[mtgnexus] Random Card of the Day - North Star

[3drinks]

Ingot Chewer has very much not been outclassed. There are better cards for just removing artifacts, and Shieldbreaker is better in aggro, but Evoke is such a great mechanic the Ingot Chewer is still great. It just has so much potential for abuse and synergy, and so many decks that want what its selling. 1 mana to blow an artifact and get a purph trigger, or sacrifice to something (hell, Ashnod's alter basically makes it a ritual that blows up an artifact!), and leaves you with the ability to reanimate it to cap another artifact AND have a 3/3 body to use for something. Compare it to the other cheap artifact removal spells, and its a 1 mana shatter that has a 3/3 enter the battlefield, die, then sit in the yard, and you can reap value from all 3 of those things, and in many decks all of them at once. Vandalblast is awesome. Shattering spree is really good. Shenanigans is comparable, and only better if you either actively want the dredge or have no way to take advantage of any aspect of the creature side of it. Viashano Heretic has a great deal more potential upside, popping an artifact every turn is nice and being able to blow up high CMC artifacts for a lot of damage is cool, but its a 5 mana investment before it works even once, you need haste or waiting a turn round to use it (so it can die before it does anything), a lot of what you blow up is low cmc so the damage is negligible, and how often do you actually get more than 2-3 activations from this dude that actually matter outside of playing a dedicated artifact deck that somehow cannot answer him over several turns? Ingot Chewer is a turn 1 play that blows up Sol Rings and Mana Crypts, screwing up their pilots plans, and a mid game value trick when paired with synergies. Its rarely dead, highly flexible, and easily abused. I've yet to draw it and be disappointed that I included it in my deck. I've drawn it and had it not be the card I wanted, but only in the sense that I drew it too late.

My fave is when you play it for R and then stick it on a Vat.

[3drinks]

Tuesday, October 6th, 2020; Spirit of the Hearth

How often is this effect relevant? How much so that you need to play this, on top of, say, True Believer and Leyline of Sanctity? The only thing I ever recall this thing doing was being the w bomb in the first Duels of the Planeswalkers.

[Dragoon]

Hmm, it can maybe help against graveyard removal if your meta is full of Bojuka Bog and Nihil Spellbomb? Although, the ones recently printed do not target any player in particular. It can protect against Aetherflux Reservoir and Mindslaver at least...

[Mookie]

Spirit of the Hearth is.... pretty underwhelming, IMO. I have certainly been burned by Leyline of Sanctity effects in the past - most notably, Sigarda, Heron's Grace stopping me from casting Cruel Ultimatum - but they're generally pretty niche. There certainly are scary targeted spells that see play, such as Comet Storm and Villainous Wealth, and it also stops some Blood Artist effects... but as a counterpoint, there are just as many scary effects that hit all opponents (ex: Torment of Hailfire, Zulaport Cutthroat). So, this isn't an effect I consider to be very reliable protection. The body - a 4/5 flyer for 6 - is fine, but not amazing.

Overall, I'd say you can do a lot better for six mana - Twilight Shepherd, Sun Titan, and Angelic Skirmisher all come to mind as cards with more consistent board impact. If you want to protect yourself, Seht's Tiger and Teferi's Protection are options.

[Ginuqu]

^I feel like playing Seht's Tiger is good, but playing it with Spirit of the Heart is better. You can add Qasali Ambusher, Fleetfoot Panther and Whitemane Lion for a cute "pets saving their owners" theme and then throw in Nine Lives

[3drinks]

Spirit of the Hearth is.... pretty underwhelming, IMO. I have certainly been burned by Leyline of Sanctity effects in the past - most notably, Sigarda, Heron's Grace stopping me from casting Cruel Ultimatum - but they're generally pretty niche. There certainly are scary targeted spells that see play, such as Comet Storm and Villainous Wealth, and it also stops some Blood Artist effects... but as a counterpoint, there are just as many scary effects that hit all opponents (ex: Torment of Hailfire, Zulaport Cutthroat). So, this isn't an effect I consider to be very reliable protection. The body - a 4/5 flyer for 6 - is fine, but not amazing.

Overall, I'd say you can do a lot better for six mana - Twilight Shepherd, Sun Titan, and Angelic Skirmisher all come to mind as cards with more consistent board impact. If you want to protect yourself, Seht's Tiger and Teferi's Protection are options.

