[mtgnexus] Random Card of the Day - North Star

[Outcryqq]

The first time I made day 2 of a GP was on the back of a sealed pool that had 2x Brutal Hordechief. I had that and two of the recently-discussed Outpost Siege: the deck was killer!

My draft on day 2 sucked though.

Edit: one of the Brutal Hordechief was foil.

[onering]

I love this card. I feel like its the ideal design for a commander card, despite coming in a standard legal set.

1. It's got a 3 color identity, limiting the decks it can be used in, so it doesn't show up everywhere
2. It supports a particular archetype, further limiting the decks it can be used in
3. Its very powerful in a swingy, splashy, big play way without just instantly winning on its own, the ideal power level for a commander finisher, yet it also comes down early enough and has enough impact without dumping 9 mana into it to succeed even in quicker metas, and have use outside of play it with the right setup and win on the spot like Hoof.
4. The particular archetype it supports is weak overall, so the fact that this this card is a powerful tool for it is a benefit to the format, rather than if it had been yet another Simic/X absurd value engine. Further, it benefits that archetype on multiple axes, with the life drain on attack supporting the prime gameplan of killing opponents quicker, while the activated ability does as well but can also be used to turn aggro critters into removal by forcing attacks and blocks, and lets the hordechief effect the board even if its your only dude. allowing it to help even the deck even when plan A isn't going well. Much better than something that adds power to plan A but does nothing to shore up bad games, pushing the decks to become glass cannons.
5. That Flavor- It's mechanics are exactly what you expect from a mythic orc war chief AND from a mythic Mardu war chief, and especially a mythic Mardu orc war chief.
6. It hits all the psychographics. Timmy likes it because its a splashy play that does something huge when it lands, spike likes it because its strong and can win games without having to be a huge play and all the flexibility it provides for smart plays, Johnny like it because it lends itself to interesting deck building and teases the possibility of playing around with forced attacks and blocks, Vorthos likes it for nailing the flavor art and name, and even Melvin likes it for its numbers (the attack ability pings for 1 per creature but causes a 2 life swing due to life gain, he's a 3/3 for 4 mana, and his activated ability costs 5).

10/10

[3drinks]

Wednesday, September 16th, 2020; Spite // Malice

I remember when this was new and everyone lost their minds for it. Man that was an eternity ago.

[Mookie]

Hmmm.... in terms of pure flexibility, Spite // Malice looks pretty reasonable - counter a noncreature spell, or kill a creature directly. Either way, it's capable of solving most problems. That said, the nonblack clause is a downside - Doom Blade misses a lot of creatures, especially commanders. You do get some additional flexibility though, so it's never really a dead card.

...unfortunately, once you get to the mana cost, this looks significantly worse - unplayably so, really. Four mana for a Negate or a Doom Blade is... bad. If you're playing Dimir and want interaction spells, there are better options - Drown in the Loch is the most obvious one to me, but both halves of this are flexible enough that I don't even think it's that necessary to pay a premium for extra flexibility in the first place. My rough estimate is that Negate is relevant 90% of the time, Doom Blade is relevant 80% of the time, and the combination is relevant 95% of the time. Is it worth paying two extra mana for an extra 5% of relevance? Definitely not, especially since Counterspell and Heartless Act can add an extra 5% for no additional mana cost.

Anyway, I think the only justification I could see for Spite // Malice is if you have some really strict deckbuilding restrictions, like 'split cards only' or '8 CMC only'. I guess it has a high CMC for Yuriko, the Tiger's Shadow, but.... still a pass from me.

[JWK]

This one gets good grades for versatility, but that's about it. In terms of efficiency, it's terrible. Both effects are way over-costed, and Malice misses too many targets. There are way too many other options that don't suck for me to ever consider running this in a Commander deck. The versatility would make it solid in limited control decks, but I can't see anyone else wanting it today.

[Serenade]

If I'm committed to running split instant 4cmc removal, I probably will use Commit // Memory.

