[mtgnexus] Random Card of the Day - Rishkar, Peema Renegade

[Mookie]

Impact Resonance is a high-variance card. It reads as potentially busted - have something enormous get into combat, then spend two mana on a Plague Wind. Unfortunately, I don't think I've ever seen it actually be cast. I suspect that's probably because the card feels a bit win-more. If you have an enormous Kresh the Bloodbraided, then the card you want is Fling, not this. And if you don't have a massive creature to fuel Impact Resonance, then this is a Lightning Strike with timing restrictions - not a card I'm particularly excited to run.

...on the other hand, I may be less excited because of the decks I'm running - none of my decks have big enough beaters to justify Impact Resonance's inclusion. On the other hand, if I were running Kresh or Xenagos, God of Revels, it starts to look a lot more interesting. I don't know if I'd run it in a Sunforger deck, but that's primarily because my mental image of a Boros beater is much smaller than my mental image of a Gruul beater. (cue people saying it's awesome with Brion Stoutarm and Feather, the Redeemed)

[TheAmericanSpirit]

Love this card on paper, never seen it in play. I think the core issue with impact resonance is that it's a value spell disguised as a removal spell. The card does nothing in a vacuum; instead its opportunistic design forces it to be used post-damage on what was likely already a pivotal turn in the game. You can't really defend yourself like you can with traditional removal, but you can revenge yourself upon a huge amount of random stuff or add additional injury to a successful aggro campaign. It's just niche.

[Outcryqq]

Impact Resonance
I know it would be OP, but limiting it to only creatures is a big strike against this. Can't even hit planeswalkers. Pretty good damage-based creature removal, but I usually like my X spells to be able to function as removal or a way to end the game.

[onering]

It's great in Feather. It's just mediocre when the biggest thing that you hit with is feather without being pumped, but even then thats 2 split between opponents creatures and 1 at feather so it goes to your hand. Cast off sunforger if feather hit with it attached, and it's a sweet repeatable removal spell. It can be a real surprise the first time you cast it off someone or something getting hit by something big. Being able to just point one damage at feather to get it back end of turn is huge. It puts in a lot of work controlling the board there.

[3drinks]

Tuesday, June 23rd, 2020; Siege-Gang Commander

Probably one of my fave r guys of all time, honestly. Five for four bodies with type advantages that can go to the face, and oh it's got that 2 power synergy (hi Llark).

Mmm. Tasty.

[Mookie]

...I just made the mental connection between Siege-Gang Commander and Chittering Witch, and now I can never unsee it.

Anyway, Siege-Gang is a card that does a lot of things, all of them good. It's a goblin, it's small (and thus can be fetched by Imperial Recruiter and recurred by Reveillark), it comes with a pile of bodies, it's a sacrifice outlet, it's removal, it pressures planeswalkers and life totals... I won't say it Slice and Dices, but it's close. I wouldn't say that Siege-Gang is the most efficient card, but I'm also a sucker for token synergies - in this case, quantity outweights quality.

Not a card that I'd throw in every red deck (I'm currently not running it in any of mine, although I am running Chittering Witch), but it really shines in the decks that can take advantage of its many attributes. I could see it in sacrifice-based decks like Korvold, Fae-Cursed King and Prossh, Skyraider of Kher, goblin tribal decks like Krenko, Mob Boss, or token decks like Zada, Hedron Grinder. Also very amusing alongside Torbran, Thane of Red Fell. Alternatively, find a way to flicker or recur it.

[ilovesaprolings]

I won a couple of games by throwing goblins in the face of my opponent. Never underestimate this guy.

[Outcryqq]

Siege-Gang Commander
Obvious powerhouse in my Grenzo, Dungeon Warden deck.

[Guardman]

I've played him a lot more in standard than EDH. In the standard he was always a great way to finish off games. In EDH, he seems like he would be really good in Subira, Tulzidi Caravanner as a high end payoff.

[onering]

Purphoros loves him, as does Alesha.

Etb triggers? Bam! 2 power synergy? Bam! Tokens? Bam! Goblins? Bam! Aristocrats? Bam! Burn? Bam! Blink? Bam! Card does it all.

[toctheyounger]

Pretty great versatility in this card. Nice, tidy package that's well costed and doesn't need other cards to do what it does well. It's not for every red deck - I don't have it in my Purph 2.0 deck but where it's worth including it does remarkably well.

[3drinks]

Wednesday, June 24th, 2020; Linvala, Keeper of Silence

I'm disappointed in how many times my auto fill kept trying to change her name to linval 🙄

Great card, great at keeping those pesky elf decks at bay, aggressively costed and completely asymmetric. And it finally gets the new legendary frame! What's not to love?

[Mookie]

Spent around an hour organizing my thoughts re: Linvala, Keeper of Silence and rewriting things, but wasn't really happy with what I wrote. So, going to try to keep my thoughts brief instead: Linvala bugs me. As a general rule, I'm a big fan of targeted hate cards for strong strategies. I appreciate Torpor Orb for ETB value decks, and Rest in Peace for graveyard decks.

