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

[Serenade]

Love that it doesn't limit it to nontoken creatures.

[3drinks]

Thursday, May 5th, 2022; The Mimeoplasm|cm2

Happy birthday to me. Remember when Sultai was graveyard hate plus extraordinarily brutal combinations of using their guys against them? Remember how much we groaned and then WotC made it worse with Muldrotha?

Oh, how I Iong for these simpler times.

[Mookie]

The Mimeoplasm is a sweet card, and I suspect to be the primary reasons why many people want to visit Muraganda - I mean, who doesn't want to see what everyone's favorite dino-handed ooze is up to?

I don't see The Mimeoplasm around that often, particularly compared to more recent, stronger commanders - Muldrotha, the Gravetide, Tasigur, the Golden Fang, and Yarok, the Desecrated all outclass it if you want to play some sort of value pile. Still, The Mimeoplasm does have some cool things in its bag of tricks, particularly if you're looking to do a Voltron build - tossing a Lord of Extinction onto a Walking Ballista / Cold-Eyed Selkie / Blighted Agent / Invisible Stalker is certainly a thing. A bit glass cannon-y and vulnerable to disruption, but certainly a stylish strategy.

[Dragoon]

I played it a long time ago, at the helm of a mill deck that aimed to steal all types of cards from my opponents' graveyards. Haven't seen it in ages (outside of a tribal ooze deck that didn't seem to last long). I still think it has a place in the format just because of the sheer amount of possibilities this fella can bring to the table.

[Dunharrow]

The ability to make a lot of counters makes it an interesting build that makes it different from other sultai commanders. I sorta had a deck for a while, but never finished it properly, and then when Reyhan, Last of the Abzan was printed I dropped the idea.

[hyalopterouslemur]

My favorite trick is to use Fathom Mage or Prime Speaker Zegana with it. How to draw 13 or more cards at a time.

[Igzex]

It's so funny to think about how we complained about these commanders back in the day. We had no idea what we were in for years from that point. Nowadays this commander actually just looks like a fun, meme-y commander you play compared to the stupidly pushed likes of Muldrotha and Yarok.

The best thing about this card though has to be that its name included "The". Remember, you're not summoning Mimeoplasm. You are summoning THE Mimeoplasm. And if you're allowed to use "Ach! Hans, Run!" and you're using it to cheat The Mimeoplasm in, you have to say "Ach! Hans run it's the The Mimeoplasm!"

[DirkGently]

I don't think the mimeoplasm was ever really the problem child of c11. That would be animar, and I still hate seeing animar. Maybe ghave a bit, but honestly nobody plays him anymore.

Edit: weird, 2.4k ghave decks on edhrec. I haven't seen him played in like a decade.

[Hawk]

I ran the Mimeoplasm for a bit, since my college budget meant I only bought two C11 decks - Zedruu and ol' Dino-Arm here. He was great fun and did all the Boneyard Wurm-y things I loved, but eventually got the boot for being just a bit too slow, and just a bit too one-dimensional despite seeming full of infinite "build your own monster" potential: turns out then when you can give him some combination of Evasion, Protection, and Infect + massive stats, that's what you're gonna do 99% of the time. I occasionally toy with rebuilding him (since I currently have no Sultai decks), but a lot of those problems have gotten worse and not better in the last 11 years.

And yeah, he's also in the sweet-spot of commanders of that class imo. He hasn't been powercrept to oblivion like Ruhan of the Fomori, Damia, Sage of Stone, and Tariel, Reckoner of Souls but he also isn't, wasn't, and never has been a boogeymonster of the format the way Animar, Soul of Elements, Kaalia of the Vast, and Ghave, Guru of Spores were or still are. He, along with Riku of Two Reflections and Karador, Ghost Chieftain, are sorta "just right".

[3drinks]

Friday, May 6th, 2022; Mental Misstep

[Hawk]

I was all set to say that the most broken of the Phyrexian Mana spells in other formats has no real place in ours. Before a delve into data and trying to understand that data, I'd have placed this well outside my top 40 counters in the format, and possibly outside my top 50. And considering that outside of Baral, Chief of Compliance (who might actually want to run 40+ counterspells) the next closest archetype (hard control decks) might run 20ish counters and most decks run 5-10, that placement means it really is unplayable here. Sure, it's a 0-mana counter - but it counters such a narrow band of stuff. How important is countering turn 1 Sol Ring? Important enough to include this silver bullet and pray you have it in the opener?

