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

[TheAmericanSpirit]

It's a mox, so it's pretty good. I don't prefer the legal mox variants to the colorless fast mana, which generally produce more mana overall. But that makes this no less powerful.

Can't really see a great reason to play it outside of storm decks or cedh. There's better ramp if you're not on a 4 turn clock.

[Serenade]

I never got one back in the day, and I do not see myself NEEEEDING it for anything, so the cost is too prohibitive at this point to obtain one.

[duducrash]

Ive built plenty of quarentine decks I never got to play with. And Arasta is in one of them, I like her but reallt dont know how good she is

[Ruiner]

Chrome Mox is pretty much an auto-include in most decks for me unless they are green. In my experience the ramp aspect outweighs the card disadvantage.

[3drinks]

Tbh Gemstone Mine might be better than either. Pitch anything early, or just play as a land late. But all 3 are very common for low-curve decks for me.

I suspect you mean Gemstone Caverns here, not mine, as the lattre doesn't make any sense in this context?

[Mookie]

Chrome Mox, like most rituals and other fast-mana-for-card-disadvantage, tends to be better when you're doing something unfair. And given that one of my key ethos for the format is 'if you're playing fair, you're playing wrong', I would say it's always correct to try to be as degenerate as possible.

More seriously, it's a strong card, and banned in Modern for a reason. The strongest thing you can do with Chrome Mox is probably to ramp out something to make up for the card disadvantage, which is pretty easy when you have a value-generating commander. If you're running wheels or other mass card draw spells, having a way to turn excess cards into mana is also extremely powerful. On the other hand, it's a terrible topdeck if you have no cards in hand. It's also the case that card advantage tends to matter more in longer games, so I don't know that I would want it in a slower deck.

Somewhat interesting to contrast with Mox Diamond, which I would generally be a bit more hesitant to include - missing land drops in the early game is pretty painful, and you're even less likely to have excess lands to play in the lategame. On the other hand, discarding the land fuels Crucible of Worlds effects. Hmmm...

[hyalopterouslemur]

It's okay, early on. Like Diamond, the card disadvantage is annoying. Late game, you're likely to pitch it to a Spellshaper or something. I really hate exiling my own things

[umtiger]

Interesting deck building is that there are some decks that will play Chrome Mox but not play Sol Ring. The color requirements are so high in my Sram deck that I cannot play Sol Ring but I will gladly play Chrome Mox.

[Sinis]

Saturday, April 10th, 2021; Chrome Mox

I'm a proud owner of every EDH-legal mox printed (except Mox Tantalite, which I think sucks), and this one is ranked highly.

The imprint for a nonland usually means that you can just replace a land in your deck with it. I also like that the imprint is a may; you can play it without imprinting if you're about to -2 Daretti, Scrap Savant, or use Master Transmuter. Similar to Everflowing Chalice without kicker.

Solid card, would definitely play in lots of decks, but I only have one.

Somewhat interesting to contrast with Mox Diamond, which I would generally be a bit more hesitant to include - missing land drops in the early game is pretty painful, and you're even less likely to have excess lands to play in the lategame. On the other hand, discarding the land fuels Crucible of Worlds effects. Hmmm...

I may have, on turn one some time in the past, played Forest + Mox Diamond into Life from the Loam...

I think it's good in the decks that don't mind the land in the graveyard for whatever reason. Threshold, Delirium, LftL, Splendid Reclamation, etc., or decks that are very land heavy. Outside those, I tend to rank Chrome Mox over it.

[DirkGently]

Tbh Gemstone Mine might be better than either. Pitch anything early, or just play as a land late. But all 3 are very common for low-curve decks for me.

I suspect you mean Gemstone Caverns here, not mine, as the lattre doesn't make any sense in this context?

You're correct, I'm on my phone and too lazy to check.

[pokken]

Chrome mox has an interesting tension in being a rock that gets worse the fewer non rock spells and more colors you're running. It can be a dud in really heavy artifact decks where your colored spells are few and often precious.

I like it best when I'm in nongreen and my commander costs 3 or less, and ideally when I have a low curve that benefits a lot from having 2 on turn 1. So lots of signets or lots of powerful 2 or 3 Mana spells.

It can be much worse than a signet a high enough percentage of the time that I'm careful with it.

I have it in ephara where my 2 cmc ramp count is so high that I end up enabling some turn 2 epharas with it. And also in sygg where it enables turn 1 sygg or blood artist etc.

I have had it be worse than a land enough times in ephara that I debate whether it belongs tbh.

It's probably not as overplayed as mox diamond -- and that's a hill I will die on, mox diamond is really sketchy in 29 land decks despite the cedh group think. It's cost me more games of cedh than it's won for sure. But I do think chrome is a bit overplayed.

[3drinks]

It's probably not as overplayed as mox diamond -- and that's a hill I will die on, mox diamond is really sketchy in 29 land decks despite the cedh group think. It's cost me more games of cedh than it's won for sure. But I do think chrome is a bit overplayed.

You're not wrong tbh. I don't play diamond in anything that runs fewer than 37 lands because diamond doesn't matter when you have two lands plus it. Just play a dang rampant growth at that point, come out ahead, and be done with it.

[pokken]

You're not wrong tbh. I don't play diamond in anything that runs fewer than 37 lands because diamond doesn't matter when you have two lands plus it. Just play a dang rampant growth at that point, come out ahead, and be done with it.

