[mtgnexus] Random Card of the Day - North Star

[illakunsaa]

Im not sure why people are comparing this to corpse dance. Dance only returns the top creature card to play and exiles at the next end step. With burial you can return any creature and kess doesn't really care if it's a sorcery.

[3drinks]

Im not sure why people are comparing this to corpse dance. Dance only returns the top creature card to play and exiles at the next end step. With burial you can return any creature and kess doesn't really care if it's a sorcery.

Because a high majority of players - especially new - aren't aware that graveyard order does indeed matter and you're not allowed to rearrange willy nilly.

[3drinks]

Monday, February 3rd, 2020; Storm the Vault

[Sinis]

Monday, February 3rd, 2020; Storm the Vault

Among my favourite cards from RIX, I bought a foil when the Saheeli precon was spoiled.

I have played it in a Nicol Bolas treasure-themed deck, and it was pretty hype. Unlike Growing Rites of Itlimoc, this is the only way to have a Tolarian Academy analogue, and it occupies a neat space in the format's card pool. It's hella fun, and I love it.

[hyalopterouslemur]

Im not sure why people are comparing this to corpse dance. Dance only returns the top creature card to play and exiles at the next end step. With burial you can return any creature and kess doesn't really care if it's a sorcery.

Because a high majority of players - especially new - aren't aware that graveyard order does indeed matter and you're not allowed to rearrange willy nilly.

More that Corpse Dance is a potential wincon and five mana is a lot for Raise Dead, even if you can reuse it (costing 4b every turn). You could say "but whaddabout infinite mana" to which I say "I would play Searing Touch or Recruit the Worthy or Evincar's Justice or or Seething Anger or Elvish Fury or Lab Rats or Haze of Rage or Reiterate or Sprout Swarm (which really doesn't even require infinite mana, thank you convoke) or Wurmcalling. There's even Whispers of the Muse and Laboratory Maniac."

Sprout Swarm, by the way, is my favorite of those, since I just need a couple token doublers (or Intruder Alarm) to make it go infinite.

Anyway, Storm the Vault is pretty fun. First, it makes a good case for double strike, since you get two tokens if you do damage during both damage-dealing steps. Secondly, yeah, it's Tolarian Academy. And it's not that hard to get five artifacts. Thopter Assembly does it. So does Myr Battlesphere. So do a lot of treasure or clue cards. Or, you know, Mycosynth Lattice.

[Toshi]

Im not sure why people are comparing this to corpse dance.

Because a high majority of players - especially new - aren't aware that graveyard order does indeed matter and you're not allowed to rearrange willy nilly.

Nope.

Because it's from the same frigging set, also has Buyback and interacts with the graveyard in a (usually) more meaningful way.

When combined with any type of sac outlet Corpse Dance can be game-ending. It takes a whole lot of effort to get anywhere near that with Disturbed Burial.

[onering]

It's a 4 mana Academy. It's other drawbacks and bonuses are pretty minor by comparison.

[folding_music]

Academy's banned in EDH and good thing too, so I've always assumed Storm the Vault would elicit terrible groans. Kinda want one for my Arjun deck anyway - the sheer amount of ramp and utility trinkets you gather up naturally would open the Vault as an amazing side effect!

[Dunharrow]

It's an interesting card - obviously goes into any blue red deck with a lot of artifacts
But if you have a deck with a lot of evasive creatures, you will also get a lot of value.

I know I put it into a deck but don't remember which. It is not a color combo I use a lot.

[toctheyounger]

Yeah, Academy is nuts. This isn't, but that's a good thing. I run it in my Grixis deck purely because there's a predilection towards historic. It doesn't always flip but you're in a good place when it does. That being said, it's an obvious target for removal, so you do need to plan around flipping it quickly.

It compares pretty favorably in the cycle of flip lands from the set, purely because more so than any others from the cycle it gives you continued value even if you don't flip it.

[Sinis]

It compares pretty favorably in the cycle of flip lands from the set, purely because more so than any others from the cycle it gives you continued value even if you don't flip it.

Oh, I don't know; it compares favourably to Path of Mettle, Profane Procession and Hadana's Climb, but those are all pretty bad (of those, Hadana's being the most gameable one with a reasonable effect).

