[mtgnexus] Random Card of the Day - North Star

[3drinks]

Yeah @Treamayne I have no idea what they were thinking with that 30th anniversary print.

[Cyberium]

Tournament staple with Awakening, but I have yet to see it in EDH.

[3drinks]

Sunday, March 5th, 2023; Klauth's Will

[onering]

Way, way too expensive as an earthquake that doesn't damage players or planeswalkers. Overcosted but reasonable enough as artifact an enchantment removal, X=6 is three naturalizes staples together so fair enough. Actually kind of good when both modes matter, like X=1 let's you pop something and wipe a bunch of tokens, or X=2 can hit a lot of utility creatures plus a couple artifacts/enchantments. Best to look at it as expensive but flexible artifact/enchantment removal that will sometimes be a board wipe.

[Mookie]

Klauth's Will seems... fine? It's certainly flexible, but you're paying a hefty premium for that flexibility - killing a bunch of artifacts / enchantments isn't as efficient as Bane of Progress or Vandalblast. Killing a bunch of ground creatures isn't as efficient as Blasphemous Act or Chain Reaction. It can represent a bunch of value if you have your commander out and happen to want both modes, but that won't always be the case.

...still, I can definitely see there being decks that want it. Klauth, Unrivaled Ancient is one obvious spot, as are other decks with flyers that want to benefit from an asymmetric, instant-speed board wipe. It also seems sweet in decks like Rosheen Meanderer that can make a ton of mana or otherwise care about X spells. The mass-disenchant mode is also nice if you're playing your own enchantments and can't run Bane of Progress. I've been pretty happy with Heliod's Intervention in my white decks, and Klauth's Will still seems very solid even if it costs an extra mana.

I'll call out Pest Infestation, Steelbane Hydra, and Druid of Purification as other mass-Naturalize effects.

[3drinks]

Monday, March 6th, 2023; The Dictate Cycle

[pokken]

I love each and every one of these in their own way. I've played them all in commander decks and some in modern decks (mostly kruphix in taking turns:P).

[Dunadain]

It never occurred to me how good this (almost) entire cycle is.

I hate group hug so I hate Dictate of Kruphix. Having said that, it your are unironically playing this card, it's probably better than all the sorcery speed options because at least you get the card first.

Dictate of Karametra is better than Dictate of Kruphix since breaking parity on mana doublers is a lot easier.

Dictate of the Twin Gods is one of the better damage doublers in the game.

Dictate of Erebos (or it's sibling, Grave Pact) has probably locked me out of the game more than any other card.

And then... there's Dictate of Heliod. I personally find people complaining about how white is so bad eye-roll inducing, but when you see a cycle like this...

[Dunharrow]

Dictate of Heliod was definitely the most boring in the cycle, but possibly the best one to get in limited.

[void_nothing]

Yup, Dictate of Heliod has a... different purpose than the others. Dictate of Erebos and Dictate of the Twin Gods are both the standouts here, and I like the latter because it could have worked as either Dictate of Mogis or of Iroas, but the fact that it depicts both of them fits very well with the doubling.

[3drinks]

A double anthem in one card is nothing to sneeze at, tbf.

[Sinis]

I have 9 copies of Dictate of Erebos because it was bulk at one point. Can you believe that?!

I think I like the Jund participants the most in this one, but my favourite one has to be Twin Gods. Just, surprise double damage on someone else's turn, or EOT before extra combats/turns progresses the game into a lightning round. Yes, I know there are better cards like Fiery Emancipation or whatever, but Flash really sells me on this, and it falls into my favourite style of red cards; cards that are double edged and very sharp, like Final Fortune.

[RedCheese]

Great cycle indeeed. Making anything instant bumps their power

[Mookie]

I'm not a huge fan of the Dictate cycle, but they do explore some interesting design space. Three of these - Dictate of Kruphix, Dictate of Karametra, and Dictate of the Twin Gods - are symmetric effects. If you deploy them at sorcery speed, they'll benefit your opponents first, which makes them generally bad... but if you can flash them out, they suddenly become much more attractive. Not necessarily enough to make me want to run them over asymmetric versions of these effects, but they're certainly interesting. Dictate of Karametra gets my obligatory 'if you play a mana doubler and don't win immediately, you probably won't get another turn' callout.

Meanwhile, Dictate of Heliod and Dictate of Erebos are a bit easier to evaluate - they're a bit more expensive that normal versions of their effects, but you can get extra value by making them a surprise. Dictate of Heliod is also one of very few white anthems that give more than +1/+1, and the only one I can find that does so unconditionally - most others require extra work (Call for Unity, Cathars' Crusade) or a specific tribe (Day of Destiny, Tempered Steel). I feel like most decks that are interested in running anthems are running green for Beastmaster Ascension / Craterhoof Behemoth, but Dictate seems worth consideration if you're running mono-white.