The thinking in the CEDH community is mostly that they have so much card filtering and draw that the Mox Diamond + 2 land hands it's worth it to slam the mox and land and do something for 2 mana on turn 1 a significant percentage of the time.

My experience has been constant chains of 1 land + Mox Diamond hands that are unkeepable but would have been fine with a second land.

But the whole CEDH format is insistent that diamond is right with those land counts and way smarter people than me swear it's correct. So we're probably both wrong. I'm happy to own that.

Just the raw math of it though like, the number of 1 land hands you get with 29 lands is pretty insane (basically a third of your hands have 0 or 1 lands ).

[DirkGently]

I remember when the common wisdom was 40 lands for commander, and I think we've significantly overcorrected. Considering we have an always-available spell in the CZ, I think it's very reasonable to skew towards higher lands than other formats.

[RadiantSophia]

I Have 2 Chrome Moxes (well, technically, they belong to my husband since he's the collector), and I can not recall ever actually playing with them in anything besides limited (Double Masters, not Mirrodin). The thought of pitching a card does not fill me with happy. I guess I should try to get over my fear of exiling a card from my hand, because who doesn't like quick mana? Right?

[3drinks]

Sunday, April 11th, 2021; Sengir, the Dark Baron

"At least it has partner" question mark

[3drinks]

I remember when the common wisdom was 40 lands for commander, and I think we've significantly overcorrected. Considering we have an always-available spell in the CZ, I think it's very reasonable to skew towards higher lands than other formats.

40 is always where I start, with my control builds going as high as 44 + a tabernacle. Grixis typically wants to actually hit it's seventh and eighth land drops.

[TheAmericanSpirit]

This sengir is kinda odd. Why does this big bad have partner? He had a "family" of evildoers, but none of them were really important to the baron beyond their utility to him e.g. Veldrane. I like the call back to his +2/+2 counters, but the trigger to get them is kinda bland. His last ability is also weird because players generally don't tend to die from very high life totals so the odds of gaining huge life is pretty low.

Frankly, it just doesn't feel like the Baron. IMO, they could have made this any generic vampire. I think it would be more in-flavor if he had an ability to steal creatures a la Captivating Vampire and get the counters from that somehow. It would match his lore much better.

[onering]

He can get big very fast. I see his schtick as kill/sac a bunch of dudes then swing for lethal commander damage, gain 40. Other commanders also have the same "grow from other things dying" theme, and since sacrifice is usually going to be how you achieve this with the Baron, he competes with Korvold. Partner is what makes him interesting, as it opens up the archetype to color combos that don't usually play around with it (Esper, Sultai, Dimir) and he plays well with Dargo (another big boi that can threated to kill with commander damage).

[DirkGently]

I don't really get how hated he is - he seems decent to me, if a bit boring. Definitely capable of 1-shotting people pretty easily, so he's not weak. But tbf I wasn't playing back in homelands so I don't have any attachment to the character and wasn't expecting anything particularly exciting.

[TheAmericanSpirit]

@DirkGently

This baron catches a lot of flak because expectation is the mother of disappointment. The baron is a very cool character, but this card is quite lame. And what with all the cool things they put on other legends in this set, it feels extra bad that an iconic character got shafted out of all of them.

[JWK]

Yeah, lore-wise, giving the Baron partner is pretty iffy. The Baron Sengir from the lore has thralls and pawns, not partners. Also, this card doesn't really hint at his power. Baron Sengir is an entity powerful enough that folk like old-walker Urza were extremely wary of him.

As a card, this was really solid in Commander Legends limited, but that's obviously going to be true of a flying beater that can become huge as things die. In the larger commander format, he's okay. I run the Baron in my Szat/Kodama deck, where he can reliably get huge and dangerous from all the things that deck makes die, whether I'm sacrificing creatures to draw cards or forcing others to sacrifice their stuff, but I don't run him in either of my two vampire tribal decks (Garza Zol or Edgar) because he's not particularly cost-effective compared to other vampires of the same or even lower CMC.

[Guardman]

I have wanted to try and build a GB Indestructible Wrath commander with him and Anara, Wolvid Familiar, some indestructible creatures like Toski, Bearer of Secrets and a bunch of board wipes like Damnation and Crux of Fate. It seems fun, if a bit annoying. And I worry I would get bored with it after a few games.

[3drinks]

Yeah, lore-wise, giving the Baron partner is pretty iffy. The Baron Sengir from the lore has thralls and pawns, not partners. Also, this card doesn't really hint at his power. Baron Sengir is an entity powerful enough that folk like old-walker Urza were extremely wary of him.

As a card, this was really solid in Commander Legends limited, but that's obviously going to be true of a flying beater that can become huge as things die. In the larger commander format, he's okay. I run the Baron in my Szat/Kodama deck, where he can reliably get huge and dangerous from all the things that deck makes die, whether I'm sacrificing creatures to draw cards or forcing others to sacrifice their stuff, but I don't run him in either of my two vampire tribal decks (Garza Zol or Edgar) because he's not particularly cost-effective compared to other vampires of the same or even lower CMC.

The good Baron should've been what Razaketh is, change my mind. Sacrificing the thralls for his own untold powerrr...

WotC, return to Ulgrotha, when?

[Sinis]

Sunday, April 11th, 2021; Sengir, the Dark Baron

I was so excited when it was spoiled, and I think...

... I think it might just be garbage