[mtgnexus] Random Card of the Day - North Star

[TheGildedGoose]

Hot take: the political aspect of Phelddagrif as espoused by the Church of the Hippo is largely overrated. If you can easily bribe someone with mere tokens and life, they're probably not great at the game and you would likely beat them anyway. Yes, I suppose you can bribe lesser skilled players and gang up on the threat a little bit, but the real strength of the Purple One is their ability to constantly evade removal and avoid the commander tax to have a constant board presence.

[Guardman]

While DirkGently might have his deck which is diplomatic win, every time I've played against this its purely grouphug kingmaker and some of the most unfun games you will ever play. That is all.

[3drinks]

I said what I said. I don't regret it and I take whatever is coming. My opinion on group hug doesn't change.

At least group slug ends the game fast. Give me Blim over this stupid thing any day (and Blim is awful, for sure).

[DirkGently]

I have returned.



The seat of the Lord High Phelddagrif, Phelddy von Phelddenstein, fourth of his name, champion of the alliance, the immortal, sire of a thousand children, and ruler of all politics wishes it to be known that he has heard your idle prattling and, though he has no reason to justify himself to the rabble, will deign to enlighten your meagre minds.

(I'm going to stop this writing device now)

@Hawk is bang on that the thing Phelddagrif does that is virtually unmatched among other commanders is the ability to do instant-speed incremental bribery. Other commanders (Gluntch, the Bestower) can give rewards at sorcery speed, or at instant speed with setup (Zedruu the Greathearted), or symmetrically (Kwain, Itinerant Meddler), etc...but in terms of being able to facilitate deals to convince your opponents to do what you want them to do, Phelddagrif remains unmatched.

On top of that, as @TheGildedGoose said, he's evasive and immortal and excellent at blocking...while not really being threatening enough to draw a lot of hate, which makes him an excellent finisher for a control deck even setting aside the political angles. Although, really, him being non-threatening and not taken seriously IS a political angle.

The 'griff can demand a degree of subtlety. I get a lot of "I would never change my move just for a token" or whatever. The point of Phelddagrif isn't to make people do egregiously bad moves by giving them minor trinkets, it's to tip the scales just enough to get the outcome you want. For example, a lot of the time, it's really not that obvious which player to attack, especially if you just want triggers. Getting a couple tokens for attacking one player over another can absolutely be enough reason to swing one way over another in those sorts of circumstances. The choice wasn't that important for the person making it, but it might have a big impact for the other players at the table. Ideally it's those sorts of decisions you're influencing, not "I'll give you a hippo if you Terminate your own commander".

And beyond dealmaking, giving away hippos and life can be a pretty effective way to keep someone alive. Phelddagrif's abilities are really efficient. A big part of my strat with my deck is trying to ensure the correct 1v1 against the opponent I can most easily defeat. So even if you're asking nothing in return, it can be a pretty useful ability.

As far as all the predictable slander...a card is not a deck. Yes, the majority of people who build Phelddagrif build group hug, and yes group hug sucks to play against, but Phelddagrif isn't at fault for that. Group hug isn't even a real archetype imo. It's putting together a bunch of cards with similar effects, but typically with very little actual synergy. It's like when Jon says he's making werewolf tribal because he's putting 30-odd werewolves into a Jund deck, but there's no synergy between any of them, no payoff for playing a critical mass of them. It's not a "werewolf deck", it's just a deck that happens to have a bunch of werewolves. Similarly, "group hug decks" are typically decks that happen to have a bunch of group hug cards in them, but not with any particular justification mechanically.

For @Mookie, tables are far too diverse to really say anything for sure. Is Phelddagrif going to be giving out a lot of hippos at a cEDH table? Well no, probably not, but he still serves a purpose in being nonthreatening and thus deflecting enemy interaction. And ofc, since he's a great standalone wincon, he leaves a ton of room for the interaction necessary to handle a high-powered table.

