[mtgnexus] Random Card of the Day - Jetfire, Ingenious Scientist

[3drinks]

Sunday, September 26th, 2021; Damn

Is this card great, or is it great?

[Sinis]

Sunday, September 26th, 2021; Damn

This card is okay. W/B has so many great removal options that this one feels... okay.

[RxPhantom]

Damn is solid, and I know this is a callback to both Wrath of God and Damnation, but I find it a little annoying that they still feel the need to hose regenerate six years after they stopped printing new cards with it.

[Jemolk]

I find it a little annoying that they still feel the need to hose regenerate six years after they stopped printing new cards with it.

I probably wouldn't be playing it where I am if it didn't! Admittedly, regen is mainly a thing in my meta because I insist on making it one, but also, I like being able to interact with the occasional regenerating oddity such as Skittles. There are enough new wraths-with-upside that don't interfere with regen now that it's actually become a reasonable assumption that it's going to be a reliable way of keeping things on board, and I like to mess with that sort of assumption. Though, of course, I also enjoy messing with the reverse, that it's fine to run things that don't stop regen, by playing a bunch of regenerating nonsense in other decks.

Long story short -- Damn cool card we got today.

[3drinks]

Hot take: indestructible is only a constant 0: regenerate shield.

[Mookie]

Damn is an extremely clean design, and a great callback to Wrath of God and Damnation. One of the better board wipes available due to its extra flexibility. Personally, I don't think Wrath of God makes the cut anymore - there are a lot of high-synergy and asymmetric board wipe options in white, so it is difficult to find space for the relatively vanilla Wrath of God. When you expand the options to Orzhov, there are even more options, with cards like Merciless Eviction and Magister of Worth. Even in that competitive space, I think Damn is still worth consideration - the flexibility to act as spot removal is quite strong.

[Hermes_]

This old world well
Don't it make you wanna think damn
This cold girl well
Don't she wanna make you scream, damn

[umtiger]

Hot take: indestructible is only a constant 0: regenerate shield.

But about that tapping part of regenerate...

[onering]

As others have said, the flexibility in Orzhov is what makes this one of the better wrath options in that color combo.

I will add that on mtgo, the profanity filter censors this card's name in the game log.

[Jemolk]

Hot take: indestructible is only a constant 0: regenerate shield.

I would legitimately love if indestructible were errataed to be the Mossbridge Troll ability where you don't even have to activate it, it's just a constant regen shield. Indestructible things getting tapped and removed from combat when they would be destroyed would significantly increase interactivity with them.

[Ruiner]

Really my only problem with this card is that I really like the original artwork for Damnation a lot, so from a pure aesthetics standpoint I'm generally going to include Damn if I want a second boardwipe like this. I know that's probably a weird take to some people.

[3drinks]

Hot take: indestructible is only a constant 0: regenerate shield.

But about that tapping part of regenerate...

Which just makes indestructible more upside. I see no problems here.

[hyalopterouslemur]

The only downside being sorcery speed. Typical of wipes, but a pretty big downside for targeted removal. But for two modes, it might be worth it.

[Igzex]

This card is great it lets me swear at local game stores.

[hyalopterouslemur]

Why I like stores in Quebec.

I suppose that works better if you know Quebec French includes a lot of Biblical taboo words like tabernac, crisse, etc. English used to, hence zounds (God's wounds), golly (God's folly) and the like, but they all have gone from Very Serious Taboo to Very Cringe Euphemism.: Robin said golly in the Silver Age. (Which, considering DC's cosmology right now, isn't too far off.)

[3drinks]

Monday, September 27th, 2021; Kheru Mind-Eater

Man I tried jamming this so hard in Alesha when it first came out......

[Wallycaine]

I wish this used the Thief of Sanity template (with or without the ability to spend mana) over the current one. Having your virtual card advantage be dependent on keeping a 1/3 alive is rough.

[BeneTleilax]

A disappointing Ophidian.

[hyalopterouslemur]

It is made somewhat better by being able to tap for off-color mana (with Gilded Lotus, Birds of Paradise, City of Brass, Chromatic Lantern or some such). But it's still a 1/1 with no evasion other than "you need to block with two guys".

