MTGNexus

Color hate like this is way too narrow. If you're going to run color hate, you go for something like Carpet of Flowers, Lifetap/Thoughtleech, Compost, Snake Pit, that sort of thing. Or "choose a color" stuff like Traveler's Cloak, Voice of All, and Glory.

Or swords, which are nice on their own.

I'd consider REB if my deck centers around discard/draw stuff, so at least it can serve a higher purpose if I am not facing blue.

The Street Fighter secret lair is not even out yet and we're already experiencing confusion over Capcom's strange localization practices back then

As for Blue Elemental Blast, the thing is you're playing blue, the color that has counterspells for everything. Red Elemental Blast sees play because it's red and none of the many, many blue players in EDH will ever see it coming.

Monday, September 20th, 2021; Refurbish



White Zombify for artifacts. I'd play this. It's an unconditional Trash for Treasure.

Refurbish is fine - four mana is roughly a fair rate for reanimation effects, and it can make sense in a white artifact-based deck. That said, I'm not running it in my Sharuum the Hegemon deck - Sharuum provides this effect in the command zone, so I don't really need other instances of it. It's somewhat rare for me to have multiple expensive permanents I want to reanimate - artifacts don't naturally die nearly as often as creatures, since they aren't swept away by most board wipes. Of course, if you're not looking to reanimate for value and instead wish to cheat something out early, looting / Entomb effects can make that happen.

That said, I'm also curious what sort of cards you would want to Refurbish in the first place. There are a lot of high-impact creatures that can dominate a game if Reanimate'd early, but it is somewhat rare for an artifact to be capable of winning the game by itself. I suppose Bolas's Citadel / Chromatic Orrery / The Immortal Sun can provide a lot of value though. On the flip side, there aren't many effects capable of reanimating an artifact (at least compared to reanimating creatures), which makes it somewhat more difficult to build around.

...maybe I should add some more looting and reanimation targets to my Sharuum deck. Hmmm...

3drinks wrote: ↑

2 years ago

Monday, September 20th, 2021; Refurbish

White Zombify for artifacts.

It's Argivian Restoration|WTH, but white.

It's okay. I guess. If white had more looting/entomb effects, it might be more playable than Argivian Restoration, but, it doesn't so it's not all that hot.

Are the only non-artifact, white rummage effects the learn cards (none of which are great)?

I could see Refurbish in Oswald Fiddlebender.

Becomes good with mill (u, sometimes bg), loot/rummage (ur), and I guess spellshapers and Land Tax, and cycling maybe? I kinda prefer Greater Good to Land Tax, though both are good.

Not enough to make it good in white. Mostly you need a discard outlet at least.

Tuesday, September 21st, 2021; Grismold, the Dreadsower

Kaervek, the Spiteful and Night of Souls' Betrayal are great follow-ups!

I'll also add Illness in the Ranks. I have no clue if this guy is strong, but he is U-G-L-Y.

I haven't built him, but I like him for a couple reasons. He plays in the same old lol sacrifice space that golgari usually does, but he brings a new soon to it by translating that to Voltron and limiting it to token, which moves away from the typical strat of sacrificing easily recurred critters and etb/ltb value creatures. This is also one of the newer Voltron commanders that doesn't force you to go all in on Voltron, but instead grows your commander as a consequence of doing something else that has other value. You can send a token swarm at one player while focusing grismold on another, letting him grow as your tokens are killed, or you can leverage sacrificing tokens for value while growing grismold. This sort of Voltron has more reach, more interaction, and a built in backup plan. But Grismold has other tricks. While limited to tokens, he triggers off of opponents tokens and even gives out some to start things off. That lends him to a GB bear hug deck focused on handing out tokens and then killing them for value, and let's you leverage several cards that have the drawback of generating tokens for other players. There are plenty of ways in GB to mass kill token swarms while leaving Grismold unscathed, plenty of ways to hand out 1/1s, and plenty of ways to get value from all those things dying (or even entering the battlefield under your opponents control).

Grismold, the Dreadsower and Massacre Wurm are good friends.

The recent Slaughter Specialist and The Meathook Massacre seem like staples here.

I've had mostly fun experiences playing against Grismold, the Dreadsower. He can get pretty huge pretty fast if ignored. Probably not a terror at high power tables but an interesting one to play against. I'll never build him but I'm not ever annoyed to see him on the other side of the table.

Serenade wrote: ↑

2 years ago

I'll also add Illness in the Ranks. I have no clue if this guy is strong, but he is U-G-L-Y.

He's a 3/3 with trample for three mana who makes himself bigger, fast. So, strong, but still Voltron.