I don't think it's accurate to split apart skill and politics. Politics is a skill. It's just not a skill that has applications in 1v1.

@Hermes_ Meh, I prefer my alter. I'm not a big fan of the Amy Weber original tbh. Though it maybe contributes to the overall nonseriousness with which he's regarded.

@Guardman @3drinks As far as kingmaking...

This is a topic I've thought about making every once in a while (maybe I did at one point? idk I'm old). Suffice to say that I think people throw the term around much too flippantly. Your presence in a game should effect the ultimate outcome, and that's a good thing. Personally, in order to consider something kingmaking, I'd need the player to be acting in a way to intentionally cause another player to win. Not a move of theirs backfiring and resulting in defeat. There's no glory without risk. While I think group hug is an obnoxious non-archetype, I don't think it's necessarily kingmaking so long as they're doing the things they're doing with the goal of winning, however inept it may be.

I will freely admit that Phelddagrif (at least my Phelddagrif) can result in extremely long games. Mea culpa on that one. Which is why I don't play it very frequently (that and my need to constantly try new things, combined with WotC's need to incessantly print new things).

But finally we come to the last, and most unforgivable take of all. @TheAmericanSpirit, you will be sent directly to the royal dungeons to serve a lifetime of hard labor for your crime. What crime, you ask, ever so innocently?

[pokken]

I have used Kenrith, the Returned King's lifegain and reanimate and haste effects to massively shift the course of games, so I can definitely see how a bit of lifegain and such can help. But being impossible to commander tax out of the game is really the juice I think I try not to design decks around what bad players do for the most part.

The hippo is functionally Ghostly Prison in the command zone for the most part. It discourages attacks enough to help you play a longer game. And it dodges sweepers of all sorts.

The problem with it is that most people do not have the intestinal fortitude to play a complete game against that level of control and start getting mad, in my experience.

[3drinks]

Sunday, June 18th, 2023; Molten Disaster

[EonAon]

I always liked it but its much harder to use effectively unless you can ramp enough mana to be useful. If I'm honest I like banefire or earthquake a lot more since once you hit the needed mana it grows faster.

[Mookie]

I'm generally low on Earthquake effects, including Molten Disaster. They're okay for cleaning up small creatures, but dealing with big creatures is often too expensive. For those, I turn to Blasphemous Act or Chain Reaction, although red's board wipes do fall in quality pretty quickly after those two. I suppose at that point, it depends whether you want flexibility (in which case you choose an X-spell) or efficiency (in which case you choose Hour of Devastation or another fixed-damage spell), with an honorable mention for picking an option because your commander happens to live through it (i.e. a 4-damage board wipe for a 5-toughness commander).

Beyond the base case of wanting a board wipe, there are a few other upsides for Molten Disaster. For one, it misses flying creatures, which can be an upside if you're running a bunch of dragons or other flyers. It also hits players, which can potentially help an aggressive deck close out the game. But the biggest unique thing it has is split second - stopping your opponents' Teferi's Protection / Counterspell can be very important. I don't know if I would be willing to pay two extra mana for that ability though - it feels a little niche, and I generally prefer my cards to be more efficient. It may be an okay choice in some metas... but I'd probably just run Pyroblast / Red Elemental Blast instead.

[Igzex]

A molten disaster is what shall happen to all you heretics that dare speak against our purple majesty.

[3drinks]

Monday, June 19th, 2023; Fleet Swallower

Well that's a pretty powerful trigger...namely because it says target player and not target opponent.

[Mookie]

Traumatize effects like Fleet Swallower are interesting - the first one is always the most impactful, but they drop in value quickly. You can one-shot people with doubling effects like Bruvac the Grandiloquent, but milling opponents is otherwise often a bit risky due to stuff like Living Death... meanwhile, milling yourself can open you up to grave hate. Fleet Swallower seems like an okay choice in dedicated mill decks, but seven mana (plus needing to attack) is a lot. I suppose it could be interesting as part of a Lord Xander, the Collector mill deck alongside Nemesis of Reason and Terisian Mindbreaker?

