Ephara, God of the Polis - Flash & Taxes

[shermanido37]

A card that screams beats much more strongly than Dream Eater is a card that you'd already played, and that's Aetherling. Ain't no other card like it.

[pokken]

A card that screams beats much more strongly than Dream Eater is a card that you'd already played, and that's Aetherling. Ain't no other card like it.

Yeah aetherling is great for sure, just a bit awkward mana wise. Dream eater digs *deeeep* and its interaction with Ephara is pretty favorable -- you dig 4 then draw it on your upkeep or can even pick out two cards, etc.

I've found the nonland permanent bounce from Brazen Borrower // Petty Theft to be amazing s'what got me thinking about Eater from Wizardmn's list.

[shermanido37]

A 4/3 flier for 6 does not impress me, even if it has flash and a single bounce. Any card that I want to consistently beat down with has to be reliable, and a card that dies to bolt does not cut that criteria for me.

How awkward is AEtherling with mana, when you already run the Kraken? Granted, AEtherling costs 6 and is not flash, but for a mana investment that's pretty much identical (except AEtherling is 3 more up front), AEtherling sure does outlast a lot more things than it, plus it has ultimate evasion.

[Wallycaine]

A 4/3 flier for 6 does not impress me, even if it has flash and a single bounce. Any card that I want to consistently beat down with has to be reliable, and a card that dies to bolt does not cut that criteria for me.

How awkward is AEtherling with mana, when you already run the Kraken? Granted, AEtherling costs 6 and is not flash, but for a mana investment that's pretty much identical (except AEtherling is 3 more up front), AEtherling sure does outlast a lot more things than it, plus it has ultimate evasion.

There's a pretty massive jump between "invest 1 a turn, as you desire, for a permanent pump + additional board presence" and "invest at least U, up to 4U, while also always keeping at least an additional U open."

[ISBPathfinder]

I have played AEtherling myself some in the past. I like it assuming you plan on a control slogfest but its not really amazing until you can stick it around for a while. It is really cool if for some reason you wanted to play a heavier control plan as Ephara yourself. Having a bunch of counter magic / spot removal and generating damage and draw from Aetherling + commander is kind of cute but its slow.

[WizardMN]

A 4/3 flier for 6 does not impress me, even if it has flash and a single bounce. Any card that I want to consistently beat down with has to be reliable, and a card that dies to bolt does not cut that criteria for me.

To be fair, at least for me, I don't run Dream Eater as a beater. It is not intended to be anyway. It can, for sure, but that is icing on the cake and not the reason for it.

Instead, it is a Instant timing "removal" spell. It is a blocker when I need it to be. It messes with combat math in such a way that it has done its fair share in saving me in situations where a single Boomerang or Flash creature wouldn't.

Then, on top of that, the ability to dig 4 deep, draw a card with Ephara, dig further (and bounce again) with Eldrazi Displacer or Soulherder means that I feel it has pulled its weight. If it lost Flash I would easily cut it. It just loses so much in that case. And I am not saying it is the greatest thing since sliced bread. It has its problems, the mana cost being the main one, so it certainly isn't an auto-include. But the utility it represents, and the allowance of playing more reactive Magic (which Aetherling doesn't allow for quite as much) gives it a home in my deck anyway.

[shermanido37]

Like you said, you're mostly using it for instant speed interaction, so I'm not really trying to criticize you. Being a slower, less competitive deck means you can use more expensive cards without as much punishment as you'd have gotten if you were trying to be more competitive. Also, less competitive formats have less interaction, so it's less likely targeted damage in particular will be a thing. These reasons make the card much more reasonable.
Also, for some reason I keep adding the "if you cast it" restriction, so I keep thinking it's worse than it actually is.

My point is that pokken seems to think about it for a beatdown plan, and in that regard it doesn't hold up.

[pokken]

Well, it's more like icing is that it's got lots of power. I've killed plenty of people with Reveillark beats over the years. 4 power fliers do a lot of work at closing games.

Cavalier is kinda similar, you get some beats and some removal.

I will say Dream eater was a stupid house in my Thassa, Deep-Dwelling deck, and the power was meaningful.

It is super expensive though.

How awkward is AEtherling with mana, when you already run the Kraken? Granted, AEtherling costs 6 and is not flash, but for a mana investment that's pretty much identical (except AEtherling is 3 more up front), AEtherling sure does outlast a lot more things than it, plus it has ultimate evasion.

