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

[wildfire393]

Oh look if it isn't the card that took Golos, Tireless Pilgrim's place as the most obvious do-everything 5c commander that doesn't actually require you hit all 5 colors to play him.

The card is obviously powerful, as it can set up infinite mana with Palinchron and a sac outlet (we did it, we broke Palinchron and free-repeatable sac oulets) and then decks out the entire table at once while gaining infinite life and making all your creatures infinitely large, hasty, and trampling. It's also just a strong infinite mana outlet in the Command zone, which is always "great" for combo decks that can often generate infinite mana but need a way to close the game.

The problem is it's just a bit too obvious, without actually providing any kind of real deckbuilding restriction to get maximum power out of it. Just run ramp, ramp, and more ramp and it'll give you infinite fuel and payoff for it.

I guess it's better than the days where you had to run an objectively bad 5c legend just to get access to all five colors, but in general I don't find five color commander to be particularly compelling. The only times I've built 5c commander are with some very extensive restrictions, like Niv-Mizzet Reborn with Jegantha, the Wellspring partner with 10 cards of each 2-color pair, or Garth One-Eye with as many weird and quirky tokens as I could manage.

[Hermes_]

5c legends should have the 5c in their mana cost *hides*

[onering]

I feel like there are a few differences that make Kenrith less obnoxious than Golos was.

Most important of these is that Kenrith is very breakable, but you need to either go for infinite mana or go deep into ramp to do so. His abilities are all ok when you don't have an absurd amount of mana, totally reasonable for a mana dump, strong but fair. It's only when you really go nuts on mana that you really want to just do nothing but pour mana into him. One of the big problems with Golos is that once you could activate his ability it often became the best thing you could do, and you would just repeatedly dump all your mana into spinning the wheel and getting 2-3 free spells a turn until you get enough mana to activate it more than once, which led to very repetitive gameplay and snowballing resources.

Golos' etb ability was also another factor, since it helped the pilot offset the impact of commander tax, and made removing the must remove commander less effective. By tutoring a land into play tapped when it came into play, it got itself halfway to covering the commander tax each time it was cast even if it just grabbed a basic. The fact that it could tutor for ANY land also meant it helped fix your mana (making hitting its ability easier, as did the ramp itself), and let you grab format all stars like Cradle, Ancient Tomb, Field of the Dead, etc. All of this added to the snowball effect, and all of this meant that even if you didn't build your deck to go any heavier into ramp than the average deck it would play as a ramp heavy deck just from Golos grabbing your best lands into play.

Golos was just intrinsically broken. You had to intentionally handicap yourself by running bad cards or building around something dumb to make it not obnoxious. Kenrith can be built in a non broken way simply by removing infinite mana combos and only ramping as much as the average deck.

[3drinks]

5c legends should have the 5c in their mana cost *hides*

No, you're 💯 right. 5c is powerful, it should require an extensive cost beyond just auto losing to ruination.

[hyalopterouslemur]

I'm not touching this one with a ten-foot pole.

[Sinis]

Monday, April 11th, 2022; Kenrith, the Returned King

It's a good white card you can't play in mono white.

[Dunharrow]

I wish that the abilities all had 'tap' costs, except the first one.

[illakunsaa]

I like how RC banned golos because was because it was hurting diversity. Then they said that if you wanna play the most obnoxious variant of golos you still can because kenrith is still unbanned.

[3drinks]

Tuesday, April 12th, 2022; Blinkmoth Infusion

This looks scary

[Hawk]

This was in my dollar rare box for the longest time before I decided to grow up and put all rares in a binder somewhere. I recall it being most explosive and powerful in Kitchen Table Magic as one of the ways to dome someone to death with Erratic Explosion.

