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

[3drinks]

Wednesday, March 8th, 2023; Fire // Ice

How on Earth did this get upshifted to rare?

[Sinis]

How on Earth did this get upshifted to rare?

I think it's probably nuts in limited.

I really like this card, but it doesn't feel like it's worth the slot in EDH anymore, if it ever was.

[void_nothing]

I think it's probably nuts in limited.

It is. Very very very versatile.

I really like this card, but it doesn't feel like it's worth the slot in EDH anymore, if it ever was.

That's a vibe. It would be nice to use all the well-known classics from two decades ago, but it doesn't keep pace in... really any kind of Constructed format.

[Serenade]

Would you play it if it was the exact same card but had Fuse?

[TheAmericanSpirit]

A solid classic powercrept out of everything but Cube.

[Mookie]

Fire // Ice is a sweet card, and extremely flexible... but I don't really see myself wanting it for any decks when even more flexible stuff like Prismari Command and Izzet Charm exists. Definitely a victim of power creep. There are some niche use cases related to it being a split card though - its mana value is 4, which means you won't accidentally cascade into it off a 3-mana cascade card, despite it being castable for two mana. That's more of a Modern thing though.

[Dunadain]

How on Earth did this get upshifted to rare?

I think it's probably nuts in limited.

Forget about Limited, this card sees play in Legacy and Modern. Yes, most of those copies are in cascading rhinos decks, so they play it as 2 mana interaction that "technically" has an MV of 4. But it's not uncommon to see it elsewhere as well, casting Ice on your opponents upkeep on T2 sometimes feels like a Time Walk and while Forked Bolt is a little too inflexible on it's own, when you have to option to "cycle it away" without really losing tempo, it becomes a really good card actually.

Trash in EDH tho, can't see myself playing it.

[PrimevalCommander]

Would you play it if it was the exact same card but had Fuse?

Probably make it quite a bit better, fusing it reminds me of Jilt, which is quite good in PDH Usually a 2 for 1 and two damage is much more relevant in PDH.

[Sinis]

Forget about Limited, this card sees play in Legacy and Modern.

My comment about limited was more of a statement about why it was upshifted to rare.

I still think it has a fair bit of juice in 60x4 constructed formats.

[Guardman]

Fire // Ice is one of those cool cards of days past. And I have thoughts. My biggest one is how cool it would be if Fire and Ice could be mixed and match, so that in a limited environment you could have Fire // Ice or Air // Ice with all ten color pairs.

On the more commander front, anytime I go through my original Ravnica cards, I always think it would be cool to have a commander that encouraged you to play split cards. I don't know how that would work, but it would be cool space to look into.

[Mookie]

Random: my mental ordering of Izzet 'card draw + burn' cards is: Fire // Ice → Electrolyze → Ral's Outburst → Prophetic Bolt → Creative Outburst → Magma Opus, while leaves holes at one and six mana. I guess we're still missing one mana option and a six mana one? Blast of Genius and Prophetic Titan could maybe fill in at six, but they're not instants. Hmmm... I guess I'll hope for a instant whenever hybrid next returns.

[tstorm823]

Random: my mental ordering of Izzet 'card draw + burn' cards is: Fire // Ice → Electrolyze → Ral's Outburst → Prophetic Bolt → Creative Outburst → Magma Opus, while leaves holes at one and six mana. I guess we're still missing one mana option and a six mana one? Blast of Genius and Prophetic Titan could maybe fill in at six, but they're not instants. Hmmm... I guess I'll hope for a instant whenever hybrid next returns.

I don't think you'll be getting a 1 for this ever, hybrid izzet burn spell would be mono-u burn in effect, and I don't think they're trying to get back to that color pie aspect ever. In the absence of izzet 1-drop burn/draw, I nominate Needle Drop.

[DirkGently]

I think it's probably nuts in limited.

As the resident limited expert (?) I'd kiiinda disagree. Like I don't think I'd ever cut it from any RU limited decks, but individually both halves aren't super exciting. Crippling Chill and its upgrades have been borderline playable, and ice is basically that, minus the stun counter, for 1 less, which is...comparable? Cerulean Wisps exists at a lower cost (wasn't playing limited at that time though, so I couldn't tell you how strong it was). You almost never choose a non-creature target in limited. Fire is more interesting, since it could conceivably be a 2-for-1 and a 2-mana shock isn't that bad in limited. But if that card was printed at common I wouldn't blink at all. If anything I'd find it strange if it was uncommon or higher. So it's basically a mediocre common and a solid common stapled together with some flexibility.

I think it's overall weaker than, say, Electrolyze, and that's a decades-old (admittedly good) uncommon. It's certainly not a card that's likely to totally dominate the game in a way that demands a rarity upshift. Your absolute best-case-scenario is you get a good on-board 2-for-1 against a couple small creatures. Could swing the game but definitely not broken.

My guess is that it had more to do with balancing the number of rares/uncommons or something.

Anyway, in commander? Probably doesn't have a lot of uses. If you're going really deep on cantrips I guess, but RU already has a ton of them. Most popular option looks like Ghyrson Starn, Kelermorph (probably my least favorite card name in the game), but it's obviously much weaker than any card which deals 1 damage to all enemy minions, which there are quite a few of.

[3drinks]

Thursday, March 9th, 2023; Spitting Image

The reason I'm glad clones aren't kill spells anymore. F troll locking my commander because you can discard an extra land. No, if you did this, you're a dick.

[void_nothing]

I just have to say bleeding cloning into green is interesting.

