MTGNexus

For my pick, I nominate Spider Spawning. Kinda obvious, but is it not what we came to do?

Easy yes to spawning.

3drinks wrote: ↑

1 year ago

I'd like to see more conversation on concoction (which I love, but this kind of thing is kind of my bag baby, so I'm bias) before issuing a confirmation as it might not be a slam dunk.

For my additional thoughts on Sinister Concoction, let's break the card down. First, the mana value is only , so I feel it is easy to 'splash'. It can be cast easily in early and late game. It is also not going to be missed if thrown into the yard, either by mill or discard. Basically a card you aren't going to miss but it has utility at any point in the game.

The ability cost kind of looks like a lot because you need mana, life, something to discard and mill a card. but as aliciaofthevast already said, we want to do all those things. Mana is only again, so nothing. 1 life, also nothing. Mill a card, that is a bonus for us. Discard can be tricky if we are low on cards in hand BUT we have access to black draw spells, so we shouldn't be low on cards in hand often. The discard is also useful with any reanimation effects.

The effect, that's just a bonus in my opinion, and we can destroy our own creatures to maximize delirium, even better if the creature has a death trigger, like Solemn Simulacrum for example.

Plus for people who don't know it, its just 1 mana enchantment that needs a lot to active and so not a threat, for us its a delirium engine.

So overall, I don't see why not include it. Good game scenario would be, turn one Concoction, turn 2 discard a big creature, kill enemy mana dork, cast Reanimate. You get the idea.

3drinks wrote: ↑

1 year ago

There's a review process at the end. I think I pretty well covered the bases we need to be able to fire on, but I'm nothing if not flexible (until you see me continually pitch Arcum's Astrolabe into these things).

All right, I'll gather my notes about lands for later.

TheAmericanSpirit wrote: ↑

1 year ago

For my pick, I nominate Spider Spawning. Kinda obvious, but is it not what we came to do?

Yes from me. With enough self mill we shouldn't struggle to have decent number of creatures in the yard.

Fair warning, I suspect I'm going to be away from the computer at least tomorrow, maybe more as I'm moving stuff into my new apartment. Which should be fine as there's lots of conversation to be had.

Yay to Sinister Concoction and Spider Spawning.

For my pick, I'm going with Nyx Weaver. It fills the graveyard, can act as a Regrowth, fuels Delirium by having two card types, and most importantly, is a spider. I really want some spiders to be part of this gameplan, but most of them are bad. I still want the good ones though.

Yes Nyx Weaver for all reasons mentioned.
Spider Spawning should be good assuming we have enough creatures.
Sinister Concoction is not great. It's a 2 for 1 against yourself. It gives the same number of card types as a basic kill spell.
The upside is that if we have a bunch of dredge this helps us discard it.

So... yes on concoction assuming we have cards we want to discard.

RxPhantom wrote: ↑

1 year ago

For my pick, I'm going with Nyx Weaver. It fills the graveyard, can act as a Regrowth, fuels Delirium by having two card types, and most importantly, is a spider. I really want some spiders to be part of this gameplan, but most of them are bad. I still want the good ones though.

Yes from me on Weaver. Don't think it needs more elaboration, ticks all the boxes.

Dunharrow wrote: ↑

1 year ago

Sinister Concoction is not great. It's a 2 for 1 against yourself.

Can you please elaborate on that? I just think looking at it only from the perspective of discarding a card is narrow. As I mentioned in my post, the ceiling is higher than that, in my opinion. At minimum, you can target your own creatures, so when we are on a turn before wanting to cast Ishkanah and don't have delirium yet, you can use Concoction to kill a creature, discard an artifact, land, instant or sorcery, send Concoction to the yard, and mill something. So pretty good chance to having delirium if you've already cast/mill something.

And it only scales up from there. Beside Dredge, we can be looking at spells with Flashback (or other ability to cast them from the yard) and targeting creatures that want to die. Heck, even card with Madness. I kind of wouldn't see it as a kill spell at all, but a Delirium engine.

Avacyn Believer wrote: ↑

1 year ago

RxPhantom wrote: ↑

1 year ago

For my pick, I'm going with Nyx Weaver. It fills the graveyard, can act as a Regrowth, fuels Delirium by having two card types, and most importantly, is a spider. I really want some spiders to be part of this gameplan, but most of them are bad. I still want the good ones though.

