[mtgnexus] Random Card of the Day - Spinal Embrace

[TheAmericanSpirit]

The whole flagbearer thing is quite weird. "Yes, let's take our attention off the enemy assault and kill that bastard with the flag, what does he think this is, the Olympics?"

[Lorn Asbord Schutta]

The whole flagbearer thing is quite weird. "Yes, let's take our attention off the enemy assault and kill that bastard with the flag, what does he think this is, the Olympics?"

In some cultures - at least among the Romans and many european medieval armies - the mere lack of flag of respective unit in sight, which usually meant that flagbearer fell in battle, was seen as a bad omen for the squad. You either fought the standar back, or you were disfavored by some powers greater-then-a-man. Killing a flagbearer was a big morale hit and it was problematic in mundane way as well, because the unit without a flag took more time to organize its movements during a battle.
So the flagbearer ability in magic is some reversed-psychology effect.

[3drinks]

The whole flagbearer thing is quite weird. "Yes, let's take our attention off the enemy assault and kill that bastard with the flag, what does he think this is, the Olympics?"

It's even better when Alesha keeps digging up Standard Bearer who is waving a multicolour flag saying "hit me I'm right here" while Alesha is also digging up a Zombie Apocalypse. Think about that visual where you're playing capture the flag but a zombie horde is being resurrected 😂

[Mookie]

The flagbearer mechanic - showing up on Coalition Flag, Coalition Honor Guard, and Standard Bearer - is pretty weird. It effectively creates a lightning rod - almost all targeted spells that see play are removal spells, so you can use a flagbearer to take the hit for another, more important creature. That's an alright ability in 1v1, but it is significantly more awkward in multiplayer, where it is likely for one opponent to be throwing removal spells at another opponent's creatures. I would say that actual protection effects like Benevolent Bodyguard and Selfless Savior are going to be better a majority of the time due to their flexibility.

....I will note that obviously, there are targeted spells that aren't removal spells (such as pump effects like Giant Growth), but those are niche enough in EDH to not be worth consideration.

As for Coalition Flag in specific... I could see some niche use cases in which you would want to throw it on an indestructible creature to shut off all non-exile removal, protecting your other creatures, but it's hard to justify spending a full card (plus the creature in question) on that. It feels like it would be better to just put a protective aura / equipment on the creatures you want to protect directly.

[tstorm823]

Flagbearer plays interestingly with ward abilities, as they don't prevent the targeting and rather just counter the spell. This and Winged Boots together can make a creature that basically turns off all targeted creature removal (for your opponents) until someone is willing to eat the cost.

[3drinks]

Putting this on a hexproof creature prevents players from casting targeted spells, yeah?

[hyalopterouslemur]

Nope. But it can be used with Livewire Lash. Now just use it on an infect creature.

If you have to activate shroud, hexproof, or protection, that's another use. And indestructible stopping direct damage and "destroy" effects.

How does it work with ward?

[Hawk]

Not a rules expert, but...

- Coalition Flag wouldn't 't work with Hexproof, Protection, Phasing, or Shroud, at least not in the way it sounds like some are hoping for. The updating Oracle wording says: "While an opponent is choosing targets as part of casting a spell they control or activating an ability they control, that player must choose at least one Flagbearer on the battlefield if able." (emphasis mine). Because they aren't able to target a Hexproof, Shrouded, Protected, or Phased Out creature with the effect, they are exempt from having to and instead can target whatever they want.

- Coalition Flag works great with Indestructible or Ward. The updated wording doesn't care about whether or not targeting the card in question requires an extra cost, or whether or not it will be effective - only that if they're gonna target anything, they must target at least one Flagbearer. So that's a great combo.

- I'm a bit less confident on what happens if you stick Coaltion Flag on, say, Boreal Elemental or Callaphe, Beloved of the Sea (which use a different templating than what Ward ended up templated as, instead focusing on the targeting as an "additional cost". I believe that the opponent would be forced to "rewind" an illegal action if they, say, attempted to cast Infernal Grasp with no extra mana up to pay the tax, but I'm not 100% positive of that - perhaps they could skirt the flag by not having enough mana to pay, and thus they "aren't able" to target the card? That'd be consistent with the ruling that, say, you can choose to not attack a player with Goblin Rabblemaster if they control a Ghostly Prison even if you do have the mana.

- For just an added weirdness note - it's not "broken" or anything, but Coalition Flag on an Artifact, Enchantment, or Land creature causes all sorts of extra weirdness, some good and some bad.

[3drinks]

We need a totem armour version of this card. Same mana value.

[Mookie]

- I'm a bit less confident on what happens if you stick Coaltion Flag on, say, Boreal Elemental or Callaphe, Beloved of the Sea (which use a different templating than what Ward ended up templated as, instead focusing on the targeting as an "additional cost". I believe that the opponent would be forced to "rewind" an illegal action if they, say, attempted to cast Infernal Grasp with no extra mana up to pay the tax, but I'm not 100% positive of that - perhaps they could skirt the flag by not having enough mana to pay, and thus they "aren't able" to target the card? That'd be consistent with the ruling that, say, you can choose to not attack a player with Goblin Rabblemaster if they control a Ghostly Prison even if you do have the mana.

