[mtgnexus] Random Card of the Day - Golgari Thug

[Dunadain]

Another old mono black enchantment that makes everyone miserable. Nowadays, white is the color of no fun allowed but it is neat to see these old cards. I ain't gonna play it tho, I like having friends. XD

[3drinks]

Another old mono black enchantment that makes everyone miserable. Nowadays, white is the color of no fun allowed but it is neat to see these old cards. I ain't gonna play it tho, I like having friends. XD

You haven't lived until you t1 a 3sphere with your Workshop though. Or at least t1 a sphere via your tomb if you're not fortunate to own a workshop.

Not pictured: the bookshelf the other players pull down on your head.

[Dunadain]

Another old mono black enchantment that makes everyone miserable. Nowadays, white is the color of no fun allowed but it is neat to see these old cards. I ain't gonna play it tho, I like having friends. XD

You haven't lived until you t1 a 3sphere with your Workshop though. Or at least t1 a sphere via your tomb if you're not fortunate to own a workshop.

Not pictured: the bookshelf the other players pull down on your head.

Hehe, I was an avid mono red prison stompy legacy player for awhile, I won't deny the high it gives you. XD

[TheGildedGoose]

Another old mono black enchantment that makes everyone miserable.

There are so many.

It's good, but not against Kadena, Slinking Sorcerer.

[materpillar]

I played this when I had Sliver Hivelord. It was less miserable because I'd basically immediately kill people because I was the only one with creatures. It was still miserable mind you, just less.

I've always thought this card was neat. It's old. Feels really weird and has cool art. But it's play pattern isn't where I want to be at.

[Mookie]

Spreading Plague, like Grave Pact, Lethal Vapors, Death Pits of Rath, The Abyss, and many other cards, is a black enchantment that reads as sort of cool but leads to unpleasant games in practice. The vast majority of decks in the format are based around playing creatures (even if it's just the commander), and discouraging that behavior tends to stall out games. It is possible to make it asymmetric or otherwise build around it... but the most common play pattern is for the rest of the table to work together to find an answer, so I wouldn't usually count on it sticking around for that long.

....still, it is a potent effect if you're running a bunch of indestructible creatures.

[folding_music]

Spreading Plague's really good against persistent token makers, arguable as a way to protect yrself from massive creature decks rather than just a spiteful feel-bad include imo. it's a very good card and reads as massively Grixis to me; lets you spellsling like crazy without bothering with archeomancer-type garbage and yr opponents are going to foil each other trying to develop a board that'll kill you

[Treamayne]

While I love me some Death Pits (Grixis ping of death, anyone) this is one board-control I never felt the urge to build. If there was ever a equiv of Bosh (Colorless with CI General) I may change my mind, 'cause a Colorless deck seems the way to go with Spreading Plague (removal will take care of SP and anything you are using to remove parity - like Eldrazi Monument - but I doubt anybody is playing Wisps to give my creatures a color) - though, as previously mentioned, it would be a miserable deck reserved for "those tables." If only there were a repeatable version of the Planewide Celebration citizen token.

it is a potent effect if you're running a bunch of indestructible creatures.

or colorless creatures. . .

[3drinks]

Tuesday, February 21st, 2023; Ilysian Caryatid

The floor isn't completely awful in relation to it's upside that I don't think is too hard to get online.

[pokken]

I'd mostly look to use this if your commander has P4 I think? Or if you've got a lot of beef.

[3drinks]

I'd mostly look to use this if your commander has P4 I think? Or if you've got a lot of beef.

Goreclaw, yeah. That's the first that comes to mind I think.

[void_nothing]

You'd normally want your two-mana mana makers to be significantly nonfragile (the earlier Sylvan Caryatid from the same plane comes to mind), but tapping for two is a huge upside if you have a deck that can keep it always turned on.

[Hawk]

In commander, there's enough 1MV dorks that it's tough for 2MV dorks to get a word in edge-wise: Elvish Mystic, Arbor Elf, Fyndhorn Elves, Llanowar Elves, and Birds of Paradise for just the best ones in mono-green. Two-MV dorks feature more resilient ones like Sylvan Caryatid and Paradise Druid alongside staple Steve; nevermind all the great Rampant Growth effects if you don't care about your creature count. With most decks running 10-15 ramp pieces, very quickly a 2-MV dork made for standard and limited just isn't good enough...