Yes from me on Weaver. Don't think it needs more elaboration, ticks all the boxes.

Dunharrow wrote: ↑

1 year ago

Sinister Concoction is not great. It's a 2 for 1 against yourself.

Can you please elaborate on that? I just think looking at it only from the perspective of discarding a card is narrow. As I mentioned in my post, the ceiling is higher than that, in my opinion. At minimum, you can target your own creatures, so when we are on a turn before wanting to cast Ishkanah and don't have delirium yet, you can use Concoction to kill a creature, discard an artifact, land, instant or sorcery, send Concoction to the yard, and mill something. So pretty good chance to having delirium if you've already cast/mill something.

And it only scales up from there. Beside Dredge, we can be looking at spells with Flashback (or other ability to cast them from the yard) and targeting creatures that want to die. Heck, even card with Madness. I kind of wouldn't see it as a kill spell at all, but a Delirium engine.

I just mean that you are spending 2 cards to kill 1 card. I understand that it can enable delirium, but it is still a 2 for 1. If you start killing your own creature with it it is a 3 for 1.

In this deck, it is clearly better than it would usually be, but I think it is worth mentioning that it is a bad card made a bit better, not a good card that is amazing in this deck.

In any case, I voted for it.

Dunharrow wrote: ↑

1 year ago

a bad card made a bit better, not a good card that is amazing in this deck.

Ah, fair enough, we can agree on this.

I'll +1 weaver and concoction as needed. I think for both if they have a home it's in delirium.

Nyx Weaver and Spider Spawning don't feel like they need much additional elaboration. I approve of both.

Just wanted to also clarify, if it's in any doubt, that I said yes to Sinister Concoction precisely because it's a terrible card that becomes tolerable-to-good in this deck. I love finding niche homes for cards that are borderline unplayable elsewhere, and that's exactly what Sinister Concoction has going here. It's still not particularly efficient removal; the costs just become acceptable because we want cards in our graveyard.

Jemolk wrote: ↑

1 year ago

I love finding niche homes for cards that are borderline unplayable elsewhere..."

BIG AGREE

But seriously, that's a big part of Commander's appeal for me, even in this age of relentless optimization and product fatigue.

Looks like we're al in agreement on Nyx Weaver, Spider Spawning, and Sinister Concoction, and the concoction really makes me happy. So those are confirms.

For today, let's put @Dunharrow and @Jemolk on the clock.

All decks need graveyard hate; even graveyard decks. And what's better than filling necessary functions with synergistic cards? I nominate Curse of Clinging Webs. It makes spiders. It hates on an opponent's graveyard. It leaves ours completely alone. Sure, instant speed would be an improvement, but this should still be pretty darn good for our purposes.

Jemolk wrote: ↑

1 year ago

All decks need graveyard hate; even graveyard decks. And what's better than filling necessary functions with synergistic cards? I nominate Curse of Clinging Webs. It makes spiders. It hates on an opponent's graveyard. It leaves ours completely alone. Sure, instant speed would be an improvement, but this should still be pretty darn good for our purposes.

I agree on having graveyard hate. I can get behind the Curse as it fits the theme, and people will want to destroy it, so that's another enchantment for Delirium, though at some stage we should also add something that hits opponent's whole yard.

Yay to Curse of Clinging Webs. It does the things.

As for the larger topic of graveyard hate, this deck will have access to Bojuka Bog, and I imagine we'll squeeze some others in along the way.

Yeah I'll get in on the curse too, that's pretty decent and ticks all of our boxes.

I'm not sure I'd call on board hate true hate given it can be played around well enough but I do like that the card does what we want to do anyway so I'll yay that.

That curse is cool, never heard of it. Yay.

Disclaimer for 3Drinks, I will never be on the boards during the weekend. I don't even open my computer on the weekend.

My nomination is Grave Pact. I can't imagine us playing grindy midrange without it.

Grave Pact seems rather strong with the spider-ristocrats plan that everyone else is pushing towards. I'll yea that one. Definitely a painful card for our opponents. I do want to note, though, that Grave Pact, and its counterpart Dictate of Erebos, will make us the problem in the eyes of some of our opponents, just because of how they make it near-impossible to keep creatures on the table, and that threat level increase is something to keep an eye on.

