[mtgnexus] Random Card of the Day - North Star

[DirkGently]

A few weeks ago, an occasional-player in my local group showed up with a new Zagras, Thief of Heartbeats deck, and played this card.

I think that illustrates the level of reading comprehension I'm dealing with.

[Hawk]

A few weeks ago, an occasional-player in my local group showed up with a new Zagras, Thief of Heartbeats deck, and played this card.

I think that illustrates the level of reading comprehension I'm dealing with.

You need a new playgroup man. Sun Tzu playing with caveman can't be a good time for either party.

Marauding Raptor is fun in dinos to enable enrage and blue-screen-of-death the game with Polyraptor (or win, if you also have something like Warstorm Surge or a sacrifice outlet on the table). The cost reduction probably isn't worth it anywhere else; this is both much more punishing and much more fragile than Heartless Summoning (different colors, I know) and most decks simply won't need this over other, better cards.

[3drinks]

Thursday, April 6th, 2023; Weathered Runestone

[3drinks]

A few weeks ago, an occasional-player in my local group showed up with a new Zagras, Thief of Heartbeats deck, and played this card.

I think that illustrates the level of reading comprehension I'm dealing with.

It took me far longer than I'd care to admit to figure out what this post was trying to say. Then it hit me

[Hermes_]

Niche card that's very meta-dependent.

[PrimevalCommander]

This card would be really good against me. I think I'm playing 3 heavy graveyard decks right now. But I'm not for meta gaming to that extent. If I was, all my decks would be packing Bane of Progress and Vandalblast since one guy has 2-3 different variations on artifact decks. But generally I build my decks with a balance of interaction and never get deep enough to even look twice at cards like this.

All my decks play at least a couple cards that interact with the GY, why leave all those resources unused? Grave hate is mandatory in every deck for this reason alone.

[void_nothing]

Niche card that's very meta-dependent.

Indeed it is. But oh, how different two EDH metas can be!

[Hawk]

In Modern EDH you're a fool to not pack a bit of graveyard hate - there's simply too many great commanders who make their graveyard a second hand. With that said, this card is a bit awkward. It won't disrupt Raise Dead effects, for instance, and nonland means this doesn't block fetches, ramp, or any of Lord Windgrace and Thrasios, Triton Hero's usual shenanigans. It does also disrupt some library stuff, notably Atla Palani, Nest Tender, Captain Sisay / Sisay, Weatherlight Captain , and Gishath, Sun's Avatar, but again that wording is key - this won't stop cascade (or Jodah, the Unifier's pseudo-cascade) or Prosper, Tome-Bound, so it's overall hit or miss.

The real killer for me is that every deck can run Scavenger Grounds if it wants it, black has Bojuka Bog, and there's a preponderance of 0 and 1 mana artifacts that eat graveyard and have "pseudo-cycling" if you don't need it or have some other upside. Makes it tough for this hate piece to be great unless your meta is full of the above commanders this nails.

[Serenade]

Probably using Grafdigger's Cage instead since it is easier to tutor given 1cmc.

[3drinks]

Friday, April 7th, 2023; Elder Brain

[Guardman]

I love Elder Brain. It is one of the most fun cards to Blitz out in my Henzie "Toolbox" Torre Blitz deck, right up there with Etali, Primal Storm.

It also has some weird political angles as I've had people ask me to attack them with it as they need to draw a new hand for whatever reason.

[3drinks]

The real killer for me is that every deck can run Scavenger Grounds if it wants it, black has Bojuka Bog, and there's a preponderance of 0 and 1 mana artifacts that eat graveyard and have "pseudo-cycling" if you don't need it or have some other upside. Makes it tough for this hate piece to be great unless your meta is full of the above commanders this nails.

