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

[folding_music]

I took this out of Colfenor because she went infinite. (and I didn't want to blame Concordant Crossroads, giggle.) lovely old card, and just about all the creatures in Weatherlight had interesting or pseudo-interesting text!

[hyalopterouslemur]

So what would "can't have anything opponent controls attached to it" be? Flavorfully sounds green.

Anyway, Llanowar Druid...Prismatic Omen? (Though untapping opponents' lands doesn't seem that bad on your turn, unless they're playing blue.)

You can use things like Sun Titan and Mikaeus, the Unhallowed to reuse her. Or Reveillark. In green, you have notably less, but there are still options like Reincarnation and Deathrender. Or just recur her and hardcast; she costs two mana.

[Mookie]

Llanowar Druid looks interesting - not a card I have seen before, but could certainly be powerful in the right deck. One-shot mass untap effects like Early Harvest, Turnabout, and Rude Awakening can be quite strong - they can represent a ton of mana to funnel into something like Genesis Wave or Finale of Devastation. I don't think Llanowar Druid is quite as strong as those though - for one, it's pretty telegraphed, which means your opponents may kill it before you get the mana. The symmetry isn't quite as big of an issue, but it is worth noting. On the other hand, Llanowar Druid only costs two mana, and you can play it ahead of time, so you could use it to ramp into a 6-drop on turn 3 with no other support, which is pretty big.

....somewhat silly to compare to Rofellos, Llanowar Emissary though.

[Wallycaine]

So what would "can't have anything opponent controls attached to it" be? Flavorfully sounds green.

I'd probably consider it a subset of Hexproof, but it's an ability that's so small it's not really defined in the color pie.

[3drinks]

Tuesday, March 29th, 2022; Ojutai's Command

[wildfire393]

I've always liked this Command in a vacuum. There's a lot of good 2mv creatures you can return like Snapcaster Mage, Jace, Vryn's Prodigy // Jace, Telepath Unbound, Baleful Strix, Dockside Extortionist, Esper Sentinel, Thassa's Oracle, Charming Prince, Sakura-Tribe Elder, Selfless Spirit, etc. I do wish it were a full Sun Titan type effect and could hit non-creature permanents, but oh well.

The other modes are mostly gravy, you'll generally find one of them to be solid, if nothing else just drawing a card.

I dunno what deck actually wants this, but I'm sure something does.

[Hawk]

I've tried this in numerous places (if you are curious it's at least seen one round of play in Jenara Counters, GAAIV Control, Zedruu Enchantress, Sygg Merfolk, and Alela faeries), but it's just really bad. Not even comparing it to Cryptic Command it is bad.

- Only hitting creature spells is super awkward, and immediately compares this unfavorably to Exclude, a card I'm not necessarily clamoring to include outside of Baral and Talrand. It also makes it compare badly to Dismiss, another card I tend to only run in the durdliest of U/x decks.
- The lifegain is functionally irrelevant in EDH.
- So that means to really get value out of this, you'd want a deck where the first option is better than drawing a card and also have a deck that's generally happy to hold up 4 mana on the opponent's turn? And even with tribally inclined Azorius decks like Millicent, Restless Revenant and Sygg, River Guide that's quite rare - I've found that as a deck has more and more targets for that Unearth effect, it tends to value mana efficiency in its answer cards more and more so that it can develop the board and also hold up reactive mana.
- If instead you are most excited about the unnearth effect - well, Unnearth is one mana and so casting it for four even with a Cantrip attached is quite mediocre. I'd honestly be looking at Miraculous Recovery instead in that case and I've never actually maindecked that spell in my life. More realistically, such "value plays" in Azorious tend to get strangled out by the glut of amazing flicker and phase effects in the color pair (I could use this to reanimate a Charming Prince...or I could just Momentary Blink the prince...)

It does look like Hinata, Dawn-Crowned has given this a new lease on life, since it functionally is Exclude with more upside but even there it seems more cute than good.

[TheAmericanSpirit]

The counter being restricted to creatures is as lame as the unearth effect, which is to say a lot. I love flexible control spells, but this card is a bummer.

[hyalopterouslemur]

I put more value into "mana value N or less" cards than most, meaning I don't see it as quite the downside.

The cantrip option makes it better, but four mana is a lot for a cantrip.

It does have one saving grace, in Jeskai appropriately enough. It's Sunforger-compatible. But then so is Absorb or Mana Tithe or Suffocating Blast or Ionize or Izzet Charm or Dovin's Veto and I'm wondering how many times that trick can still be unexpected.

[Dunharrow]

I think I recently cut it from Shu Yun, the Silent Tempest in favour of Dovin's Veto. The deck has a sunforger package and while this is cool it is not that strong.

