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

[TheAmericanSpirit]

They're technically all solid value, but they're all a bit short of the sweet spot occupied by the titans. They're big, but not big enough. They generate value but not enough. Triple pips is also brutal for most cards that aren't busted in twain.

[Ruiner]

Cavalier of Flame has definitely won me some games in my Mina and Denn, Wildborn deck. The ETB is solid. Haste + mass firebreathing when you are going a bit wide gets scary (especially with a lot of mana available). The death trigger is big if you are throwing lands in your grave regularly like I do as well.

Cavalier of Dawn has been a major nuisance in my ol' blinky unicorn deck, where I can abuse that ETB.

The others I haven't played but I could definitely see myself playing Cavalier of Night (just picked up a copy to potentially put in a deck) and Cavalier of Gales has some potential.

The only one I can't see a use for is Cavalier of Thorns. It just seems low impact on ETB and the death exile clause makes it non-recurrable. Good stats with reach make it okay if you see lots of big fliers and you are playing monogreen I guess?

[Sinis]

Sunday, November 14th, 2021; The Cavalier Cycle

I love all of these and have played them pretty extensively. Only the white one hasn't gotten a ton of play, since it's hard to extract maximum value out of the death trigger. I find red has the most versatility in terms of mucking about with draw, death, haste and boost. Green seems niche (self mill), but I play in that niche a lot.

I think the unremarkable ones are blue and black. Brainstorm/scry 2 on Gales and Bone Splinters/Unearth aren't especially costly effects, and their bodies/keywords are (arguably) the least impressive.

[Guardman]

Cavalier of Flame is sneakily good in commander. I've won so many games off of either his haste/pump ability or having him die and dealing a good chunk of damage and becoming a one-sided Planeswalker wrath.

I tried Cavalier of Night in my Korvold, Fae-Cursed King deck for a little bit. It was fine. But I ended up cutting him due to tripple black and the fact that there are so many better sac+removal options.

I haven't seen or used any of the other Cavaliers in EDH, but surprisingly, I agree that Cavalier of Thorns is the worst one in EDH, despite being the strongest one when they were in standard (and I know technically Cavalier of Flame and Cavalier of Gales saw more play, but I'm chalking that up solely to the fact they were in color and worked great with Fires of Invention).

[hyalopterouslemur]

They look solid, but not amazing. Teferi's Ageless Insight or Alhammarret's Archive breaks all Brainstorms. Dawn and Night are just really good. Thorns can whiff, but since I tend to play decks with a lot of mana sinks in green, a whiff becomes unlikely. And that leaves Flame, which can be good for all the card draw, but how many lands other than fetches and Strip Mine (and maybe manlands and Glacial Chasm ) regularly end up in your graveyard? Maybe some spellshaper fuel. I find you're looking at 5 damage, tops. Which isn't nothing, but it's barely something: Primal Order costs less, is green, and typically does more per turn.

[Mookie]

The Cavalier cycle is sweet. I would put them somewhere in the middle of core set fatty cycles - below the Titans, but above the Souls. They all have both an ETB and a death trigger, which means they're pretty much guaranteed value. However, they only trigger once (barring flicker / recursion effects), which means that they can't provide much incremental value. As a result, I feel like they're significantly less exciting than the Titans - when you have an interest in protecting a creature to generate additional value, that results in interesting play patterns, while your opponents will feel pressure as they try to find an answer before it spirals out of control. With the Cavaliers, it doesn't really matter if they stick around since they've already done their job.

Anyway, I run Cavalier of Dawn in my Brago deck, and I've been meaning to add Cavalier of Gales to my Thada deck - they're both solid piles of value that do what those decks are interested in. I've also been meaning to test out Cavalier of Night in Teysa. I'm less sold on Cavalier of Flame - it may have some potential in Samut as another source of haste, but I think it's generally better for a more aggressive deck. I think Cavalier of Thorns is a miss - its ETB if fine, but a single land for five mana is a bit expensive. The recursion is also fine, but going to top of deck always feels awkward, as is the fact that it exiles itself. Hmmm...

I will call out that the Cavaliers are elemental knights, which make them strong considerations for decks that care about those tribes, such as Omnath, Locus of Rage and Syr Gwyn, Hero of Ashvale.

[BeneTleilax]

I find Cavalier of Dawn good, but outcompeted by Skyclave Apparition and Solitude in blink decks, where are the only place I saw it run.

[3drinks]

Monday, November 15th, 2021; Pemmin's Aura

I like build your own Morphling tbh.

[materpillar]

I saw this put on a Leviathan with a Loxodon Warhammer in a chaos draft once.

Pretty sure this is only used to go infinite with the untap effect and a creature that taps for uu. Snore.

[pokken]

Pretty sure this is only used to go infinite with the untap effect and a creature that taps for . Snore.

Sadly it's even more egregious than that, it doesn't need to tap for UU so much as UX - just don't get infinite blue if it doesn't make UU.

The most uses I see are feeding infinite thrasios, with Faeburrow Elder, Bloom Tender or Incubation Druid.

While it's fun for my johnny brain to go infinite with mana dorks and mana rocks, I'm starting to wonder if we shouldn't steer clear from combos that just combo with good cards you're already playing as a general case. My brain started thinking along this path when I was thinking about how nice it would be for Ephara to be able to close games with Mana Vault and Mana Crypt as combo pieces with Hullbreaker Horror.

