[mtgnexus] Random Card of the Day - North Star

[yeti1069]

I really dislike group hug, but yeah, this is a pretty safe/friendly version of it. My biggest complaint about this, otherwise, is that you can't pass it to the player who is struggling--if they aren't the player to your right, it has to work its way around.

I like this in theory, though if we templated it as such then it would just become another piece of coercion for two players to run away with the game, like Trade Secrets was.

I don't know. I feel like Humble Defector ends up being pretty fair in most games, although it does tend to skip 1 player, which is kind of what you want to be doing with "fair" group hug cards. Helping the player who is already ahead is why group hug is so miserable most of the time. This is structured to be perceived more amicably, I think, than Defector. I also think that templating could have been found to move toward that functionality. While not perfect, maybe "...pass to the player with the fewest lands on the battlefield," or "fewest cards in hand."

[Mookie]

I really dislike group hug, but yeah, this is a pretty safe/friendly version of it. My biggest complaint about this, otherwise, is that you can't pass it to the player who is struggling--if they aren't the player to your right, it has to work its way around.

I like this in theory, though if we templated it as such then it would just become another piece of coercion for two players to run away with the game, like Trade Secrets was.

I don't know. I feel like Humble Defector ends up being pretty fair in most games, although it does tend to skip 1 player, which is kind of what you want to be doing with "fair" group hug cards. Helping the player who is already ahead is why group hug is so miserable most of the time. This is structured to be perceived more amicably, I think, than Defector. I also think that templating could have been found to move toward that functionality. While not perfect, maybe "...pass to the player with the fewest lands on the battlefield," or "fewest cards in hand."

Yeah, my experience with Humble Defector is that it's generally pretty well-allocated, in terms of helping out the player furthest behind. The one exception is when its owner (me) can consistently make deals to get it passed back, in which case they can break the symmetry.

...of course, when I'm playing it, I usually have Samut, Voice of Dissent / Halo Fountain / Seeker of Skybreak to untap it and break the symmetry further, but that's neither here nor there.

...anyway, Hithlain Rope seems like a slightly clunky but playable group hug card. Its templating makes it more difficult to make deals, so it has fewer political uses. You can make it better with Voltaic Key or other untap effects / ways to copy the ability, but otherwise you primary benefit is that you get to activate it first. I'm a bit underwhelmed by it otherwise.

Also: design-wise, it's somewhat interesting that it passes to the player to your right, since that is the player furthest away from you in turn order. Assuming everyone always activates it, it will generally take 3 turn cycles for it to return, which is... pretty slow. I would not expect to get more than one land out of it, and would generally prefer Wayfarer's Bauble or another ramp option.

[DirkGently]

Wtf does it even mean to say it's playable in group hug? Group hug as a deck is garbage by design. Most group hug decks run cards that provide the controller a net benefit of zero. I would rather play Squire , at least it definitely helps me more than my opponents.

The shape sucks too. 1 to play 2 to activate is much cleaner. So even if your opponent just sits on it and does nothing it still sucks.

I don't think any commanders synergise either. All the blinking and control regaining apply to creatures only.

Card is actual garbage.

[tstorm823]

I don't think any commanders synergise either.

Think slightly harder.

[DirkGently]

I don't think any commanders synergise either.

Think slightly harder.

Zedruu, is that what you're getting at? I'll grant that it's synergistic, but not in a very powerful way - which is presumably why you aren't running it yourself. It'd be a lot more interesting if it could return to you and ramp repeatedly, but I don't think any commander enables that. You need Brooding Saurian or Venser, the Sojourner .

[DirkGently]

To go into a bit more detail, because it is an interesting card to analyze even if it's god-awful:

For purposes of this analysis I'm basically ignoring the draw option. It's more expensive and cycling is a lot less exciting than ramping, so the only reason you'd choose it is if you're out of targets or if it's late enough in the game that ramp isn't very relevant.

