[mtgnexus] Random Card of the Day - Spinal Embrace

[pokken]

That one person humility is pretty savage too overwhelming splendor

[hyalopterouslemur]

Basically this is how you search for Overwhelming Splendor, though Academy Rector is better.

[Serenade]

AND she doesn't exile herself! Dang, I might have to find room for her. I had forgotten there was more curse support in that block.

[Mookie]

I've seen a few curse decks in action, and Bitterheart Witch showed up in most of them. Turns out Academy Rector-lite is still a pretty good card. And while Rector can fetch a much larger pool of cards, I suspect any non-enchantress deck will plan on getting the same one or two cards every time (coughomnisciencecough). Meanwhile, curse decks have a pretty wide toolbox of cards to shut people down - Overwhelming Splendor can take many players out by itself, but Curse of Death's Hold, Curse of Echoes, and Cruel Reality are also quite nasty. And that's before we get into Curse of Misfortunes - 'curse for more curses' isn't quite as catchy as 'wish for more wishes', but it gets really unpleasant really fast.

As for the body itself... a 1/2 for 5 isn't exciting, but between the deathtouch and the death trigger, it's excellent for warding off attacks. And while five mana is a bit much for a tutor, it also goes directly into play, which makes it a pretty good deal (even if you aren't cheating out a more expensive curse). Curse decks tend to want games to go longer anyway, to get more value from them.

Anyway, 'target opponent questions their life choices'/10 in curse decks, 0/10 elsewhere.

[3drinks]

Tuesday, January 21st, 2020; Telemin Performance

Ever since an un[sic]fortunate typo, this card became unofficially known as Telemundo Performance for us...

[Myllior]

To be honest, I haven't got the slightest clue how the name or art of this card relate to its effect.

As far as use goes, I feel like you're either using this as a budget, but very bad version of Bribery (please don't do this; just run something else), or you're attempting to mill a player out by first removing all the creatures from their deck, which seems like a pretty difficult hoop to jump through.

It looks like it should be part of some crazy combo, but I can't find it. I wouldn't even use it in an Eye of the Storm and Knowledge Exploitation loop if I found it in an opponent's deck, because it will mill the instants and sorceries that I want to keep the loop going. I'd just use it as an extra EotS trigger and then never cast the copies of it.

I really feel like I must be missing something important here.

[schweinefett]

Does anyone know if there are cards like

• artificial evolution

but for enchantment subtypes? it could possibly make it more playable. academy rector in a shrine? or a quest? saga?

....cartouche? actually, forget it. It's not good enough.

edit: Whoops, didn't see that it was another card of the day.
It's not all that bad, really. You could make it do some amount of work if you know that your opponent runs worldly tutor, and if you somehow could teferi-flash or quicken it in.
It's a lot of work for a cute effect, but hey. It's EDH-world, where you spend all your card advantage and tempo to get silly value!

[Hermes_]

Could be used against a jhoira of the ghitu deck but beyond that I got nothing....

[PrimevalCommander]

This saw some play in my group circa 2012/13 and before when the format was young and slow. You would play this on the opponents playing the splashiest creatures and hope to hit a bomb. Not very consistent, but honestly synergy was more of an afterthought in those days, and goodstuff was much more common. So this was a way to have a little fun and try to cheat in your opponents big fatties.

Not useful today, but I immediately recognized the card name in the thread title. Good times.

[ilovesaprolings]

I honestly think it's a fair card. However, in my meta bribery is too strong.

[Dunharrow]

Let's imagine it was 3 mana, but it only got creatures with mana cost 4 or less. I think it would be highly playable.
5 mana to get a dork feels bad.
Maybe if it had a clause that said "if the revealed creature has CMC 3 or less, return Telemin Performance it its owner's hand"

[cryogen]

I remember seeing someone cast Hinder on someone's general in a spellslinger deck then follow it up with this. RIP their entire library.

[lyonhaert]

I remember a story of someone hitting Phage the Untouchable with this.

[3drinks]

I baited someone into hitting my Leveler once with a worldly tutor in response... Never again did they cast that crap at me.

That's almost as sucky as the smug jerk that spent bribery at my Alesha slivers. "Enjoy your necrotic sliver, jerk!"

[Toshi]

I had this in my Talrand, Sky Summoner deck for years, when that deck was a lot cuter than it is today.

It's certainly a fun card, but the more our Meta transitioned from haymakers to synergies, the shorter this fell. I was used to hitting Primordials, Titans, Eldrazis and the likes, but you certainly don't want to hit dorks or niche interaction utility creatures.

Another allstar from back then was Gather Specimen, which "aged" a lot better. Sure, is a lot, but there are so many situation where its effect is still nuts.

[pokken]

Ah, my favorite pointless but coo tech against legacy storm. Enjoy getting decked you creatureless monster I did it once and my opponent laughed his ass off.

In EDH I think [mention]NoNeedToBragoBoutIt[/mention] hit the nail on the head. Much like bribery it has not aged well.

[Hermes_]

I remember a story of someone hitting Phage the Untouchable with this.

ouch

[Mookie]

Telemin Performance is usually going to be worse than Bribery - what you get is random, which means you'll probably get a utility creature or something inconsequential. And going with the recurring theme of 'synergy is important', random creatures from your opponents' decks aren't always going to synergize with your own deck.

However, it also has a secret hidden mode against creature-light decks, which is a massive mill card. Knowing that a given deck is running a low number of creatures does require some amount of knowledge of your meta, but it's worth consideration if you care about mill. I've never actually run into it, but it's also the main reason I'm running a single creature in my otherwise-creatureless Zedruu deck. Maybe that's a sign that I should just go full creatureless....?

[hyalopterouslemur]

This is one of those "depends on the meta" things. Now with the additional fact that decks which run a lot of fatties tend to exploit the graveyard. And the randomness does not help. What it does do is make for insta-kills against creature-light decks, if you have Bloodchief Ascension active.

[BeneTleilax]

So, you Worldly Tutored for a Craterhoof Behemoth?

[pokken]

Hoof is pretty bad on someone else's turn

[3drinks]

Wednesday, January 22nd, 2020; Heretic's Punishment

I remember trying so hard to make this work, and never truly getting the return on it to justify it. What are your experiences with it?

[tstorm823]

I also want to love it. I love the side-game of trying to guess if you can kill a creature or not. The 4 per activation I actually think is pretty fair, but the 5 cmc is way too much. If you could plop this down in a reactive deck, particularly one that uses the graveyard, on like turn 1, and then just have a repeatable answer to likely only small things on board later, I'd give it a shot again somewhere (and shout "Time Roulette Go!"), but tapping 5 mana on your turn to do nothing is the fast track to a game getting out of hand if you're trying to play the control deck at the table.

[ilovesaprolings]

One time a friend played combustible gearhulk. I didn't let him draw and got 15 damage right in my face.
He played it in another game, i didn't let him draw and got 20 damage on my face.
Now i always let him draw these damn 3 cards.

This thing looks like it's trying to do the same thing, but in a really expensive and crappy way. Pay 5 to do nothing and then pay 4 to do an effect only if you milled something good?
I could see this maybe in a reanimator with red (like sedris), but even there the initial cost is too high imho.

[3drinks]

I see this as a natural in a Feldon deck, but I'd rather just Faithless Looting fir that anyway.

Sweet design hampered by overly prohibitive costs.