[mtgnexus] Random Card of the Day - North Star

[Mookie]

Haunted One seems... fine? As a baseline for an aggressive tribal typal kindred deck, whenever your commander attacks, your attacking creatures get +2/+0 and undying. That seems good but not amazing, given that black doesn't have many mass pump effects. The obvious use case is for zombie or vampire decks, but those tribes already have access to less conditional lord effects. Undying is certainly nice (it makes your creatures really awkward to block), but it doesn't protect from board wipes on your opponents' turns. Hmmm....

Where it becomes really interesting is when your commander has a tap ability, such as on Anje Falkenrath or Aryel, Knight of Windgrace - you won't necessarily be able to make use of the +2/+0 effect, but granting your team undying on command seems quite nice. Alternatively, if you can untap and tap your commander repeatedly, you could get multiple buffs. Awkwardly, many of the best tap abilities on commanders require sacrificing a creature (which thus won't benefit from the undying), but there are probably some interesting uses.

[Vertierer]

Obviously a nice pair with Burakos, either as the background or in the 98.

[onering]

Looking at background commanders:

Alora, Merry Thief is a rogue, and her ability makes something unlockable and returns it to your hand at the end step, which is a way to remove the counter from a creature so you can give it undying again. That works well with etb abilities (get the effect on the initial etb, when undying triggers, then when you recast it again after returning it to your hand), and a decent amount of rogues have them. Puts you in UB, which is good for rouges.

Durnan of the Yawning Portal puts you in BG, supports both human and warriors, and he grabs you more creatures to cast and makes them cheaper.

Ganax, Astral Hunter is pretty solid, I have him as a Boros dragons commander with Folk Hero and its effective. That card lets you draw an extra card a turn for casting dragons, this one puts you in Rakdos, gives your dragons undying, and gives them a power boost. Honestly it's probably the better choice, it's just not on MTGO.

Gut, True Soul Zealot Rakdos goblins is already a thing and already has a sacrifice subtheme, this leans hard into it by giving you two bites from the apple every time you sac a goblin plush skeleton tokens, and of course helps you snowball with gobbos.

Karlach, Fury of Avernus Would be ideal if it had relevant creature types, you'd get +2/+0 the first attack then and additional+2/+0 on the second. First strike makes them very likely to survive, and you can sacrifice them all afterwards to basically give them vigilance and a permanent +1/+1 boost once for each creature, and anything that actually doesn't survive combat that doesn't already have a counter gets brought back. I'd honestly just go Barbarian tribal here with Lovisa Coldeyes in the 98 and throw in whichever Tieflings are the best. The only good thing about the tribes being relatively unsupported is that you don't really lose much from running both since Karlach will give the boosts to both, and you don't have to actually go hard into tribal effects and instead focus on the best individual cards, cards that benefit from additional attacks or help attacks, and rely on Karlach to give you your bonuses.

Shadowheart, Dark Justiciar gets you human or cleric tribal, both of which have some support in mono black. I use her with folk hero to do WB elves because it's funny and surprisingly potent, so mono black might be an option for elves as well here. Her effect lets you get the bonuses without sending her into combat, and draws you cards, but is a nonbo with undying because you have to sac before the trigger (unless you can untap her and get to use undying on subsequent activations).

Everything else is basically nonbos, active anti synergy, or don't have enough support in the colors.

[Ardeyn]

Haunted One is actually quite good in Jerren, Corrupted Bishop // Ormendahl, the Corrupter kindred humans. Playing some tap enablers such as Springleaf Drum helps to get the best out of the card. The deck can use both the pump for attacks and the undying for some aristocrats shenanigans. And the counters for use with Agatha's Soul Cauldron. But well, that's a niche deck.
TLDR, the card is good if you can enable it and make good use of both effects.
Probably best if your Commander can tap itself for some ability.

Ardeyn

[3drinks]

Saturday, November 18th, 2023; Invasion Plans

[Hermes_]

Seems like it might need some set up,but if you have a token or other chump and some big scary thing and they have a chump blocker i guess it would work.