From the comprehensive rules:

118.3c Activating mana abilities is not mandatory, even if paying a cost is.
Example: A player controls Lodestone Golem, which says "Nonartifact spells cost {1} more to cast." Another player removes the last time counter from a suspended sorcery card. That player must cast that spell if able, but doing so costs {1}. The player is forced to pay that cost if enough mana is in their mana pool, but the player isn't forced to activate a mana ability to produce that mana. If they don't, the card simply remains exiled.

So, you must pay the cost if you have mana floating. If you don't have mana floating, you're not forced to activate any mana abilities and thus can generally ignore it. There may be some weird interaction if the only way you can produces the necessary mana is to generate significantly more than necessary (ex: you have a bunch of Mana Reflection effects), but I'll leave it to an actual judge to figure that out.

[tstorm823]

If I may speculate with my amateur opinion, I believe it works fine with something like Boreal Elemental because of the way casting a spell works in steps:
1) Move the spell to the stack
2) Choose any modes if necessary
3) Declare targets
4) Calculate the total cost of the spell
5) Activate mana abilities
6) Pay the cost of the spell
At that point, the spell is considered cast, and if you cannot fulfill the requirements of any given step, the cast is illegal, and you rewind back to before you started attempting to cast the spell.

So if an opponent has Coalition Flag on a Boreal Elemental, and you have 1 red mana and a Lightning Bolt, you'd put Lightning Bolt on the stack, it only has one mode, then you'd pick a target which would have to be the elemental because it's a flagbearer. The cost of the spell has not been calculated at this point, so the game has no idea whether you can afford the spell with or without the added cost. It only cares if Boreal Elemental is able to be targeted by Lightning Bolt, and it is, so flagbearer should apply. Then after declaring that target, the game says "ok, pay 2 and a red... oh you can't... get that crap off the stack then".

[3drinks]

Thursday, October 28th, 2021; Hivis of the Scale

Someone's gotta have something sweet with this guy right?

[Sinis]

Someone's gotta have something sweet with this guy right?

Probably not. I think anybody who wanted to take control of other people's dragons is playing Karrthus, Tyrant of Jund...

[hyalopterouslemur]

Blades of Velis Vel makes this dude okay.

I can't get over the hair and nipple. Silly viashino, you're not mammals.

[Igzex]

Too narrow and ineffective of a hate card to warrant a place in any deck really. Question yourself as a player if you need such a specific hate card to counter a bad strategy poorly, and question yourself as a person for hating out a particular friend's jank deck in a casual game.

[materpillar]

I mean, I have a Tivadar of Thorn goblin hate deck that loops Shields of Velis Vel. Pretty sure you could make a creature type hate deck with Sliver Overlord and stuff like Artificial Evolution. Probably bad, but hilarious.

If you really really hate playing against The Ur-Dragon... you still probably have better options for hating out dragons. *cough Intrepid Hero cough*

[3drinks]

Friday, October 29th, 2021; Order of Succession

Why did this card drop to bulk pricing? It's still pretty good...

[BeneTleilax]

It's too chaosy for a lot of people.

[hyalopterouslemur]

It's easy to benefit from, but too chaos for a lot of players. But hey, the king is dead, long live the king.

[Sinis]

Friday, October 29th, 2021; Order of Succession



Why did this card drop to bulk pricing? It's still pretty good...

1. I think it's garbage. You have to gain more than you're going to lose, and there's a chance (at a 4-person table) that the person with the most dangerous board won't be adjacent to you, or that it's you. To be frank, I've never even heard of this being played, let alone seen it.
2. Webcam/spelltable play makes this somewhat difficult to resolve.

[DirkGently]

Why play this over Control Magic ? Like…ever?

[TheAmericanSpirit]

Why play this over Control Magic ? Like…ever?

Agreed. I really despise cards that make seating order relevant in-game. Choosing a folding chair to sit in should not ever be a strategically relevant pregame decision, outside of games such as Musical Chairs and its ilk. I still dread the possibility of encountering Aeon Engine someday...

[DirkGently]

Giving this card a slightly fairer shake, I think the idea (i.e. best case scenario) is that you don't have any creatures on board, and all of your opponents have their commanders on board, and nobody has any understanding of politics whatsoever and is operating on the assumption of "anything that's bad for any of my opponents must therefore be good for me." Then everyone takes everyone else's commanders, thus throwing their decks into disarray, and you lose nothing.

Unfortunately this falls down in basically any real-world scenario.

[Mookie]

I've never really been a fan of Order of Succession. The best-case scenario certainly exists - you're playing a Donate deck and give away Steel Golem to an Animar, Soul of Elements deck, who in turn loses Animar to the almost-creatureless Bruna, Light of Alabaster deck, who loses Bruna to the final player, who gives you some absurd fatty.... but the odds of that happening is almost zero. Obviously, switching a creature to a different controller will often make that creature worse due to a lack of synergy, but it's rare for that to actually be significant. In practice, I would expect the average value of the chosen creatures to be relatively similar, which means you're casting a spell that doesn't actually have a significant impact on the game.

As others have noted, Mind Control is a much easier effect if you want to steal a creature. Alternatively, run Inniaz, the Gale Force, who actually gives you control over what gets switched around.

[Sinis]

I've never really been a fan of Order of Succession. The best-case scenario certainly exists - you're playing a Donate deck and give away Steel Golem to an Animar, Soul of Elements deck

One of the deeply unfortunate aspects of this card is that the person gaining the permanent gets to pick it. So, they probably choose something *other* than the steel golem.