[Ink-Treader]

I just have to say bleeding cloning into green is interesting.

Not that green needs it, but I do agree that copying creatures at least feels fine for it.

[Jemolk]

A very strong card, given it's repeatable. I do kind of resent just how much clones have been pushing into green lately. I built a clone tribal deck with Volrath, the Shapestealer, but I'd really like to swap it over to Halfdane just for the old-school cool factor. I can't really justify it, though, given how many copy effects are green (there are a lot) and how few white ones there are to compensate for their loss. Not really this card's fault, though it doesn't help matters, nor does Progenitor Mimic. Honestly, green's been eating too much color pie lately in general. Sort of like blue was doing way back when. If they're going to give green just about everything, it's probably time we got back to allowing all colors to do all things (including occasional nonblue counterspells), and have the color pie just restrict how they do them and how efficiently.

[Dunadain]

I'd rather the color pie was more of an exception than a rule, but that's because I play EDH, the restrictions colors place on deck building are a lot more interesting when you actually have a choice.

[Jemolk]

I'd rather the color pie was more of an exception than a rule, but that's because I play EDH, the restrictions colors place on deck building are a lot more interesting when you actually have a choice.

To some degree, yes, that's why, but also... when, for example, black has answers to artifacts, but they're rare and kinda clunky, that's interesting and actually helps the flavor of the thing. When everyone just defaults to colorless cards instead because those are literally the only two artifact answers in black and one of them is overpriced RL nonsense, I feel like it actually makes black's struggle with artifacts feel less like a part of its identity, if that makes sense. If in-color options can't exist at all, why even think about it being a problem for that color from a flavor perspective?

Also would probably help with all the "just splash another color" nonsense that happens in 60-card formats.

[Mookie]

I don't think you'll be getting a 1 for this ever, hybrid izzet burn spell would be mono-u burn in effect, and I don't think they're trying to get back to that color pie aspect ever. In the absence of izzet 1-drop burn/draw, I nominate Needle Drop.

'Deal 1 damage to any target if was spent on this. Draw a card if was spent on this.' That might be a bit too good, but the technology exists - see Unnerving Assault.

Anyway, I've run Spitting Image before, but it's a bit clunky. The default price for a Clone is four mana. and that's before we consider any additional upsides. Retrace means this does have the marginal upside of being able to cast it from the graveyard, but you need to discard a card, so it isn't card advantage. Casting it in mono-green is somewhat interesting, but color identity stops that in this format. Interestingly, I think the best I've seen it be is when I've stolen it with a Chancellor of the Spires for infinite tokens.

I think Spitting Image is generally outclassed by Cackling Counterpart and Quasiduplicate - they only copy your stuff, but that's usually what you want anyway. Beyond those, there are plenty of other, more efficient copy effects.

---

On the topic of black answers to artifacts, I'll call out the obvious one: discard. That's not as much of a thing in commander, but it is technically an option. Similarly, blue can't really deal with enchantments... but it does have countermagic and bounce spells. Personally, I don't mind if a color is bad at dealing with a problem... but I do think they should have some way to deal with it, even if that answer is somewhat abstract.

[Igzex]

It's a fun card but man I have such a hard time making room for it nowadays with all the many excellent clones they pump out.

[PrimevalCommander]

On the topic of black answers to artifacts, I'll call out the obvious one: discard. That's not as much of a thing in commander, but it is technically an option

I'm not sure I agree with this statement. This is like saying white has answers to counterspells in the form of land destruction. If you can't cast it, then technically it is answered? Green has answers to creatures if you make them block. Technically true, but consistent or reliable. Player removal is permanent removal, but it's not the answer we mean when mentioning weaknesses within the color pie.

[Dunadain]

For the record I don't think the color pie should be broken, at least not often and not blatantly, as much as I like commander, it's not the only format that exists. We could talk about removing color identity from EDH, but that's part of EDH's core and never going to happen, I imagine most players would hate that change anyways. So I'll just have to live with using Karn Liberated in my Ebondeath, Dracolich deck.

[Sinis]

As the resident limited expert (?) I'd kiiinda disagree. Like I don't think I'd ever cut it from any RU limited decks,

Without wanting to debate you, "I don't think I'd ever cut it" feels like a ringing endorsement. I defer to your wisdom on this, though.

---

Spitting Image has aged so badly, and I don't think it's solely because of the legend rule. 6 mana for this in 2010 was okay. There's so much crazier stuff for 6 mana now, and there's a greater variety of powerful clones (like Spark Double, Stunt Double, Clever Impersonator) that SI feels like it's just not very good since it only makes a basic clone.

I don't think it's unplayable, though; the fact that the clone is a token means that you can go places with Parallel Lives, Populate, that kind of thing.

[Mookie]

On the topic of black answers to artifacts, I'll call out the obvious one: discard. That's not as much of a thing in commander, but it is technically an option

I'm not sure I agree with this statement. This is like saying white has answers to counterspells in the form of land destruction. If you can't cast it, then technically it is answered? Green has answers to creatures if you make them block. Technically true, but consistent or reliable. Player removal is permanent removal, but it's not the answer we mean when mentioning weaknesses within the color pie.

White has Thalia, Guardian of Thraben and Grand Abolisher to fight against countermagic. Green has Prey Upon and other fight spells to deal with creatures, plus Lure effects. I will agree that discard isn't necessarily a consistent solution to artifacts (particularly in commander)... but if your opponent fetches up a Kaldra Compleat with Stoneforge Mystic, I would say that discard is one of the better solutions.