WC covered it but basically every time you spend {1} on the kraken you're adding +2 permanent power to the board vs. AEtherling every time you blink it you're drawing a card, and then you can pump to deal up to 8 or some odd for 4U.

Kraken also comes out on curve before Ephara, or after Ephara with mana to trigger it twice. AEtherling is permanently going to be like 4 mana behind kraken.

[ISBPathfinder]

Has anyone managed any games lately? I am curious of Drannith Magistrate but it might just be too early to hear any feedback. I was going to run it in my Bruna list but am still curious to hear any feedback that others might have.

[pokken]

Has anyone managed any games lately? I am curious of Drannith Magistrate but it might just be too early to hear any feedback. I was going to run it in my Bruna list but am still curious to hear any feedback that others might have.

I have played a few on MTGO, and this build is pretty dominant online. I got only one game with magistrate, but when it hit it was ridiculous. I baited someone into wrathing and then played magistrate and karmic guided half my board back, locked everyone out prettymuch and killed'em all in a couple turns of Sun Titan shenanigans.

Magistrate felt very strong to me, very small investment. Its worst mode is draw a removal spell, but it plays a lot of weird games with politics where people don't want to kill it when it'll let people cast their powerful commanders.

[pokken]

2019/05/20
cut terminus and cleansing nova
add force of will and fierce guardianship

This is a change I've wanted to make for a while to give a try to some more free counterspells; I've found myself wanting them a lot.

While Terminus has been overall good it wasn't great, and I have made the mistake of casting it a few times when it set me back more than others (just misreading the board state). The random miracle off the top is kinda testing.

Cleansing Nova has just been medium at best, usually just a second copy of Supreme Verdict that's worse. Much worse than Austere overall and I rarely want to do this rather than find Hour of Revelation.

Many, many games I've lost due to not having another counter and Fierce Guardianship gives me the volume of good ones I think would be nice.

I'm still really thinking hard about whethre I want to add cartographer's hawk or not. It feels like it could be good enough.

[shermanido37]

If you're upping your noncreature count and losing sweepers, Monastery Mentor demands to be slotted in. It can be yet another way to reinforce that beats plan.

About the hawk. At best, it's a repeatable Nature's Lore that draws you a card, but that is the very best. It won't reward you if you're not attacking a player with more lands, it won't reward you if you don't actually manage to hit that player (meaning the majority of the time), it's not good at holding swords because it must be bounced if possible, and it has 1 toughness so it dies to a stiff breeze, especially in combat - but it still has to attack to get profit.
I think it's a great card for Isperia the Inscrutable or other flying tribal decks - maybe Alela, Artful Provocateur - but otherwise it is so slow and unreliable and sad.
The worst case is that you pay 2 mana for a 2/1 that can't attack.

[Wallycaine]

I you're upping your creature count and losing sweepers, Monastery Mentor demands to be slotted in. It can be yet another way to reinforce that beats plan.

About the hawk. At best, it's a repeatable Nature's Lore that draws you a card, but that is the very best. It won't reward you if you're not attacking a player with more lands, it won't reward you if you don't actually manage to hit that player (meaning the majority of the time), it's not good at holding swords because it must be bounced if possible, and it has 1 toughness so it dies to a stiff breeze, especially in combat - but it still has to attack to get profit.
I think it's a great card for Isperia the Inscrutable or other flying tribal decks - maybe Alela, Artful Provocateur - but otherwise it is so slow and unreliable and sad.
The worst case is that you pay 2 mana for a 2/1 that can't attack.

I think you're seriously underselling the card. I'm highly skeptical that a flying 2/1 won't be able to hit a player "the majority of the time". It's also worth pointing out that if you get even one hit in, this is a slighly slower Nature's Lore, a card that sees plenty of play. The fact that you can get multiple lands out of it is a huge deal. A Nature's lore with "Buyback - target an opponent who can't block a flyer" would be an autoinclude, so dismissively saying "at best it's a card that would be ridiculous" seems... very silly.

[shermanido37]

I would rather downgrade the utility, from Nature's Lore to Rampant Growth, and have it trigger more often, namely every time the creature attacks. Oh, look, it already exists! It's Sword of Rampant Growth!
I strongly believe that if that card did not make the list, this should not be considered.

