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

[Mookie]

Deceiver of Form is awesome but impractical most of the time - 7 mana (including colorless) for an 8/8 with no keywords isn't very exciting, and occasionally transforming your team into a random creature is... fine, but not amazing. It really depends on what creatures you're running, and how much token production you have - upgrading a bunch of 1/1s into 4/4s for an alpha strike is good, but you won't get that every turn.

Where it gets interesting is when you have topdeck manipulation to throw something synergistic on top. Turning a bunch of small creatures into eldrazi is strong... and turning them into Pathbreaker Ibex is arguably even better. I can't think of many decks that both go wide and are likely to have topdeck manipulation, but it's not hard to do if you build around it a bit. One downside to doing so is that there aren't a lot of substitutes, but I suppose Infinite Reflection and Mirrorweave exist. Could make for a sweet (if somewhat gimmicky) deck.

[Dunharrow]

Cream of the crop lets you set-up your alpha strike the same turn you play Deceiver. Feel like it could be fun in a Rhys the redeemed deck.

[Hermes_]

maybe good in Jhoira of the Ghitu ?

[Sinis]

Saturday, April 25th, 2020; Deceiver of Form

It didn't quite make the cut in my Rashmi, Eternities Crafter top-deck manipulation deck, or my Aminatou pile.

There's a few requirements to make it good; you need to manipulate the top of your deck, you need to have a wide-ish board, you have to playing some number of backbreaking guys that you would want to turn into and you need to easily manage that cost. Very few decks are going to want to do all that, and get much benefit out of being able to perform those requirements for other cards.

It's not impossible, but I haven't managed to leverage it yet.

[3drinks]

Making your team a bunch of Reveillark copies seems pretty stronk.

[3drinks]

Sunday, April 26th, 2020; Metamorphic Alteration

Hmm. I wonder how good a second phantasmal image is that comes in aura form really is. Can't recall seeing this anywhere but I don't pay attention to corre set previews anyway.

[folding_music]

been playing this in a Callaphe deck that runs Rayne, Academy Chancellor, Hakim, Loreweaver, the Tempest merfolk who care about auras, Puppet Master and all that. a seriously old-school blue enchantment control deck that now has a finisher that shows up as an 11/3 creature that's hard to target. pretty good at a very casual level. It's a good card which varies massively in utility based on what everyone else is doing and that's one of the properties of an entertaining card to me.

[DirkGently]

It also has the tech of playing on an enemy to turn it into something useless. Honestly I think that's the default mode since using it on yourself takes setup and is risky.

[3drinks]

It also has the tech of playing on an enemy to turn it into something useless. Honestly I think that's the default mode since using it on yourself takes setup and is risky.

I love this. Turning commanders to Elvish Visionarys since '19!

[ZenN]

I've seen it used to turn a Birds of Paradise into an It That Betrays, and I've seen it brought back by a Sun Titan to put onto a Narset, Enlightened Master to turn her into a 1/1 human token.

It's definitely a fine card. I'm honestly a little surprised I haven't seen it played more. The fact that it can sometimes be Kasmina's Transmutation and sometimes be Eldrazi Conscription is some nice versatility, for only 2 mana.

The biggest thing against it is just that it does nothing by itself. You need to either have a dork of your own and someone have a sweet thing to copy, or else there needs to be both a dork on the table and something you want to gimp.

[ilovesaprolings]

Not a bad card. It can either turn your 1/1 into the best opponents' creature, or turn the best opponents' creature into a 1/1.
The power level isn't high, but it's really flexible

[onering]

Well awesome, I never thought of this as blue removal, now I'm going to give it a shot. Blue's removal suite just keeps growing.

[Sinis]

Sunday, April 26th, 2020; Metamorphic Alteration

With so many clones in the environment, this one is unremarkable as a clone.

It is, however, interesting if you want to dodge an ETB on the cloned creature. The poster child for that kind of corner case is Wormfang Manta; the copy never enters the battlefield as a copy, so you skip the ETB part, but can still get the death trigger. You can do this also with Vesuvan Shapeshifter, Vesuvan Doppelganger (switch to the thing with an undesirable ETB trigger during your upkeep) and a handful of other cards.

Of course, there aren't many cards where you're trying to do this, so Metamorphic Alteration (while being very aggressively costed) isn't exactly high on my list of includes.

