[mtgnexus] Random Card of the Day - North Star

[RedCheese]

Is still a power house in landfall/ Big Token decks due to synergies. But i udnerstand not been a top tier finisher in tradicional green decks, but i still think it holds up and should still be respected

[hyalopterouslemur]

I mean, it still has value in tokens or landfall, and the fact that other iconic green fatties are banned helps it a lot.

[Sinis]

I feel like Rampaging Baloths is an oldie but a goodie. The power 4 is perfect for Garruk's Uprising and Temur Ascendancy, and it feels like a good 6-mv thing, even in the modern environment even though it's a decade old. It's one of my favourites.

[Jemolk]

Seemingly contrary to everyone else, I found Rampaging Baloths bland and boring years ago, and I feel exactly the same now. They're strong, for sure, but I don't play cards in EDH because they're strong, so much as because they're interesting, and preferably make the game around them take a turn for the weird. The baloths are neither obscure enough nor complicated enough to get me to care, and they don't synergize in notably unusual ways with anything else. The card is just a ball of stats that makes extra balls of stats by doing what you were already going to be doing. The only thing less interesting than that is a random vanilla creature with very average power and toughness.

I don't really dislike the baloths either, I should say. They don't particularly annoy me, just bore me.

[TheGildedGoose]

It sucks.

It's an efficient beater that poops out more tokens for doing a very basic and easy to do thing, but uh, so what? Are you really going to make a dent with your little 6/6 and, typically, 1-2 4/4s a turn until you eat a board wipe? I've played several landfall decks, and not a single one of them won via "fair" combat (I don't consider 3 copies of Field of the Dead churning out absurd amounts of zombies in Yarok, the Desecrated to be "fair"), so I just don't get the appeal. Hell, the tokens can't even be clamped! Rampaging Baloths is the textbook example of a lukewarm, mediocre card without a reasonable home.

[folding_music]

^I always find that kind of comment depressing, lol. This perfectly serviceable and powerful card doesn't fit into a bunch of apparently critical archetypes so it sucks? in a casual format?

[TheGildedGoose]

^I always find that kind of comment depressing, lol. This perfectly serviceable and powerful card doesn't fit into a bunch of apparently critical archetypes so it sucks? in a casual format?

"in a casual format" is a nonargument that can be made for any card. Chimney Imp? In my deck? It's more likely than you think.

At its heart, it's a dumb beater that makes more dumb beaters in a format where dumb beaters aren't very useful because of vastly inflated life totals and an absurd banlist philosophy. Compared with, say, Avenger of Zendikar Scute Swarm, a card that gets truly absurd with multiple lands entering the battlefield each turn, Baloth just comes up short.

[3drinks]

Sunday, May 29th, 2022; Reality Shift

I can't believe more people haven't adopted blue plow. Card is way better than it appears to read, and who the hell gave blue exile removal at instant and cheap?

[TheGildedGoose]

I have many fond memories of decking people with an infinitely recurred Reality Shift via Tasigur, the Golden Fang and infinite mana courtesy of Dramatic Reversal on an Isochron Scepter. It's a fantastic card that belongs in most non-white blue decks. The real debate is between Reality Shift and Pongify/Rapid Hybridization, which boils down to exile and a potential threat compared with one less mana and a token token.

[Melua]

Sunday, May 29th, 2022; Reality Shift

I can't believe more people haven't adopted blue plow. Card is way better than it appears to read, and who the hell gave blue exile removal at instant and cheap?

I remember this card being meh in Standard, but this card is just so good in Commander. Most of the time you won't be worried about the manifested card as you're Patching something dangerous.

If this card doesn't keep seeing reprints then the price is going to shoot through the roof, and it won't see a Standard reprint. I can see them making a White version that exiles and gives the opponent two tapped treasures in return.

[Mookie]

Reality Shift is excellent, and possibly the best blue spot removal in the format. I wouldn't necessarily run it over black or white spot removal, but definitely worth consideration in Temur decks. Exiling stuff is excellent when you don't want to worry about recursion / indestructible, and the downside of manifesting a card is generally pretty negligible - I have yet to see an opponent flip a relevant creature off it. Throw in the ability to mess with topdeck tutors and occasionally serve as a win condition when looped, and you have a very playable card. It won't be out actual countermagic as blue's primary form of interaction, but certainly worth having in the toolbox.

....somewhat interesting to contrast with the cheaper Pongify, but I prefer Reality Shift - exiling stuff just feels better.

[Serenade]

I don't compare this card to Pongify/RH because destroy and exile are too different (a difference that seems to grow more each set).

I compare it to Resculpt. Same cost, still exile, hits an additional card type. You're giving a much bigger creature (that'll never morph) and can't mess with topdeck tutors…but I just love the added versatility so much.