[pokken]

So the sword requires having a creature and the hawk is a creature. Big difference. That said, hawk is much worse than lore because it puts the land into play tapped. Rampant Growth is a much better comparison, although with Ephara it also triggers her once a turn which is very nice.

The sword also costs 4 to get you your first land vs. 2, which is quite a bit. And it can't get duals.

The floor for Hawk is basically a 2 mana flying chumpblocker. Which is not great. But the ceiling is ramping 2 or 3 while repeatedly tutoring plains for emeria and drawing Ephara cards. I suspect its typical functionality will be ramp 1 draw 2 which is pretty nice.

My thinking is the ceiling games where it ramps you 2 or 3 are a pretty reasonable gamble for a 2 mana card. I really want to try it out - I remember I did not give Smothering Tithe a try until quite a bit late and kinda regret that.

Unfortunately the only real cuts I can see for it are mana rocks or Land Tax though, and while Tax looks unassuming it always seems to put in a ton of work. I've had people actively remove it to get rid of the shuffle effect with Top.


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My experience with Monastery Mentor was that it was very good when I could stick it with a repeatable spell, but otherwise my spell volume was not high enough. I might try it again if I go beyond Ghostly Flicker. That said, Force and Guardianship make it a lot easier to defend it too. I think if I'm running stuff like Momentary Blink Mentor's stock goes up quite a bit.

It might be that Mentor is better when I am not actively sweeping the board quite as much; I remember one game where I had to Terminus it and that was really bad.

I'm definitely not getting rid of my foil mentor anytime soon though

[Rumpy5897]

Smothering Tithe would be quite interesting to discuss, actually. I've found the card lacking in my faster decks, and it'd just rot in hand as I could not be bothered to cast it. It's nice in slower builds, so I'd imagine it's solid here, but for example I think its 57% include rate in Feather is way too high. Is this an artifact of my playgroup not being super draw happy, and as a result I come off as a blathering madman? Or can it conceivably just not be impactful enough to merit inclusion in relatively quick decks that have track records of killing around turn seven on decent hands? What do ya'll think?

Land Tax is another slow deck bloomer, and I can imagine it being nice for you in spite of your draw prowess. Sword of Rampant Growth is indeed nicer in a vacuum than Rampant Hawk, but it does come with its caveats. However, you have a healthy dose of low-drop creatures to keep Ephara rolling, so it should be reasonably easy to have something carry it into battle. And also I'm still a big Rampant Hawk fan in slow decks. When playing this sucker in my group, the floor has been two lands. I've often gotten like four off it. That said, all prior disclaimers about my group still apply

[Wallycaine]

So the sword requires having a creature and the hawk is a creature. Big difference. That said, hawk is much worse than lore because it puts the land into play tapped. Rampant Growth is a much better comparison, although with Ephara it also triggers her once a turn which is very nice.

The sword also costs 4 to get you your first land vs. 2, which is quite a bit. And it can't get duals.

The floor for Hawk is basically a 2 mana flying chumpblocker. Which is not great. But the ceiling is ramping 2 or 3 while repeatedly tutoring plains for emeria and drawing Ephara cards. I suspect its typical functionality will be ramp 1 draw 2 which is pretty nice.

My thinking is the ceiling games where it ramps you 2 or 3 are a pretty reasonable gamble for a 2 mana card. I really want to try it out - I remember I did not give Smothering Tithe a try until quite a bit late and kinda regret that.

Unfortunately the only real cuts I can see for it are mana rocks or Land Tax though, and while Tax looks unassuming it always seems to put in a ton of work. I've had people actively remove it to get rid of the shuffle effect with Top.

Looking over the deck and philosophy, wouldn't Tithe be a good cut for trying out the hawk? It lets you run a creature over a non-creature, and provides a similar benefit (with some differences, obviously).

[pokken]

The one time Smothering Tithe was not ridiculous for me was in CEDH when someone dropped a collector ouphe. In Ephara, it's so good I am willing to consider casting it before Ephara, God of the Polis sometimes. That's how bonkers it is.

In my experience with it, you cast it on turn 4-5ish and let the treasures roll in and then are set up to overwhelm the game. It also helps nip huge card draw spells and wheels in the bud; if you wheel with this out I'm definitely winning

I'm playing it in my Feather build but I have taken a bit of a hiatus from that deck on MTGO due to some of the command zone bugs being really annoying to remember.

