[mtgnexus] Random Card of the Day - Golgari Thug

[3drinks]

Nit: you wrote Gaea's Liege. I assume Golos, Tireless Pilgrim is the correct one.

Stupid auto card window being too small.

[RxPhantom]

Golos is another in what is becoming a long line of value-generating commanders that need very little synergy from the rest of the deck. These decks and commanders bore me, and when it comes to Golos specifically, all of my resources go into getting him off the board once he comes down. Spinning the wheel even once can be backbreaking for the rest of the table.

[Dragoon]

I put Golos, Tireless Pilgrim in the same category as cards like Chulane, Teller of Tales: powerful commanders that can support a wide range of strategies. I'm not really a spike player and I love my decks to have distinctive themes (not necessarily original, mind you). I see this as good news: it is now easier to build less reliable strategies that didn't have an on-theme commander, as having a powerful commander that can compensate for their somewhat lacking firepower is obviously a huge plus.

I personally play him at the helm of a "random tribal" deck that uses cascade, coin flip and other stuff of that vein and I would categorize that deck as a 4-5 that might sometimes compete with a 6-7 if the stars align. I've seen him played with an alt wincon strategy and a gate strategy, that's about it in my meta. I can't deny how powerful Golos is, but I think that if you're seeing it everywhere piloting goodstuffy generic decks, it might have more to do with your players rather than the card.

Also, if you're having trouble dealing with commanders such as Golos, remember that cards like Darksteel Mutation, Song of the Dryads and Imprisoned in the Moon exists. Killing or exiling Golos isn't necessarily the best move, there are other options out there.

[Rumpy5897]

I was twirling my moustache and preparing to barf out a diatribe about Golos but Mookie beat me to the punch, quite spectacularly I might add.

Pretty much the only thing left to add is 2019 was a particularly bad year for heinous goodstuff commanders. M20 also gave us Yarok and Kykar, and the fact that a three-colour legend that makes all your equipments attach for free and draws you cards on swing was the worst of the brawl deck legends is saying something too. However, that's the secret - brawl. It feels like the busted M20 stuff was also made with R&D's new brainchild in mind, as the standard card pool is shallow and you wouldn't get the same exciting gameplay you're used to from commander. The solution apparently was to make beast mode goodstuff demigods that synergise with air. After an initial period of growing pains, WotC figured out how to design interesting cards for EDH without hovering around ban tier for the most part.

I find it encouraging that there haven't been more of these sort of obnoxious powerhouses in 2020 yet. Sheldon worked with R&D on stuff last year, and among it was supposedly some companion consulting. As such, IKO was not set in stone at the time when there was already data that these brawl-minded legends were taking commander by storm, yet no new representatives of the category got snuck in at the eleventh hour. This leaves me hopeful that 2019's cohort was an isolated blip stemming from trying to support a knockoff format and won't become the norm, especially since brawl's no less dead than it's been since its initial five minutes of fame.

[gilrad]

...It feels like the busted M20 stuff was also made with R&D's new brainchild in mind, as the standard card pool is shallow and you wouldn't get the same exciting gameplay you're used to from commander. The solution apparently was to make beast mode goodstuff demigods that synergise with air. After an initial period of growing pains, WotC figured out how to design interesting cards for EDH without hovering around ban tier for the most part.

This can also be seen in the 2010-2012 (old Zendikar block to old Innistrad block), where there is a visible pivot in design to include EDH bombs and strong commanders without quite knowing where the power floor/ceiling should be, and as a result a LOT of the cards on the current banlist are from that era. Basically it's a mistaken philosophy of "Players like cards that are X, so let's give them SUPER X, they'll super like that!"

OG Emrakul is a good example of this: Make a super game-ending bomb that, once cast, almost certainly ends the game right there. The problem is, the power floor to this card is so hilariously in the stratosphere the card was pretty quickly banned. In fact, I think it was the first new card added to the banlist since Kamigawa block (but I started EDH around Shards so I can't be sure).

I guess what I'm trying to say is, Wizards has a pretty bad track record when it comes to designing cards with a high power floor for the casual groups.

[3drinks]

I hate Golos. You can't deal with it effectively. You can't colour screw them with wasteland, it really doesn't care about blood moon, and you can't even effectively tax it out of the game since it pays for half the recast every time. Oh, and it's overly synergized with blink, and gets access to all colours such that it can pick and choose from the very best of the best cards. It is the epitome of easy mode commander, and if ever anything deserved a ban for over-homogenization of the format? It was this. Your move, Sheldon, papa-funk.....................