[3drinks]

Monday, April 27th, 2020; Karn, Scion of Urza

I remember playing it in Traxos the Swolverine. Don't really recall how it did. Maybe that's telling to how it performed.

[ZenN]

Every time I've seen Karn, Scion of Urza's +1 used it has ended up permanently exiling something the controller really wanted.
His -2 is fine.

[SocorroTortoise]

Loses a lot of value compared to 60 card formats because you're never going to draw another copy to grab exiled cards with silver counters. Most people I play with are happy to attack card advantage engines, so this isn't going to stick around reliably. Four mana at sorcery speed to get the worse of your top 2 cards isn't great. If you're just using it for the token it's efficient enough, but even huge vanilla creatures are questionably valuable in this format.

It's not good if you only get one activation and solid enough if it sticks around. My experience with the format has been that those kinds of walkers almost never stick unless you're already in an excellent position, so this is too much of a win-more card for my taste.

[Hawk]

Definitely the weakest of the Karns - while Karn Liberated is nuking the world and archenemying it out, and Karn, the Great Creator is animating blockers and locking down boards and "wishing" for stuff that ate an exile, this guy is a mediocre card advantage engine. Heck I like him less than Karn, Silver Golem too despite being completely different cards - Karnfather is a great defensive lineman and enables some fun defensive, offensive, and destructive combos. As noted, +1 to draw one would be great - but +1 to draw the worst of your top two is frequently pretty rough especially when the better card is exiled. And for his -2...even if it was reliably making a 5/5 it would be merely okay in this format given the frailty of the token. For many decks, it is more like making a 3/3 which is totally fine but nothing to write home about.

He's not the worst 'walker currently in my 99 for Daretti, but he is among them. Budget restrictions have me running Sarkhan, the Dragonspeaker, Chandra Nalaar, and Chandra, Pyromaster instead of Sarkhan the Masterless, Sarkhan, Fireblood, Chandra, Acolyte of Flame, Chandra, Flamecaller, or Chandra, Torch of Defiance. Those three are the actual worst and the first I'll cut as I acquire better Chandras and Sarkhans - but being honest, this Karn is probably next in line. Yes, I'd actually keep Tibalt, the Fiend-Blooded in over Karn - yes that +1 is similarly dicey but two mana is great, and discarding isn't the end of the world.

I think he's worth a look in true pure colorless decks that are hard-up for advantage engines - he is worse than some powerful newcomer effects like Mystic Forge and Bonders' Enclave but roughly on par with Staff of Nin, Mind's Eye, and Arch of Orazca - and ultimately beggars can't be choosers. I think it's increasingly hard to justify him in even the most artifact heavy or Ux or Rx decks with those colors having access to infinitely better draw engines or token making effects.

[Outcryqq]

I really like the art on Karn, Scion of Urza.

[Hawk]

I really like the art on Karn, Scion of Urza.

Lol this is the "you have a beautiful personality" of Magic card evaluation.

[KMA_Again]

He also used to be worth about $30 instead of about $5 he is now. It shows the love, or lack thereof, after he left Standard.

[Mookie]

Wow, I didn't realize how much the price dropped. Karn, Scion of Urza is fine as a draw engine, but there are a fair number of alternatives in colorless that don't come with the downside of being able to be attacked. In terms of pure card advantage, if you alternate using the (+1) and (-1), it's a bit worse than just drawing a card each turn, since your opponents decide which card you get first. I'd consider it primarily if I could make use of the (-2) to pump out giant construct tokens - if you can stabilize behind some big bodies, it's a lot easier to protect Karn and draw extra cards. Plus the whole 'beating your opponents to death with 20/20 tokens' thing.

Another downside that can't be understated is that your opponents get to see the cards you can get from Karn. So, if you reveal a bad card and a good card, your opponents will likely give you the bad card, then be strongly incentivized to kill Karn to deny you the good card. That makes Karn less likely to stick around than most pure draw engines. There are arguably some upsides to playing Karn in a more political deck - you can make a deal with an opponent to give you the card you want, in which case it's better than just drawing a card - but this isn't a consistent strategy.