At least usually. I think this dork is underrated, and part of the same club as Devoted Druid, Priest of Titania, Gyre Sage, and Bloom Tender of 2MV dorks that can make 2+ mana under the right conditions and thus have a home in decks that can reliably turn them on. Obviously the ceiling on this card isn't as high as those three, but the condition is also fairly broad compared to the very specific decks that most of the aforementioned need. This card is definitely worth a look in decks that care about cards having 4+ power (Goreclaw, Terror of Qal Sisma, have commanders with 4+ power, and care about having a high density of creatures.

[3drinks]

Wednesday, February 22nd, 2023; Burgeoning

[pokken]

Man I struggle to imagine a card I have had more of a love-hate with than Burgeoning.

So here's the most annoying thing about Burgeoning--when your opponents miss land drops, it makes it worse. And your opponents are all bad at deckbuilding and will miss land drops all the time.

Second most annoying thing, you don't get mana *now* so it's soooo bad on turn 8.

Third most is the Exploration trap in general which is playing this card, running all your lands out, and not really getting ahead because you don't have enough lands or subsequent spells. This is where the fact that these effects are *card disadvantage* comes in.

It is so, so important for people to remember when building burgeoning/exploration type decks that "put land from your hand" effects are card disadvantage. It's not like Farseek where you 1-1 with a land.

And what that means is if you want to treat these as ramp effects you need to hit a lot more lands, which means playing a lot more and playing a lot of things that find lands.

Burgeoning with a 32 land deck is really really unlikely to ramp you any more than Nature's Lore.

What I love about Archaeomancer's Map is that it fixes this issue. Such an amazing card.

[Yatsufusa]

Burgeoning is the most explosive version of Exploration-type effects, especially in a multiplayer environment, which makes it look very good in a vacuum, but in practice it's very easy to see why it's actually a lot more niche than it looks.

As mentioned by pokken, it suffers from the card advantage issue where it accelerates your land drops at the cost from your hand, not from your library, and that's a world of difference. Being explosive racks this problem up even faster (but hey at least it's an obvious teacher, Exploration slowly dwindling your hand might not let you notice until it's too late). Deck running effects like these need to rack-up hard on the draw count and preferably have a card-advantage commander (even though I do find the recent surge in those to be uninspired and obnoxious).

The second problem is well the same advantage it has in multiplayer makes you the archenemy. 5 lands on turn 2, especially with fixed color and card draw locked-on, means either you're setting up for the win or you're definitely the target of every alpha strike / removal in the game. If you didn't have the card draw locked-in, you're a sitting duck. If you have it, then either your plan is faster, or you're loaded with answers (and at this speed it practically demands counterspells), this makes the optimal set-up probably the typical UG goodstuff archetype loaded with ramp and counterspells, except it's more focused on lands (since that archetype gets away with traditional ramp better otherwise), but being able to plonk lands at instant-speed does have a niche U would appreciate.

Also in-line with preferences for lands.dec, the card also potentially gets more dead the later you draw into it, as it's more likely you have less (or no) lands in hand then and the explosive factor it provides is essentially worthless, so you'll want a deck that still supplies lands to your hand later in the game. But what makes it more niche and inferior to Exploration-type effects is it has no synergy with Crucible effects, as it demands the lands come from your hand. Yes, Life from the Loam exists but generally outside from LftL itself, decks usually prefer crucible-type effects. Not to mention Exploration-type effects still work fine with LftL-effects.

All that being said, even not in the most optimal shell, as long as you subvert the basic problems of Exploration-ramp, it's still a perfectly serviceable redundancy copy, especially when it costs the same as Exploration mana-wise, which I do in Najeela Lands, but I'm hard-pressed to find a slot in any of my other decks for it because of its problems (which means it's probably safe to offload my Conspiracy Foil since I replaced it with the Secret Lair one I got from the only Secret Lair I actually bought as the Secret Lair set, mostly because I didn't want to miss the Mystic Remora foil boat, which didn't really matter because Dominaria Remastered pulled a Concordant Crossroads stunt on Remora, but hey at I least I like the art of all four cards on the Secret Lair better than their originals and three of them have homes in my deck, so I didn't really lose out).

[Hermes_]

Wednesday, February 22nd, 2023; Burgeoning

ohh 97 Omnath, Locus of Mana forest deck.