I'm a little surprised to see it at $8+ now but I guess between the influx of powerful Ux Artifacts commanders in the last few years (Urza, Lord High Artificer chief among them) alongside a more refined way to Explosion people out of the command zone with Yuriko, the Tiger's Shadow maybe I shouldn't be? I know I eschewed it in Yuriko because it's "just damage" there but maybe I shouldn't - 14 is alotta damage! I tend to prefer expensive as all get-out cards that Yuriko might actually get mileage out of though - delve spells like Temporal Trespass and Dig Through Time, split cards like Connive // Concoct and Rags // Riches, miracle cards like Temporal Mastery, etc. The deck is already so clunky that I think the possible high-rolls from this and stuff like Draco doesn't make up for running cards that are literally dead beyond getting revealed by a Yuriko trigger.

If you are looking to combo off I think this is inferior to Turnabout and mostly inferior to Hurkyl's Recall, but even for those strategies this represents some redundancy and it is better than those two spells in Galazeth Prismari and Brudiclad, Telchor Engineer (bouncing tokens is no fun!) and Zaffai, Thunder Conductor (this triggers all the colors of Zaffai and not just the first line of text).

More artifact lands certainly helps this - a deck like Galazeth or Zaffai can have 4 artifact lands now, and a deck like Breya, Etherium Shaper could theoretically run 11 if she so chose thanks to the bridges. They've also printed a ton more 2 CMC rocks in the last three years (well a ton is a stretch, but we got Arcane Signet, enemy-colored Talismans, and Liquimetal Torque). With those, it doesn't take that many additional rocks to get to a point of this being mana positive especially if you are running bigger rocks like Grim Monolith, Thran Dynamo, Gilded Lotus - heck, even Worn Powerstone and ubiquitous Sol Ring help a lot.

[Dragoon]

More artifact lands certainly helps this - a deck like Galazeth or Zaffai can have 4 artifact lands now, and a deck like Breya, Etherium Shaper could theoretically run 11 if she so chose thanks to the bridges.

I ran 13 in mine I kept the few counterspells in that deck for Merciless Eviction and Vandalblast. I dismantled the deck just in time before Farewell came

[hyalopterouslemur]

This is a card that started out meh but now it's a veritable Early Harvest and Vitalize put together.

[Igzex]

I'm late to the party on Kenrith here but I got a funny tale to tell. I built an esper draw-go deck with him as my commander because he was easily the best choice for that. My deck was basically all answers and no win conditions in the 99 because he just wins with his black and blue abilities alone. Yeah it didn't take long for me to disown that deck. Who even attempted to design this card...

As for Blinkmoth Infusion, yeah it looks busted on paper but in actual practice it honestly takes more work than say, Isochron Scepter shenanigans.

[Dragoon]

I'm late to the party on Kenrith here but I got a funny tale to tell. I built an esper draw-go deck with him as my commander because he was easily the best choice for that. My deck was basically all answers and no win conditions in the 99 because he just wins with his black and blue abilities alone. Yeah it didn't take long for me to disown that deck. Who even attempted to design this card..

As a fellow dragon lover, have you thought of using Chromium, the Mutable instead?

[Mookie]

I'm also a bit late to the Kenrith, the Returned King party, but my brief thoughts are 'it looks like someone tried to design a group hug commander and forgot to add text to actually encourage that play pattern'. Seriously, has anyone actually targeted an opponent with his abilities? (ignoring Tainted Remedy)

Blinkmoth Infusion feels like a very win-more card - assuming all your artifacts tap for , you need at least 7 of them to break even. Obviously, if you have more artifacts, it goes up in value (or if you have powerful tap abilities to reuse), but Dramatic Reversal and Turnabout will generally do the same thing without needing to jump through any hoops, as can Unwinding Clock. Maybe if you have Vial Smasher the Fierce or another card that specifically cares about casting expensive spells?

[DirkGently]

Talk about conditional. You dont just need a million artifacts, you also need a good payoff for untapping them. I feel like any time blinkmoth infusion does something good, there was some other card that would have just won the game instead of faffing about.