Land Tax is one of those things that just does way more than it feels like it should. I guess the main thing it does is guarantee you hit Emeria if you want to, but it also allows repeated shuffles deck thinning becomes really a serious thing when you take 9 or 12 basics out of your deck. And it acts like a discard outlet a lot of the times letting me drop elesh norn in the yard to reanimate it, or discard lands to hand size so I can titan them back, etc. I do really think that I should be making room for Scroll Rack but I just can't bring myself to durdle that hard.

The thing I do not like about Sword of the Animist is that it really requires you have a flier out to be particularly safe, and the mana investment up front is very high. It was never very good - I did have it in the deck for a while. but if you look at the list I do not really have that many fliers -- only about 15, and many of them are more expensive. Often you can get other random chip shots off, but a lot of times you can't.

The really enticing thing to me about hawk is that it fixes low land hands while simultaneously giving you a repeated Ephara outlet. The sword does nothing like that. It requires you to commit two things to the board and make attacks and spend more mana up front. Costing 4 makes the chances of you fixing a 2 lander basically nil...you have to play it on 2, play something else on 3, then equip on 4 and catch up. Yuck

Looking over the deck and philosophy, wouldn't Tithe be a good cut for trying out the hawk? It lets you run a creature over a non-creature, and provides a similar benefit (with some differences, obviously).

I am really appreciating you guys jumping in here and poking at my sacred cows, even if I don't wind up agreeing it helps me solidify my thoughts. So the thing that Tithe does that's so interesting is it does a decent Land Tax impression, while guaranteeing a shuffle and working on the play in a pinch - land tax is really bad in first position.

I feel like if I had to choose between land tax and tithe I would probably keep Tithe. but it's a very difficult decision. Guaranteeing at least one land even if you aren't behind is really good. Tithe also is just way, way better as a random draw mid-late game - gets you a shuffle and a land *right now* so you can hit a land drop if needed.

I'm really torn though tbh, Tax does a *ton* of work in your opening hand. I have kept Plains + Land tax one landers a lot, but I would have to be cautious about that with Tithe since 3 lands doesn't always work with every hand.

It's probably right that either one of those is the right card to go for hawk, and Hawk has the ability to ramp which is very nice. I can also see the argument for either Ponder or Brainstorm as options, though I do really love ponder in particular.

[shermanido37]

I guess that the number of wipes comes in again in the argument between Hawk and Sword. Odds are that if there's an opposing flying board, you will want to wipe it, but if Hawk is already in play that will feel pretty bad. On the other hand, with Sword you don't really care about wiping creatures, because after the fact it's easier for you to play one and equip it than it is for them.

Overall, if I look at the facts again, I guess that pokken's meta is less competitive, he runs less board wipes, he has practically no token generation, and he wants to increase his creature count as well as his ramp. In that case, I guess Hawk's flaws are actually quite reasonable, and what's left is to see if there are cheap fliers in the green decks he opposes. I'll leave that to him.

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Just my 2 cents:

While Land Tax has just been awesome, I'm beginning to hear a lot of negative feedback about Top. Sure, it's a filter effect that never dies, but I'm beginning to doubt how much that matters in a mana hungry deck that consistently draws 3-4 cards per round, especially now that you slotted out your Miracle wipe.
I run Scroll Rack in my deck, both to combo with the Tax, and for general utility: while I can only activate it once per round, it can put bad cards back in before I shuffle them, reset Miracles that I draw by mistake, and in the worst case it effectively doubles hand size. Considering our deck is great at maintaining hand size, I view that to be a big plus.

Tithe has just been stellar and never dead. It is very strong if you have high counts of fetchlands. Not only does it guarantee land drops, but it guarantees virtually no color screw as well, and for 1 mana at instant speed it is just so highly flexible.