However, I would say that activated abilities are an inherently high-risk strategy before Linvala even comes into the picture. If you don't have mana to spend on Burnished Hart, or your Goblin Welder has summoning sickness, or you have no creatures to sacrifice to Yahenni, Undying Partisan, then your card effectively has no text when a board wipe comes along. This means that activate abilities are already facing an uphill battle against board wipes and spot removal. And that, in turn, means that activated abilities don't see a lot of play, especially more interesting or expensive ones. Looking at the top 100 creatures on EDHREC, I see around 28 with activated abilities, of which around 12 are mana dorks (the class of activated abilities with the lowest amount of risk). Which means that not a lot of creatures with interesting activated abilities see play in the first place. (in comparison, there are around 25 creatures with ETB effects)

To me, running Linvala is like killing a unicorn - it's so rare to see a deck built around activated abilities in the wild that I'd much prefer to just see it in action. If you really need to shut down Golos, Tireless Pilgrim, run Pithing Needle instead (which hits more things anyway, including planeswalkers), and leave the Humble Defectors and Prodigal Pyromancers of the world alone.

[Lifeless]

One of my absolute favorites. She puts in work at every level of competitiveness. That being said she also puts a target on your head at even level of competitiveness since you're holding off a lot of "fun". I actually think you need to be mindful of playing her so that you don't end up public enemy #1.

[pokken]

I recently had Linvala absolutely dominate a poor Kenrith, the Returned King and Golos, Tireless Pilgrim deck at the same time, and Kenrith player said "Damnit that's two games in a row to Linvala."

Linvala is very good in EDH at most levels of play. I like her a lot. Many people don't. She's the type of card that exemplifies the importance of the whole "play removal so your strategy isn't invalidated" because her cost is quite fair and she's not exactly hard to kill. People who get upset about her are usually doing really unfair stuff.

She's basically everything good about staxy effects in EDH in my opinion. Her and Eidolon of Rhetoric are my two faves.

[ISBPathfinder]

Linvala is amazing. I was skeptical because really killing creatures isn't that hard but man, she really does so much in play. Pithing Needle effects have slowly become more important to me in the last few years. Its so big to have these type of interactions to shut down some strategies.

Great card.

[onering]

I like Linvalla. She shuts of dorks, shuts of effects that give creatures abilities (like cryptolith rite), shuts off the random abilities you may run across, hurts a variety of commanders including Golos, shuts off Kiki Jiki combos and shenanigans, really does a lot of work for minimal investment, all while being a reasonably coated mid sized flyer that can strap on some swords and get in for triggers fairly easily, or simply work on getting chip damage that adds up over time. In competitive metas that doesn't matter but if damage is ever relevant it cannot be discounted (and of course an evasive 3 power creature also helps handle pws via attacks). She also has combo potential with cards that animate all lands, making you the only one with Mana from anything but rocks.

[ilovesaprolings]

Plz don't play this against my Ghave
I'm lucky that my friend with Kaalia never did because he never bought the card, it was too expensive

[Dunharrow]

Good card. But I realized the hard way that sometimes you can't play it.
You have to ask: If an opponent clones the card, would it kill your deck? And if yes, how reliably do you have a sac outlet available to sac Linvala in response to a Clone?

[toctheyounger]

Great card. She's not for every deck or every meta, but when she's valid she's an all star.

I'm very much not fond of mana dorks in this format - it's a fragile resource, and the best of the bunch (Bloom Tender, Birds of Paradise and Selvala, Heart of the Wilds) are way overpriced. So I sort of relish teaching the lesson not to rely on that as your sole strategy for mana. While this isn't always relevant, bare minimum she drops early and has evasion, so in her native colour she can carry equipment which is really worthwhile.

The only issue you have is her being identified as a hatebear and painting a target on your head, so it's worth considering that before dropping her without any plan moving forward - especially if it locks the game down. I find most people are fine with a lockdown so long as you're shuffling up for another game shortly afterwards. Literally no one likes slow torture games.

[if4ko]

Godlike card. Looking for a foil right now.

[3drinks]

Thursday, June 25th, 2020; Dwarven Miner & Dwarven Blastminer

Zirda's BFFs 💖. Great little utility dudes never lacking in quality targets, cheap enough to get in under the radar and steal back the monarch.

[Mookie]

I briefly tested Dwarven Blastminer in my Samut (tap ability tribal) deck, but ultimately ended up cutting it. I like the idea of being able to deal with problematic utility lands (or just lock an opponent out entirely), but I felt like I wanted something more proactive. Three mana to activate is also sort of expensive, especially if you ever plan to untap it and blow up multiple things per turn.

That said, I'm also not running any cost reducers in that deck because I focus so much on cheap / free tap abilities, since I plan to utilize them multiple times per turn. If I were running more expensive tap abilities alongside cost reducers like Zirda, the Dawnwaker, Heartstone, or Training Grounds, then these look significantly more attractive. It's also a bit of a meta call - the more strong utility lands in your meta, the more valuable targeted land destruction is.

I will call out that these cards tend to draw a lot of hate - blowing up lands tends to attract a lot of attention, especially if you do so repeatedly.

[Serenade]

You know who's great against these?

Linvala, Keeper of Silence

[DirkGently]

I think these are sort of the in a valley of unplayability. They're too slow for anything remotely competitive - 5 mana before you blow up your first land? lol - but they're too "mean" for a lot of casual groups, even if they aren't particularly powerful. Even if your group is cool with them, people like their lands and they'll probably overtarget them and you to reduce the risk.

I could potentially see playing them in Depala, Pilot Exemplar since they are decent-ish dwarves, which are hard to come by...but that's about it.