MTGNexus

I run Basri's Lieutenant in my Knights deck (duh) and in my Linden white aggro deck. It's a solid card on turn 4, and gives some good protection against opposing combat commanders. White has also been getting more and more +1 counter support, and Heliod, Sun-Crowned and kin are always happy to see him.

I also run the Lieutenant in my budget Selesnya token +1 counters deck, where as you can probably guess, it steals the show when it hits the field. Especially if I have something like Juniper Order Ranger as well.

I forgot those showcase/PW borders existed in M21. They feel more magical than our normal, base case border/template.

https://scryfall.com/search?order=set&q ... que=prints

Thursday, September 16th, 2021; Exotic Orchard

I always forget about this guy. Did not know it got reprinted so often. Seems best with anything that steals your opponents' cards but does NOT allow you to use mana as mana of any color to play them. Obviously better as you add more colors to your deck, but........I still do not want to rely on my opponent to get a benefit here.

One of my favorite lands in 3+ colors, though I've run it in decks with fewer colors, too, but for more niche purposes.

Serenade wrote: ↑

2 years ago

I always forget about this guy. Did not know it got reprinted so often. Seems best with anything that steals your opponents' cards but does NOT allow you to use mana as mana of any color to play them. Obviously better as you add more colors to your deck, but........I still do not want to rely on my opponent to get a benefit here.

It's a slightly different calculation in Zedruu.

I run this card in a lot of my 5c decks. I find that it is usually just a dual/tri without drawback which is fantastic. Not for the most bestest of mana bases but fantastic in anything short of that.

Exotic Orchard is a strong but inconsistent option for multicolor mana fixing. The more colors you're playing, the more relevant it is - good in 3-5 color decks, but I would usually skip it in 2-color decks. (I am running it in my Thada Adel, Acquisitor deck though, for casting off-color artifacts) It has also been reprinted enough times to be pretty affordable, which is nice. I usually expect it to tap for around 3 colors, but it's hard to know which colors those will be.

The math for Exotic Orchard vs other 5-color fixing options is interesting - there are significant tradeoffs you have to make for lands that powerful. City of Brass and Mana Confluence are consistent but painful, Gateway Plaza is slow, Gemstone Caverns and Aether Hub are temporary, Opal Palace is expensive... other than Command Tower, you'll pretty much always have some downside. Of course, you can also take the opposite strategy - instead of playing a bunch of lands that tap for every color, instead play fetches and stuff like pathways that can provide any color, but lock you in once you've made your decision. Those are good for making sure you have access to every color, but aren't necessary plausible if you have lots of highly divergent mana costs (ex: you want to play both Cruel Ultimatum and Eerie Ultimatum).

...or I guess you can just have a bunch of ways to fetch up The World Tree.

every time I picked up one of those expansion-related commander decks it had one of these in, I think it's the card I own most of aside from having 16 Hymns to Tourach lol

my honest opinion of it is that it sucks, a feel bad card that's unreliable in two colour, way too far down the list in three colour and you'll never catch me building four or five. Prefer Planeshift's Meteor Crater when it comes to lands like this that ain't mega-expensive, never managed to get a Reflecting Pool or whatever

Just a flexible, dirt cheap color fixer. The fact that this has been reprinted into the ground pleases me greatly.

Nine times out of ten the color restriction won't matter, and the tenth you might just get unlucky and be playing Esper at an all mono green table, but honestly I've found that to be incredibly rare.

I love Exotic Orchard in my 3+ colour decks. An untapped land that usually provides 3+ colours of mana? Yes please! I'm yet to encounter the situation where I've been unable to cast a spell because it's not providing the coloured mana I need.

Also fun when an opponent drops their copy too; then you both have souped-up Reflecting Pools.

Well, the obvious question is, what kind of decks do your opponents have? Like, in a four-player game, you can be pretty sure green, blue, and black will hit the table, less so for white and red. As the number of opponents dwindles, it gets worse.

I mean, there's still five-color lands that are good for a lot of decks. (Gold standard here: Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx), but most of my "one mana of any color" cards are either artifacts or creatures. But one five-color land for any opponent makes this five-color.

Still a passable stealth way to add a color to sunburst.

