly mean spirited!

It's actually a reference to that Hayao Miyazaki meme and I don't really think people who play certain cards are garbage. But yeah, the mana cost is meaningless when we're dealing with the easiest type of card to cheat into play (I was on the receiving end of a turn 4 Sneak Attack Ulamog myself. Let me tell you, not great.), not to mention how easy it is to just generate big mana in EDH anyway resulting in haymakers like the eldrazi being more "Good grief..." than "Oh cool you actually managed to cast that!"

Honestly you're legitimately better off playing cards like Smokestack but nobody runs them because they look boring while the Eldrazi cards try to pretend they're not boring which is probably the biggest reason why I hate them no matter how non-competitive those cards are.

Ah, sorry, I didn't get the reference. Yeah, Eldrazi are annoying to cheat out, but at least they take some effort to reanimate, unlike many similar threats. I'd still rather have Ulamog Sneak Attack me than Blightsteel Colossus, but doing either on turn 4 isn't my preferred power level, so I can't really comment on it. I just don't see these guys very frequently at all, because people who want dumb, self-enclosed wins play stronger, dumber, self-enclosed wins in my experience. New Emrakul is the one exception to this, but to me these feel of an era with Rafiq.

[Mookie]

Personally, I'm a fan of Eldrazi. Is annihilator a fun mechanic? No. But Eldrazi are Timmy incarnate. Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre does a lot of things, and I'm perpetually annoyed by its high monetary price preventing me from putting it in decks. From a design perspective, I find cast triggers to be a solid solution to large spells' traditional weakness to countermagic, without the clunky 'this spell can't be countered' text. It's also a bonus incentive for decks to be able to hardcast them instead of cheating them out. The shuffle ability means they can't be reanimated (usually), and means that they can't ever really be killed. It also allows for some very interesting recursion loops, like using Survival of the Fittest as graveyard protection (by fetching + discarding) a titan. One of my pet brainstorms is even currently looking to use Intuition to dump Eldrazi in the bin as a combo piece.

From my own perspective, there are two decks I'd like to throw Ulamog in. The first one is Animar, who is a fan of Eldrazi in general - with sufficient cost reduction, you can start slinging them for free. That deck also runs Possibility Storm, and cast triggers are awesome there. Ulamog (both old and new) is also one of the few creature-based answers to Humility available. The deck is also pretty light on recursion, so I'd like a way to restock my deck for Primal Surge.

The other deck I'm interest to run Ulamog in is Thada Adel - the three traits I look for in a beater are 1: that it generates card advantage, 2: it has some form of evasion, and 3: it has some form of protection. Ulamog happens to hit all three of those boxes, which is somewhat rare. That deck is also even lighter on recursion than Animar, and would appreciate a way to shuffle gas back into the deck.

....anyway, if you're hardcasting Eldrazi, I think they're perfectly fair, and some of the few creatures actually worth their extreme mana cost. I can definitely understand the hate for them from a Sneak Attack / Oath of Druids / Show and Tell perspective though. They can be difficult to deal with in the command zone, but those decks also tend to be really, really predictable (and extremely soft to mass artifact hate).

[Igzex]

Ah, sorry, I didn't get the reference. Yeah, Eldrazi are annoying to cheat out, but at least they take some effort to reanimate, unlike many similar threats. I'd still rather have Ulamog Sneak Attack me than Blightsteel Colossus, but doing either on turn 4 isn't my preferred power level, so I can't really comment on it. I just don't see these guys very frequently at all, because people who want dumb, self-enclosed wins play stronger, dumber, self-enclosed wins in my experience. New Emrakul is the one exception to this, but to me these feel of an era with Rafiq.

Honestly I'd rather eat a Blightsteel early. If I were to be murdered I'd rather my killer just immediately go for my throat than start with my legs and slowly work their way up by inches. That, and if I suddenly die to infect I can just whip out my Switch and grind my Poke'mon or something

And yeah, I like that you bring up the Rafiq sort of era because now that you mention that, it's that the Eldrazi cards are sub optimal ways to win rudely is what actually make them the worst to me. They feel like they kind prey upon people who like to play a more classic commander meta.