[mtgnexus] Random Card of the Day - North Star

[Serenade]

My buddy runs it in Aegar, the Freezing Flame. I always get a kick out of it.

I have Volcanic Vision and Mizzium Mortars in Kess. MM finds a place in a few other red decks given the versatility. Not sure I have anything else that would consider DBF. Are there other one-sided, fixed-damage red wipes worth comparing?

[duducrash]

I run in Veyran, Voice of Duality which is perhaps my favorite deck of mine and it's a house. I love casting it out of Expressive Iteration or Epic Experiment

[3drinks]

Amusingly enough, I think this card is a fantastic example of the difference in my and @3drinks play styles. I imagine he goes more for Fiery Emancipation and I go for Curse of Bloodletting.

Sure, but why hit one for ten if I can hit three for fifteen? If Gut's skelies can hit you for 8 but I can send one to each player for 12...when in doubt, go for the higher damage. Or emancipation+ scald so each island you tap bolts you. Whereas the curse gets you labeled as a kingmaker.

Every time someone has played Fiery Emancipation at my tables, it's either been removed or the player has been removed. Curse of Bloodletting is probably less threatening.

I guess these are all points that keep me leaning towards Dictate of the Twin Gods over it. This must send off the same warning bells as True Conviction then?

[ironic gesture]

Interesting. I'm taking another look at my Ghen, Arcanum Weaver deck and wonder if Curse of Bloodletting is worth it.

Same!

[Sinis]

Every time someone has played Fiery Emancipation at my tables, it's either been removed or the player has been removed. Curse of Bloodletting is probably less threatening.

I guess these are all points that keep me leaning towards Dictate of the Twin Gods over it. This must send off the same warning bells as True Conviction then?

I would say so. Though, True Conviction's lifelink makes it it at least a little hard to eliminate the person playing it. Fiery Emancipation has no defensive properties at all.

I am a fan of Dictate of the Twin Gods. You can mess up other player's combat math, or EOT it into a turn (maybe two, if you're willing to leverage a Final Fortune or something). Flash really sells it, and it can go nuts if you're playing something like Aurelia or Karlach.

[Mookie]

I have Volcanic Vision and Mizzium Mortars in Kess. MM finds a place in a few other red decks given the versatility. Not sure I have anything else that would consider DBF. Are there other one-sided, fixed-damage red wipes worth comparing?

Not fixed damage, but I've been testing Immolating Gyre recently in my Mizzix deck. I think Kess has better options due to access to black, but it's been alright so far.

As for Delayed Blast Fireball... it's flexible and asymmetric, but also seems sort of inefficient. Three mana for a one-sided Pyroclasm doesn't particularly excite me, and eight mana for five damage doesn't seem much better. Instant speed is definitely a thing though, so I could see it being good in some situations. Hmmm...

[3drinks]

Friday, December 30th, 2022; Common Type Duals

There's like twenty of these, I'm not gonna post them all. What do we think though? In laying out my mana for Naya, it's truly a beautiful, robust environment. Abus, Shocks, Tangos, Bicycles, Triome, Snows, Corres is 19 +11 fetches is 30, command tower, strip mine, wasteland makes 33 and sprinkle the rest with basics. I think it's lovely that you don't need any of the other rando untyped nonbasics now.

[Sinis]

I think common duals are okay, but for a lot of colour combos/budgets, they're going to be overrated. For G/x decks, I think you're good to game Farseek, Nature's Lore, Three Visits, Skyshroud Claim, Hunting Wilds and Ranger's Path (though, you're probably not running all these).

Outside of g/x, what are land types actually doing for people? Fetches? Okay, those players already (probably) have shocks, tango lands, and other budget duals with types. Are you banking on someone hitting you with Boseiju, Who Endures?

I appreciate that they exist, and I even play them... but, I think the fact that I have enough fetches to go around makes them playable for me. I'm not especially convinced they're particularly playable (ahead of other ETB tapped lands, like manlands or whatever) for people who don't use fetches.

[TheGildedGoose]

B+ for fetchland manabases, D for budget manabases.

