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

[3drinks]

Thursday, August 26th, 2021; Alirios, Enraptured

Hmm. I wonder...

[Mookie]

Hmmm.... Alirios, Enraptured is a weird card. In a vacuum, three mana for 10 points of stats (a 3/2 and a 2/3) is a pretty good deal. The extra body works well if you need expendable tokens, or if you plan to do any flickering. That said, I'm not entirely sure what decks would want to run him - as tokens go, a 3/2 isn't very exciting when you compare to other blue token producers like Master of Waves, Reef Worm, and Whirler Rogue. If you're running a more aggressive deck and care about the raw stat efficiency, there's also the issue that you don't have access to all the stats at the same time due to Alirios being tapped.

....there might be a flavor combo somewhere with Infinite Reflection.

[Hawk]

low-budget Blade Splicer with the flaw that most decks that want to blink for low-grade value like this are probably in UW, and Blade Splicer isn't that expensive these days. I also think I'd generally prefer Wing Splicer - one more mana, but the 3/3 flies and the 1/1 dork body can still block or attack with anthems. Heck, even though it's less overall power/toughness for the cost I'd generally find something as simple as Eldrazi Skyspawner superior, as it has more utility and keywords.

[3drinks]

Hmmm.... Alirios, Enraptured is a weird card. In a vacuum, three mana for 10 points of stats (a 3/2 and a 2/3) is a pretty good deal. The extra body works well if you need expendable tokens, or if you plan to do any flickering. That said, I'm not entirely sure what decks would want to run him - as tokens go, a 3/2 isn't very exciting when you compare to other blue token producers like Master of Waves, Reef Worm, and Whirler Rogue. If you're running a more aggressive deck and care about the raw stat efficiency, there's also the issue that you don't have access to all the stats at the same time due to Alirios being tapped.

....there might be a flavor combo somewhere with Infinite Reflection.

Spirit Mirror is the one that keeps coming to mind, but I don't see the combo here. Make a 2/3 for three and then 0 to untap seems like a lot of work for a coloured Brass Man. Unless the goal is to cast, make the token, and then bounce with, say, Cloudstone Curio to replay for all the reflections you want? That suggests Aluren is the play we need.

[kirkusjones]

Oh man, I want to find a home for Spirit Mirror + Unnatural Selection! I've loved Unnatural Selection since I ran Mistform Ultimus as my super jank commander back in the day. Cool to see a way to machine gun critters with it…

[BeneTleilax]

Yarok, maybe?

[hyalopterouslemur]

This was good in limited, but it's kinda terrible in EDH? If you go this route, you already have splicers.

So, yeah, Narcissus isn't as great as he looks.

[Igzex]

I mean, I guess he gets me one step closer to finally building my Jodah, Archmage Eternal 5 color bishonens deck...

[3drinks]

Friday, August 27th, 2021; Mirrored Lotus

Not just this card, but this codename Reflect as well. What a sweet mechanic that could be I think.

Forgot we don't have support for the playtest cards. https://scryfall.com/card/cmb2/107/mirrored-lotus

Mirrored Lotus 0
Artifact

Reflect 0 (As this enters the battlefield, each opponent may pay 0. When they do, they create a token copy of this except it lacks this ability.)

T, Exile Mirrored Lotus: Add three mana of any one color.

[PrimevalCommander]

Please no more Lotuses... This will obviously help the caster more than opponents because opponents are limited to instant speed if they want to interact with anything the active player is doing with the free mana. Best for combo decks that typically wait until interaction is spent to make their move anyway. Maybe a fine casual card, but they really need to move on from the fixed Lotus and find something less broken to fiddle with.

[onering]

Can we not do playtest cards, at all. They aren't legal, and aren't real cards.

[Hawk]

Agreed that I'm not sure I see the value in talking about playtest cards. It'd be like discussing the merits of Jack-in-the-Mox or Chaos Orb in EDH - it's a null question, since it isn't legal and never has been.

That being said, I'll play along at least this one more time.

This is a card that reads pretty fair, and I'm sure some group hug players would play it that way, but it also could easily have that symmetry broken:

- Use Karn, the Great Creator to prevent opponents from using their copies.
- Use Gorilla Shaman or other cheap repeatable/mass destruction effects to nuke their copies.
- Use a Containment Priest-style effect to hose the copies (too sleep deprived to recall a version of this effect that hits all non-land permanents - is there one?)
- Just wait to use this until you're ready to "go off" with a Storm/Eggs combo, before opponents can leverage their free lotus.

