[mtgnexus] Random Card of the Day - Journeyer's Kite

[Mookie]

Dragon Broodmother is sweet. She's capable of going both wide and tall - you get a token every upkeep (which adds up quickly), but you can also cash them in for a single massive token. In a four player game, getting a 7/7 flyer every turn cycle seems pretty solid, and that's before accounting for other token production. The tokens are also dragons, which can be relevant for stuff like Dragon Tempest. I don't know that I would run her without dragon synergies (if you just want to make tokens, Tendershoot Dryad and Rampaging Baloths are much easier to cast), but she doesn't need that much extra to be good.

...I guess I'll also give a shout to Dragonlair Spider, who is somewhat similar in function (and is great at feeding baby dragon tokens).

[TheGildedGoose]

Old timey mythics are a refreshing change of pace from today's litany of pushed chase cards.

[PrimevalCommander]

Great old token maker. One of the more efficient ways to make tokens back when it came out. No one wanted to pay 8 for Verdant Force even 10 years ago. And this one created evasive tokens that can grow quickly. Probably good with dragon synergy as mentioned. This card has been sitting in my cube. I should really look for a deck to put this in as a bit of nostalgia and solid token making.

[Igzex]

A classic mythic rare that can actually still kinda pull its weight in the kinds of games you would be casting dragons in, especially when backed up by cards like Dragon Tempest. Kindred Discovery, and Descendants' Fury. With so many decent dragons in the game, it's amazing that she's worked well for me from the very moment she was released and I still run her to this very day.

Fun fact: Instead of the actual tokens made for the card I actually just bring a bunch of copies of the old Charmander Poke'mon TCG card with me.

[gsgfdf]

A great card for Wort, the Raidmother, this provides both free and R/G bodies. The fact that Wort doesn't care about +1/+1 counters eliminates any bookkeeping needed as well

[onering]

Still awesome and goes in every RG token or dragon deck

[3drinks]

Thursday, September 7th, 2023; Kathril, Aspect Warper

If you're the type to not use actual counters, do us all a favour and just not look at this. "Uhm, I think it has protection, and oh wait it has flying, and -" no, you're a douche. Track game state proper if you're going to play with this headache of a card.

[Igzex]

Even out of the box this thing's commander deck is a seizure to play and play against.

[Guardman]

Even out of the box this thing's commander deck is a seizure to play and play against.

That's why Kathril is a Nightmare.

[Mookie]

Ability counters are a mechanic that sound great in theory, but awkward in practice. If you happen to bring a stack of the punch-out counters with you everywhere, great! Otherwise, it feels like a mechanic that works much better in digital.

I like the idea of Kathril, Aspect Warper, but I'm not a fan of unnecessary bookkeeping. Ability counters are somewhat difficult to visually parse if you're playing in paper - if I look cross the table and see a bunch of stuff on Kathril, I can sense that it's threatening... but I'm unlikely to know whether it has indestructible / flying / other relevant keywords without actually walking over and reading. Additionally, playing against it requires tracking the Kathril player's graveyard - if they only have a menace creature in the graveyard, I may not care... but if they cast a Grisly Salvage and mill a bunch of stuff, my mental threat model needs to update. Things can also get even more complicated if Kathril gets blinked and throws more counters on other creatures... and of course, you also need to differentiate between ability counters and Kathril's +1/+1 counters.

...anyway, if I'm not willing to play Cathars' Crusade because I don't want to deal with all the dice, I'm definitely not interested in playing with Kathril.

[Lifeless]

I loved this card at first glance because it does some interesting work in this wedge, but after sitting down and thinking about a build for a few minutes I realized that the juice wasn't worth the squeeze.

[3drinks]

Friday, September 8th, 2023; Sunscour

Hey, they just talked about this card on goldfish this week!

[Dunadain]

Anybody playing a format with Force of Will or Force of Negation in it knows that having the second blue card is much less assured than you might think.

I can't imagine running this card in anything except mono-white. And it would have to be a mono white deck with a lot of card advantage (which is a bit of an oxymoron).

Of course, white is THE board wipe color, so it also has to beat out A LOT of competition.

I think the card is fairly playable honestly, but there's always going to be better alternatives when someone starts tuning their deck.

One of the nice things about Sunscour, as opposed to most other pitch spells, is that board wipes are functional card advantage, assuming your opponents have a superior board to you, so some of the lost CA is recouped by the card itself.