I'm not massively convinced with pact. It's the sort of card you do really need a significant architecture of sacrifice (name of my death metal album, calling it now) in place to really leverage well. That could well be the case down the line but as of right now all we have is Steve and concoction. The spiders themselves are vanilla af, and realistically is we want to make use of our commanders last ability to it's utmost we want our critters in play.

That said I can get behind pact as a 'dont swing at me because I will chump block and wreck your board', but again if that's the best were getting from pact I don't know that it's the best fit.

I'd l I'll l Ike to see more back and forth on the whither tos and why fors, but for know I think I'm on nay.

toctheyounger wrote: ↑

1 year ago

I'm not massively convinced with pact. It's the sort of card you do really need a significant architecture of sacrifice (name of my death metal album, calling it now) in place to really leverage well. That could well be the case down the line but as of right now all we have is Steve and concoction. The spiders themselves are vanilla af, and realistically is we want to make use of our commanders last ability to it's utmost we want our critters in play.

That said I can get behind pact as a 'dont swing at me because I will chump block and wreck your board', but again if that's the best were getting from pact I don't know that it's the best fit.

I'd l I'll l Ike to see more back and forth on the whither tos and why fors, but for know I think I'm on nay.

I guess part of how I see this deck working involves sacrifice loops with our commander to make more tokens.
But we haven't built that in yet so I get your POV.

RxPhantom wrote: ↑

1 year ago

As for the larger topic of graveyard hate, this deck will have access to Bojuka Bog, and I imagine we'll squeeze some others in along the way.

Good shout, and it is already on the lands list, so 3drinks thought of it ahead I see.

Jemolk wrote: ↑

1 year ago

I do want to note, though, that Grave Pact, and its counterpart Dictate of Erebos, will make us the problem in the eyes of some of our opponents, just because of how they make it near-impossible to keep creatures on the table, and that threat level increase is something to keep an eye on.

toctheyounger wrote: ↑

1 year ago

That said I can get behind pact as a 'dont swing at me because I will chump block and wreck your board', but again if that's the best were getting from pact I don't know that it's the best fit.

I agree with being cautious about high threat cards like the Pact, in my eyes it makes anyone running a priority to eliminate (unless someone else is near winning) because I will expect them to play more cards like that. Which for me raises the question of what are we doing with it? Soft lock to try grind the game out, or a part of wincon loop? The first option doesn't sit with me as a deck builder simply because I am not fan of stax games, but the second I'd be happy to work it, we need cards to end the game. I just don't want it to be like a situation of overloading Rift and having no win follow up

Dunharrow wrote: ↑

1 year ago

I guess part of how I see this deck working involves sacrifice loops with our commander to make more tokens.
But we haven't built that in yet so I get your POV.

Which bring me onto this point... maybe the difficulty suggesting cards like the Pact is not being able to suggest more than one card, and this feels like one of those where we should be considering a number of cards interacting together than just one. I am not sure how this was overcome in the past build threads?

For now I am okay to say yes to the Pact, but maybe we should evaluate how it fits in later?

Avacyn Believer wrote: ↑

1 year ago

Which bring me onto this point... maybe the difficulty suggesting cards like the Pact is not being able to suggest more than one card, and this feels like one of those where we should be considering a number of cards interacting together than just one. I am not sure how this was overcome in the past build threads?

Yeah pretty much this. Pact feels like it's just a little further downstream than we should be looking currently. We can do some sac things, but I think we bake those in first and see if the synergy goes deep enough before we commit to a piece that heavy into attrition mechanics.

Dunharrow wrote: ↑

1 year ago

I guess part of how I see this deck working involves sacrifice loops with our commander to make more tokens.
But we haven't built that in yet so I get your POV.

I hadn't really thought of that before now, but it probably is one of the better ways to get our arachnid count up to a reasonable level, and it saves us having to run objectively bad spiders. I can get behind that if we've got the depth of reanimation to make it work.

I'll just say for now I'm on the fence; if Pact gets close enough to get into the list I'll nudge it over the line with a yea.

I'm fine with tabling Pact for now, too. Is there anything else up for discussion rn?