Dictate of Erebos is likely the strongest member of the cycle, and certainly the hardest to replace - the only alternatives are Grave Pact and Butcher of Malakir, plus maybe Rampage of the Valkyries and Savra, Queen of the Golgari in certain decks. I suppose there are plenty of other black options to kill creatures, but cards that effectively lock your opponents out from playing creatures are (probably rightly) not printed that often.

[tstorm823]

Obviously the Howling Mine is the best of the five.

[EonAon]

The fact you can flash heliod during blockers or during attack makes it nicely swingy at the right moments.

[Igzex]

I adore Dictate of the Twin Gods and all the naughty moments I have seen it cause.

[DirkGently]

White is honestly pretty solid. Being a trick is great for combat and the rate is pretty unique - cheaper anthems are plentiful but not as impactful, or have other requirements. B.

Blue is pretty niche, given it's a Howling Mine without a way to break symmetry and with extra cost and a less useful type. Getting the card first is okay but pretty small potatoes. Probably only useful for some kind of stax deck maybe. D

Black is unambiguously strong (white and black were both unbeatable in limited btw, the others were crap). Is the extra cost compared to Grave Pact worth the advantage of flash? Irrelevant because any deck that runs one, runs both. A.

Red is probably the most interesting. Getting first mover makes it a big deal with things like Heartless Hidetsugu. It can also be used to aid someone else's attack. On the downside ofc it can backfire - you don't get to just play it regardless of board state. Probably a C but B in the right decks.

Green is even more dangerous than red and can't do anything tricky on enemy turns really, being able to eot a powerful mana ramp is cool but 5 is a lot. D, although maybe it can do things somewhere.

[3drinks]

Tuesday, March 7th, 2023; Early Harvest|mir

[Sinis]

Early Harvest is a card, for sure. If people can be mana positive after Brass's Bounty, they can be mana positive on this.

[TheGildedGoose]

Early Harvest along with Rude Awakening were key players in my "Play Every Card in My Collection" deck (with Research // Development) as my preferred non-deterministic "infinite" mana combo with recursion.

[Mookie]

Early Harvest is a broken card (as rituals often are), but you do need to run enough basic lands. It is at its best in storm and spellslinger decks that can copy or recur it, or you can go infinite with stuff like Temur Sabertooth and Eternal Witness, but that's generally overkill. I think it's fine to just play it in a ramp deck to juice up a Genesis Wave or Finale of Devastation.

More broadly, I would say that a lot of games are won by 'big turns' - a player is able to assemble a dominant board state in a single turn, and they either win on the spot or no one is able to answer their stuff and they win on their next turn. Rituals like Early Harvest, High Tide, and Mana Geyser help reach the mana threshold necessary to do something explosive, so I think they're worth consideration in many decks - even if you aren't ramping into some giant X spell, they're still great if you want to cast multiple smaller spells in a single turn.

[void_nothing]

Early Harvest is a classic explosive combo enabler but has the restriction that you have to be all in basics to make it work. Doesn't have quite the bite that it once did, but monogreen decks could almost all at least take a look. Love Song of Night and Day flavor text is a bonus.

[Guardman]

Early Harvest reminds me that one day I do want to build a Heartbeat of Spring/Mana Flair EDH deck that plays a lot like the old Heartbeat of Spring combo deck from Ravnica / Kamigawa standard (the best standard by the way). It was a deck I never got to play, but played against often, and I always appreciated how the deck required work, wasn't completely deterministic, and was more than play a lot of cantrips and I win like storm is. Probably a fun build around in combo with Wilderness Reclamation.

[Mookie]

Early Harvest is a classic explosive combo enabler but has the restriction that you have to be all in basics to make it work. Doesn't have quite the bite that it once did, but monogreen decks could almost all at least take a look. Love Song of Night and Day flavor text is a bonus.

I'm running it in my Tasigur deck, which is running 15 basics (out of ~36 lands total), and that feels like plenty. I think it's less about how many basics you run total, and more about how aggressively you can fetch them out with Cultivate / Kodama's Reach / Rampant Growth... or even better, you can run mana doublers to effectively multiply how much mana it generates. Casting it on three basics with a mana doubler out is equivalent to casting it on six basics, which is already better than Seething Song. It does depend somewhat on what your gameplan is though - if you want to cast it early to ramp out a 6 or 7-drop, you need a lot more basics than if you're okay with casting it later on.