The turn you activate hithlain rope you're 1 mana ahead of the table. Essentially you've played a 3 mana Rampant Growth. Unfortunately a 3 mana rampant growth kinda sucks, especially in the 2:1 configuration since you can't normally activate it earlier than turn 3.

In subsequent turns, assuming your opponents use the rope, the advantage you gained will slowly ebb away as they pull even with you on lands. Granted, you have the advantage of having had the lands earliest, giving you more time to exploit them, however as mentioned a 3 mana rampant growth isn't very good, and your opponents were probably doing more productive things. An opponent that played a 2-mana rock on 2, for example, also gained a mana on the table but didn't lose that advantage over time.

Once the rope makes it back around to you, symmetry has been achieved and you've accomplished approximately nothing, congratulations. But now you can activate it again and start the cycle over again, woohoo. At least it doesn't cost 2 upfront the second time.

If the rope cost, say, 0, I could see it being okay. Functionally it's putting you somewhere-less-than-1 mana ahead of the table. Given that there are many, many cards that put you a full mana ahead of the table for 2, this costing anything more than 1 in total makes it weak for general utility, and 3 is right out.

Okay, so it's bad as a general mana ramp card. But what about synergies?

With tstorms somewhat-opaque help, I've got 4 that come to mind - blinking it, gaining direct control of it, untapping it, benefitting from opponents having it.

The first two, as far as I can tell, do not have any commanders which enable them. They can only blink creatures and/or can't blink in response and can't target opponent-controlled permanents. There are certainly commanders that helm blink-themed decks that might have some pieces which incidentally could enable blinking, like the aforementioned Venser, the Sojourner, but there aren't nearly enough of them afaik to make it reliable. Directly gaining control is even more difficult, since most effects that would give you control are priced for stealing opponent-owned, opponent-controlled permanents (i.e. Steal Artifact) and thus are wildly inefficient. The only card that comes to mind as being decent here is Brooding Saurian, but it's only 1 card in the deck and doesn't have much synergy with anything else to be a key card for any particular deck, afaik.

However, the bigger issue is that, even if such cards do exist, it's still not THAT exciting. Realmbreaker, the Invasion Tree essentially does the same thing as hithlain knots, except costing 1 more on both sides - which is a fair increase, but it does the same thing as hithlain + saurian except with no synergy required whatsoever. It just does it. Realmbreaker + some random mana rock is as much of a "combo" as hithlain + saurian, which is probably the most efficient way to repeatedly use the rope. In order for Hithlain rope to become interesting, you'd basically want a cheap commander with the brooding saurian ability. I'm not holding my breath.

Untapping it is much the same - even with something very efficient, like Voltaic Key, you're most of the way to a realmbreaker except that you're still ultimately losing the rope. You're up a land compared to the rest of the table once they've used it, so that's good, but you'll have to wait ages to use it again, and there's a good chance you don't get it back at all if you're clearly getting more value from it than they are. If you could pair it with a brooding saurian to force it to return in a timely manner, then we'd perhaps be cooking with gas, but that's a TON of effort, At that point, just tutor for something that doesn't suck and win the game instead.

Finally we get to the zedruu + blim situation. Unfortunately, the shape of the costs makes it pretty awkward to play in either deck, since you'd almost certainly prefer a 2-drop rock in order to t3 your commander. But setting that aside, zedruu already has a 3-mana ability to donate away a permanent, the same cost as playing and activating the rope. So you could just play a Darksteel Ingot or whatever, and donate it away with zedruu for the same cost. Granted, you do get the aforementioned temporary advantage of being up a mana, so it is slightly better than giving away an ingot. But ingot is...extremely bad? Being slightly better than any random 0-drop artifact is not exactly a ringing endorsement. Blim is more difficult to compare, since he can't just pay mana to donate permanents, but the rope's ability to be traded away for a draw kinda undercuts the discard that Blim gives you. You make the opponent discard an extra card, but then they can redraw it when they untap. You are tying up some of their mana, granted, but I really think you've got more compelling synergies to use. Seems like most blim decks are trying to give away stuff that literally loses the opponent the game, which seems a touch more effective than forcing your opponents to tie up a couple mana to rummage. If there is somewhere that rope is viable, I think it's definitely in blim, but I still don't think it's remotely good.