Pretty much the only thing left to add is 2019 was a particularly bad year for heinous goodstuff commanders. M20 also gave us Yarok and Kykar, and the fact that a three-colour legend that makes all your equipments attach for free and draws you cards on swing was the worst of the brawl deck legends is saying something too. However, that's the secret - brawl. It feels like the busted M20 stuff was also made with R&D's new brainchild in mind, as the standard card pool is shallow and you wouldn't get the same exciting gameplay you're used to from commander. The solution apparently was to make beast mode goodstuff demigods that synergise with air. After an initial period of growing pains, WotC figured out how to design interesting cards for EDH without hovering around ban tier for the most part.

I find it entertaining, knowing how ridiculous those commanders are, that I set out to build Korvold, but I wanted to see how stronk it was when you take away 70% of the card pool and - while sticking to white border only - just how easy or difficult it would be to proc it numerous times in a game. And within that narrow design space, I STILL locked three players out of the game with grave pact + hell's caretaker reviving...iirc, sengir autocrat. That didn't even feel like the ceiling (Wildfire most likely is, I'd imagine). Yuck. WotC really tried to over-push these cards with blinders to everything but their weird amalgamation of a format without even considering what it would do elsewhere? RIP. I'm shivering with fear in what I could have done with Chulane in this space rather than Korvold; something about having access to both Opposition and Intruder Alarm, alongside two Orbs and.........................

FWIW, I still keep the deck around, cause I paid money to have Korvold altered to WB...might as well keep playing it. And, y'know, that I spent about a month to research it.

[pokken]

Pretty much the most oppressively overpowered 5c goodstuff commander that turns ramp into a strategy. He's like 5c Maelstrom Wanderer and results in all kinds of extremely tiresome decks.

I love lands and built 5 different Golos decks and even in mono-color they wound up too powerful. Just did the same thing every game, tutor for a land that makes a ton of mana and tutor for cataracts and start blasting.

Golos reminds me of Frank from Always Sunny.

He's generally part of a trend of ridiculously overpowered commanders that I don't like at all.

[DirkGently]

What I hate about Golos is that he gets you either way. Other commanders you can generally either deal with by removing (if they have a strong in-play effect) or let it sit on the battlefield (if it has a strong etb effect). But Golos you lose out if you remove it, but you can't let it stay on the battlefield either.

Then add to that giving you access to 5c without even requiring fixing. Plusses on top of plusses.

I do like nonbasic lands, but I would have preferred he had a more niche, less powerful 5c ability so that he wasn't a must-remove target. Maybe instead of casting them, he does thrasios' ability to play lands but everything else is just drawn and must be paid for. Although maybe that's just because I want to make another 99 land deck :laugh:

[Sinis]

Sunday, May 31st, 2020; Golos, Tireless Pilgrim

My Golos list was really tame! All the Bringers (like Bringer of the Blue Dawn), utility lands, Genju of the Realm for Cascading Cataracts, The Haunt of Hightower to combo with Geier Reach Sanitarium...

It was a fun deck to play; search a land that matched what was in hand, and then try to go to town. I made my version pretty weak, but it ended up being strong anyway. The moment you can pour mana into Golos, it was just a losing proposition for everyone else.

[Outcryqq]

@3drinks
He musta had 4 drinks last night.

[3drinks]

Monday, June 1st, 2020; Aethermage's Touch

Hmm. I do like me some Summoning Trap effects, but outta the top four and one turn use, like unless you're abusing Scroll Rack (or similarly Soothsaying I guess), then I'm struggling to see a high enough avenue of playability here to make such a narrow window worthwhile.

[3drinks]

3drinks
He musta had 4 drinks last night.

Between watching the riots happening a half hour from me last night, battling an ever-persistent headache that wouldn't go away in spite of my three shots of mango & vodka, my usual 2am post time got away from me. Maybe the vodka is the real culprit >_>

[Sinis]

Monday, June 1st, 2020; Aethermage's Touch

4 cards really isn't deep enough unless you're running a truly colossal number of creatures. And then, you're as likely to get the Wood Elves as you are the bomb you want to surprise with.

0/10, would not play. I can barely bring myself to play Summoning Trap.

[Serenade]

Azorius Aethermage isn't even that big a fan of it.

[Hawk]

A 30 creature UWx deck is still around 17% to miss entirely with this card. We can get down to an 8% miss chance at 40 creatures, and hit at 99% with 58 creatures maindeck.

I probably would want to hit at least 95% of the time to feel good about this card, which would require at least 45 creatures. It's just a really rare and unusual deck that is UWx with 45+ creatures...and also has room for this as one of its 19 or so noncreature, nonland cards.