I'm a big big fan of Seht's Tiger, maybe.a bit more than i should be, but it's right up there with Whitemane Lion and Brass Squire as my penultimate "kuriboh effect" haha. It's the best kind of jank that performs a not-jank function 😂😂

[JWK]

Effects that give you hexproof are more powerful than a lot of people seem to think. They stop an awful lot of effects, including most discard effects, things like Bribery and River's Rebuke and many things that eliminate graveyards or do direct damage. I recently started running Lazotep Plating as a means of protecting my board state and found myself using it a lot more than I'd expected - like, more than half of the time - against player-targeted effects. In many cases, I would have lost the game if not for the Plating,

The thing is, while these effects are something you are glad to have when you need them, there will be many games in which they aren't needed at all. If you are in a meta with a lot of Aetherflux Reservoir and Mindslaver, they are well worth running, but in metas ruled by non-interactive combos like Thassa's Oracle, they are probably close to worthless. Plus, as already noted above, more things are being printed that hit all opponents' graveyards, hands, libraries or life totals, rather than being targeted. So, whether or not cards like this will be any good at all is very much a meta call.

One reason Lazotep Plating is so good is that it is a low-cost instant. That makes Plating harder to prepare against than something like this kitty spirit or Witchbane Orb. It is also versatile, in that it can protect you and your stuff both, which greatly increases the odds it will be useful in a given game. This is where I find things like the Orb and Leyline of Sanctity questionable; they literally do only one narrow thing, and if that one thing isn't relevant, they are dead cards.

Spirit of the Hearth at least has the advantage of being a fairly hefty flying creature, which is often a pretty good thing to have in play. You can play it as a flying beater with an additional feature that is going to be relevant sometimes. Unfortunately, it is also CMC 6. If it was CMC 4 or maybe even 5, it might see more play, even if it lost a point of power and/or toughness, but at CMC 6 it is competing with cards that have much greater and more reliable impact, such as Sun Titan. I think that leaves it relegated mostly to cat tribal, and even there it's not an exciting choice and probably won't make the cut in more aggro builds like equipment cats.

I used to run the Spirit in my Azorius flying tribal deck (originally helmed by Isperia 2, now by Azor), but it got traded out for something else a long time ago. That deck had plenty of beefy flying beaters to choose among, often at much lower cost or with more reliably useful features, and access to cheap countermagic as protection.

[Sinis]

Tuesday, October 6th, 2020; Spirit of the Hearth

I think player-hexproof/shroud is relevant, but probably not for 6 mana. If I want this effect in white, it's going to be True Believer, Aegis of the Gods or incidentally from Teyo, the Shieldmage.

That said, I've played a lot of Lazotep Plating, because having the effect you rarely and only briefly need is more exciting on an instant with more than just the one effect.

Effects that give you hexproof are more powerful than a lot of people seem to think. They stop an awful lot of effects, including most discard effects, things like Bribery and River's Rebuke and many things that eliminate graveyards or do direct damage. I recently started running Lazotep Plating as a means of protecting my board state and found myself using it a lot more than I'd expected - like, more than half of the time - against player-targeted effects. In many cases, I would have lost the game if not for the Plating,

Seconded on the Lazotep Plating. It's not that the effect is bad on Spirit of the Hearth, it's that it's bad for cost and there's more efficient ways of getting there. Do people really play River's Rebuke though? I've only seen it once or twice...

[JWK]

Do people really play River's Rebuke though? I've only seen it once or twice.

It's probably a meta thing, but I run into it fairly often among the people I regularly play with. At least one of them doesn't have, and isn't willing to pay the cost to obtain, Cyclonic Rift, so runs Rebuke instead. I also run it in some decks, usually along with Rift. Sometimes bouncing one opponent's board can be a better strategic move than becoming the archenemy by casting Cyclonic Rift, especially if your boardstate won't allow to immediately win with Rift, and other times you just need to set someone back a lot, and I pack both in decks to improve the odds of drawing into one or the other.

Oh, and thanks for the reminder of Teyo. I had rather forgotten he existed, but he's a much more reasonably-costed way to give yourself hexproof.

[Serenade]

Re: River's Rebuke
Last week three multiplayer games in a row were determined by Cyclonic Rift...and we all agreed that it's on the table for a house ban. As such I will continue to use RR. I also have been facing lots of tokens and playing more 1vs1, so it plays better against those.