[Mookie]

I'm sharing a bunch of cards between my Tasigur and Samut decks for budget reasons. Both of them are green decks with heavy land ramp themes, which means that both of them benefit from cards like Exploration, Life from the Loam, and Oracle of Mul Daya. Until recently, Burgeoning was one of the cards I was running in both... but I ended up cutting it from Tasigur, while I consider it one of the more powerful (and silly) engines in Samut.

It's interesting to compare Burgeoning and its parallel, Exploration. Strictly speaking, both are card disadvantage - unlike Rampant Growth or other ramp cards, they don't provide any mana themselves. If you don't have extra lands to play, they do nothing, which can make them weak draws in the lategame. On the flip side, if you have a ton of lands, they offer access to unparalleled mana acceleration - Sol Ring gives two extra mana, but if you get three extra land drops from Burgeoning/Exploration, they'll outpace it pretty quickly. So, both pose a question: can you find enough lands to fuel them? The basic solution to get more lands to play is card draw - if you're playing Edric, Spymaster of Trest or some other deck capable of drawing absurd numbers of cards, both of these are very powerful ramp engines.

If you're just playing lands from hand, I think Burgeoning is the more powerful card - assuming your opponents are hitting their land drops, it gives you three extra land drops per turn cycle, while Exploration only gives one. Exploration does give an extra mana the turn you play it... but given that you've already spent a mana casting it on the first place, I don't value that particularly highly.

In practice though, I think Exploration is stronger for one reason: it works with Crucible of Worlds. Exploration + recursion + any fetch land is an extremely powerful engine that lets you hit all your land drops until you run out of fetchables. It also works nicely with Courser of Kruphix and other cards the let you play lands off the top of your deck, or if you happen to be running any red impulsive draw and want to play them from exile. On the flip side, Burgeoning only lets you play extra lands from hand, which makes it a bit more limited. My Tasigur deck is great at dumping lands in the graveyard to play with Ramunap Excavator, but since Tasigur himself only puts nonland cards into hand, he's a bit awkward with Burgeoning.

That said, I think Burgeoning is better in my Samut deck due to synergy. For one, I'm running Thawing Glaciers and Nylea's Intervention, which makes that deck particularly good at putting extra lands into hand. But the real reason why I think it's better is Quirion Ranger and Scryb Ranger - my deck is built around tap abilities, so removing the costs from those two cards is extremely powerful. It also works well with Selesnya Sanctuary and other bouncelands.

....anyway, tl;dr: Burgeoning is better if you have a ton of card draw or bounce effects to support it, Exploration is better if you're running Crucible effects. Both are very strong on turn 1, but are weak topdecks.

[Serenade]

I put my one copy of it into group-hug Multani, Maro-Sorcerer. I think that just plays into the tons-of-card-draw scenarios already mentioned.

[Treamayne]

In my experience, when I see Burgeoning in EDH, Storm Cauldron will soon follow. . .

For one, I'm running Thawing Glaciers

This is the other time I recall seeing Burgeoning, to include one game where the player dropped:

1. T1 Burgeoning
   • Thawing Glaciers on my turn
2. T2 Amulet of Vigor

Granted, he admitted it was a God hand and he had never seen that combination in a year of playing that deck, but it was still over quickly (mostly since 2 players ragequit - and I just let him play it out since he asked nicely)

[3drinks]

Thursday, February 23rd, 2023; Hail Storm|tsb

Well I certainly didn't have g Volcanic Fallout on my Magic bingo card today.

[Guardman]

Thursday, February 23rd, 2023; Hail Storm|tsb

Well I certainly didn't have g Volcanic Fallout on my Magic bingo card today.

It's a card I forgot about as well. And you know what, in mono-green or Simic, it is a card that I would think about. Especially since there is a lot of tokens in my meta.

[materpillar]

Attack with Polyraptor
Cast Hail Storm
…
Profit slightly?

[void_nothing]

Attack with Polyraptor
Cast Hail Storm
…
Profit slightly?

Yeah, Gishath, Sun's Avatar enrage tricks have to be the biggest use case, right?

[Igzex]

Could also be a weird surprise pick for Vrondiss, Rage of Ancients. I mean if you're bored of the tons of red cards that let you hurt your own stuff.