#3drinksHotTake: bojuka bog|tsr sucks, and decks would be better off without it. Now, before I get angry messages about how I am dumb, let me explain. Bog is sorcery speed, but in order to make grave hate effective, it needs to be a response. Proactive one shot hate like this (different from Ground Seal or Silent Gravestone) is super easy to play around for a seasoned grave user like myself, if it's even relevant ...c'mon how many people play it t1 cause they don't have another land play? And then that's their only grave hate because the average deckbuilder isn't great, as evidenced by...well, edhrec tbh. Meanwhile a rakdos charm|tsr always catches you because you can't just play around it all game, if they have it, they have it, but not all decks can play charm. Scavenger Grounds with desert support (the cycling deserts are enough tbh) is so much more powerful and and repeatable such that you can keep grave players honest with the looming threat of a desert activation.

If you can't flash a Bog out Crop Rotation, Knight of the Reliquary|tsr, Elvish Reclaimer, and karoos to at least re-buy it and try again etc (not near as good as flashing it in, but it's better than blind playing it one time at least), then you really can't leverage Bog and your deck would be better without it.

Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.

[materpillar]

Elder Brain is a really cool card, but I like jamming Akroma, Angel of Wrath or Sheoldred, Whispering One or other nostalgic 7cmc cards when I'm jamming a Timmy 7drop.

#3drinksHotTake: bojuka bog|tsr sucks, and decks would be better off without it. Now, before I get angry messages about how I am dumb, let me explain. Bog is sorcery speed, but in order to make grave hate effective, it needs to be a response.

The more chill your metagame is the worse this take is. The stronger your metagame the better this take is. In incredibly high power tables where you're infinite looping something from your graveyard for the win this is very true. When you're going up against Muldrotha, the Gravetide or Tasigur, the Golden Fang durdle tribal Bojuka Bog is really good. Shutting down / putting a huge speed bump in the way of a value engine while only taking up a land slot is fantastic.

The more durdley the metagame is the less an ETB tapped land matters. Slapping another graveyard disruption tool for basically free is super duper good. If everyone is getting killed turn 5 then you basically can't play ETB tapped lands and your take is pretty on point.

[TheGildedGoose]

Bojuka Bog's floor is an ETB monocolor land. Bojuka Bog's ceiling is "Oops, target player loses." It's fine.

Elder Brain is cool. Cards like this make me want to play a Dimir theft deck, but the reality is that with so many people playing on Spelltable these days combined with the unnecessary hate these effects get, it'll never happen.

[3drinks]

Saturday, April 8th, 2023; Angel of Suffering

Cool effect I think. Not strictly a win con as much as a "don't lose con".

[3drinks]

#3drinksHotTake: bojuka bog|tsr sucks, and decks would be better off without it. Now, before I get angry messages about how I am dumb, let me explain. Bog is sorcery speed, but in order to make grave hate effective, it needs to be a response.

The more chill your metagame is the worse this take is. The stronger your metagame the better this take is. In incredibly high power tables where you're infinite looping something from your graveyard for the win this is very true. When you're going up against Muldrotha, the Gravetide or Tasigur, the Golden Fang durdle tribal Bojuka Bog is really good. Shutting down / putting a huge speed bump in the way of a value engine while only taking up a land slot is fantastic.

The more durdley the metagame is the less an ETB tapped land matters. Slapping another graveyard disruption tool for basically free is super duper good. If everyone is getting killed turn 5 then you basically can't play ETB tapped lands and your take is pretty on point.

Now see, you're focusing on the wrong aspect here. It's nothing to do with being EBT or not. It's that one shot proactive grave hate (note this isn't the same as on-going such as the aforementioned Silent Gravestone) isn't good, especially when the average player plays criminally low to non-existent grave hate in the first place.

[Mookie]

I'll agree that Bojuka Bog is pretty weak, but the opportunity cost of running it over a basic Swamp is appropriately also pretty low. I wouldn't run it instead of more dedicated grave hate, but it's reasonable to run in addition to other hate. The opportunity cost does go up as more utility lands are printed though - Castle Locthwain and Agadeem's Awakening // Agadeem, the Undercrypt are two other cards I would be tempted to cut Swamps for.