[onering]

It does look like Hinata, Dawn-Crowned has given this a new lease on life, since it functionally is Exclude with more upside but even there it seems more cute than good.

Hinata also seems like it can make good use of a fair amount of CMC 2 or less creatures, so it can functionally be "UW: Counter target creature spell and return a CMC 2 or less creature from your gy to the battlefield" with some regularity, and that seems like a pretty good play (and the first time its ever been worth it to run this card).

[Jemolk]

I've got it in Ramos Lucky Charms. Solid card there with how I've built the deck, considering I've got 20 guildmages that it can reanimate.

[Serenade]

Had it in an Ishai/Kraum whatever-I-had-extra-lying-around deck, which outperformed my expectations. This card got a laugh because they expected more from four mana. I also would like to try with Hinata.

[3drinks]

Wednesday, March 30th, 2022; Burning-Tree Shaman

[wildfire393]

It's an interesting hate piece that turns off a number of combos and makes a lot of regular things like fetchlands and planeswalker activations hurt. It just seems a little too low impact overall.

[BeneTleilax]

Still a good way to hose infinite combos. Red still doesn't have enough incidental ping payoffs to make it worthwhile otherwise, but I hope it gets more. Run it if you're seeing too many ability infinites. Harsh Mentor is probably better.

[Jemolk]

Stopping activated ability infinites is a definite positive for the card in my book, and I like that it's symmetrical, unlike Harsh Mentor. I think that's better card design and better for the game, and as such would be more inclined to run Burning-Tree Shaman than the Mentor, even though it's a weaker card.

[onering]

I'd say run both if its important enough of an effect to run the shaman. Redundancy is nice and since it doesn't actually shut off the effect but punishes instead having both on the field increases the impact, making it less likely that you just get killed first by the combo if they have enough life to take you out, and making the incidental damage better. Adding a ping to every activation is ok, adding a shock is nice, but adding a bolt to the face every time an opponent activates something gets crazy quickly.

[hyalopterouslemur]

It's definitely a meta call, but it will stop infinite combos. Maybe? (I mean, a little bit of lifegain will thwart it.)

[Hawk]

I remember this being the toast of standard - thing was a wrecking ball, in an era where just being a 3/4 for 3 MV was very good.

It's...fine...in EDH. But honestly, if you are hoping to stop people from comboing off you probably want Harsh Mentor (it's too easy to "fight through" Burning Tree Shaman for most Ghave, Guru of Spores engines, for instance, as a player with Zulaport Cutthroat or Soul Warden is staying life neutral), and if you are looking to just eek some incidental value out of opposing durdling I've grown to be a big fan of Runic Armasaur. Any deck that could run ol' Shaman here could also either or both of those, sharply limiting Shaman to exactly Gruul Centaur tribal.

Also notable (for all of these) - they do nothing to stop an infinite involving Ashnod's Altar, Krark-Clan Ironworks, or Phyrexian Altar i.e. the most common infinite engines in the format, so that's a huge drawback imo.

[3drinks]

Thursday, March 31st, 2022; Pyrrhic Revival

I've actually never seen this before. I kind dig it tbh.

[Sinis]

Thursday, March 31st, 2022; Pyrrhic Revival
I've actually never seen this before. I kind dig it tbh.

This card sort of was prominent for people I played with in 2011, in the post-Kaalia of the Vast world. The idea was that if someone wiped the army you cheated in, this, along with Living Death|cmd and Twilight's Call could undo the whole thing. If you were heavy into dragons/demons instead of angels, Balthor the Defiled was acceptable, and if you wanted to dig really deep, All Hallow's Eve was affordable back then.

But, yeah, this is not the first time I've seen this card, though I have not seen it in quite some time.

[onering]

Even when it was printed it faced competition. Twilight's Call is just better unless your opponent's have a lot of X/1's that would be returned, and you can pay 2 extra to cast it with flash which can be huge. Meanwhile, for 3 more mana than this card you get Rise of the Dark Realms, which puts all the creatures into play under your control (though it came out some years later). If your game plan is to self mill and then reanimate ASAP, Living Death is cheaper, and nukes whatever your opponents have on the field at the time.

[Dunharrow]

I feel like the idea of this card was to pair it with the Lorwyn block cards that could remove -1/-1 counters to activate abilities.

[wildfire393]

The best use case for this seems to be reanimating a bunch of Blood Artist type effects that can see everyone's creatures dying, and having a ton of things die on resolution due to the -1/-1 counters. Unfortunately most of these type of effects only count your own creatures dying, and the ones that count everyone's these days tend to be bigger (Dreadhound, Syr Konrad, the Grim) so won't die to this so you need more pieces to make it work.

This would be more useful if the Hybrid rules were fixed as White doesn't have as many ways to mass reanimate as black does at the moment. As it stands this is mostly just outclassed by black's myriad mass reanimate spells.