In the 99, he's most often used as a way to help Ghave go infinite (which requires two cards at a minimum besides Ghave) but better options exist.

One of my favorite, longest running decks. Always fun to take the troll for a spin. Even when people see him coming, they still can underestimate how quickly he gets HUUUUUGE. Plus I get to run stuff like Dark Privilege! I really need to get around to posting my list on here.

Wednesday, September 22nd, 2021; Magus of the Will

Wednesday, September 22nd, 2021; Magus of the Will

Looking for opinions on this one. I don't play my copy of this, Yawgmoth's Will, Underworld Breach, or even Past in Flames in any of my current decks. Just too strong for my group's current tastes, I think?

A solid card, and probably a decent budget alternative to Yawgmoth's Will in more casual decks. Of course, Yawg Will is an insanely powerful recursion spell, but whether it's too good depends on what you're recurring with it. Also Jesus Christ I just noticed that both my judge promo Yawg Will and my regular copy are now worth more than I paid for the entire decks they're in abolish the RL yesterday.

I haven't tested out this magus. In general all the Magus have been a bit too slow and haven't gotten wide appeal. Magus of the Wheel seems to be one of the most liked. Generally putting a powerful artifact or sorcery ability on a creature with summoning sickness and an activation cost severely limits the power of the effect. I know that is the point of them, but it is funny how nerfed that effect is once put onto a magus. Magus of the wheel is actually cheaper to activate than it's namesake, which is interesting.

Now if you take Magus of the Crucible as an example, having a powerful artifact static effect on a sizeable body appropriate for the CMC is a significant upgrade. Magus of the Abyss follows this style and has some niche rolls.

Magus of the Will is solid, and should do well in mono-black decks that want a big recursion spell like Will on the cheap. Reanimation also helps if it dies before activation, or can be discarded and Apprentice Necromancer-d back with haste. Though that eats up some mana, Cabal Coffers not withstanding.

The problem with Magus of the Will is that it's not broken. That it's not broken should surprise no one. Taking a sorcery, giving it summoning sickness and making you pay for it twice is obviously going to power down the card.

The thing is Yawgmoth's Will is pretty much only worthwhile if you are doing broken things. Virtually no one is playing Will unless they are doing stupid things. If you aren't recurring fast mana, undercosted tutors, or ridiculous combo pieces, it's a mediocre to bad way to recur cards from your graveyard. It's not something you play to reanimate a creature, or get a second use out of a kill spell or something. If you want to do those things, you want something else, because Will is not particularly good at that.

It's funny, basically every category in the EDHRec page for Yawgmoth's Will - https://edhrec.com/cards/yawgmoths-will - might as well just say "This is played in cEDH decks."

Taking a card that is only worthwhile when used in a broken fashion, and powering it down to be not broken, makes a card that no one uses or wants. It is what it is, which unfortunately, is a card that might trick someone into thinking its good, which it isn't.

Sharpened wrote: ↑

2 years ago

If you aren't recurring fast mana, undercosted tutors, or ridiculous combo pieces, it's a mediocre to bad way to recur cards from your graveyard. It's not something you play to reanimate a creature, or get a second use out of a kill spell or something. If you want to do those things, you want something else, because Will is not particularly good at that.

Well, if Will is mediocre for those, then what are your better suggestions for those functions - especially the noncreature cards - in monoblack?

lyonhaert wrote: ↑

2 years ago

Sharpened wrote: ↑

2 years ago

If you aren't recurring fast mana, undercosted tutors, or ridiculous combo pieces, it's a mediocre to bad way to recur cards from your graveyard. It's not something you play to reanimate a creature, or get a second use out of a kill spell or something. If you want to do those things, you want something else, because Will is not particularly good at that.

Well, if Will is mediocre for those, then what are your better suggestions for those functions - especially the noncreature cards - in monoblack?

There may not be a better way to do those things in monoblack. They doesn't make it not mediocre.

I'm a pretty poor basketball player. I may be the best basketball player in my office (I'm almost certainly not, but for the sake of argument). As a result, I would probably choose to find away to have our office avoid playing basketball rather than rely on my basketball skills.

Without a better option that Yawgmoth's Will to recur noncreatures (and nonplaneswalkers), most monoblack decks go without that recursion.

Sure, price and availability keep the card out of most people's hands. But lets be honest, if you could substitute the card into every commander precon that has black in it, it would be mediocre to bad in pretty much all of them.

Y'all don't use Ill-Gotten Gains to recur noncreatures in monoB? (I stopped because it kept helping my opponents more.)