[Sinis]

Wednesday, September 16th, 2020; Spite // Malice

I like the flexibility, and definitely played it when I first started playing EDH, but, the mana cost has gotten crept out in the intervening time.

Cards are just more powerful now, and 4-mana flexibility isn't as good as it used to be (if it ever was).

[Hawk]

I have fond memories of this card, so I tried it out in early UBx builds. More recently, it was in my 1.0 draft of Yuriko for all the reasons Mookie outlined - it looks like an 8, and I tried to run cards that were theoretically useful in Yuriko instead of trying to dome people with Draco. The deck is a tempo deck, so in theory once I get down a few hard-to-block ninjas I can hold mana up to remove stuff.

But this thing is so inefficient, I'd have been better off with Draco. We've reached a point with so many powerful engines coming down turn 4+ that having conditional 4 CMC removal is just totally unacceptable imo - if I'm paying more than three for removal, I really need it to be unconditional or come with built-in card advantage.

Also, for Yuriko specifically - in theory I thought it'd play out like a Delver deck riding a few threats to victory while holding up a fist full of counters and disruption, but in practice you are resummoning dorks and shuffling ninjas to and from your hand so much that you actually don't tend to have a ton of spare mana to hold up. It's actually more, not less, important for Yuriko to be running the leanest, meanest removal she can get her hands on.

I'm still not running Draco, but this got swapped out as soon as I got a Force of Despair to up my quotient of removal that is effectively zero mana but "looks" like something on top.

[3drinks]

Thursday, September 17th, 2020; Drogskol Reaver

The oft-forgot about bomb, I always wanted to play this with Pristine Talisman & Sun Droplet. What a massively cool dollar bin alternative to Consecrated Sphinx.

[tstorm823]

One of my top 5 Mirrorweaves of all time. Consider me player C, who was in last place at the time. Player A attacked player B with like 10 things. Mirrorweave on a Drogskol Reaver made the attack lethal damage, and 200 card draw triggers took out player A. Game over, Mirrorweave wins again.

[JWK]

I run the Reaver in three decks (Azor flying tribal, Rubinia Soulsinger and Geist of St. Traft, which has spirits and equipment/auras sub-themes). It's a potent late-game finisher that draws you more cards. Put a good piece of equipment or an aura on it and it becomes even more amazing.

Solid card, worthy of consideration in most Azorius, Bant or Esper decks. I run very few cards of CMC 7+ in my decks, and even fewer of them are creatures, but I am pretty much always happy to draw into this.

[RxPhantom]

Drogskol Reaver will be the first card I add when I make my Hands deck.

[Mookie]

Drogskol Reaver is sweet. It's certainly on the more expensive side, but it's also an incredibly powerful draw engine for lifegain decks - occasionally too powerful, since its draw effect is mandatory. It combos with Horizon Chimera and Shabraz, the Skyshark to draw your deck, which can be useful it you have a Laboratory Maniac effect. Alternatively, just throw it in alongside Soul Warden or another repeatable source of lifegain. Or don't, since its native lifelink and double strike lets it draw two extra cards every turn by itself.

[Neptune]

I want to jam this in Oloro, Ageless Ascetic. Since I want to build that deck with a bunch of Clones, it would be a sick addition to copy.

[TheAmericanSpirit]

"Whenever you gain life, draw a card" is some text I'm so glad is chained to this 7 mana albatross from yesteryear instead of one of wotc's nighstmarish new designs for our beloved format in recent years.

Because %$#%$#%, is that some powerful text or what. I dread to think what that text could do on a 3-4 cmc UWx commander... *shudders violently, as if shaken by an invisible goon*

[3drinks]

Friday, September 18th, 2020; Shard Convergence

Well...one card fetching four duals to super fetch is certainly unique. It'd have to cost eight, nine mana at least if it put them on the board. Don't think there's anything else like it that fetches this strong either - Skyshroud Claim is limited to two xg duals and Farseek only gets one.

