[mtgnexus] Random Card of the Day - Fatal Push

[Moxnix]

I mean you can snipe the titans from the deck or even on the trigger and mill them out a second time ghost vacume it up or something on trigger not that i think the deck would be very fun after 2-3 games

[3drinks]

Exactly that. Once you solve the critical flaw it doesn't offer different play. Just another A + B combo deck in mono U.

[Hermes_]

Yeah thrumming stone is a glass cannon no matter what deck you put it in.

[materpillar]

My understanding of this card's play pattern is that you look at it and say "man this card is really cool!" Then, you build a super sweet deck around it. You trigger it once to do the thing. Finally, you immediately disassemble the deck after that one time as you realize the thing is actually really lame and boring in practice.

[Mookie]

Ripple may be one of the worst mechanics ever designed. The base cards (Surging Flame and friends) only have a 20% or so chance of hitting another copy, assuming you're running a 4-of in a 60-card deck. Those are... not great odds, and mean they're generally not playable outside limited. But if you're playing a 40-card deck and somehow end up with 10 of them? Congratulations, you may have a T2 kill. That's a remarkably high variance in power level.

Then there is Thrumming Stone. Again, if you're playing it with a bunch of 4-ofs then it will usually do nothing. But if you're playing a pile of Relentless Rats? Well, now you have a glass cannon that just needs to cast a single spell after Thrumming Stone is in play, at which point you will nondeterministically flip your entire deck into play and pray your opponents don't have a board wipe. Except because it's nondeterministic, you need to actually go through all the motions just in case of a brick, which is... sort of a waste of time. There are certainly other cards and mechanics that can result in extremely long turns (Mississippi River cascade says hi), but those tend to be outside the default use case. For ripple, it feels like being miserable to play is the only way to make it usable.

Anyway, seems like it would be fun to do exactly once and no more.

[3drinks]

Thursday, September 10th 2026; Worldspine Wurm

[MAGUSZANIN]

The graveyard restriction kills Worldspine Wurm for me. I get it for 60 card, but if someone reanimates this at my commander table I'm just going to say cool?

11 is to much Mana to be paying for French vanilla beef, and you can't loop it without some pretty specific instant speed stuff. That renders what would be a potential card for our format nigh unplayable.

[Serenade]

They had reprinted it for Zimone, Mystery Unraveler. Should be fun there.

I've only played Vannifar, Evolved Enigma, which has a different approach to cheaty-morph.

[materpillar]

My inner Timmy loves this card to death. My favorite with this is the time that I went against a mill deck with Esika. They milled my deck but I had Progenitus and this. So they ended with me at 2 cards in library.

I proceeded to laser them out with Heretic's Punishment that could only hit those cards.

[ISBPathfinder]

Worldspine Wurm is kind of bad. I remember some obscure Sidisi, Brood Tyrant combo with Greater Good (and I think a delve card) where you would use the wurm to keep shuffling itself into your library to loop infinitely for a ETB / Death loop. I believe there are some other cards that always shuffle back in though today too like Darksteel Colossus / Blightsteel Colossus. I am not really seeing a reason why the wurm in particular needs to be run, its just the one thing I can recall anyone ever referencing this card about.

Honestly, I can't say I have ever seen Worldspine Wurm actually cast. I wish the death trigger was just a leaves play trigger and I wish it cost less to play. It is what it is though and its kind of bad. I even built a bad wurm deck recently and I didn't include it in the list because the mana to cast is crazy. Its also not that common to have sac outlets in green so its kind of a hard sell.

[Moxnix]

I mean 11 sure is a lot for no effect outside I'm big and leave some dudes when I die. Cant say its ever tickled my fancy enough to want to use.

[3drinks]

Worldspine Wurm is kind of bad. I remember some obscure Sidisi, Brood Tyrant combo with Greater Good (and I think a delve card) where you would use the wurm to keep shuffling itself into your library to loop infinitely for a ETB / Death loop. I believe there are some other cards that always shuffle back in though today too like Darksteel Colossus / Blightsteel Colossus. I am not really seeing a reason why the wurm in particular needs to be run, its just the one thing I can recall anyone ever referencing this card about.

Honestly, I can't say I have ever seen Worldspine Wurm actually cast. I wish the death trigger was just a leaves play trigger and I wish it cost less to play. It is what it is though and its kind of bad. I even built a bad wurm deck recently and I didn't include it in the list because the mana to cast is crazy. Its also not that common to have sac outlets in green so its kind of a hard sell.

Wurm is for when you do the Natural Order version of this combo since you need a g creature.

[Wanli]

A friend plays this as the only creature in the 99 of his Atla Palani, Nest Tender deck; with lots of instant speed sac outlets of course, Greater Good being the best one. Impressive the first time you play (against) it…

[onering]

I had it in Goreclaw for awhile. 9 mana is still a lot, but it's better than 11, and kind of worth it for a 15/15 trample in a deck with power doubling that wants to turn fatties sideways. Goreclaw also has plenty of ramp in it, and while the main goal is to double cast 5 and 6 drops because they become 3 or 4 drops, spending a turn casting something incredibly scary was always fine. It was always most effective when dropped and then immediately sacrificed to Greater Good. 9 mana to go up 12 cards and still put 15 trampling power and toughness on the board from the tokens it leaves behind was absurd. Or if I had Selvala out just spending 9 to cast it and then 1 to tap her to make 15 mana, meaning I got a 15/15 trample for -5 mana, that poops out 3 5/5s when it dies.