As for Angel of Suffering... it looks reasonable. Getting milled is generally an upside (particularly in graveyard-focused decks), so it functions decently as a black Blazing Archon / Platinum Emperion. That said, a sufficiently large alpha strike can still kill you - the mill is double the damage, so a 80-card deck becomes a 40-point life total, essentially the same as what you start with. That can be stopped with Kozilek, Butcher of Truth or another way to shuffle things back, but you may not want those cards in a dedicated graveyard deck.

Beyond damage prevention, I'll call out the obvious - a 5/3 flyer for 5 is pretty solid, but it's also vulnerable to removal. It may ward off attacks for a few turn cycles, but it's not difficult to answer either. There are also cards like Volcano Hellion that you can use to intentionally damage yourself if you want more self-mill.

[3drinks]

Sunday, April 9th, 2023; Inquisitor Eisenhorn

[3drinks]

Beyond damage prevention, I'll call out the obvious - a 5/3 flyer for 5 is pretty solid, but it's also vulnerable to removal. It may ward off attacks for a few turn cycles, but it's not difficult to answer either. There are also cards like Volcano Hellion that you can use to intentionally damage yourself if you want more self-mill.

Worth noting, because I love these little cornercase interactions, the damage from your example is specifically unpreventable so you'll both dome yourself as well as mill 2x. That's probably relevant a non-zero percent of the time. (Angel of Suffering creates a replacement effect that will replace the damage dealing event with mill, but Volcano Hellion's damage can't be prevented so you must apply as much of the replacement effect as possible while fulfilling the rest of the text on the other card).

[RedCheese]

I would have expect that his demon pet would have the investigate genration ability Eisenhorn has. The way he is tough, kinda meh to be honest. Shame because i heard hes a cool character in the lore.

[Dragonlover]

I would have expect that his demon pet would have the investigate genration ability Eisenhorn has. The way he is tough, kinda meh to be honest. Shame because i heard hes a cool character in the lore.

Cherubael doesn't care about investigating, Cherubael just cares about breaking %$#% and pushing Eisenhorn over the edge.

Dragonlover

[3drinks]

Oh, and I guess happy Easter to those whom celebrate. I had forgotten (I work retail, these days all just blur together tbh).

[Dunadain]

This card is a bit of a mess, is it spell slinger? Not really, the token is legendary, so you can only have one at a time. Maybe you could use the token as sacrifice fodder, but the size of the sacrifice fodder usually doesn't matter, only the quantity and there are many commanders who can make more token with fewer hoops.

Then the second ability has no synergy with the first ability and, isn't that strong, unless you buff him up, and you'll probably need some evasion too while you're at it.

[Mookie]

Inquisitor Eisenhorn looks to pull in a few different directions. On one hand, you want to be playing instants / sorceries to get a demon token... but the token is legendary, so you can only have one. Simultanteously, Eisenhorn rewards running a voltron strategy to do more investigating... but with no evasion or other keywords, Eisenhorn isn't a particularly great creature to pump up. Making massive numbers of clues can also be a bit awkward, since then mana becomes a bottleneck that stops you from cracking all of them. Hmmmm... there is a little synergy between the two abilities, in that you can use the clues to draw a card on your opponents' turns (and thus have another shot at summoning Cherubael), but that's pretty much it.

I think the most interesting build for Inquisitor Eisenhorn is probably something based around Cranial Plating and Nettlecyst - suit up Eisenhorn, hit an opponent to make a bunch of artifact tokens, then hit even harder next time. Throw in Tezzeret, Betrayer of Flesh or Krark-Clan Ironworks to subsidize your clues and you have a deck.

[Cyberium]

Sunday, April 9th, 2023; Inquisitor Eisenhorn

I like the card. Card draw and artifact generation is always a good thing, the demon is more like an added aggression than fodder. As Dunadain puts it, quantity is more important when it comes to saccing.

I think Elsenhorn is leaning towards a spellslinger deck due to needing instant/sorcery for consistent (or at least more predictable) demon generation. Runechanter's Pike would be perfect for that. I wonder if he's more suitable to be a 99 in Tetsuo, Imperial Champion deck.