[not-a-cube]

seems nice, but Skyshroud Claim , Farseek and Nature's Lore all put those lands onto the battlefield, which is why i'd play those and not this. Most of the time you'll be able to fix your mana with basics gotten via Kodama's Reach, Cultivate, Explosive Vegetation, or gates with Circuitous Route.

Not getting ahead on curve with a 4 mana land tutor doesn't cut it for me.

[materpillar]

I'd imagine Skyshroud Claim is usually going to just be better. Putting them in your hand is way less good than onto the battlefield. That being said if you've got some weird 5color Azusa, Lost but Seeking/The Gitrog Monster landfall deck I can see this being worth a slot. Seems decent with Ayula's Influence or Seismic Assault. Also, knowing you're going to hit your next 4 land drops is really underrated. I wouldn't think someone was an idiot for running this.

That being said I've never played it as I usually only run 1 basic of every color in my 5c decks and I don't own any og duals.

[Mookie]

Shard Convergence is a powerful card, but I don't think it's a good one. Best-case scenario, you're playing a five-color deck and fetch four dual lands (or triomes), plus you happen to have a way to accelerate your land drops like Azusa, Lost but Seeking. In that case you get to ramp out four lands for four mana, which is pretty absurd - the only comparable effect I can think of is Frontier Siege. Unfortunately, that's the ceiling... and the floor is significantly lower - fetching a bunch of lands to hand is sort of useless if you were already hitting all of your land drops. I wouldn't count it as a ramp spell unless I had a ton of extra land drop effects... and given that it's way easier to combo those with Crucible of Worlds + fetchlands, I still don't love the idea.

That said, if you have triomes or bicycle lands, being able to cycle them away is a pretty interesting upside. I probably still wouldn't play a four mana spell with 'investigate four times', but it's certainly interesting. Fetching cycling lands does give it some very interesting applications for Astral Slide decks. Kydele, Chosen of Kruphix + Ravos, Soultender cycling.dek?

As for other options... discard them to Borborygmos Enraged or Ayula's Influence and reanimate them with Splendid Reclamation? Turn on Sasaya, Orochi Ascendant // Sasaya's Essence? There are definitely ways to take advantage of having a bunch of extra cards in hand, even if they are lands.

This does obviously go waaaay down in value if you only have basics available to fetch.

[JWK]

This seems like it should be a strong card, but unless you run a lot of things like Burgeoning, Exploration or Azusa, Lost but Seeking, it's just slow. It probably can actually be strong in some decks, but I think at the point in the game you'd be casting this, with most decks you probably want to do something other than put a bunch of lands in your hand.

[DirkGently]

It'd have to cost eight, nine mana at least if it put them on the board.

Maybe you're kidding, but a ramp 4 would most likely cost 6, maybe 7 if they were playing it safe. I mean, Boundless Realms almost always tutors 7+ and it costs 7 (granted they enter tapped - you weren't clear if you meant tapped or not - but I'd say 4 untapped < 7 tapped). You can't get duals, but if you're pulling that many lands out of your deck color fixing is probably irrelevant. Also compare to Chromatic Orrery which generates 5 mana untapped for 7 without color requirements and with perfect fixing and even an additional ability (and the weakness of being destroyable by a single artifact removal spell).

Can't really imagine running this. You'd need to be in 5c unless there's something I'm missing, and while 4 cards for 4 is a good rate, it's not an absurd rate (even ignoring the very important fact that you only get lands), and you've got every card in the format at your disposal. Maybe if there was a commander like Borborygmos Enraged or Sasaya, Orochi Ascendant // Sasaya's Essence that was 5c? None come to mind, though.

[3drinks]

It'd have to cost eight, nine mana at least if it put them on the board.