[pokken]

I can usually think of something else to play over these, but sometimes in enemy color decks where we're missing cycling duals and tangoes. Wish they would finish those two cycles already

[Hawk]

Obviously these are great in budget and even mid-budget Gx decks where you can Nature's Lore/Farseek/Three Visits/Wood Elves them out. Some W/x builds are also interested for the same reason these days (Kor Cartographer, Knight of the White Orchid, Deep Gnome Terramancer, Boreas Charger, Cartographer's Hawk, Tithe, and more don't say basic).

If you aren't exploiting that synergy, these still have some synergy if you happen to own fetches but not enough duals (like me who has fetches but only two ABU duals), but it's diminishing returns. I'd say for most decks that aren't Gx or Wx on a budget, if you are going to play a tapland at all you might as well play temples instead.

[Guardman]

I love these lands because so many of the middle school and high school kids (and unemployed) who play at my LGS can run decent mana bases now without having to spend an arm and a leg. I really think these were some of the best things to happen to commander in a long time.

[Mookie]

I'm a big fan of the common duals. Not necessarily from a competitive standpoint - entering tapped is a pain - but there are a ton of random synergies they enable that previously required an expensive fetch + shock + dual manabase. Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle and Emeria, the Sky Ruin are two of the biggest winners, since turning them on with only basics is extremely challenging for multicolor decks. However, they also power up cards like Keeper of Progenitus, Dread Presence, and High Tide - every color has plenty of random synergies with their basic land type.

...I'll note that Highland Forest and the rest of its cycle also enable running a snow manabase, if that's something you care about. Blood on the Snow and Dead of Winter are two nice budget board wipes if you're in black.

[DirkGently]

People really overrate dual typing. Assuming you're just using it for fixing off fetches etc, you really don't need many available before your manabase is fixed well enough. Given how many strict upgrades exist for these, it's hard to imagine a budget that needs these. If you're buying fetches you can probably afford shocks/triomes, or at least crappy tangos. So the budget range for these is more the Wood Elves range, but I think it'd be rare to run enough forest-only tutors to where this is terribly useful. Outside of very budget decks, I see no reason to use these. I did run them gladly in my set commander decks though. In the absence of other options, a tap land is better than all basics, easily.

The snow ones are more unique though. If you really care about snow, being able to find it off a fetch is a nice add. Idk if that's very many decks, but it is there.

[folding_music]

I like these with Yavimaya Dryad? and also with second string duals like, um, Fortified Village. I like the names the Kaldheim ones have and they imo make a deck look prettier, if yr the type to notice that sorta thing. but ultimately they're the sort of card you can spend a bunch of money to not have to play; more for making extra decks than yr main. i value all flexible mana at common though, i think it's a good thing they exist. just have to remember they are worse than Temples etc as soon as you actually draw one

[Treamayne]

I really wish Landwalk would make a comeback!

Landwalk was a thing; then Duals became a thing and landwalk was ignored because nobody had land subtypes. Now Duals with land subtypes are a thing and landwalk should return to help balance the over-reliance on Fetch manabases. . .

Not just draft chaff french vanilla commons - legit threats with landwalk.

Outside of g/x, what are land types actually doing for people?

Wx decks also have a not insignificant number of Plains searching now

[Igzex]

The only common tap duals I'd run are the snow ones for a ramp package that includes Into the North. It says a lot about the nonbasic land options we have these days when we can have actual dual type lands as common chaff.

I will be looking forward to gathering a bunch of these in commander precons in the following years to come.

[Dunharrow]

I'm with Dirk on this one - once you've fetched about 3-4 times, you don't need to fetch anything other than basics anymore. I would not play these in any of my decks. I am a much bigger fan of MDFC lands, the Neo land cycle, or just about any other reasonable option.

I rate these slightly above the ETB lands that gain you a life.

[Jemolk]

Any 2-3 color deck that cares about basic types probably wants these. It's not all that common for that to be the case, but if you've got a 3-color deck that wants Cabal Coffers even without Urborg (like my Sol'kanar the Swamp King Demon tribal deck) you have all the reason you need, I'd say, to run the black ones, and, for example, in my Doran treefolk deck, I have a lot of treefolk that care about my lands' types. Meanwhile, Emeria, the Sky Ruin has already been mentioned, but Emeria Shepherd also wants you to have bunches of Plains and is a strong card. I think there are a fair number of use cases where you actually want to have basic types enough for these to matter.