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I'd like to start another discussion. I like my deck to be versatile, and among other things that means optimizing the number of things each of my cards can do. In particular, I'm looking at Thassa, which is already in, and trying to determine the ease in which I can animate her to attack. With Ephara it's much easier since she cares about any color symbol, but specifically blue is more difficult. This is also very relevant concerning Nykthos - if I won't be able to have reliably high devotion, slotting it won't be worth it.
Assuming I'll most likely have Ephara on the board with her, I will need 3 more devotion to blue. With Teferi that is easily met, but otherwise it is rather challenging.
The creatures with UU are: Brazen Borrower, Nadir Kraken, Venser, Shaper Savant, Archaeomancer. I have 10 creatures that give me U devotion.
What's the sweet spot for getting reliable blue devotion? That can get pretty difficult!

[pokken]

I guess that the number of wipes comes in again in the argument between Hawk and Sword. Odds are that if there's an opposing flying board, you will want to wipe it, but if Hawk is already in play that will feel pretty bad. On the other hand, with Sword you don't really care about wiping creatures, because after the fact it's easier for you to play one and equip it than it is for them.

Overall, if I look at the facts again, I guess that pokken's meta is less competitive, he runs less board wipes, and he wants to increase his creature count as well as his ramp. In that case, I guess Hawk's flaws are actually quite reasonable, and what's left is to see if there are cheap fliers in the green decks he opposes. I'll leave that to him.

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Just my 2 cents: While Land Tax has just been awesome, I'm beginning to hear a lot of negative feedback about Top. Sure, it's a filter effect that never dies, but I'm beginning to doubt how much that matters in a mana hungry deck that consistently draws 3-4 cards per round, especially now that you slotted out your Miracle wipe.
I run Scroll Rack in my deck, both to combo with the Tax, and for general utility: while I can only activate it once per round, it can put bad cards back in before I shuffle them, reset Miracles that I draw by mistake, and in the worst case it effectively doubles hand size. Considering our deck is great at maintaining hand size, I view that to be a big plus.

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I'd like to start another discussion. I like my deck to be versatile, and among other things that means optimizing the number of things each of my cards can do. In particular, I'm looking at Thassa, which is already in, and trying to determine the ease in which I can animate her to attack. With Ephara it's much easier since she cares about any color symbol, but specifically blue is more difficult. This is also very relevant concerning Nykthos - if I won't be able to have reliably high devotion, slotting it won't be worth it.
Assuming I'll most likely have Ephara on the board with her, I will need 3 more devotion to blue. With Teferi that is easily met, but otherwise it is rather challenging.
The creatures with UU are: Brazen Borrower, Nadir Kraken, Venser, Shaper Savant, Archaeomancer. I have 10 creatures that give me U devotion.
What's the sweet spot for getting reliable blue devotion? That can get pretty difficult!

Yeah, my meta is definitely like 4-7 mostly, usually one person with an underpowered deck and multiple 6-7s. The overall meta skews kinda timmy, play big dumb stuff, so wipes are great, but I'm trying to find ways to win without wiping quite as much - so more ways to reuse my wipes or tempo stuff out.

Top is definitely something worth considering; in my experience it smooths opening draws so well that it's worth it, and the deck's high velocity of card draw actually makes it better since you can get the best of your top 3 every time instead, and sometimes mix in shuffle effects in there. I think that top would probably go after either of the blue cantrips for me.

I'd like to start another discussion. I like my deck to be versatile, and among other things that means optimizing the number of things each of my cards can do. In particular, I'm looking at Thassa, which is already in, and trying to determine the ease in which I can animate her to attack. With Ephara it's much easier since she cares about any color symbol, but specifically blue is more difficult. This is also very relevant concerning Nykthos - if I won't be able to have reliably high devotion, slotting it won't be worth it.
Assuming I'll most likely have Ephara on the board with her, I will need 3 more devotion to blue. With Teferi that is easily met, but otherwise it is rather challenging.
The creatures with UU are: Brazen Borrower, Nadir Kraken, Venser, Shaper Savant, Archaeomancer. I have 10 creatures that give me U devotion.
What's the sweet spot for getting reliable blue devotion? That can get pretty difficult!

I don't know that I have animated Thassa more than once or twice, and I think my blue count is a hair higher than yours.

Don't forget about the clones and tutors though- I find myself imaging archaeomancer quite a bit for example.

It's really tough to put this kind of problem into a hypergeometric calculator meaningfully since you see things in groups of cards (e.g. you see 20 cards in a game or whatever) but you have 4 cards that add 2 and 10 cards that add 1.

Just swagging it, I think you have a reasonable chance of seeing 3 pips in your first 20 cards most games -- probably approaching 60-70%. But that's not amazingly reliable.