On topic: I'll also note Shalai, Voice of Plenty as a good alternative for GW decks.

[JWK]

On topic: I'll also note Shalai, Voice of Plenty as a good alternative for GW decks.

Yup. There's a reason I currently play Shalai in two decks and Spirit of the Hearth in zero.

[3drinks]

Wednesday, October 7th, 2020; Animal Boneyard

Like, "enchanted land becomes a Diamond Valley" isn't the worst effect I've seen on a land aura.

[DirkGently]

Diamond valley is already a very niche card, and it's colorless. Adding white to the CI, and 3 cmc and a card to the cost, unsurprisingly, results in a pretty awful card. It's also a lot less durable since land or enchantment removal can dismantle it - especially unappetizing for Child of Alara, for example.

So yeh is bad.

[Mookie]

Hmmm, interesting. Animal Boneyard isn't a particularly powerful sacrifice outlet - it effectively costs a mana to activate (assuming you put it on a mana-producing land), and you can only use it once per turn cycle. As a result, if I were planning to do any sort of combo / aristocrats shenanigans, I'd usually look elsewhere. Martyr's Cause, Ashnod's Altar, Blasting Station.... there are a lot of more powerful sacrifice outlets available, even in mono-white.

That said, if you specifically care about the lifegain, you're a bit more limited. If you're also running black, Ayli, Eternal Pilgrim and Disciple of Griselbrand are options, but I can't think of many alternatives in mono-white. There are effects like Trostani, Selesnya's Voice that gain life equal to toughness on ETB, but I can't think of any others that do quite the same as this. Diamond Valley (and the more affordable High Market) are options if you want this on a land though.

....I guess one other niche use case is it's a sacrifice outlet that can be fetched by Heliod's Pilgrim or other aura-fetchers, which can be relevant for an enchantress deck like Sram, Senior Edificer. Relevant if you're concerned about Song of the Dryads or Mind Control effects shutting down your commander and want a fetchable answer, although I imagine there are better ones out there.

[PrimevalCommander]

Though these are not mono-white, I would prefer the already mentioned Disciple of Griselbrand or Ayli, Eternal Pilgrim to make ALL of my lands into Diamond Valleys. I will be trying one of these out in a deck that already includes Diamond Valley and would appreciate the additional life gain. It may come as a shock, but black likes to spend life points about as fast as it spends mana. Gaining some of that back would be worth the activation cost.

I wouldn't call this a terrible card, but it's not all that good. If I saw someone play it, I would check my field for a Tectonic Edge, but probably wait to see if they start to abuse it before doing anything to it. The more high impact enchantments get printed, the less these smaller value-based enchantments get targeted by my removal. Does mono white need too much help gaining life? Colorless sac outlets are common enough to be attainable.

[Hawk]

I have seen this played once, in my brother's Lin Sivvi, Defiant Hero deck that had the backdoor infinite of Task Force + Outrider en-Kor + this for infinite life (with Worthy Cause as a substitute). That was a long time ago and a deck that wasn't even that great.

I think that's about it. The other tribe interested in this, Clerics (or Humans I guess) have the ability to run some combination of Ayli, Eternal Pilgrim, Disciple of Griselbrand, and Starlit Sanctum nevermind OG Diamond Valley.

[Serenade]

Y'all aren't using this in all of your toughness-matters/aura-enchantress/life gain decks?!?

Miren, the Moaning Well is the same cost for one activation, fits in a land slot in all decks, draws zero hate, and has been replaced in all of my decks for High Market, which has been replaced with Phyrexian Tower or a different land in most of my decks.

[Hawk]

Y'all aren't using this in all of your toughness-matters/aura-enchantress/life gain decks?!?

Miren, the Moaning Well is the same cost for one activation, fits in a land slot in all decks, draws zero hate, and has been replaced in all of my decks for High Market, which has been replaced with Phyrexian Tower or a different land in most of my decks.

This is it, yeah. Sacrifice for 0 at instant speed is really good; it fizzles targeted spells, blocks theft effects, and can break a commander out of a Darksteel Mutation or whatever. But this is effectively sacrifice for 1 and unless you REALLY care about it being an aura or the toughness-matters bit, you can accomplish much the same with High Market for a much lower deck cost. Or Claws of Gix. Or lots of other lands or permanents. And High Market is a card I've had a bit of a weird relationship with, going from "never played" to "always played" to "only occasionally played" over the decade of Commander I've played.