Okay, so that's synergy. "But what about in group hug?" I hear you say.

I'm not really sure what someone means when they say it's viable in group hug. I don't see any synergies being provided by group hug. It still functionally provides very little, bordering on zero, benefit. The only way I see it being "viable" is insofar as it does DO a group hug thing. It has an effect that could be categorized as group hug. But c'mon, that justification could literally apply to any card in existence.

1: "Shelkin Brownie is a viable commander card"
2: "What? How?"
1: "In my deck, 'cards which are named shelkin brownie'."

Sure, I guess it fulfills the criteria that you've established, but outside of being within the arbitrary theme it doesn't do anything useful for the deck.

In summary and in conclusion, it's bad.

[3drinks]

Tuesday, August 15th, 2023; Electrodominance

[PrimevalCommander]

I'm running this in Kalamax, the Stormsire as a finisher that can cheat cards into play. Double the fun it it's copied and I get 2 free spells off my big burn. It is my only non-combat wincon, so I wanted something that had a bit more flexibility and can be copied by Kalamax. One of my favorite instant burn spells because you can scale it into a one-shot Emergence Zone that adds a little burn on the front end. Though typically I try to hold it long enough to burn out one player and drop a creature at instant speed for a followup attack.

[Dunadain]

As a fair card, Electrodominance is actually pretty cool. Pretty sure most people are just using it to cast Living End or something tho

[Mookie]

I tested Electrodominance in Mizzix for a while, but ultimately cut it. The idea was that I could use it to apply Mizzix's cost reduction to Aetherflux Reservoir or other non-instant, non-sorcery spells. In practice, I found it a bit awkward. When I didn't have Mizzix out, adding rr to the cost of another spell felt clunky. When I do have Mizzix out, it doesn't actually completely remove the mana cost, and I often want to be casting Pull from Tomorrow or another big X spell instead anyway. I think there was one game I used it to flash out a board wipe, but it otherwise felt a bit awkward.

That said, I think the awkwardness was less Electrodominance's fault, and more that Mizzix is particularly sensitive to colored mana due to all the cost reduction (plus I'm a High Tide deck, so I have a heavy blue bias). It seems sweet in decks like Galazeth Prismari as a way to turn spell-only mana into something more flexible, or spell-copying decks like Kalamax, the Stormsire / Riku of Two Reflections to get twice as much value from what you pay into the X.

[Serenade]

I've used it in Obosh, Kess, and most of my RG decks. It's another Expertise, with a lot more flexibility. I'm never disappointed to see it.

[3drinks]

Wednesday, August 16th, 2023; Beastmaster Ascension

[Serenade]

More cards should have multiple tigers on them.

[Guardman]

Wednesday, August 16th, 2023; Beastmaster Ascension

It requires a little set-up and the right deck, but every time I see it played, its usually three mana and win the game.

More cards should have multiple tigers on them.

I always wondered if its Oprah in the background.

"You get a tiger! You get a tiger! And you! And you! And you! Everyone gets a tiger to the FACE!!!!"

[Mookie]

Beastmaster Ascension is one of the strongest anthem effects available, particularly given that it's only three mana. It may not give as large of a boost as Craterhoof Behemoth / Overwhelming Stampede (or trample), but +5/+5 is still a massive buff. It does require seven attacks, which makes it a bit conditional... but if you're looking to wipe all of your opponents at once, two attacking creatures per opponent sounds like the bare minimum anyway. You theoretically could try to build up counters over multiple turns, but then you'll be more vulnerable to a blowout if an opponent can remove it mid-combat. (or they may just cast a board wipe to make it hard to build up counters)

Overall, a reasonable finisher for go-wide strategies.