I'd consider if you really want to achieve that, adding a recruiterable UU creature or two would make a big difference.

All that said I am not really sure it's worth worrying about. Thassa pulls her weight as a mana sink and blink engine, sometimes nice to have her not be a creature in the event of merciless eviction.

[shermanido37]

Frankly it seems like if a Merciless Eviction would be played against us, they'd choose the Enchantment part and not the creature count. And in that case I'd have liked Thassa to be animated so she can be utilized more.
Also, I love that the deck can toy around with effects at instant speed, maybe bounce a creature back to hand with Whitemane thus reducing devotion and rendering them safe from Swords or Path.

Technically we already have 3 recruitable UU creatures: Borrower, Venser, Arch. However, one might argue that this is not enough.

This is due to the lack of games with Ephara, but I'm ashamed to admit I have not drawn into Recruiter at all... For this reason I like to be not too reliant on him in terms of strategy. If it works well that's great, otherwise I will not go out of my way to enable gross Recruiter chains.

[pokken]

You can recruit clones too so recruiter + any UU creature (well, nonlegendary) instantly turns thassa online.

You might like trying Shrieking Drake btw as an affordable additional pip creature you can use to say, bounce borrower but also enable pips as needed. That is one I will probably pick up when there's a foil.

[pokken]

Finally got up the gumption to pull the deck apart and really think about stuff I wanted to try. I backed up the current point in time list and here's what I'm going to try:

2020-05-22 - Major testing modification

CUT

• Phyrexian Metamorph
• Sword of Feast and Famine
• Altar of Dementia
• Hushbringer
• windborn muse
• leonin relic-warder
• body double
• land tax

Add

• Deputy of Detention
• Drannith Magistrate
• Cartographer's Hawk
• Sunscape Familiar
• Palinchron
• Ghostly Flicker
• Stunt Double
• Salvager of Secrets

I really think Stunt Double might be something I have slept on, and want to try it out. I also think adding flicker and salvager might counteract some of my wrath cuts. We'll see though I guess.

Probably a lot of stuff won't last in here from these changes but a lot of stuff has been on the bubble now and then too. I really am going to miss relic warder but I think deputy might do the job there and being able to pop walkers and big creatures is nice. Worth a try anyway. I like that it can come back off Sun titan.

[WizardMN]

Stunt Double has almost always been good for me. Sometimes even great. I wouldn't put any clone above it (not even Phantasmal Image).

I almost pulled the trigger on buying new cards, but Hawk is still $3. It doesn't seem like a $3 card (and the others seemed high too). Since the sets just released, I suppose this is to be expected (and I have no desire to pay $35 for Fierce Guardianship).

I would be curious to know how much you miss Leonin Relic Warder. We went back and forth on that in my thread a bit before I finally caved. I wonder if Deputy of Detention is better in most cases? It can't get the permanent exile, but maybe it doesn't need to.

Salvager of Secrets is interesting but just seems to high costed. But, with blinking it and all that, maybe it works out. I am looking forward to hearing your summaries with the new changes.

[shermanido37]

What finally made you cut Relic-Warder, after all the time I had tried to convince you to do it?
Also interested in what made you cut Windborn Muse and how you're going to deal with it.
Same for Land Tax.

I absolutely love Deputy and don't think it will ever come out of my deck. I face big amounts of tokens, as well as different types of permanents that manifest as threats, so it has never been dead.
Another thing that's important to mention is a weakness of the card - wrathing the board when you have it in play, thus leaving your opponent's threat as the only thing on the board, feels really bad. However you both have plenty of ways to reset it (i.e. Whitemane) and have cut board wipes, so this should be much less of a problem.

A card that I think you might want to consider now is Vesperlark. Most of the creatures you slotted in have <=1 power, it's awesome with blink engines, plus it's decent at holding swords if you'll want to reexplore that. I'd consider it instead of Karmic Guide now that the combo is gone - having to pay that echo cost each time you want value from it is a pain.

I can definitely see how Stunt Double dominates in fattie-rich metas, and always thought it was good for the deck. I think that Metamorph was a good cut for it, since copying artifacts with it was often overkill or not efficient enough, and the flash is much better than that. Obviously the phyrexian mana will be missed, but no biggie.