I think they will also commonly be an upgrade to budget manabases, due to being findable with things like Farseek, Nature's Lore, and Knight of the White Orchid, as well as making check lands and show lands enter untapped. In general, I'm very glad they exist. I might not put them in all my decks, but I definitely have uses for them.

[Toshi]

Common Type Duals

Sure, WotC is trying to shove 3C commanders down our throats, but there are few reasons to run lots of taplands.
Evolving Wilds, Terramorphic Expanse, Myriad Landscape plus the fitting Capenna fetches, Tango lands and Basics make for a considerably fast and very cheap mana base.
Adding and therefor Cultivate, Kodama's Reach, Rampant Growth and Sakura-Tribe Elder, there would be even less reason to go for bad non-Basics instead.

Off the top of my head, Jorn, God of Winter // Kaldring, the Rimestaff, Isu the Abominable, Archelos, Lagoon Mystic and Cabal Coffers/High Tide packages would be the only reasons for me to run a plethora of them over better ones with land types.

[3drinks]

Saturday, December 31st, 2022; Arcane Endeavor

What a fun card.

[3drinks]

People really overrate dual typing. Assuming you're just using it for fixing off fetches etc, you really don't need many available before your manabase is fixed well enough. Given how many strict upgrades exist for these, it's hard to imagine a budget that needs these. If you're buying fetches you can probably afford shocks/triomes, or at least crappy tangos.

That's really what it's for tbh. Fetches are the best fixing you can get, capable of fixing up to three colours or finding basics when you need or want to play around Back to Basics, and as such it stands to reason having even more options to hit is gonna be better, not worse. People can and will wasteland you off a colour and having more options to fetch into is incredibly relevant. Maybe you play in some christmasland where you don't face LD or don't have players spite wasting your colours, but that's not what I see. Further, consider when you'd fetch a shock EOT and don't have a spell to play so you let it come in tapped which is effectively what these represent. So you fetch these instead to minimize the drawback, and then fetch into the shock untapped on the next turn. terramorphic expanse|brc can't do this as the land is always tapped, a la, less options for how you play.

Naturally I come at this from the stance that you have the full suite of fetches (6 in mono, 9 in bicolour, 11 in tri and etc). If you don't, then obviously look to the other untyped options.

[Hermes_]

Randomness = bad right?

[3drinks]

Randomness = bad right?

Hard to say. You're gonna draw some number of cards and cast a spell "for free", so I'd imagine the odds are with you that this is typically going to be worthwhile. That mv is concerning, naturally, but I suspect it's going to work out more often than the whiff.

[Mookie]

Randomness = bad right?

Not necessarily. If a hypothetical card caused you to win the game 90% of the time, and lose the game 10% of the time, that would be an amazing card. The relevant numbers are the expected value and the standard deviation - how much value can you reasonably expect to generate, and how much failure are you willing to tolerate? At that point, you can compare it to some baseline spell and make a decision.

In this case, the expected value of Arcane Endeavor if you always choose to draw the larger number (and cast a free spell for the smaller number) is 5.8125, and you'll draw at least four cards 86% of the time. The compares poorly to the baseline, Overflowing Insight, but it's not terrible.

On the flip side, you'll get to cast a spell of mana value 3.1875 on average. Rounding the numbers a bit and treating that as a mana discount, that means you're not paying seven mana for your draw spell - you're only paying four mana. At that point in time, it starts to look much better. If you flip things around and are drawing three cards but getting a free 6-drop, that's Ancestral Recall territory. As a result, I would say this looks like a weak card if you only care about the card draw, but it looks much better if you can take advantage of the free spell (and can consistently reach 7 mana).

....anyway, I'd usually go for Aminatou's Augury or Finale of Revelation if I were looking for a sorcery-speed draw spell, but I do think Arcane Endeavor has its uses. I've brewed a bit with it in a cascade-based deck, since it's one of the few spells that let you cast another spell for free on resolution.