Exiling means it is a bit tougher to abuse than other lotus-lites (no Auriok Salvagers tricks here), so this feels like a fringe combo piece a la Lion's Eye Diamond more than a staple. It'd be super toxic in every non-EDH format though, where you are only 1v`1 and are more likely to be able to run multiples of ways to break the symmetry.

Reflect also doesn't excite me as a mechanic. My experience with the Tempting Offer cards (Tempt with Vengeance, Tempt with Discovery, etc.) is that they are often super swingy and unfun. This mechanic is significantly worse than that because often, you are just putting opponents way far ahead whereas with Tempt its less predictable. Maybe if the Reflect costs were different? On this card opponents would be dumb not to take the offer but what if it was "0, pay 3 life"? Probably still dumb not to take it. In general it feels hard to balance this mechanic since the Reflect cost is either so cheap that opponents always take it, or so expensive that you just wait to "get 'em" once they tap out. Doesn't seem like great design space.

[3drinks]

Who is buying these then such that this card is asking $20?

[Hawk]

Who is buying these then such that this card is asking $20?

Collectors and cube enthusiasts? No idea.

[folding_music]

excluding interesting cards from the format remains arbitrary to me, proxy the card up and try it imo

[BeneTleilax]

excluding interesting cards from the format remains arbitrary to me, proxy the card up and try it imo

I mean, this is plainly broken, and at best lets two players team up to race ahead of the table. Many of the others break the rules in confusing ways that will likely bring the game to a halt. They're like un-cards, where they have to be allowed in specifically, rather than by default. This allows tables to avoid the broken %$#% that would have been banned anyways, and negotiate uncharted rules interactions before the game starts.

[folding_music]

it's all opponents. if it was only target opponent also creates one of these, or whatever, it'd be a more interesting come-back tool - you identify taht someone's ahead, crack a lotus each with a knowing nod and get back in the game. that's really broken but this entire format is based around broken interactions to the point where vanilla cards have no impact whatsoever. and I don't think there's much need to play dense when it comes to new mechanics

[BeneTleilax]

and I don't think there's much need to play dense when it comes to new mechanics

It's not about playing dense, it's about mechanics that are terra nova ruleswise, with little to no resources to understand how they work. If two players disagree on the many ambiguities of some of these cards, there is no third-party, authoritative source to reference. They're fine to opt-in, but springing them on your table seems thoughtless at best, and insulting the intelligence of your fellow players if they don't go along with your interpretation makes me question opting in to playing with *you*.

[Signe]

I actually would really love this for Group Hug decks, but it could easily get out of hand in heavy artifact themes. Sadly it would probably get used more for the latter, but the idea of more cards that sort of do Group Hug's thing of "Nobody is LOSING, but I'm definitely winning" is intriguing at least. Too bad it's not real, I'd have loved to see what it did to the game. Might try proxies some time!

[Mookie]

Yeah, playtest cards are weird. Personally, I think a lot of them are pretty cool and explore some interesting design space. Unfortunately, a lot of them are also pretty poorly balanced or lead to poor gameplay experiences. That's also true for silver-bordered cards, but definitely exaggerated for the playtest cards (have you seen Golgari Death Swarm? absolutely broken)

Anyway, speaking to Mirrored Lotus itself.... yeah, even a fixed Black Lotus still looks pretty broken. The symmetry means I don't think you want to run it outside dedicated storm / combo decks that plan to win the turn they play it, but the decks where it does fit are going to look pretty degenerate. It somewhat reminds me of Eladamri's Vineyard otherwise, which is a pretty niche effect, so it may be fair outside the abuse cases, like a one-shot Mana Flare. Reflect is.... an interesting mechanic. It's somewhat similar to demonstrate. A free cost turns it into a pretty significant downside, but if there are other costs (such as life, or mana, or discarding cards, or sacrificing creatures), then you can make it more asymmetric.

[Igzex]

I am pretty sure if this became an actual card it would be banned in this format pretty quickly. There's so many ways a 4 player game can go horrifyingly wrong with this monstrosity.

[plushpenguin]

Even if you play it in a combo deck, you give the other players mana to use their interaction. Sounds like it would simply mess up a game more than anything.

[3drinks]

Saturday, August 28th, 2021; Mangara, the Diplomat

[Cyberium]

Saturday, August 28th, 2021; Mangara, the Diplomat

The second ability doesn't require the casted spells to target you or your permanents so it's particularly useful in group games, especially when opponents engage in a counter war.

[pokken]

I love this card. I really liked it as a commander for my first cut at a superfriends deck, and I love the effect. It's a bit tedious to keep track of but it's very solidly powerful.

I'd definitely consider building another version of him again, and if the effect was on a multicolored commander I'd like that a lot

I think it costs a bit much for the effect as a just card advantage engine in a deck though it could go in the right shell