I think the best one is probably Journey to Eternity/Atzal, Cave of Eternity, which has been a scourge in my group, simply because it is extremely easy to enable, provides some great value as an enchantment, and can cause problems/loops with EWit, or other creatures. The ease of flippage + silly value just crushes it, IMO.

[toctheyounger]

It compares pretty favorably in the cycle of flip lands from the set, purely because more so than any others from the cycle it gives you continued value even if you don't flip it.

Oh, I don't know; it compares favourably to Path of Mettle, Profane Procession and Hadana's Climb, but those are all pretty bad (of those, Hadana's being the most gameable one with a reasonable effect).

I think the best one is probably Journey to Eternity/Atzal, Cave of Eternity, which has been a scourge in my group, simply because it is extremely easy to enable, provides some great value as an enchantment, and can cause problems/loops with EWit, or other creatures. The ease of flippage + silly value just crushes it, IMO.

The bar is pretty low for most of them. Of the mono colours only Itlimoc and Azcanta are widely playable. It probably sits in the middle of these for value if you can't (or don't want to) flip it, with Azcanta topping it and Itlimoc having a relatively tame ETB effect.

For the enemy colours most of them are pretty underwhelming. In my play with Atzal I've found it very resource thirsty. If you're in a deck with lean mana it's not really going to do much for you, and you really need to be able to sac your enchanted creature yourself, because there's no way the table wants Atzal flipped. Besides, it's value really does come from flipping it, the enchantment is fine but it is a one time thing with no real enduring value innately. And that's more what I was getting at with Catlacan; you get an Academy if you flip it, but if you can't or choose not to, you still get a steady stream of treasure tokens provided you can connect, which is pretty decent.

[MeowZeDung]

I really love the design, and the power is certainly there. I've personally only ever flipped it once, and then promptly had access to all the mana in the world. The trick is where to justify a card slot for it. There's plenty of good homes for it, but not in my current decks unfortunately. It comes close in my Jhoira, Weatherlight Captain, but my particular build isn't doing a ton on the combat step, so I wouldn't be making a lot of treasure. The other contender would be Brudiclad, Telchor Engineer, who would love the tokens and is usually connecting with at least one attacker, but currently has better options for token creation beyond 1 treasure per turn. This is in the same "Gosh, I love this card and really want to play it. . . but where?" category that I have Assemble the Legion, Ojutai Exemplars, Mizzium Transreliquat, etc. in.

[Serenade]

I think you just made a Kykar deck!

[Mookie]

Storm the Vault tilts me slightly, mostly because it's another artifact-friendly card for Breya, Etherium Shaper decks that I can't play in my Sharuum the Hegemon deck. Rawr.

Other than that, it's certainly a powerful effect - Tolarian Academy is banned for a reason. That said, it also requires a significant investment to flip - five artifacts is easy for dedicated artifact decks, but difficult to splash for. It does self-enable, at least. You need to have creatures to attack with, which may or may not be available (again, Breya's Thopters are a natural fit here). Note that similar to Thopter Spy Network, you can get multiple triggers in a single combat by attacking multiple people - it triggers once per player hit.

Examining the overall package, if you expect to flip it immediately, it's sort of like a super-Thran Dynamo that enters tapped (unless you have instants to spend your mana on, which you probably do). Which is a pretty good deal. It's also significantly better than Blinkmoth Urn, in that it isn't symmetric and you don't have to wait a full turn cycle for the payoff.

Side note: I really wish Path of Mettle were better - I'd love to play it in my Samut, Voice of Dissent deck, since it seems like a perfect fit there (synergizes with keywords, I have ways to untap lands, etc). Except I'm running a bunch of X/1s that die to the trigger, and I'll never flip it before I hit 5 mana and can play Samut, which means I can't run it as ramp. Rawr again.

[MeowZeDung]

I think you just made a Kykar deck!

I used to run assemble in kykar, but found it to be too slow

[3drinks]

Tuesday, February 4th, 2020; Gadwick, the Wizened

It feels like it plays similar to a Nin, the Pain Artist;deck without r. I'm not sure how accurate that is, or why I would play this over Nin.

