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

[pokken]

I've been blown out enough times by big game hunter to think it's usually right to play if you have even a modest chance of discarding it. Not sure I play it without being able to madness it though, it's just narrow enough I'd play chupes first if I couldn't get it for B.

That time I got key to the city'd on a lethal attack ugh.

[ZenN]

The restriction just misses too many relevant targets. Unless I'm specifically playing a deck that is likely to take advantage of the Madness ability, I have a hard time imagining ever choosing to play Big Game Hunter over Ravenous Chupacabra, Plaguecrafter, and Murderous Rider.

Yes, I'm aware Plaguecrafter doesn't technically do the same thing, but realistically they fight for the same slots.

[3drinks]

Are you ok there, bud?

I may or may not be mildly bittre towards the sixth allied colour Simic getting windmill bombs in every set. Lilbit :laugh:

[Hawk]

I too feel like you really need to be abusing Madness to get the most of this and I've never run it in any deck. But, to crunch some numbers....

- This actually hits a full 10/20, or 50%, of the top non-'walker commanders of the last two years. As a point of comparison, Nekrataal and Bone Shredder only hits 6/20.
- This does only hit 11/50 of the top creatures of the last two years compared to Nekrataal hitting 31/50...but, grain of salt, it's not like you were going to realistically be Nekrataaling Eternal Witness or Wood Elves right?
- If I instead look at the top 30 "creatures you'd actually want to burn a removal spell on that aren't indestructible" of the last two years, we have a much closer 12/30 for Big Game Hunter compared to 19/30 for Nekrataal and friends - still a lead, but less of an insurmountable one.

And that's all in a vacuum - for instance, Hunter misses Shalai but only until she activates her ability, at which point he's a hit. Anthems, counters, auras, equipment - all of them can let Hunter turn misses into hits. The bigger they are and all that jazz.

Nowadays it's all moot since Ravenous Chupacabra hits it all, but I'd say it's closer than you think and closer than I thought. BRB adding this to my Gitrog Monster deck

[Mookie]

Are you ok there, bud?

I may or may not be mildly bittre towards the sixth allied colour Simic getting windmill bombs in every set. Lilbit :laugh:

Hmmm.... besides Prophet of Kruphix, and Oko, Thief of Crowns*, I'm pretty sure no playable Simic cards have ever been printed.

Now, Gruul on the other hand - that's a problem color. Just look at Quartzwood Crasher - it doubles the amount of trampling power you have every turn! If it survives three turn cycles, that's almost enough power to kill the entire table! Which is way scarier than Kinnan, Bonder Prodigy + Basalt Monolith + Walking Ballista killing the table on turn 3, or Emergent Ultimatum tutoring up Omniscience, or storming off with Song of Creation, or cheating things out with Illuna, Apex of Wishes. Because all of those are perfectly fair and reasonable interactions from the latest set.

*ignoring Leovold, Emissary of Trest, Once Upon a Time, Veil of Summer, Mana Drain, Primeval Titan, and Sylvan Primordial, because none of those are Simic.

[lyonhaert]

Madness-cast Big Game Hunter for 'free' with Skirge Familiar.

[3drinks]

Friday, May 1st, 2020; Tamiyo, the Moon Sage

🙄 the nightmares will persist indefinitely.

[Mookie]

I expect most of the comments re: Tamiyo, the Moon Sage will be about her ultimate... which is, admittedly, sort of ridiculous. You can get it instantly with Doubling Season, and it lets you loop Time Warp / Cyclonic Rift / etc.

However, I'd like to call attention to her (+1) ability to lock down troublesome creatures - like Frost Titan, she's quite solid at shutting down voltron strategies, and blue doesn't have access to that many good Frost Breath effects. Obviously stronger in 1v1, but keeping a creature (or other problematic permanent) locked down can have some useful political implications, especially if it's something hard to kill like Blightsteel Colossus. While your opponents are certainly incentivized to stop her from reaching her ultimate, I do believe that she often sticks around for longer than many more selfish planeswalkers due to this ability.

Additionally, her (-2) Borrowing 100,000 Arrows ability is also pretty solid. Easiest to use in a more aggressive go-wide deck, since you can attack with a bunch of creatures, then draw cards off them. However, it's also a decent response to an opponent's alpha strike. Realistically, I don't think it's hard to draw 2-3 cards off it per activation.

Put it together, and Tamiyo is a very respectable planeswalker. She's likely been outclassed by newer ones (such as Teferi, Hero of Dominaria and other Ob Nixilis Reignited-templated walkers), and not as splashy or threatening as Jace the Mind Sculptor or Tezzeret the Seeker, but I do think her original incarnation to be a pretty sweet card.

[Dunharrow]

Does the most work when people want it to stay around. Like if someone played a Winter Orb or if there is a scary attack trigger on board.
I have seen the ult a couple of times. Even Counterspells become a nuisance.

[lyonhaert]

Additionally, her (-2) Borrowing 100,000 Arrows ability is also pretty solid. Easiest to use in a more aggressive go-wide deck, since you can attack with a bunch of creatures, then draw cards off them. However, it's also a decent response to an opponent's alpha strike. Realistically, I don't think it's hard to draw 2-3 cards off it per activation.