If you're milling yourself, Fleet Swallower seems a bit more interesting - while it may be difficult to kill your opponents by milling half repeatedly, it's certainly possible to win the game by milling yourself once. Sedris, the Traitor King, Araumi of the Dead Tide, and The Scarab God can all both get Fleet Swallower into play and benefit from the self-mill, setting up a kill with Living Death / Syr Konrad, the Grim / etc.

...I will call out that despite Fleet Swallower being flavored as a sea monster, it unfortunately misses out on those tribal synergies, which don't include fish (see Kenessos, Priest of Thassa).

[3drinks]

Tuesday, June 20th, 2023; Synthetic Destiny

[TheAmericanSpirit]

Tuesday, June 20th, 2023; Synthetic Destiny

Brother of Mass Polymorph, cousin of Divergent Transformations. I kinda dig all the Polymorph cards but there's easier ways to cheat a fatty these days that don't require running nearly creatureless decks to ensure your hits.

Edit: Mass Polymorph is such a cool Christopher Moeller piece btw. All those generic soldiers are becoming classic Moeller designs like Isamaru, Hound of Konda, Pestermite, Crush of Wurms, the minotaur from Dizzy Spell, and even the infamous Chimney Imp way there in the background. I never noticed that before and it's awesome.

[kirkusjones]

Goblin Lackey and Bringer of the Red Dawn are in there too.

[Mookie]

My obligatory callout re: Polymorph effects: interesting if you're doing it for value, sort of lame if you're doing it for combo.

Synthetic Destiny is somewhat interesting in that it is instant-speed and the creatures you get are delayed, which means you can use it to dodge a board wipe or otherwise do tricky things, but it's a bit harder to win with it immediately unless you can do so at instant speed. I suppose you can do it during the previous player's second main phase and then untap with those creatures when you start your turn, but there is a wider window of opportunity than, say, Mass Polymorph. Beyond that, seems fine if you're doing token / polymorph shenanigans, a bit niche otherwise.

[ISBPathfinder]

I have always viewed Mass Polymorph decks to be a bit gimmicky but they probably involve a commander who can make tokens and a deck with few creatures that can deterministically flip into a boardstate that is pre determined. I came close to making on once or twice but I think the replayability of said deck would be fairly low. It would be funny to do a few times but I think it wouldn't be all that fun to play long term.

[3drinks]

Wednesday, June 21st, 2023; Codie, Vociferous Codex

Huh. This could have been a good community deck build project

[pokken]

I was gonna make Codie, Vociferous Codex as my proliferate lands deck but it just needs too many permanents Might still get there at some point since the mana fixing is super nice.

[TheAmericanSpirit]

Never have I ever seen a Codie deck that wasn't a storm variant. It's got as much build flexibility as a toothpick has tensile strength.

[Dunharrow]

I think it's gimmicky and easy to disrupt.

[3drinks]

Thursday, June 22nd, 2023; Wand of the Worldsoul

Huh. Now there's an upside worth being on a tapped 3mv rock. Makes coloured mana even.

[Dunharrow]

I guess it's way to ramp out Eldrazi

[pokken]

I do not understand why the white versions of cards are so often so much worse Cursed Mirror just makes this look so poor.

[Guardman]

I do not understand why the white versions of cards are so often so much worse Cursed Mirror just makes this look so poor.

I don't think the Cursed Mirror / Wand of the Worldsoul comparison is fair. One isn't worse than the other. They are different, trying to do different things. Wand is something that I think works well in go-wide and token decks that want to convoke out a large game winning spell, be it Craterhoof Behemoth or maybe some big Torment of Hailfire.

[pokken]

White card enters tapped and requires tons of setup red card is just good.

It's like a template "add stupid hoops to jump through" is one of the white hallmarks

Other fun white gotchas "triggers only once per turn" "only works on white human tokens" "only on Thursday'"

"Depends on cards in another color to be decent" is another one.