Maybe you're kidding, but a ramp 4 would most likely cost 6, maybe 7 if they were playing it safe. I mean, Boundless Realms almost always tutors 7+ and it costs 7 (granted they enter tapped - you weren't clear if you meant tapped or not - but I'd say 4 untapped < 7 tapped). You can't get duals, but if you're pulling that many lands out of your deck color fixing is probably irrelevant. Also compare to Chromatic Orrery which generates 5 mana untapped for 7 without color requirements and with perfect fixing and even an additional ability (and the weakness of being destroyable by a single artifact removal spell).

The reason this would need to cost eight if it put them on the board is because it finds typed nonbasics. Skyshroud Claim and Ranger's Path both do half of this for four, so it stands to reason if you're doubling that spell, you double the cost. You could certainly push it to rare and a six drop, and it would be really, really good - and if they entered untapped it'd be overpowering. As is, eight to fetch four tapped duals is a strong enough play, though not particularly exciting without a killer follow up turn.

[Sinis]

Friday, September 18th, 2020; Shard Convergence

The weakest Concentrate in the game. Edit: Okay, it gets 4 cards. But, like, unless you're playing every additional land drop card in the game, this isn't going to work out well for you. It'd be wild if you had Manabond and some out.

[DirkGently]

The reason this would need to cost eight if it put them on the board is because it finds typed nonbasics.

Is that actually relevant by the time you're casting a 6-8 mana sorcery and putting 4 lands into play? You still need fixing? I have a hard time believing that (especially if we're assuming the alternative would be "search for any 4 basics and put them onto the battlefield").

Skyshroud Claim and Ranger's Path both do half of this for four, so it stands to reason if you're doubling that spell, you double the cost.

That's not generally how it works. Imagine half-Kozilek for half-cost.

Half-Kozilek, Butcher of Balance
Legendary Creature - Eldrazi
When you cast this spell, draw 2 cards
Annihilator 2
When it's put into a graveyard...idk what half of this effect would be. Flip a coin and shuffle it in if you win the flip?
6/6

That would be ABSURDLY strong, way way stronger than original kozilek.

At low mana costs, doubling the effect = double the costs is relatively accurate - if anything it's undershooting it - because doubling the effect is also functionally getting you an extra card, at the cost of being clunkier to use. I.e. double the effect of Opt for double the cost would be pretty insane.

I'd say the balance point, where that rule holds true, is around the 2/4 range. If we're comparing mana rocks, 2 mana rocks tend to be a little worse than a land ability on an artifact (they enter tapped, or they tap for colorless, or whatever - arcane signet being the exception since it's pushed for commander), whereas 4-mana rocks are roughly twice as good, though sometimes a little better depending on the era (ur-golem's eye, thran dynamo). Once the costs get higher and higher, though, the clunkiness is way more important. Almost every game gets to 2 mana for double-power-opt, and most games get to 4 for double-power-mana-rocks, but most (non-commander, at least) games end before anyone gets to 10 mana to cask Kozilek, which is why he can be pretty absurd at a power/cost ratio - if you've done the work of getting that much mana, you've earned the payoff of a huge bomb, because you're taking on the risk that you won't survive that long and it'll be a dead card - not so for half-kozilek. There's also the fact that expensive cards are more vulnerable to removal/countermagic.

At 8 this theoretical ramp spell would be unbelievably bad, no one would ever play it. It'd be the tybalt of ramp spells. At 7 it'd be very niche, maybe occasionally used but a subpar choice, but maybe with some applications if they entered untapped. At 6 and etbt, it'd be pretty much on-par for a ramp spell, probably a little weak but still useful. 6 and entering untapped, it'd probably get played in a lot of 5c decks but it wouldn't be busted or anything. I mean, Gilded Lotus and Chromatic Orrery border it on either side, ramp-wise and cmc-wise, and neither of those cards are busted.

[onering]

Fantastic analysis Dirk. I think that really reveals the limitations of this card. Not actually ramping, it's limited to just fixing Mana and getting you extra lands in hand to discard.