[Wallycaine]

Wow, I didn't realize how much the price dropped. Karn, Scion of Urza is fine as a draw engine, but there are a fair number of alternatives in colorless that don't come with the downside of being able to be attacked. In terms of pure card advantage, if you alternate using the (+1) and (-1), it's a bit worse than just drawing a card each turn, since your opponents decide which card you get first. I'd consider it primarily if I could make use of the (-2) to pump out giant construct tokens - if you can stabilize behind some big bodies, it's a lot easier to protect Karn and draw extra cards. Plus the whole 'beating your opponents to death with 20/20 tokens' thing.

Another downside that can't be understated is that your opponents get to see the cards you can get from Karn. So, if you reveal a bad card and a good card, your opponents will likely give you the bad card, then be strongly incentivized to kill Karn to deny you the good card. That makes Karn less likely to stick around than most pure draw engines. There are arguably some upsides to playing Karn in a more political deck - you can make a deal with an opponent to give you the card you want, in which case it's better than just drawing a card - but this isn't a consistent strategy.

From playing with it in standard, I would point out that the +1 and -1 tends to be slightly better than drawing a card twice, because you're not forced to use the -1 if the second card out of your top two isn't what you need right now. It's a small effect, but there's often times you'd +1 him and then +1 again, either because the opponent made the "wrong" choice, you don't need that other card in the current board state, or because you flipped two lands off the first plus, and don't really need the second land right now anyways. That said, all of this only applies if he is surviving to activate again, which is the real weakness for him in Commander. 6 Loyalty is a lot in regular play, but not nearly as much in multiplayer, and that's where he runs into a lot of trouble.

[3drinks]

Tuesday, April 28th, 2020; Mirage Mirror

So it's been about a year or so. Does this still frequently show up in games? If no, how often do you see it? Do you play it yourself? I never found myself wanting to hold mana up for this.

Although, I do so enjoy using this to piggyback off your sylvan library...

[Mookie]

I keep meaning to try Mirage Mirror out, but somehow haven't gotten around to it. Sitting across from it, it certainly has appeared to be a flexible card, and its ability to turn into a land makes it pretty hard to throw removal at. However, I don't think I've ever seen a game where it absolutely dominated - at the very least, it needs strong cards worth copying to already be on the board, and paying 2 mana to copy something temporarily is a significant upkeep cost.

One reason I haven't been able to fit it into a deck is that it doesn't really have any obvious synergies. Unlike a normal Clone, I can't copy a card's ETB effect, and it also won't get the upkeep effect from a card like Phyrexian Arena. There are also a lot of cards that are redundant in multiples. As a result, there aren't a ton of cards in my decks that I specifically want to copy with it. I imagine a more common use case is to copy something an opponent has played - making use of something like an opponent's Etali, Primal Storm or Cabal Coffers is pretty strong. But obviously, that depends a lot on what my opponents are running, and whether those cards have any synergy with my own gameplan.

Still, running a card specifically for its flexibility (and without a plan for how to use it) is a perfectly valid option. It somewhat reminds me of Narset's Reversal, a card I actually was able to fit into decks without knowing exactly what it would do. In that case, I just assigned it a base case in my mental model of copying a ramp spell (such as Cultivate or Explosive Vegetation), and decided I would be happy if it were at least that in the majority of games. For Mirage Mirror, I'd probably assign a base case of copying some sort of generic beater or utility creature, like Sun Titan or Blood Artist. Would I be happy with that? For some decks, yes, and for other decks, no.

[DirkGently]

I love this card. It generally flies under the radar since it can only copy what's already there, but it can provide some major value. Copying sylvan library is cute...copying necropotence is a hell of a lot better, though. You don't even have to deal with the downsides! It threatens to be the best blocker on the field, so it makes you much harder to attack just by existing, and almost always has something to get value from.

It's also very hard to kill since it can turn into a land in response to removal, which protects it from most removal that might kill it.

Sometimes you can activate it multiple times to pull off shenanigans. For example, target Dragon Tyrant and then moltensteel dragon, pay a bunch of life to pump while it's moltensteel, let the second activation resolve and swing for a ton of damage.

It's a pretty high skill-cap card, between all the tricks it can pull and how much field-awareness improves its potential. It's probably one of my favourite card designs in recent memory.

I don't think it's the MOST competitive card, but it's really good and a fun card. If I can find a reason to include it, I will.