I just don't like to trust to this kinda card for my mana. I only play these in 4-5c decks.

I started using Exotic Orchard in a couple of three-color decks when I ran out of Reflecting Pools. It's fine.

3drinks wrote: ↑

2 years ago

Pfff, unplayable! Doesn't make mana against only opponents!
Also, what if i don't have any opponents!?

On a more serious note, i think Exotic Orchard is unnecessary in 2C, great in 3C that isn't heavy and a great budget option for 4C/5C.
I've ran it for a while in my Gonti, Lord of Luxury deck, to be able to activate opponents' cards under my control. It didn't take long to realize that these situations came up way too rarely. It was cut for Swamp synergies and gifted away shortly after.

RxPhantom wrote: ↑

2 years ago

I started using Exotic Orchard in a couple of three-color decks when I ran out of Reflecting Pools. It's fine.

That's another one I won't use in 3 color but i'm kind of a manabase snob =P OUR LANDS MUST BE FETCHABLE!

Thursday, September 16th, 2021; Exotic Orchard

My only contribution to this rcotd is that I pronounce it "exotic orc hard" and my group has started to follow suit. I won't be taking questions.

Friday, September 17th, 2021; Darkblast



Under rated removal far more players could leverage that don't.

3drinks wrote: ↑

2 years ago

Friday, September 17th, 2021; Darkblast

Under rated removal far more players could leverage that don't.

How many x/1s are there that you really want to devote a card slot to killing?

I think it's more of a question of how important is dredge 3 to you. If it's important, then killing random utility creatures is worth it.

onering wrote: ↑

2 years ago

I think it's more of a question of how important is dredge 3 to you. If it's important, then killing random utility creatures is worth it.

I'd rather the defensive utility and sac synergies of a Stinkweed Imp, the recursion of Golgari Thug or even the ratcheting of Necroplasm. Toughness creep is very real in this format, a lot of utility/onastick dudes aren't x/1s anymore. This is a C-tier dredger imo, and we have much better self-mill options of late.

It is worth noting that you can -2/-2 a creature pretty easily with darkblast by casting it, dredging it, and casting it again. With The Gitrog Monster it got pretty bananas as a functional lockout card where every draw turns into darkblasting and probably drawing again

It is acceptable removal with a little work. The real star here is dredge.

I prefer Life from the Loam for synergy with cycling lands tho. Or Tragic Slip for removal.

In theory and on paper this kills around 30 of the top 100 creatures in EDH, but realistically that number is very skewed as several of those creatures are irrelevant to spend a kill spell on (Coiling Oracle, Reclamation Sage, Sakura-Tribe Elder, Baleful Strix, Spellseeker, Eternal Witness, Wood Elves and its ilk), and several more give a narrow window to be killable (Mother of Runes, Carrion Feeder, Soulherder are all likely to grow or have protection unless you nail them at a lucky moment). And many, many more of those 29 are just mana dorks - in a competitive environment it can still be worth "Blasting the Bird, but most of the time this is a poor move politically and card-parity wise in EDH. Sure, sure, as an instant you can combine it with blocks and maybe trade off for something bigger but that's even more of a losing move most of the time. And that's before we account for the possibility of X/1s getting pumped by lords, anthems, counters, equipment - while there are some powerful X/1s in the format for sure (Notion Thief, Blood Artist, Aven Mindcensor, Priest of Titania in elves.dec, etc.) this is not a reliable way to kill them and it's still a small number.

Of course, this card also has the second most broken keyword in Magic in its textbox. If you wanna dredge though, I like this less than Dakmor Salvage and Stinkweed Imp in the average B/x deck and find it only equal to Necroplasm or Golgari Thug. Most dredge-centric decks also have green, where this gets blown out of the water by Golgari Grave-Troll, Life from the Loam, and arguably Shambling Shell. If you desperately need more dredge, or if you are in non-green Dredge (Toshiro Umezawa, Syr Konrad, the Grim, Araumi of the Dead Tide), this is worth a look and maybe is even a bit underplayed - but, it's a risky and meta-dependent card for sure.

Darkblast is a great, and repeatable, way to trigger Baron Von Count at instant speed. I've never considered it as effective removal.