God Goreclaw was fun in that era. The deck has sped up way too much as there have been so many great includes for it, especially competing for the higher MV slots, that this guy doesn't fit anymore. The 10 mana guy that cascades 4 times packs almost the same punch as this guy did when I had support out, just doing so on its own with no support for 1 mana less. I think that was what I swapped it out for. Goreclaw is just so solidly Bracket 4 at this point because of how quickly it can reasonably knock people out, even powering it down makes it too likely to do so to fairly run in B3 where running this guy would actually be reasonable (in Goreclaw).

As for Thrumming Stone, I agree that Ripple is an all time terrible mechanic. Thrumming Stone itself leads to brainless and unfun decks in commander, but the entire mechanic sucks. It have said "if you cast it from your hand" and then had much higher numbers for Ripple. Reasonably cost the spell assuming you won't find another, but have a realistic chance at getting another off the ripple.

Like, take Surging Flame. With those changes, you could give it Ripple 10. In limited, it would be an archetype to build around because getting enough would essentially be 4 damage for 1R, very strong but without being able to chain 10 together into a turn 2 win. Thrumming Stone could have had Ripple 10 and the Ravenous Rats type decks could cut back on how many they need to make it work, freeing up deck space for other cards while turning the Stone into a value engine instead of a combo piece. That would make the decks more fun to play against and the Stone more fun to play with, as it would be more likely to stick around and actually do stuff instead of just getting removed or immediately winning.

[Moxnix]

A friend plays this as the only creature in the 99 of his Atla Palani, Nest Tender deck; with lots of instant speed sac outlets of course, Greater Good being the best one. Impressive the first time you play (against) it…

Thats actaully hilarious and when i imagine it i see a vision of that card better than i ever thought it could be lol. Pretty cool

[Ruiner]

I've got fond memories of seeing Worldspine Wurm in Sneak Attack decks back in 60 card days before Commander was really a thing. That was a monster of a card to sneak in back then.

In Commander it's a pretty respectable beater but unless you are cheating it out some way or just have an absurd ramp deck, it's probably not much of a consideration.

[Mookie]

Worldspine Wurm is a pretty solid option to cheat out. 15/15 trample is a massive body, and it leaves behind a bunch of extra stats when it dies. There aren't that many decks that necessarily want this sort of effect, but seems reasonable in decks like Oviya, Automech Artisan and Kona, Rescue Beastie, to say nothing of Sneak Attack shenanigans.

...of course, there is the question of whether a giant pile of stats is better than the value generated by Old Gnawbone / Nyxbloom Ancient / Ghalta, Stampede Tyrant / other big dumb things. Worldspine certainly has some Timmy appeal by virtue of being one of the biggest and dumbest, at least.

[Lifeless]

I can think of a lot worse cards to repeatedly Survival of the Fittestinto play with Sneak Attack. It's a fun design and I can't get mad at it.

[3drinks]

Friday, September 11th 2026; The Battle of Bywater|86887

[MAGUSZANIN]

The Battle of Bywater is pretty strong for low power decks. Lots of card advantage in getting rid of a ton of opposing creatures, while you can swing in with your board of hobbits or defenders or whatever.

The food is great for hobbits obviously, but there are other decks that can take advantage of making a few artifacts or some lifegain. This is also one of the cheapest versions of this effect at 3 Mana.

Overall, a solid, if niche, card.

[Lifeless]

Various Doran and other butt-fighting decks should love this. They're almost always in W and the price is right.

[yeti1069]

Friday, September 11th 2026; The Battle of Bywater|86887

This is a fantastic card in the right deck.

In the Frodo + Sam list, only 11 of my 39 creatures have power 3+, and of those, Boromir, Warden of the Tower can sacrifice to protect any of the others, and Gyome, Master Chef can give himself indestructible.

The food production part can range from a nice-to-have to a game ender with something like Mirkwood Bats on the field.

With Academy Manufactor, Night of the Sweets' Revenge, or The Cabbage Merchant out, those food tokens can also be used for mana.

I've ended plenty of games by casting Battle then following it up with Motivated Pony to swing out at the mostly empty board.

For a while, I was running 3 power-excluding wipes like this, but found myself in too many games where I needed to kill my opponent's swarm of weenies, but unable to do so. As such, I've mixed things up a bit. My sweeper suite now is: Battle, Make an Example, Austere Command, and Elspeth, Sun's Champion.

[Moxnix]

3 mana one sided wipe with upsides verdict good

[onering]

My Mono White Control deck mostly loves this because all the hate bears are small enough and so are most of the advantage engines. I don't want to cast it while Elesh Norn is out, but otherwise it's a great wipe for the deck.

Arcades loves it because everything has low power and it's just mean there, although you need to pop it off while Arcades isn't on the field (or just accept the need to recast him).

[Mookie]

I don't think I've ever actually read The Battle of Bywater, because I didn't realize how much food it makes. For some reason I thought it only made one or two food tokens, max. That... actually seems sort of strong? I've only ever seen it played as an asymmetric board wipe (which is totally reasonable), but that makes me a lot more excited about it for go-wide food / artifact decks.

I have somewhat mixed feelings about using it as an asymmetric board wipe - I've sort of liked Dusk // Dawn as an option in my white decks with lots of small creatures (Teysa and Brago), but there are also a lot of random utility creatures it misses... to say nothing of the opposing go-wide little creature decks across the table. There are certainly plenty of situations where it's strong, but it's significantly something more nuanced than an unconditional board wipe. There are a lot of times I have it in hand and feel like it's not worth casting to only kill one or two things. Still, I suppose its cheap cost is nice. Sort of like an inverted Anger of the Gods - it will often miss the things you most care about, but that's a sacrifice some decks are willing to make for efficiency.