Well, not in response per se, but afterward if you weren't the target of the alpha strike, if it was fogged, etc. Unless vigilance (which is one of my favorite abilities).

If one doesn't have many creatures yet or somebody open to attack, in a superfriends deck Honor-Worn Shaku could tap the walkers, Sarkhan the Masterless could turn them into creatures, then draw with Tamiyo. Since it opens them to creature removal it strikes me as an emergency, "need to dig for an answer" kind of maneuver, but if followed in that order there isn't an opportunity for creature removal between Sarkhan's ability resolving and activating Tamiyo's. And somebody might be dying to a crackback if Sarkhan was a surprise.

[Sinis]

Friday, May 1st, 2020; Tamiyo, the Moon Sage

<less about the card, more about my Magic experiences>

I returned to Magic around Mirrodin Besieged after a 10+ year hiatus specifically for EDH, but Avacyn Restored was the first set that I played limited in and started attending LGS events for (really just a prerelease and several drafts). I remember drafting my one copy of Tamiyo, and thinking nothing of it for years.

It wasn't until I ulted her and Lightning Bolted everyone to death that I realized just how stupid her ult was.

I may or may not be mildly bittre towards the sixth allied colour Simic getting windmill bombs in every set. Lilbit

Green is the real culprit, here. Green has been getting extreme power creep for around a decade; their full-on claim of Fight in the colour pie (it should have been red!), the efficiency of giant creatures that almost always have powerful and relevant abilities, etc. It gets my goat a little that Simic is the only colour that got two mutates while every other enemy colour pair got one.

[ZenN]

Tamiyo, the Moon Sage was printed at a time when I was deep into competitive constructed play. Grinding PTQs, travelling around to GPs, playing LGS events 2-3 days a week, so on and so forth. As such, I both saw her played a lot and played her a lot myself in Standard. She is definitely great for a control deck in 1v1 matchups. Being able to curve a Day of Judgment or Supreme Verdict into her and freeze whatever creature the opponent just played was always strong. She's a super solid walker in general.

Sadly, unless you're specifically playing a planeswalker focused deck, the bar for walkers in a multiplayer format is really high. They need to be cheap and/or have a meaningful effect the turn they hit the table. Against 3 other people, freezing one person's thing just isn't gonna cut it most of the time. Her -2 is still solid, as you should pretty regularly be able to get 2 or 3 cards off of it, sometimes more, but if you're just playing her for card draw then there are better options.

Her ultimate is obviously insane, but unless you're playing Doubling Season, Deepglow Skate, proliferate, etc, then it's probably never happening. I can't speak for others, but I know in my group there's a standing unwritten rule of "attack the open planeswalker".

[Hawk]

For mono-blue 'walkers, she's pretty rock solid. She's not quite solid enough to justify just jamming into a deck that doesn't A) have a superfriends subtheme or B) go wide enough to be interested in her -2 alone in a vacuum (which, notably unlike Borrowing 100,000 Arrows can target you), but if your deck does one or two of those things she's awesome. Her ultimate is stupid, and one of the best things you can do post Doubling Season (I prefer the Timmy highrolliness of immediately ultimating Jace, Architect of Thought, Tamiyo, Field Researcher or Ugin, the Spirit Dragon but this is a slower and much more reliable win). Unlike that Jace and Tamiyo 2.0, Moon Sage provides a reasonable way of surviving until you draw stuff later thanks to her ability to "freeze" threats or draw a ton versus a swarm.

In terms of ranking blue walkers, EDHREC has "top 10 most played monoblue" as:

1. Narset, Parter of Veils
2. Jace, Wielder of Mysteries
3. Tezzeret the Seeker
4. Jace, the Mind Sculptor
5. Jace Beleren
6. Tezzeret, Artifice Master
7. Jace, Unraveler of Secrets
8. Tamiyo, the Moon Sage
9. Teferi, Temporal Archmage
10. Jace, Memory Adept

I post this mostly because I was surprised to see Tamiyo 1.0 so low on that list. The top three make total sense; mini-Narsest is insanely powerful in a very generic sort of way, Jace WoM is a more self-sustaining and fun Lab Man, Tezzeret is out of control as both a tutor and a combo enabler for any artifact-heavy build. But I'd argue that Tamiyo deserves more homes than the next several - Mind Sculptor feels like pure flexing in this format and rarely feels great, baby Jace 1.0 is a fine group hug draw card but nothing special, M20 Tezz is a decent artifact planeswalker but how many do you need, and Unraveler of Secrets just seems mediocre in general.

As another tangent, this especialy surprises me considering that Blue is almost always present in Superfriends - of the 4,031 "Superfriends" decks present in the "Top Commanders" section of EDHRecs, only 268 don't have blue in their color identity.

