[mtgnexus] Random Card of the Day - North Star

[tstorm823]

This was niche until Garna, the Bloodflame, now it's all but obsoleted. If you want to do RB recursive beatdown, at a mid-to-low power level, I guess this guy could still be useful?

Both is nice.

[Hawk]

I was there, Gandalf. I was there when Spiritmonger was first printed and we all collectively lost our minds over a 6/6 for five mana that not only had no horrific drawbacks, it actually had meaningful upsides! Thing seemed like a monster. It strangely didn't warp standard - perhaps, in truth, a big creature could be printed and be good and still not be broken because it died to removal?

I see Underworld Cerberus and see a similar story. This is a big body for the mana value, with cool gametext. If you add this up, you're getting a 6/6 super menace + Ground Seal + a death trigger Empty the Catacombs. That all feels like it ought to be worth a lot more than five mana so it's a ton of value, but like Spiritmonger it's a bunch of great ingredients that don't necessarily gel into a cohesive meal. Many weeks ago now we discussed how Ground Seal is really shaky graveyard hate that faces a ton of competition. The Empty effect is great, but is a bit of an awkward combination with the first ability if you wanted to do reanimator-y things. Plus, being symmetrical is a significant drawback, and again as we recently discussed even really powerful raise-dead type effects are mediocre in a format that can play the best reanimation effects. And the body, while good, is ultimately "just stats". I'm a bit surprised to see it as 260 some decks on EDHRECs, but not that surprised - just a bit of an awkward dog.

Flavor is a home-run though.

[Serenade]

Was Terminate popular in that Standard?

Always loved the flavor but never knew what to do with the card.

[Melua]

I've always wanted to use it, but it's just too pricey for what it does. The exile clause hurts it a lot, and it's just too costly for a hate piece. It's also an oddity for rakdos colors as one of it's strengths is reanimation.

3/10, 10/10 flavor

Well, black. Red doesn't do much reanimation, or even really interact with the graveyard, and every other color pair featuring black, the other color brings more to the party. I mean, it is a 6/6 with super-menace for five. That's something?

Reds strength there is pitching things to the yard, and I'm glad they are leaning into it a bit more if Chainer, Nightmare Adept is any sign

[3drinks]

Wednesday, November 17th, 2021; Split Decision

I like this kind of counterspell, it gets the whole table involved. It's gonna unanimously veto an Expropriate, but otherwise still act as a Twincast in smaller cases. 1U is a pretty efficient rate for either effect.

[Melua]

This card is one that requires good politics, and there's an upper limit to what you will be able to copy depending on your table.

[Wallycaine]

I've always felt like duplication being the default on a tie vote really hurts this spell's playability. There's a lot of spells where copying it is largely useless, so having that be the default in heads up play or a 2/2 split is rough. For example, it's hard for this spell to counter a wrath, because you need everyone other than the wrath caster to agree that it's better to counter it than to let it go through.

[Igzex]

I always did like cards that are basically social experiments. Sometimes a good laugh is the result you truly need.

[Sinis]

I feel like Split Decision is only good while you're behind. At a 4 person table, if you target someone's ramp spell, you'll at least have yours and the ramp player's vote to copy, but the moment someone Wraths against your board, or you're further ahead, it seems more liable to work against you than get you value. Additionally, you basically don't get to copy your own spells: the table will absolutely turn on you if you try and copy your own Cultivate or something.

Essentially, you're looking at countering only wincons, and duplicating only small value spells. Also, it only counters instants and sorceries, which makes it quite limited (c.f. Swan Song, Miscast).

[hyalopterouslemur]

I once designed a split card along these lines called Double // Nothing.

Not sure if I would play this, so many things could go wrong.

[Serenade]

This is the cheapest (mana value AND color-wise) Fork effect in singles, right? =P

[kirkusjones]

I was there, Gandalf. I was there when Spiritmonger was first printed and we all collectively lost our minds over a 6/6 for five mana that not only had no horrific drawbacks, it actually had meaningful upsides! Thing seemed like a monster. It strangely didn't warp standard - perhaps, in truth, a big creature could be printed and be good and still not be broken because it died to removal?