[3drinks]

Y'all aren't using this in all of your toughness-matters/aura-enchantress/life gain decks?!?

Miren, the Moaning Well is the same cost for one activation, fits in a land slot in all decks, draws zero hate, and has been replaced in all of my decks for High Market, which has been replaced with Phyrexian Tower or a different land in most of my decks.

Real men use Despotic Scepter for this effect. This goes out to all of us old timers.

[3drinks]

Thursday, october 8th, 2020; Theater of Horrors

The hardest part of this was spelling that the backwards way with the R and the E so our card catalogue would be able to recognize it. Decent card really, I like how it doesn't specifically give you a use it or lose it turn-by-turn rule. Useful. Can't imagine activating the other ability, unless I had a mana combo (heeelllllooooooo WGD.....)

[DirkGently]

It annoys me when they put (imo) unnecessary timing restrictions on cards. Why only on your turn? Would this card really be busted if you could ping your opponent on their turn to unlock you instants from under this card? Plus it'd be funny to unlock stuff after an opponent cracked a fetch, or one opponent hit another one.

If this was mono-red it'd be amazing, but as a multicolor card (especially with black) it's got some pretty steep competition. Compare to perennial favourite Phyrexian Arena, which costs basically the same but doesn't require damage, doesn't reveal the card, doesn't have any timing restrictions, and doesn't lose the cards if it's removed before you cast them, for the cost of just 1 life a turn.

Not unplayable but definitely niche. If you're looking for an infinite mana dump already then at least it's a decent card on its own, but if you're not planning to go infinite then you've gotta be almost guaranteeing the damage triggers just to bring it close to arena. Rakdos LOR maybe?

[JWK]

If this was mono-red it'd be amazing, but as a multicolor card (especially with black) it's got some pretty steep competition. Compare to perennial favourite Phyrexian Arena, which costs basically the same but doesn't require damage, doesn't reveal the card, doesn't have any timing restrictions, and doesn't lose the cards if it's removed before you cast them, for the cost of just 1 life a turn.

Not unplayable but definitely niche. If you're looking for an infinite mana dump already then at least it's a decent card on its own, but if you're not planning to go infinite then you've gotta be almost guaranteeing the damage triggers just to bring it close to arena. Rakdos LOR maybe?

All of the above is why I don't play this card. It draws you one card per turn that you have to jump through hoops to play. The direct damage add-on is over-costed unless you are generating ridiculous amounts of mana, in which case either a) you are probably winning regardless of this card, or b) you probably want to be drawing more cards than this gives you.

If you can make it good in your deck, cool, but I run three purely Rakdos colored decks, plus some Jund and Mardu ones, and I would pretty much always run Phyrexian Arena, Read the Bones and four or five other black draw effects before I considered running this.

[Dunharrow]

I believe I put it into Rakdos, Lord of Riots since it can help ping an opponent in a pinch... Hasn't come up yet and I suspect that when I do have it in a game I will realize that I should put a different card draw effect.

[Mookie]

Theater of Horrors is fine. I'd generally evaluate it as a one-sided Howling Mine that requires a few hoops to be jumped through. Assuming you're able to deal damage to your opponents consistently, an extra card each turn for three mana is pretty solid. Still, black and red already have a lot of options for this - Phyrexian Arena, Outpost Siege, etc. As a result, I don't really see a need to play Theater - there are other options that are easier to use.

I suppose the one thing that makes Theater unique is its ping ability, but at four mana for one damage it's not exactly a good rate. It can theoretically serve as a mana sink (or a win condition with infinite mana), but I'd generally assume it to be an emergency panic button in case your really need one of the cards exiled by it. Alternatively, a very janky Jayemdae Tome variant.

[JWK]

In my comments above, I did forget to mention one other good reason for running Theater of Horrors: flavor. If you are running not just Rakdos colors or a deck with one of the versions of Rakdos as your commander, but actually a Rakdos character/guild theme deck, then this is of couse a legit inclusion. Daarken's art is quite nice, and the Rakdos guild cards include a wonderful array of wonderfully and cleverly illustrated, evocative cards. I think of the Ravnica guilds, Rakdos is tied with Izzet in terms of the most consistently interesting and distinct art, with Orzhov coming in at a distant third and everyone else further back.

For pretty much anything else, though, there are more reliable, more efficient and/or better costed options.