And then I went to Scryfall...and found that this is actually the 13th most played Counter in the format (for monoblue counters; it's still 14th since only Dovin's Veto rates higher if we open up multicolor spells), still well outside the scope of a "normal" deck but very much up there in the rankings for a more controlling deck or for Baral. It is played in 40,792 decks according to EDHRECs. What?

Sure, part of that might be that Wash Away and An Offer You Can't Refuse haven't had a chance to carve their way into the meta just yet, but is this thing really that good in cEDH? It must be, since all the most popular commanders I can see are cEDH staple partner piles with Silas Renn, Seeker Adept and/or Thrasios, Triton Hero plus other legendaries.

[hyalopterouslemur]

Broken in Legacy. Let's see how it holds up here.

Not well. Look at a list of cards with exactly 1 CMC. There are quite a few, but the fact that many of them would be played in a Sun Titan package does not help its case, since Sun Titan does not care.

[Mookie]

Yeah, the main reasons I see to play Mental Misstep are for the meme value of countering Sol Ring on turn 1, or if you're doing something cEDH-ish. There certainly are 1-mana spells in the format worth countering, but the majority of spells that you actually want to counter are going to be more expensive. I'd lean towards other efficient / free spells instead - Force of Will, Swan Song, etc.

[Hawk]

I've noodled more and I guess it makes sense in cEDH. In addition to stopping random mana dorks dorks and some of the most powerful ramp spells in the format (Sol Ring, Mana Vault, Dark Ritual, Carpet of Flowers), it is a powerful "anti-disruption" piece of disruption, especially in that meta. Over the years answers have gotten cheaper and cheaper, and this hits Swords to Plowshares, Path to Exile, Pyroblast/Red Elemental Blast, Vandalblast, Pongify/Rapid Hybridization, Veil of Summer, Dispel, Swan Song, An Offer You Can't Refuse, Lightning Bolt, Nature's Claim, and a few taxy cards like Mystic Remora and Esper Sentinel. It also counters most all of the best tutors in the format and a few of the more ubiquitous and obnoxious cards like Skullclamp. It hits a lot more than I thought, and makes me thing I should at least consider it in Yuriko? Still not something I'd play everywhere, but I can see it for a "Flying Men" style deck like Yuriko, Edric, etc that wants to develop the board and have cheap answers to opposing answers.

[3drinks]

You should absolutely be playing it in Yuriko, Hawk. It is totally correct just on the merits of targets you listed alone.

[DirkGently]

Countering a sol ring or mana dork or whatever is extremely worth it…in 1v1. In multiplayer, barring situations when you know the sol-ring-player is the archenemy from the word go, it's really not. 1v1 trades are something you should usually only accept when you know the shape of the game well enough to know that you're spending your disruption where it's warranted. Far too easy to use this on a player and then 4 turns later needing their help to take down someone else who benefitted significantly from the misstep interaction. And it just doesn't hit enough important targets to be worth running outside cEDH.

[materpillar]

I think this is just worth it for the meme value if countering T1 Sol Ring when you have no lands in play. I ran it for a while in Lazav, the Multifarious basically for meme value. That deck really didn't like running into Swords to Plowshares/Path to Exile and was really mana tight, in addition to looting a ton. It was pretty solid there.

[3drinks]

Saturday, May 7th, 2022; Darien, King of Kjeldor

[folding_music]

his crown makes him look like he has the Tekken 3 Paul Phoenix haircut

[Igzex]

Ah yes, the classic mono white S&M commander.

[hyalopterouslemur]

More fun if you add red.

[illakunsaa]

One of the best lifegain commanders.

[3drinks]

Sunday, May 8th, 2022; Druid of Purification

[RxPhantom]

Druid of Purification is new to me. It's definitely strong, but it's also a readymade, 'hey play this!' card from WotC, and I find those dull but increasingly inescapable.

[hyalopterouslemur]

Druid of Purification is new to me. It's definitely strong, but it's also a readymade, 'hey play this!' card from WotC, and I find those dull but increasingly inescapable.

I mean, it's strong, but your opponents choose, though it always benefits you in theory.