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

[3drinks]

Friday, May 24th 2024; Spinal Embrace|dmr

I know I've pulled a few blowouts with this card before. Always a riot.

[onering]

This thing can remove two attackers in key situations, and that flexibility I what puts it ahead of similar cards that are sorcery speed.

[tstorm823]

High impact instants is a fun design space.

[Dunadain]

*reads the card*
"looks good, looks good"
*Reads the mana cost*
"WTF??"

👎👎

[TheGildedGoose]

Charmed Pendant REPRESENT

[3drinks]

Saturday, May 25th 2024; Sigarda's Splendor

[folding_music]

really good in my 60 card casual deck with 4x Candles' Glow, 4x Hundred-Talon Strike and 4x Spiritual Visit :3 it doesn't really exist I'm just preparing to check out of this awful format

[Dunadain]

This entire niche of cards is terrible. But they're pretty cool. Would recommend trying out my jumpstart cube, the vitality deck is a lot of fun.

[3drinks]

Monday, May 27th 2024; The Cyber-Controller

[Dunadain]

Honestly, a dimir deck with a bunch of repeatable bounce and mana doublers sounds amusing.

👍

[Dragonlover]

I had this in my face down deck but could never really mill enough for it to be relevant, I feel like this is something you run as a commander but not in the 99.

Dragonlover

[pokken]

Hey it's an infinite colorless outlet in the zone :D

[TheAmericanSpirit]

I played it for a bit in Davros, Dalek Creator. It's a nice option as a lord that can %$#% out its own army in a topdeck war. And yeah, as Pokken said, it kills the table with infinite mana so that's cool for the hardcore dimir players who want an Oona, Queen of the Fae analog with fewer steps.

[3drinks]

Tuesday, May 28th 2024; Howling Mine|brr and similar close functional reprints Font of Mythos and Temple Bell (the enchantment is different enough with play patterns and card type).

[materpillar]

I find these to be surprisingly playable. Sometimes you just want your opponents to hit landdrops and have an actual game too, you know? In before the inevitable @DirkGently in depth dissection about how these are almost strictly worse than any other card draw engine.

[FoxHybrid]

Depending on your playgroup's power level, these range from being an okay-ish source of card draw that makes you the table's friend to being literally unplayable because of how far behind in card advantage they put you. They are obviously decent in decks like Nekusar, the Mindrazer and Xyris, the Writhing Storm, which probably aren't at those higher power tables.

[Lifeless]

Classic "this guy is up to no good" cards IMO. Either you're and agent of chaos or you have a nefarious plan to take advantage of the bonus draws. Either way you get my most suspicious glance if you drop any of these.

[Serenade]

I run them in Multani, Maro-Sorcerer. No one misinterprets my gameplan or deck design there.

[Dunadain]

Kami of the Crescent Moon + all of these effects+a bunch of time magic is probably the first "good" commander deck I ever made. Probably wasn't fun to play against though 🤷‍♂️.

These cards have very powerful effects for a very cheap cost, which means they are awesome cards to try to build around.

Sure some cringe people don't build around them, and I feel that taints many people's perspective of them, but I really love these cards when they are being used in good faith.

👍👍

[yeti1069]

Friday, May 24th 2024; Spinal Embrace|dmr

I know I've pulled a few blowouts with this card before. Always a riot.

I feel like I want to play this card, but can't ever justify the inclusion of such a narrow 6 CMC spell. It's fun, but just doesn't do what I need when I need it.

Monday, May 27th 2024; The Cyber-Controller

I have this in Kadena for testing. In theory, I can dump some mana into this, then draw a bunch of cards off of Kadena, and have some resources that I can potentially use via something like Primordial Mist. However, the couple of times it has shown up, the reality has been that it just didn't seem like a worthwhile play. Almost certainly getting cut. It might play slightly better in something like Marchesa, the Black Rose, where stolen creatures can be utilized later, but then its own X-based ETB will be fairly useless.

Tuesday, May 28th 2024; Howling Mine|brr and similar close functional reprints Font of Mythos and Temple Bell (the enchantment is different enough with play patterns and card type).

On the one hand, I like seeing these cards, because hey, free resources, but on the other, I certainly subscribe to the relative card advantage mentality, and view these as a direct threat by giving my "opponent" 3 cards to my 1. I've only ever played Howling Mine myself in decks that can consistently tap it, and then typically only play it when I have that effect available. I find that it's incredibly rare for someone to play one of these cards and win--more often, they feed someone else the resources they need to get ahead (sometimes that's me). If I have an abundance of removal, reusable removal, or removal that has no other targets and seems unlikely to have any for a while, I'll often get rid of these, to the ire of the rest of the table.

I think people who include these without a specific plan for how they break parity on them are making a mistake, especially if they're playing at anything above battlecruiser Magic.

[pokken]

I really do not like these cards because my deck design tends toward a place where if you give me an extra card per turn I'm going to go absolutely bananas--like my decks operate at a fairly tight tolerance with low ramp and card advantage counts and strong synergies, mostly, and if I can count on drawing extra cards, stuff just goes off the rails. I don't know why exactly this is but my win rate against opposing Howling Mine effects is very high.

And a side effect of that is it's very difficult to reason about how well your deck is doing if everybody's drawing a ton of cards from random hug effects. Like who knows if you have enough lands or whatever.

[PrimevalCommander]

I need another Temple Bell functional equivalent so I can force my opponents to draw cards outside of their turn. I am amazed with all the symmetrical draw and fixed wheels they have been printing that we haven't gotten another version of this.

Howling Mine can help turn on white's catch-up stuff like Smothering Tithe, Smuggler's Share and Trouble in Pairs, but I don't think there is a saturation of those to make Howling Mine worth it yet.

[TheGildedGoose]

I don't know why exactly this is but my win rate against opposing Howling Mine effects is very high.

Howling Mine is symmetrical only in a vacuum, as different decks and pilots have different degrees to which they can capitalize on it. Most Mine players I've seen are either Nekusar, the Mindrazeresque forced draw decks or Group Hug, neither of which tend to have great win percentages on their own for various reasons, and when you combine that with the fact that your deck is more likely to take advantage of the resources better than the other decks at the table, you find yourself winning even more games than normal.

And a side effect of that is it's very difficult to reason about how well your deck is doing if everybody's drawing a ton of cards from random hug effects. Like who knows if you have enough lands or whatever.

Hm, disrupting the expected state of the game with a new set of rules and building my deck to exploit that better than the others at the table sounds like a fun brew experiment. Stax is the most obvious example, as is Group Hug in theory, but hmm...

[pokken]

I need another Temple Bell functional equivalent so I can force my opponents to draw cards outside of their turn. I am amazed with all the symmetrical draw and fixed wheels they have been printing that we haven't gotten another version of this.

Howling Mine can help turn on white's catch-up stuff like Smothering Tithe, Smuggler's Share and Trouble in Pairs, but I don't think there is a saturation of those to make Howling Mine worth it yet.

I think there probably is if you branch out into Ledger Shredder / Faerie Mastermind colors. Mangara, the Diplomat and Monologue Tax can alos synergize since when people have more cards they cast more spells.

Another fun (for me) part for white/blue is that Rule of Law and Arcane Laboratory are fantastic with those effects too, as you just choke the rate of casting, but you have to be good at defending them :D

[Ruiner]

In general I definitely prefer Temple Bell, and similar "we all draw extra cards right now" effects over the "every turn the current player gets extra stuff" effects.

Playing a hug effect like that and getting the benefit last is annoying, with potential for never getting the benefit at all as well if the card is removed. There are obviously exceptions where these kinds of cards shine of course.