[3drinks]

Wednesday, April 13th, 2022; Siege Behemoth

[wildfire393]

Siege Behemoth is one of those cards I was pretty high on when it originally spoiled. Turning every single creature into a Thorn Elemental is fairly scary, and Hexproof makes it tough to keep from doing its thing. Having to attack though means this is pretty well telegraphed, however, which often gives your opponents the chance to dig for a wrath or something to avoid dying. In the same set, Thunderfoot Baloth gives you a similar way to punch through damage that doesn't require that you survive a turn to attack, which is probably a bit scarier overall. And of course, nothing holds a candle to Craterhoof Behemoth, or even stuff like Blossoming Bogbeast and Pathbreaker Ibex which can get out of control quickly.

[Lifeless]

What I like about this guy the most is how he fits into a Birthing Pod curve. Also he straight up ignores blockers in the alpha-strike equation so that's nice. As G finishers are concerned he's more in the Bellowing Tanglewurm class than the trample class and I think that's a pretty important distinction.

[hyalopterouslemur]

The biggest problem with him is that you generally don't need him. Thunderfoot Baloth, Bellowing Tanglewurm, Eldrazi Monument, and any number of Overrun variants do the same more efficiently, generally speaking.

[Igzex]

As a fellow dragon lover, have you thought of using Chromium, the Mutable instead?

I dunno the card always looked a bit too meh to me but it's a dragon so I'm pretty sure I can pull something creative. Also it is hilarious that as a dragon lover I have not touched a dragon related deck in forever because WOTC won't f'n stop with this nonstop barrage of dragon cards. My The Ur-Dragon is going through a massive identity crisis and I don't know what to do

Also I guess Siege Behemoth is fine in green beatdown I dunno. I don't like beatdown unless the things I'm beating people to death with have wings and burn entire cities just by sighing at y'all.

[Mookie]

Siege Behemoth is an interesting callback to Thorn Elemental and other 'super-trample' cards, but I don't think I have ever been interested in running it. It is somewhat rare for green to get a true mass evasion effect, which means that opponents can ward off most attacks if they have sufficient toughness.... but given how many Overrun effects green has to grant both trample and a pile of stats, it's hard to justify a finisher that doesn't also grant stats. Maybe it could be good alongside saboteur effects like Phage the Untouchable / Deus of Calamity / Virtus the Veiled? I'd probably still prefer Whispersilk Cloak or other cheap equipment - it's rare to have that many saboteur effects at once.

That said, I will call out Siege Behemoth's hexproof - if you're worried about being blown out by a removal spell on Thunderfoot Baloth or Beastmaster Ascension, hexproof can help. Not really a concern if you're using Decimator of the Provinces / Craterhoof Behemoth or another ETB effect though.

[RxPhantom]

Siege Behemoth is an all-star closer in my Goreclaw, Terror of Qal Sisma deck. Similarly, it shines a light on just how valuable Surrak, the Hunt Caller an Crashing Drawbridge are in the deck. Big fat fatties getting a taste of the haste can be devastating.

[onering]

As a fellow dragon lover, have you thought of using Chromium, the Mutable instead?

I dunno the card always looked a bit too meh to me but it's a dragon so I'm pretty sure I can pull something creative. Also it is hilarious that as a dragon lover I have not touched a dragon related deck in forever because WOTC won't f'n stop with this nonstop barrage of dragon cards. My The Ur-Dragon is going through a massive identity crisis and I don't know what to do

Also I guess Siege Behemoth is fine in green beatdown I dunno. I don't like beatdown unless the things I'm beating people to death with have wings and burn entire cities just by sighing at y'all.

Chromium is really solid for draw go. He's a three turn clock that can't be countered and is easy to protect, and you can wait until the perfect time to cast him so you don't ever have to lower your shields (and if people aren't paying attention they can forget he can flash in as a blocker).

[3drinks]

Thursday, April 14th, 2022; Brimaz, King of Oreskos