[Jemolk]

Reality Shift is an incredible card. Instant-speed exiling removal in blue, and even if something strong is manifested, they still have to pay the same amount of mana they would to cast it to get the actual creature, and in the mean time it's an extremely vulnerable vanilla 2/2. Good interaction makes for better games. Any deck that lacks both black and white but includes blue should probably be playing this card.

[onering]

I mean, I run the blue removal in decks with black and white. Swords, path, and Infernal Grasp are ahead of them, then Reality Shift and Resculpt followed by Rapid and Pongify.

[Sinis]

My habitual hot take is that Reality Shift is better than Plow, and certainly better than Path.

[Igzex]

Never leave home without one in your blue decks.

[DirkGently]

My habitual hot take is that Reality Shift is better than Plow, and certainly better than Path.

Lol explain? Downsides aside, costing 2 makes it much weaker than pte or stp imo.

It's a good card but I generally use Pongify and Rapid Hybridization first. I'd rather give a 3/3 than risk putting something nasty into play uncountably, but mostly it's the mana value.

[Sinis]

Lol explain? Downsides aside, costing 2 makes it much weaker than pte or stp imo.

That 1 mana rarely ever matters to me, White is a worse colour, and you can mess up people's Mirage-era tutors with Reality Shift.

[3drinks]

Monday, May 30th, 2022; Prismatic Strands

A pauper all-star, but I believe this can very much serve much to stop many known quantity kills a la Moment's Peace.

[pokken]

I love this card in breena. It has gotten me with its limitations a few times dying to colorless creatures but it has saved my bacon a ton of
Times too. The mana efficiency is so nice

[DirkGently]

That 1 mana rarely ever matters to me, White is a worse colour, and you can mess up people's Mirage-era tutors with Reality Shift.

Using color as justification seems like a strange way to compare things, especially non-commanders. So then is Cancel better than Armageddon because geddon means you have to be in white? I mean, each card is only 1/99 so surely being blue is way more impactful than a 1/99 draw for geddon. This seems like a bad way to make comparisons.

It seems hard for me to believe that a meta so rife with the fastest tutors in the format that they become an important factor for rating cards is also a meta where 1mv difference doesn't really matter.

[Sinis]

Using color as justification seems like a strange way to compare things, especially non-commanders. ... This seems like a bad way to make comparisons.

I mean blue has a deeper pool of good cards. If I'm playing w/x, it's probably going to be mostly x, unless I'm leaning into a very specific niche where White has a deep/superior card pool (like human or angel tribal). That's just the truth of the matter to me. I'll elaborate further...

It starts with Red, before WotC really started leaning into making red a better colour. Back in the day, around Innistrad block, red was atrocious. I would often build Temur decks, and the red cards in the deck would end up being limited to Blasphemous Act, Chaos Warp and maybe Fires of Yavimaya. Green and Blue just had so much more. There were niche cards, but the generically good stuff was definitely not Red.

Red's quality has exploded since then. DKA saw Faithless Looting, and the wave of good cards just started rolling in. A trickle at first, and then a flood. The last 10 years (and especially the last 3) have been incredible for Red.

White is the new Red. When I play W/x, I end up playing Swords, Wraths, Teferi's Protection, Land Tax (maybe), Path (maybe), and Winds of Abandonment (maybe). When I say "White is a worse colour", I mean that outside the 10ish generically good cards that I truly value in White, it's just not very exciting, whereas (IMO) Blue has dozens and dozens of great cards after Reality Shift.

Now, I say this with full acknowledgement that there are personal tastes that don't always line up. Your mileage may vary, as always.

[DirkGently]

@Sinis I'm not arguing that blue is overall stronger - of course it is. I'm saying that using that color as a metric for evaluating cards in the 99 would mean literally every white card is worse than literally every blue card, which makes that methodology essentially useless imo.

I can think of 2 cases where you care about comparing the effectiveness of cards in the 99 - either you want to compare the overall strength of two colors to decide which is stronger by comparing the individual cards available to those colors, perhaps for deciding between commanders (in which case you can't very well assume one colors superiority over the other since that's the very thing you're trying to calculate), or you have access to both cards (a uw commander) and are deciding which to include, in which case color is basically irrelevant and (imo) path and definitely swords are stronger than shift.

I can't think of any use case for evaluating cards while "correcting" for their Color's overall strength. Did you have something in mind? Are we p1p1 drafting a commander cube?

[TheAmericanSpirit]

No one ever expects the strands. Sometimes though, they don't expect it twice.

[Sinis]

I can think of 2 cases where you care about comparing the effectiveness of cards in the 99 -

either you want to compare the overall strength of two colors to decide which is stronger by comparing the individual cards available to those colors,

It's not really a contest, I think. Even if it's debatable whether shift or swords is better, I think Blue is clearly and obviously a stronger colour.

or you have access to both cards (a uw commander) and are deciding which to include, in which case color is basically irrelevant and (imo) path and definitely swords are stronger than shift.

This is where I was going with this. I think shift is better than swords for the reasons I went through before.

Though, let's not kid ourselves, any w/u deck is going to have both.