It doesn't help that most of the very best "top of library" manipulation cards are non-creature cards: Haunted Crossroads, Mortuary, Scroll Rack, Sensei's Divining Top, Brainstorm, Soothsaying, Jace, the Mind Sculptor. Makes it tough to stack the deck in your favor.

And that's some very quick and bad hypergeometric math, and it doesn't properly account for the fact that "hitting" Wood Elves or Mother of Runes or Kor Sanctifiers is tantamount to a miss. I have never run this and never would. It's not even a good "fun-of", since it's going to be really sad more often than its going to be really fun and sweet.

[pokken]

Much like Collected Company the essential nature of commander requiring so many glue cards makes it really hard to get this to a playable place. I can't imagine I would play it in anything.

[Mookie]

Best-case scenario, Aethermage's Touch is a better Through the Breach. Cast it, cheat something out at the end of an opponent's turn, then you have an attack step on your own turn to use the creature. It has the upside of being a mana cheaper, and also not costing a card from hand. Hard for me to say whether Azorius benefits more from this sort of effect than red decks do though. On the other hand, Through the Breach isn't a card that sees a lot of play in this format anyway - the best targets (Emrakul, the Aeons Torn and Griselbrand) are banned, and temporary board advantages at the cost of card disadvantage tend to not be that impressive.

The primary issue is that the vast majority of the time, this will either whiff or hit something useless - four cards isn't very deep, so you really want to back it up with some topdeck manipulation. I guess Long-Term Plans is a card, but I'd prefer the consistency of Through the Breach in terms of guaranteeing a good hit.

One upside of Aethermage's Touch is that it's in the best colors for blink effects - cheating something out temporarily and blinking it with Brago, King Eternal or Yorion, Sky Nomad is pretty solid.

[BeneTleilax]

anamitou card

[Toshi]

The thing with this card is, that it isn't all out aweful, since there are a few Commanders that could run this in casual lists (Aminatou, the Fateshifter, Brago, King Eternal, Ephara, God of the Polis, Roon of the Hidden Realm, Yorion, Sky Nomad, ...), but there are just so many better things to do, by now.

When i built my Brago, King Eternal deck back in 2014, AEthermage's touch|dis, Vanish into Memory|CSP and others neither would've been great includes nor would they have raised eyebrows necessarily, due to the fact that they weren't as far off, as they are from what you see at today's tables.

Overall such cards give me a sense of melancholy. The format i play today just isn't the format i played back then anymore.

[Outcryqq]

When i built my Brago, King Eternal deck back in 2014, AEthermage's touch|dis, Vanish into Memory|CSP and others neither would've been great includes nor would they have raised eyebrows necessarily, due to the fact that they weren't as far off, as they are from what you see at today's tables.

Overall such cards give me a sense of melancholy. The format i play today just isn't the format i played back then anymore.

The other side of this coin: what was subpar 6 years ago is now unplayable. Had cards not gotten better in 6 years, I think a lot of people would be complaining how Wizards never prints anything good any more. The format develops but, IMO, the allure of it remains the same.

[Toshi]

The other side of this coin: what was subpar 6 years ago is now unplayable. Had cards not gotten better in 6 years, I think a lot of people would be complaining how Wizards never prints anything good any more. The format develops but, IMO, the allure of it remains the same.

Agreed! I never meant this in a negative way. Then borderline playable cards are absolute chaff today and give me an idea of the transition the format went through and said transition will likely continue in the future.

[tstorm823]

When i built my Brago, King Eternal deck back in 2014, AEthermage's touch|dis, Vanish into Memory|CSP and others neither would've been great includes nor would they have raised eyebrows necessarily, due to the fact that they weren't as far off, as they are from what you see at today's tables.

Vanish into Memory is still great.

[Rumpy5897]

That's an interesting thought actually. I bust out my five current decks and counted the number of KTK onwards cards among nonlands. The proportions varied from a sixth to a third, with Daxos's 16 (a fourth of the deck) giving him both the mean and median. Having an average of 25% of the deck come from about 23% of the game's life span is not crazy.

[3drinks]

The concept you're discussing here is called power creep. And it makes me long for the days where we played rend flesh as premiere removal. You had more undiscovered hidden gems, more people exploring the travel paths of their decks, it was a much simpler time for sure.

If only I could get a time machine and go back about to Conflux era commander.

[3drinks]

Tuesday, June 2nd, 2020; Conjurer's Closet

You don't know how close I was to listing Tawnos's Coffin here too as a very similar effect. But, I think there's enough difference to keep them separate. Like the part where the Closet turns threatens to perma-thefts, among others. So this is really still the defacto go to for extra ETBs without any added mana invested. But at 5cmc, why is it still a $6 card. I'd typically favour a mimic vat, even, though I guess not strictly so. What do we think?