[pokken]

The source of some pretty supreme blowouts for real. You'd better be damned sure it isn't getting removed when you attack

[3drinks]

Thursday, August 17th, 2023; Defiler of Vigor

[Dunadain]

I really expected to see the defilers everywhere, but nope.

[PrimevalCommander]

I did as well. This creature has a lot going for it. Mana reduction, above rate stats, permanent mass pump effect. My only thoughts are what keeps it out of my own decks. At 5 mana, the mana reduction is less compelling. And while it has excellent synergy with counter decks, if I am not doing counter things, the sum of the parts just doesn't feel as exciting. I am sure if I put it in my mono-green aggro deck, it would go hard, but I just don't know what I want to take out. Especially because Ohran Frostfang is first in line with the reprint.

[onering]

The Defilers are a mixed bag. This one, I think, is the strongest, because it's effects are the most synergistic in green. Green, along with white, is more likely to be permanent heavy, but Green can ramp out a 5 drop faster and then still be able to take advantage of the cost reduction by using it to cast multiple pieces a beef a turn (and has the card draw to keep the beef coming). Putting counters on all your stuff is fairly good on its own, and there are plenty of synergies with counters to make it even better. Green also just cares about big creatures, so being a 6/6 matters. Goreclaw loves this, you can drop this for 3 the turn after dropping Goreclaw, then use the cost reductions and leftover mana to immediately throw down a 6 drop on the same turn (assuming it has GG in the cost).

It's not going in every deck because you need the cost reduction be relevant and the counters to be meaningful, but that just means it's not good in green decks that are light on creatures (which is less common than in other colors).

I actually think the White one is fairly weak despite being similar, simply because White isn't as able to get it out in time or keep the flow of cards going to maximize the cost reduction and the cast triggers. Cost reduction in White is strong, and adding a 1/1 to every permanent spell is pretty good (especially with the token synergies in White), but it's just harder to leverage it's strengths than it is in Green. I feel like it's really best in a 2 color deck that's heavy on white permanents but uses the other color to draw cards. I have it in Ephara because she leans White but draw plenty of cards all by herself, so the Defiler helps churn out board state pretty well, but it needs the right deck.

Blue seems like the highest ceiling but is probably the hardest to make work. Turning all your permanents into cantrips is very strong, and combined with the cost reduction it can draw a bunch of cards quickly while building your board. The downside is, of course, that Blue is the least likely color to be permanent heavy.

Black and Red are only 4 mana, which makes the cost reduction a more important part of their value, which is good because they have the weakest triggers. Black's trigger is pathetic, but Black has plenty of pip heavy permanents and plenty of ways to claw back that life paid, so I think using it solely to reduce costs can make sense. The problem is you don't want to build your deck around it since you might not see it, and if you aren't maximizing cost reduction its not worth it. It's solid backup in Kerrick and should be in any Black deck that benefits from paying life. The Red one is similar but really seems best in aggro or other low to the ground Red decks, since it makes it easier to spill your hand and the damage is a bit more relevant when your already trying to pressure life totals ASAP. I still think both of these are on the weaker side, though, with the lowest ceilings.

[3drinks]

Friday, August 18th, 2023; Mirri, Weatherlight Duelist

[Treamayne]

Friday, August 18th, 2023; Mirri, Weatherlight Duelist

FTFY (the autolink gave you the crap picture)

Removal Magnet since people don't like attacking and blocking restrictions. However, I find it fun playing fairly - but mostly see others trying to make the catch-22 combo (with Menace) so everything is unblockable. My version is a non-equipment Cat deck (since the rare times I see other Cat decks, they tend to always be equipment-based).

[Hermes_]

Friday, August 18th, 2023; Mirri, Weatherlight Duelist

[3drinks]

Saturday, August 19th, 2023; Scorched Ruins

[3drinks]

Friday, August 18th, 2023; Mirri, Weatherlight Duelist

FTFY (the autolink gave you the crap picture)

On the contrary, that was by choice. The SLD art is so much better