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

[ironic gesture]

The dream is that you'd have the Pontiff plus three creatures out, play a 1MV cantrip, but spend four more to drain four, gain twelve-- and then hopefully draw something worthwhile to cast next turn.

Fixed it for you!

[OneAndOnly]

I usually play 1v1, so it's less potent there.

Yes, I realize this is the Commander forum.

Carry on.

[3drinks]

Friday, July 22nd, 2022; Priest of Fell Rites

[void_nothing]

It's two-mana, repeatable, flexible reanimation. That makes the Priest pretty good. Yes, the first activation is slow, but 6 life is nothing in a 40-life format, you can use this as discard fodder and then get just the unearth activation, etc.

[Guardman]

I've always thought Priest of Fell Rites was an interesting reanimator option. It can reanimate something on turn 3. With spot removal becoming less and less common, putting a big fatty like Archon of Cruelty on turn 3 can win games. It even has an option to reanimate from graveyard to rebuild after a sweeper. I think it is probably a worthy inclusion in any Orzhov reanimator strategy. As I say this, however, I have never actually seen this in the wild.

[Mookie]

Priest of Fell Rites is excellent. It isn't necessarily quite as efficient as Animate Dead or Reanimate, but the fact that it is a creature opens up a lot of synergies, such as recurring it repeatedly with Sun Titan or Phyrexian Reclamation. That alone wouldn't make it that much more impressive than Doomed Necromancer, but then you throw in the unearth ability for a bit of extra value and it starts to look pretty interesting. I particularly enjoy its interaction with Buried Alive - eight mana to put any creature in your deck into play (and another one into the graveyard) is very powerful.

I'll also call out that white has gotten a bunch of support for small creatures (MV 2 or less). Lurrus of the Dream-Den is probably the biggest enabler, but The Restoration of Eiganjo // Architect of Restoration and Sigardian Savior are also worth calling out, and I think that cards like Priest of Fell Rites, Stoneforge Mystic, and Deep Gnome Terramancer are impactful enough to justify building a small creature synergy package.

[PrimevalCommander]

I've played it a bit and so has one of my friends. He plays about how he reads on paper. Solid little creature that does work in graveyard decks. If you care about the creature body, it is a worthy inclusion. If you don't care about the body, play Animate Dead or Unburial Rites instead. Overall, good card if your going for the late game grindy value engines, which are a bit of my forte'.

[hyalopterouslemur]

It's two-mana, repeatable, flexible reanimation. That makes the Priest pretty good. Yes, the first activation is slow, but 6 life is nothing in a 40-life format, you can use this as discard fodder and then get just the unearth activation, etc.

Sorta repeatable. I mean, she's not repeatable on her own. You use her twice and you're done. But if you have her in Alesha, Who Smiles at Death (ideally with Anger in your 'yard) or with Sun Tian, she becomes much more useful.

Still...

Honest Priest of Fell Rites wb

Sorcery

Return target creature from your graveyard to the battlefield. You lose 3 life.

Flashback 3wb

is nothing to sneeze at, even with the summoning sickness restriction for the first use.

[PrimevalCommander]

The big thing about : zombify is the telegraph to everyone at the table that you are looking to get the best creature in your gy into play. It immediately draws everyone's eye to your graveyard and start looking for ways to disrupt it. Not the worst thing in the world, especially if everyone knows you do graveyard stuff anyway. But it leaves several avenues to blank this card, either kill the creature, or nuke the gy.

Better as part of a package where if you whiff the first time, you can try again later. Guess that is where unearth comes in!

[Sinis]

Keruga sure does "casualize" a lot of unfair things into very fair decks, doesn't it.

I would say so, though there are tons of cards that 'cheat' it now. Like channel cards from Kamigawa, Suspend, etc.

As for Priest of Fell Rites, I kinda like it, but I think it's probably pretty bad.

[Ruiner]

I was so disappointed that this so called "priest" did not have the Cleric creature type for my bad BW clerics deck.

Seems decently playable if you need a backup Doomed Necromancer but other than for fun casual use, I can't see actually including this over any of the usual reanimator cards.

[TheGildedGoose]

With spot removal becoming less and less common

I like this card quite a bit. The value nerd in me just can't resist it.