[Sinis]

Invasion plans always struck me as weirdness. The 'fun' case is that you repeatedly pick favourable combat conditions over and over, and just outvalue your opponent because you're more aggressive in a midrange pile or something. What actually happens in my experience is that all your opponent's creatures block a 1/1 goblin and the rest of your creatures get through and kill them.

This is how it played out with Odric, Master Tactician when I built him around M13's release.

[3drinks]

Sunday, November 19th, 2023; Reverberation

Man what a specialized niche. Love this old art style though. Someday I'd love to hit a Blasphemous Act|brc with this, but not enough to spend the $22 on this.

[Lifeless]

Feel the old school vibes. The art, the terrible mana cost, the ridiculously restricted ability because they didn't know people played the game when this came out. A Legends card through and through.

[Dunadain]

yikes

[Mookie]

Reverberation is not Reverberate. It this looks strong against Blasphemous Act and Chain Reaction... but four mana for a spell that only affects damage-based sorceries (so no instants like Lightning Bolt) seems extremely narrow.

[Lifeless]

I have nowhere near the motivation to find out but I'm very curious how many legal targets this had back when it was printed. And how many of those are hilariously inefficient to redirect for 4cmc. Fireball, Storm Seeker, Hurricane, and Earthquake all seem like value targets but that's all I've got off the top of my head.

[materpillar]

Man I want to blow someone out with this card so bad. This is exactly my jam. There's got to be some way to kill the table with this and Hive Mind

[3drinks]

Monday, November 20th, 2023; Nature's Blessing

[Treamayne]

Monday, November 20th, 2023; Nature's Blessing

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One of my all-time favorite cards. Perpetual Banding for all of my friends (not to mention instant-speed First Strike and other combat tricks).

Go Go Combat Math!

Too bad it's limited to GW and GWx decks.

[Lifeless]

Helm of Chatzuk is where the real chads get Banding. Go on and play it to ruin your friendships.

[Mookie]

Nature's Blessing looks like it can make combat math extremely complicated - instant-speed trample, first strike, banding, or a +1/+1 counter allow for a lot of possible options.... and that's before you consider the possibility of activating it multiple times. That said, four mana for the enchantment itself, plus another two mana and a card for each activation make it pretty costly to use. Additionally, on-board tricks are generally weaker than from-hand tricks (although with something this complicated, your opponents will probably play incorrectly anyway). I suspect the ceiling is 'my opponents never block my creatures', and if I just wanted that, I would run Mirri, Weatherlight Duelist or something similar.

...anyway, my official policy is 'no banding', so I'll pass based on that criteria.

[3drinks]

Helm of Chatzuk is where the real chads get Banding. Go on and play it to ruin your friendships.

Out skill your opponent by fetching up Helm of Chatzuk with Urza's Saga.

[Lifeless]

Helm of Chatzuk is where the real chads get Banding. Go on and play it to ruin your friendships.

Out skill your opponent by fetching up Helm of Chatzuk with Urza's Saga.

If you Trinket Mage for anything else you're a coward.

[TheGildedGoose]

Helm of Chatzuk is where the real chads get Banding. Go on and play it to ruin your friendships.

Out skill your opponent by fetching up Helm of Chatzuk with Urza's Saga.

If you Trinket Mage for anything else you're a coward.

Does The Millennium Calendar get an honorable mention?

[Lifeless]

I'll allow it because it's probably going to deal a lot of mental damage.

[Sinis]

That sweet, sweet, w/g madness enabler

[3drinks]

Tuesday, November 21st, 2023; Phyrexian Reclamation

[3drinks]

That sweet, sweet, w/g madness enabler

Underrated comment. The Selesnya Madness deck we never knew we needed. Finally, we found a home for Vengevine! We did it guys!

[Moxnix]

I like this card I use it a lot when I plan on doing like say gray merchant loops in mono black.