MTGNexus

Sunday, November 27th, 2022; The Ramos Cycle



...Why is the Eye $2 when Heart is the one with a pro deck print? during it's time, it was a key component of Kai Budde's Wildfire deck (because of it's ramp effect). I guess these have been crept out, but not strictly so I think since you can generate 2 for the 3 they cost for a net loss of 1 the turn you play them. Idk, I don't imagine they're terrible still (Coalition Relic can't even completely do what they do).

Or I'm just nostalgic to Kai's deck because Wildfire was what helped shape me into the player I am today.

Decent rocks for your meme Rarity deck.

There may be some niche use case for these cards, but I'm not seeing it. I guess Second Sunrise? There aren't that many cards that sacrifice for mana, and recurring an Eye of Ramos even once yields +1 mana, with it only getting better from there. I'd probably lean towards a more traditional Krark-Clan Ironworks engine though, since it lets you play artifacts that are actually useful.

Beyond combo nonsense and treating these as an actual mana rock, I'd lean towards Worn Powerstone / Coalition Relic instead. Those don't produce two mana the turn you play them, but playing a mana rock and immediately sacrificing it seems pretty underwhelming anyway. Alternatively, Commander's Sphere exists.

Obligatory Ramos, Dragon Engine shout-out.

Fun nostalgia cards. Even in my one deck that values sacrificing anything on-demand (Juri, Master of the Revue), I cut them for cards that produce more treasures. I still have Commander's Sphere in it, but it's on the short list.

They've got nice art, but I think they've just aged out of the format.

3drinks wrote: ↑

1 year ago

Sunday, November 27th, 2022; The Ramos Cycle

By your powers combined, I am Ramos, Dragon Engine

Chromaticus wrote: ↑

1 year ago

Decent rocks for your meme Rarity deck.

I wanna run her with my Rainbow Dash plushy

They're only marginally underpowered IMHO, at least depending on what you want to do with them. That means that if you like them, you can totally get away with playing them. They're not best-in-class anywhere anymore, though. On power level alone, they're all just barely edged out of basically everything, I'd say. Still neat cards with neat art, though. I play all 5 in my Ramos Lucky Charms list purely for flavor reasons, alongside Henge of Ramos, and I have the Tooth in Darien soldier tribal just because I like the card enough to be willing to run with a sup-optimal rock that still lets me cast Darien 2 turns early.

Hermes_ wrote: ↑

1 year ago

3drinks wrote: ↑

1 year ago

Sunday, November 27th, 2022; The Ramos Cycle

By your powers combined, I am Ramos, Dragon Engine

By your powers combined, I am one mana short of Ramos, Dragon Engine

We need a colorless Rest of Ramos to complete Ramos.



I can't believe there isn't a deck that wants a self sacrificing artifact that generates mana but some kind of eggs deck is the only one I can think of. None of the artifact commanders are big on recurring small artifacts or trigger off an artifact sacrificing itself. Of the sacrifice matters commanders, Korvold, Fae-Cursed King is the only one I can think of that would get any value out of them sacrificing themselves.

I could see them being played if there was a commander who could recur them easily or if there was a commander who liked artifacts going to the graveyard without being a sac outlet themselves. As it stands though their main use is to get people to think you are tapped out and walk into the one mana counter.

Monday, November 28th, 2022; Life of the Party

3drinks wrote: ↑

1 year ago

Monday, November 28th, 2022; Life of the Party

This guy should definetely have been in my Thantis, the Warweaver deck.
There's actually a lot of cards I've found that should be in that deck, maybe I'll resurrect it someday.

Played against this card and Rite of the Raging Storm with my Shadowheart, Dark Justiciar deck.

I won that game.

It looks like a fun card, but I have not gotten to try it in the Cabaretti precon that I am playing as-is. Giving opponents resources can be dangerous, but I still think this is an interesting card for an aggro deck. Having first strike makes it much better, and the tokens can't kill each other since they block with 0 power. Clever.

Tuesday, November 29th, 2022; Razia's Purification

Unless they only have three permanents this will be more miss than hit and a high cost

Hermes_ wrote: ↑

1 year ago

Unless they only have three permanents this will be more miss than hit and a high cost

If opps only have three permanents it'll be all miss.

In between Blasphemous Act, Cleansing Nova, Austere Command, Tragic Arrogance, Winds of Abandon, Farewell, Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite, ect. It's hard to put this card above those.

Also, Boros is generally the color of aggro. The other colors are more likely to have scary permanents like The Great Henge and Omniscience. Unless you're also playing those colors, then I guess it could work but then you'd have more cards competing with RP.

Some of the best art for a wipe effect. Unfortunately it is very difficult to capitalize on only 3 permanents. If it was 5-6 I would expect it to see a bit more play since you could get a winning possition from that number of permanents. Or just keep 6 lands that tap for 2+ each and get a leg up in mana on the table. White's catch-up ramp would work well with this.

This card is a nuke. It looks like a nuke and wraths like a nuke. Super high cool quotient, very low playability given its sheer extremity.

When I have seen Razia's Purification, it's mostly Jeskai decks (and likely storm combo of some kind) and almost exclusively with Phasing to avoid at least some of the sacrifice. Niche Johnny Wipe that tends to feel bad because it rarely closest out quickly after resolving. . .

This card is very strong, but it has a few big problems.

1) most people don't want to play MLD
2) the people that do usually want it for cheaper
3) trying to have 3 permanents sufficiently stronger than the rest of the table's 3 permanents to close out the game is difficult - if you have 10 creatures while everyone else has 2, it's easy to get ahead with geddon. When you have to concentrate your lead into just 3 cards, it's a lot harder. Especially if you're trying to calculate for potential removal.
4) RW isn't that popular and isn't amazing at having high-impact permanents

Making this reduce to 5 or 6 would make it significantly weaker overall (though it might get played more by virtue of being "nicer"). The better version of this card already exists - Cataclysm. It costs less, it's less color restrictive, and it cuts opponents off of mana more effectively (so you don't risk keeping 3 bomb creatures into an enemy going "4th land, board wipe" like with Razia).

Does Gerrard, Weatherlight Hero play this and Cataclysm to get an asymmetrical wipe? Or is it still too mean? Looks like a good wincon, but still vulnerable to a timely spot removal. Maybe not the best for that.

This is held back by its colors quite a bit. Outside of Gerrard, most RW decks are going wide or won't have the scariest three permanents on the board. If you add blue you get more ways to cheat it out as well as selection of much more powerful individual permanents (Omniscience, GinGitaxis). Adding Green gets ramp to get it out faster and recover faster, land recursion to make it asymmetrical and better threats (Gishath, Sun's Avatar).

Even so it is a punisher card because your opponent get's to choose what to keep so it is rarely ever a guaranteed answer to anything specific. It usually ends being a value play for a player rather than cementing the win like true MLD does. And 6 mana is a little too steep for that in RW.

I think this would be soft-banned by most people I would play with. In a universe with MLD, I can see it getting a slot, if you can make your three permanents be something like Aurelia, Gisela, Iroas.

Wdnesday, November 30th, 2022; Angelic Ascension



I'd play this. Odds are the 4/4 angel is worth a helluva lot less than whatever it is you're hitting.

I'd snap play this in Green or Red, but not White or Black. Blue would be borderline as we already have Resculpt and a half dozen other transformation removal spells giving less back than this. I favor Fateful Absence over this at the moment. Although many would say the card is worth more than the 4/4, but Flying is somewhat relevant. I play a ton of these transformation removals, but this one is in a color of some of the best removal in the format, so it had stiff competition.