It's super efficient to be able to combo out with stuff you're already using but man, comboing with ramp spells is particularly nasty.

Something about comboing with Saffi Eriksdotter and Renegade Rallier in human tribal feels better to me, I guess because you're not playing obvious goodstuff?

[Serenade]

Irked by that price tag.

[Crazy Monkey]

Pemmin's Aura is great in an aura-centric deck, but underperforms in decks like Bruna, Light of Alabaster when compared to something like Diplomatic Immunity. Outside voltron or combo, protecting and enabling activated abilities can be very power on the right commander. I have used it to good effect in Ertai, the Corrupted; but commanders like Angus Mackenzie or Hanna, Ship's Navigator also fit this category.

[kirkusjones]

I run it in Archelos currently, but may swap for freed from the real after more testing.

[onering]

Love it in Reveka, Wizard Savant

[hyalopterouslemur]

This should be called Jimmy Olsen.

For those who don't get it, back in the Silver Age, Jimmy Olsen used to get new powers just about every issue; Countdown to Final Crisis even homaged that in one of its disconnected storylines.

Mostly it's been replaced by Freed from the Real, but activated shroud is nice, as is the ability to boost power or toughness as needed.

This is nice. I give it 9/10. Only 9/10 because it made me remember Countdown.

[The_Hittite]

This should be called Jimmy Olsen.

For those who don't get it, back in the Silver Age, Jimmy Olsen used to get new powers just about every issue; Countdown to Final Crisis even homaged that in one of its disconnected storylines.

Mostly it's been replaced by Freed from the Real, but activated shroud is nice, as is the ability to boost power or toughness as needed.

This is nice. I give it 9/10. Only 9/10 because it made me remember Countdown.

Well given that the card's name is an anagram of "I am Superman" it's probably more a reference to Silver Age Superman who just had random new powers sometimes. Or rather Morphling's nickname was Superman because it had a ton of abilities and couldn't be killed and this turns you into a Morphling.

[Mookie]

My tap ability deck is Naya, but there are definitely times I wish I had access to blue mana for cards like Pemmin's Aura - the untap effects available to blue are absurdly efficient compared to what is available in other colors. On the other hand, this also means that there is a very strong pull to just throwing in a bunch of two-card combos for infinite mana, such as Pemmin's Aura / Freed from the Real + Bloom Tender or another mana-producing creature. Not the most exciting gameplan, but it is certainly efficient.

Speaking to Pemmin's Aura in a non-combo context, it provides a variety of abilities in a somewhat inefficient manner - costing to activate is a pain. Diplomatic Immunity is a better source of shroud, Aqueous Form is a better source of evasion, and Whispersilk Cloak provides both. The power/toughness flipping is a bit rare to replicate, but if you're a voltron commander, I'd probably go with a colorless option anyway, such as Blackblade Reforged. As a result, I don't think I would run it if the untap ability didn't matter to me.

...of course, if the untap ability is relevant, there aren't that many alternatives for it, so it will usually make the cut for the sake of redundancy. Activated shroud also makes it a bit more resilient in the face of removal, although it doesn't worth against an opponent removing the creature in response to casting the aura... and if you pass turn after assembling infinite mana with it, something has usually gone wrong. Still, seems very good with Reveka, Wizard Savant, who doesn't win immediately when enchanted.

[Hermes_]

This should be called Jimmy Olsen.

For those who don't get it, back in the Silver Age, Jimmy Olsen used to get new powers just about every issue; Countdown to Final Crisis even homaged that in one of its disconnected storylines.

In between attempting to get super man to reveal his secret identity

[Ruiner]

This is nice. I give it 9/10. Only 9/10 because it made me remember Countdown.

Pied Piper dragging around the dead corpse of Trickster and having imaginary conversations with him was about the only highlight of that super dull 52 follow up that I can recall. I've always had a sweet spot for the Rogues though.


Pemmin's Aura was a bit more fun in the "damage on the stack" days, but I never see it for anything other than infinite combos these days. Obviously great card but not particularly exciting.

[3drinks]

Tuesday, November 16th, 2021; Underworld Cerberus

[Melua]

I've always wanted to use it, but it's just too pricey for what it does. The exile clause hurts it a lot, and it's just too costly for a hate piece. It's also an oddity for rakdos colors as one of it's strengths is reanimation.

3/10, 10/10 flavor

[3drinks]

I'll be slotting it into Kardur to help keep the war torn blood spilling ....evil laugh with mustache twirling

[hyalopterouslemur]

I've always wanted to use it, but it's just too pricey for what it does. The exile clause hurts it a lot, and it's just too costly for a hate piece. It's also an oddity for rakdos colors as one of it's strengths is reanimation.

3/10, 10/10 flavor

Well, black. Red doesn't do much reanimation, or even really interact with the graveyard, and every other color pair featuring black, the other color brings more to the party. I mean, it is a 6/6 with super-menace for five. That's something?

[BeneTleilax]

This was niche until Garna, the Bloodflame, now it's all but obsoleted. If you want to do RB recursive beatdown, at a mid-to-low power level, I guess this guy could still be useful?

[Dunharrow]

Pemmin's Aura - Fair use in Phenax, God of Deception decks. That being said, it is incredibly strong there and can easily knock a player out of the game, and even win the game if you put it on a big dude.

Underworld Cerberus - I love the design. The flavour matches Cerberus so well.