[TheAmericanSpirit]

I have a Raffine list (soon to be posted) heavily based on the work of @ISBPathfinder that plays this to great effect. A turn 3-4 Tidespout Tyrant puts you pretty far ahead in my experience (at least until everyone jumps you for cheating out a t4 Tidespout Tyrant).

[3drinks]

Saturday, July 23rd, 2022; The MH2 Freelementals

[RedCheese]

They are very powerfull. But too expensive

[Ruiner]

Solitude is in a number of my Wx decks and always is super useful.

Endurance has come in pretty handy in a few games as well, recycling my own grave or messing with reanimator shenanigans.

Subtlety seems just lackluster given all other options you have in blue.

Grief seems really good for 60 card formats but a bit tougher to get real good use out of in commander.

Fury is a solid beater with some removal attached. Seems playable in a slower more casual deck.

[materpillar]

Free spells tend to be good so I assume these are strong. I haven't actually seen anyone play any of them though. Probably because they're expensive and the cards are extremely uninspired in terms of flavor. They're just boring obviously powercrept new stuff.

I'd imagine the powerlevel is W > U > R > G > B based purely on which color is like flickering the most. But I have no experience.

[BeneTleilax]

The new free answers have enabled midrange to exist again at 7-9 games, so I like them, even though they are all overpriced and overpowered. I haven't seen them take over a game, or shut someone out of one, so they're alright in my book.

[ISBPathfinder]

I have a Raffine list (soon to be posted) heavily based on the work of @ISBPathfinder that plays this to great effect. A turn 3-4 Tidespout Tyrant puts you pretty far ahead in my experience (at least until everyone jumps you for cheating out a t4 Tidespout Tyrant).

Yea, I had to give that one up. I think I had like an 80+% win ratio telling people I was stepping it up to a faster deck. If you didn't kill / steal / tree my commander the turn I played it I just found counter magic to fight through too much after the first trigger. I was killing everyone on like turns 6/7 with interaction backup. When I step a commander up to be that fast I usually end up taking them out back before long.

[Mookie]

The MH2 elementals are certainly powerful, but I'm not entirely convinced they're worth their price tag in EDH. I would say that Solitude is the strongest of the bunch - it's a solid piece of interaction, and it works well with white's recursion and flicker strategies (ex: Ephemerate). Endurance is also a powerful piece of interaction, and it does provide a nice surprise factor that on-board grave hate like Relic of Progenitus doesn't. Other than those two though... Fury is playable, but it's not going to single-handedly shut down a white weenie deck like it can in other formats. Subtlety is a little niche compared to other blue countermagic. Finally, Grief suffers from the fact that targeted discard is pretty weak in this format.

...more broadly, I'm generally not a fan of free spells, overpriced staples, or intentional power creep. Still, I do appreciate the fact that all of them are reactive instead of proactive - if we had a pitch-Divination or Desperate Ritual, that would speed the format up, but these cards will generally slow the format down a bit, and help check fast combo wins. I do wish they weren't so obnoxiously expensive though - I've noticed that as format staples have risen in price (or, alternatively, as the average price of new staples has risen), my desire to brew and tweak decks has proportionately fallen.

[Sinis]

I only play Endurance. I think I might play Fury or Solitude, but I feel like the former might be too weak, and Solitude is for blink decks (which I'm playing none right now, but would pick one up if I were).

Endurance is great; it's efficient, and interacts with something that's very common in gameplay right now.

[Gentle Giant]

On the one hand, I like the reference to te olde 'pitch card for the cost'-mechanic, always nice/interesting in stuff like cubes (would love these in a tempo-focused one for example). In EDH though.. I'm just not a fan of free spells with such strong interactive capabilities. Shields down moments enable tension and allow for strategic decision making. Having to gamble on someone not having a free spell does neither. And I haven't even addressed their price! Blegh

[toctheyounger]

I think most of them are fairly uninspired despite being strong in their respective places. They're great value if you pulled them but tough to spring for at their current prices, and as MH2 dries up that'll only get worse I'd imagine.

That said I really really like Endurance. Its a clever effect that's surprisingly helpful and versatile across a range of scenarios. Being able to hose a breach, gank someone's topdeck tutor, defuse a bog or just reuse your own stuff in a roundabout way or prevent from milling out, there's a lot of applications there.

[BeneTleilax]

topdeck tutor

it goes to bottom.

[toctheyounger]

topdeck tutor

it goes to bottom.

Ah yeah. I'm stupid sometimes.