[materpillar]

This seems really bad. I guess the idea is that you cast it for free and then get to immediately cast the first creature onto the board? Discarding two spells for a 2WW discount on Day of Judgment just sounds so bad. I'm sure there's some really niche decks that could use this but they're probably few and far between.

[Moxnix]

If it was remove one white card it would be a house but kind of like commandeer its really hard to pitch 2 cards. That being said the pitch mechanic and casting cards for 0 is in fact broken and I would not be surprised if this was a wrath of choice in some kind of build. Meta wise though anything degenerate or fast enough to make use of this probably doesn't play enough white cards to support it. Mabe there is a mono white Gandalf the white deck that makes use of this. Just feels like all the fast white decks are very brown. Some of whites best cards are well creatures maybe some kind of stax build for when its got a poor draw and needs to wipe instead? I Dunno I'm struggling to find a practical application but my pattern recognition for pitch cards is telling me it has potential. Maybe blue white flash playing lots of Draw x instant cards for a mid/ late game 0 mana wipe that doesn't lose tempo?

[3drinks]

Saturday, September 9th, 2023; Kurkesh, Onakke Ancient

Oh yeah...I had forgotten about this guy...

[Dunadain]

Someone enlighten me, I have no idea what you're supposed to do with him.

[folding_music]

there are a lot of high-end artifact activations... Mindslaver, Charbelcher, Helm of Obedience, Chaos Wand, probably Dollhouse of Horrors (or maybe that's just a bad card I really like)... you can duplicate abilities with special costs, like Tamiyo's Journal or Kuldotha Forgemaster... you can also uhhhh turn Goblin Welder into an artifact and find probably one of a million ways to win immediately! they really made him hard to protect, though, looks more like a deck where you'd make burst mana, get Kurkesh in play and stubbornly force whatever you want to have happen, happen immediately while he's being bolted

[TheAmericanSpirit]

Kurkesh is one of the cooler Red Artifacts generals. I always preferred his Rube Goldberg Machine proficiency to the more classic Daretti → reanimate giant robot strategy.

[Mookie]

The basic Kurkesh, Onakke Ancient combo I've seen is with Voltaic Key + Gilded Lotus - Kurkesh copies Key's ability and untaps Lotus and Key, producing infinite mana. One of the few situations in which Manifold Key doesn't strictly outclass Voltaic Key. Other than that, there are plenty of useful activated abilities on artifacts to copy, from Aetherflux Reservoir to Wayfarer's Bauble.

I think Daretti, Scrap Savant is more interesting (and powerful) in the command zone of a mono-red artifact deck, but they play pretty differently. Daretti is often more focused on ETB / sacrifice value, cheating out nonsense like Portal to Phyrexia or Wurmcoil Engine. On the other hand, Kurkesh wants to have artifacts stick around for a while and generate value. It can be a lot of fun to throw Clock of Omens, Liquimetal Torque, Trading Post, and a bunch of other random stuff in a Kurkesh deck and try to puzzle out the combos on the fly.

[tstorm823]

Someone enlighten me, I have no idea what you're supposed to do with him.

Mirror of Fate

[Chromaticus]

Classically was a win-more combo with Golos, Tireless Pilgrim

[3drinks]

Sunday, September 10th, 2023; Display of Power

How often is this really more than Chef's Kiss or Reverberate?

[Mookie]

There are a few situations in which Display of Power is a notable upgrade over Reverberate, and the most common one is in spellslinger / storm decks. It's not difficult for those decks to produce a complicated stack, so copying multiple spells is sweet. You could also always cast it and another spell in response to an opponent casting something useful, although that is a bit less consistent. That said, the most exciting use case is to hit it with Mind's Desire, Epic Experiment, Mizzix's Mastery, or some other effect that puts multiple other spells on the stack. Copying Epic Experiment is sweet, but hitting Display of Power off it and copying all the other hits can be just as good, if not better.

Outside dedicated spellslinger decks, I'm not sure how many copy effects I would be interested in running, or if I would run it over Reverberate. It could be interesting as a Sunforger target, but the extra mana is certainly relevant.

[Treamayne]

Sunday, September 10th, 2023; Display of Power

SPOILER

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How often is this really more than Chef's Kiss or Reverberate?

About half of the time, as I have seen it, since the most common use I have seen so-far is Player A casts <spell> Control Player B counters said <spell>, Player A (sometimes C) casts this to copy both <spell> and <counter>, using <counter-copy> to counter the <counter> and getting double <spell>. . .