[3drinks]

I may or may not be mildly bittre towards the sixth allied colour Simic getting windmill bombs in every set. Lilbit

Green is the real culprit, here. Green has been getting extreme power creep for around a decade; their full-on claim of Fight in the colour pie (it should have been red!), the efficiency of giant creatures that almost always have powerful and relevant abilities, etc. It gets my goat a little that Simic is the only colour that got two mutates while every other enemy colour pair got one.

G really is outta control. Gone are the days where people thought of it as the creature colour or that a 4/5 for four that gave something forestwalk was an amazing bomb in the rare slot. Nowadays it's thought that you're most likely mentally ill if you don't play G. I don't like that, but I feel like I'm hitting "old man on the porch yelling at clouds in the sky" territory anymore.

Back in my day... okay I'm done now.

[pokken]

The first time I saw the Doubling Season interaction was when someone ultimatted Tamiyo, the Moon Sage and had a counterspell in hand. It was "fun."

It left a bad taste in my mouth about the way loyalty works to this day

[3drinks]

Saturday, May 2nd, 2020; AEtherize

I like it. Such a blowout I typically prefer it to evacuation.

[Mookie]

Aetherize is a massive blowout when it works, as is its cousin Aetherspouts. It's a very strong answer to Craterhoof Behemoth, token swarm, or Insurrection. And since it's asymmetric, unlike Evacuation, you can leave the attacker open for crackback from the rest of the table, assuming they don't have the mana to redeploy their creatures.

My main issue with it is that there are a lot of decks that don't use the attack step, or only attack with their commander (or another single large creature), in which case you're effectively playing a fancy time-constrained Unsummon. It's much better in decks that plan to hold open mana for countermagic or other spells - holding open four mana every turn is pretty painful.

Overall, I'd say it's more of a meta call. In a meta with lots of go-wide, combat-focused strategies, it's worth consideration as a supplemental panic button. If your meta is less combat-focused and more combo-centric, I'd pass - it's dead too often for my taste. I'll also note that it's somewhat better as a rattlesnake - if an opponent is unprepared, then you can get massive blowout value.... but if your opponents know you're running it in your deck and play around it, then that's also good. Could be interesting in Tasigur, the Golden Fang.

[Serenade]

It's nice that you can return your creatures, should you have the need.

[Outcryqq]

I've definitely gotten blown out by Aetherize.

[Dragoon]

My main issue with it is that there are a lot of decks that don't use the attack step, or only attack with their commander (or another single large creature), in which case you're effectively playing a fancy time-constrained Unsummon.

One thing to note is that Aetherize doesn't target, so it could be a reasonable answer against voltron decks.

[Wallycaine]

I think a lot of the criticisms of Settle the Wreckage apply here too. 4 mana is a lot to hold open turn after turn, so it's hard to make sure it's available for the "right" attack. It's obviously not good pinpoint removal, as so much doesn't attack, so it's more akin to a Fog style effect. And 4 mana is a lot for that, even if it comes with a strong upside. On the other hand, when it works it works well. It's just a matter of whether you're willing to devote deck and mana space to making it work.

[pokken]

I tend to play it only in decks that want to be holding tons of mana up on other people's turns but don't want to wipe the entire board. It's a pretty rare confluence of circumstances.

The issue with bounce spells specifically in commander is they are often a double edged sword, one reason I prefer to just suck it up and play Aetherspouts, or if in white Selfless Squire or Comeuppance

[toctheyounger]

Tends to be a Lazav staple. Decent board clearing option.

[3drinks]

Sunday, May 3rd, 2020; Rona, Disciple of Gix

My [bad] joke aside, I do kinda feel like there's something here. Not sure what or how deep, but I suspect there's an avenue to explore.

[Mookie]

I run Rona, Disciple of Gix in my Sharuum the Hegemon deck. The vast majority of the time, it functions as a fancy Trusty Packbeast, which isn't particularly exciting. The tap ability is mostly flavor text, as expensive tap abilities tend to be - I can't recall activating it more than once or twice in a game of EDH. Exiling the card you recur from your graveyard is also a bit of a downside, since you lose it if Rona leaves the battlefield.

Still, I'd say that I've generally been happy with Rona - grabbing historic cards does have some upside over Trusty Packbeast, since I run a decent number of legendary creatures and planeswalkers. Net result is that Rona can recur almost every nonland permanent in the deck. I'm also a sucker for sweet uncommons - Rona was a blast to play with in limited, and that may have colored my impression a bit. If you're running a lot of historic cards that you want to recur, certainly worth consideration. Also enables some durdley recursion engines / recursion chaining with a way to recur Rona, such as Crystal Shard or Conjurer's Closet.

I'd say the biggest upside to Rona is that it does something Dimir otherwise doesn't have much access to - specifically, recurring artifacts. Black can only really recur creatures, while blue is usually limited to instants and sorceries. There are exceptions (such as Academy Ruins), but none that cover as wide of a spectrum that I can think of. The ability to recur planeswalkers is also worth calling out for superfriends decks. The legendary supertype is also relevant for decks running Urza's Ruinous Blast or Sisay, Weatherlight Captain.

...not a card I could see myself running as a commander, but I'd definitely consider it in the 99 if the ETB trigger is relevant.