[Sinis]

Tuesday, February 4th, 2020; Gadwick, the Wizened

It feels like it plays similar to a Nin, the Pain Artist;deck without r. I'm not sure how accurate that is, or why I would play this over Nin.

Okay, it has a second sentence in there. What can you do with that? Lots of Dismiss into Dream triggers, or shutting down their attack step.

I don't think Gadwick is great, but I don't think she's awful, either.

[toctheyounger]

Okay, it has a second sentence in there. What can you do with that? Lots of Dismiss into Dream triggers, or shutting down their attack step.

I don't think Gadwick is great, but I don't think she's awful, either.

She? I assumed as a Merlin archetype that it was a male character. Never really looked closely at the art. You know what they say about assumptions I guess.

I feel like there's enough to do with Gadwick around the second sentence; Dismiss into Dream, Willbreaker and various tap locks . I just don't think that's much fun, personally. She's definitely not in the 99 either. Seems like a card you would have to run as commander.

[WizardMN]

Okay, it has a second sentence in there. What can you do with that? Lots of Dismiss into Dream triggers, or shutting down their attack step.

I don't think Gadwick is great, but I don't think she's awful, either.

She? I assumed as a Merlin archetype that it was a male character. Never really looked closely at the art. You know what they say about assumptions I guess.

I feel like there's enough to do with Gadwick around the second sentence; Dismiss into Dream, Willbreaker and various tap locks . I just don't think that's much fun, personally. She's definitely not in the 99 either. Seems like a card you would have to run as commander.

Gadwick is male. You can tell from the Flavor text (and the art if you look close enough).

[lyonhaert]

Speaking of character gender, it was funny to stand around in a shop the other week (right around THB's release) catching bits of different conversations when Ashiok is discussed.

[toctheyounger]

Okay, it has a second sentence in there. What can you do with that? Lots of Dismiss into Dream triggers, or shutting down their attack step.

I don't think Gadwick is great, but I don't think she's awful, either.

She? I assumed as a Merlin archetype that it was a male character. Never really looked closely at the art. You know what they say about assumptions I guess.

I feel like there's enough to do with Gadwick around the second sentence; Dismiss into Dream, Willbreaker and various tap locks . I just don't think that's much fun, personally. She's definitely not in the 99 either. Seems like a card you would have to run as commander.

Gadwick is male. You can tell from the Flavor text (and the art if you look close enough).

Oh, his. Literally the first word. Thanks for that lol. I'll assume typo from Sinis then.

[Sinis]

She? I assumed as a Merlin archetype that it was a male character. Never really looked closely at the art. You know what they say about assumptions I guess.

Whoops! My wires are crossed.

I feel like there's enough to do with Gadwick around the second sentence; Dismiss into Dream, Willbreaker and various tap locks . I just don't think that's much fun, personally. She's definitely not in the 99 either. Seems like a card you would have to run as commander.

I guess, I'm blinded by the fact I like to draw cards, and that she then rewards those card draws by permitting you to squeeze a tiny bit more out of some of them. Perhaps not much fun, though.

[Segrus]

I'm planning to try out Gadwick in a Naban, Dean of Iteration deck (once it gets built, that is), which I think should make Gadwick's output a bit better. Outside of that I'm not sure where he'd fit.

[Myllior]

Gadwick is an exceedingly boring Commander option. Someone runs him in my playgroup and the one game I played against him ended after two hours with people conceding out of boredom.

Looking at EDHREC, the two most common cards in Gadwick, after Sol Ring and Counterspell, are Laboratory Maniac and Jace, Wielder of Mysteries. The Dramatic Reversal-Isochron Scepter|MRD combo is missing from a large number of these decks, so at least a quarter of those decks are trying to draw themselves out without infinite draw. It reminds me of the U/W control decks in Standard that ran Teferi, Hero of Dominaria, where the only win con was to get his emblem then use his -3 on himself repeatedly so you never deck out, but eventually your opponent will. Add in an two (or more) extra players and 39 extra cards per deck and you have a recipe for an obnoxious game.

He's probably fine in the 99 as another Blue Sun's Zenith, but as a Commander you have better options whether you're going for combo, wizard tribal or Dismiss into Dream/Willbreaker shenanigans.