And it's really funny because I wrote on MTGS about how every black two-color combination could flavor vampires their own way (aristocratic wb, psychic ub, hedonistic br, predatory bg) and this how I imagined Dimir vampirws.

[RxPhantom]

This old world well
Don't it make you wanna think damn
This cold girl well
Don't she wanna make you scream, damn

I too grew up in the 90's.

[onering]

The fact that it exiles the card from their hand is important. Even if you can't cast anything with it, it's at least still disruptive. Usually when an opponent can choose to discard, they either discard a land or something that they actually want in their gy. By exiling, this removes the latter as an option, and them discarding a land is actually really good for you because you are definitely able to play it (if you waited for your land drop) and it sets up being able to play their other cards more easily later. Being able to play their stuff is a bonus on top of a solid specter ability. At 3 mana without good evasion, that's rarely going to be worth it, but it's value goes up if you have other ways of giving it evasion and access to 4+ colors.

[Mookie]

Yeah, there are a lot of issues with Kheru Mind-Eater.

• 1/3 for 3
• Requires combat damage
• Opponent chooses which card you get
• Requires appropriate colors of mana
• Only castable while you have Kheru Mind-Eater

I guess it is a 2-for-1 when it connects (you gain a card, the hit player loses a card), but the value of the worst card in your opponent's hand is usually going to be be pretty low. I'd prefer Dreamstealer, which can both scale with pumps and eternalize later for a bigger threat.

....on the opposite end of the spectrum, I wonder what the best Ophidian in the format is. I'm a big fan of Thada Adel, Acquisitor, and Thief of Sanity is pretty solid. I'm also cautiously optimistic about Oakhame Adversary, given that I added it to one of my decks earlier today,

[3drinks]

Tuesday, September 28th, 2021; Creeping Tar Pit|zne

[Hawk]

At the dawn of EDH (or at least, my dawn of time in the format, in 2011ish), I used to randomly slam manlands into every one of my decks. Every Gx deck had a Treetop Village, every Ux deck had a Faerie Conclave. I didn't happen to own any of the Zen Manduals, but would have given them the same treatment (and did, for a spell, when I finally got my hands on some Lavaclaw Reaches and Shambling Vents). The thought process was "the format is slow, so might as well get a possible late-game manasink, spare blocker, and utility card out of my land slots". Same reason every deck was running a full fist of cycling lands.

Times have changed, and nowadays I find taplands a much harder pill to swallow. Even the "best" of this cycle (tody's CotD Creeping Tar Pit for its inevitability, Celestial Colonnade for its sheer size) are pretty medium here, with 40 life and all the other risks and issues of manlands. If you must run a tapland, I think Creeping Tar Pit and its ilk generally come in behind the temples for always tapped lands (and thus also behind Path of Ancestry if your deck runs a commander who is a creature and at least a smattering of creatures that share its type in the 99), and then come in way ahead of the Gainlands or (*shudder*) the no-upside starter lands and guildgates. I'd also say they're way ahead of the new artifact duals (Mistvault Bridge) unless your deck is really, really heavy on the artifact synergy. They're about even with the Amonkhet Bicycle lands (Fetid Pools) and the new snow duals (Ice Tunnel) depending on how many ways you have to fetch those versus any possibly synergies with the manlands.

But even then, lots of the time I just don't want tapped lands period, and even a poor player like myself can often get away with not running any thanks to the existence of Command Tower as cheap universal fixing and the relative affordability of the Checklands, Reveallands, Fastlands, Pathways, Tangos, etc. Oh and that's the other issue - for folks on a budget who must run always tapped lands, these aren't budget friendly usually as most of the best ones are still playable and sought-after in Modern, so they lose that fight to the Scrylands and all the common duals printed in the last decade.

[BeneTleilax]

I think Hissing Quagmire is the best of the cycle, because it can act as a decent rattlesnake by threatening activation, and GB are the best lands colors. That said, Tar Pit has its place in saboteur decks, as a hard-to-kill unblockable that takes a land slot, especially ninjutsu decks that can benefit from the bounce to untap it.