I see Underworld Cerberus and see a similar story. This is a big body for the mana value, with cool gametext. If you add this up, you're getting a 6/6 super menace + Ground Seal + a death trigger Empty the Catacombs. That all feels like it ought to be worth a lot more than five mana so it's a ton of value, but like Spiritmonger it's a bunch of great ingredients that don't necessarily gel into a cohesive meal. Many weeks ago now we discussed how Ground Seal is really shaky graveyard hate that faces a ton of competition. The Empty effect is great, but is a bit of an awkward combination with the first ability if you wanted to do reanimator-y things. Plus, being symmetrical is a significant drawback, and again as we recently discussed even really powerful raise-dead type effects are mediocre in a format that can play the best reanimation effects. And the body, while good, is ultimately "just stats". I'm a bit surprised to see it as 260 some decks on EDHRECs, but not that surprised - just a bit of an awkward dog.

Flavor is a home-run though.

Spiritmonger was an unholy blight on our kitchen table metagame when it first came on the scene. We lived in fear of it and metagamed against the damn thing. That and Laquatus's Champion. Barf. To this day, the 'monger is one of my all-time favorite cards and probably the reason I play BG. That and dredge.

[onering]

The will of the council is that this garbage rot in binder hell.

There are situations where it's better than negate, copying a removal spell for instance, but it's far too unreliable as a counter spell, a narrow one at that, and only copies opponents spells (somewhat unreliably as well). Its cool to copy someone's sphinx's rev, but if I'm trying to copy stuff I'd rather just play more reliable copy spells. What it gains in flexibility it loses drastically in reliability. You can increase that through politicking, but only so far. Pick the effect you need more and run a better card.

[Mookie]

Split Decision is an interesting card. In a four player game, for many spells, I would expect for the original caster of the spell to vote for it to be copied, while the other two players will vote for a counter. The result defaults to a copy in case of tie, so this effectively gives you the power to choose whether it will be a 2-2 tie to copy, or 3-1 in favor of countering the spell, which seems pretty good. The place where it gets awkward are the positions in which you get overruled by the other players at the table. One situation where that can come up is if you're copying a game-winning spell like a lethal Torment of Hailfire), in which case the rest of the table will vote to counter - although honesty, having a counterspell in that situation is still pretty good. The other situation would be if you want to counter something that hits you specifically, such as a board wipe when you have overextended. In that case, it's no better than a fork effect, but no worse either.

....so yeah, if you're only considering your opponents' spells, it seems like a better Twincast. However, it does have a huge hole in its functionality - namely, that you can't copy your own spells, since your opponents will just vote to counter them. Most of the times I play fork effects, they're in spellslinger decks that want to copy their own spells, so I'm not sure if I would actually run Split Decision. I've noticed that they're pretty inconsistent in general, since not all decks play big spells worth copying (and even if they are, you won't necessarily be holding open mana at the right time). There are times that I've won off a copied Cultivate in the early game out of a nongreen deck, but there are also times that my copy spell just rots in my hand with no target. Hmmm....

Anyway, seems like a fun card to test out, if a bit inconsistent. I think I favor Narset's Reversal as my janky stack interaction, but Split Decision seems like an interesting option if you're already looking to fork your opponents' spells.

[3drinks]

Thursday, November 18th, 2021; Perilous Forays

[pokken]

I used to love this card but man it's just gotten too expensive for the most part. I used it as one of the ways to protect Derevi, Empyrial Tactician from theft effects back in the day, and it was always fine, just so slow.

5 mana enchantments are something I almost never play these days -- across all my decks, the only two I play consistently are Dictate of Erebos and Kindred Discovery (and even that is on my chopping block:)). Well, outside of enchantress decks anyway, where I play the hell out of Skybind

[Dragoon]

I like this card very much, even though it's slow. I'm currently playing it in Yedora, Grave Gardener where it has put a lot of work, especially with cards like Scute Swarm or Desecrated Tomb.

[Mookie]

Perilous Forays is alright. As a sac outlet, it's a bit expensive - five mana, plus an additional one mana per activation compares pretty poorly to options like Goblin Bombardment. However, unlike most free sac outlets, it actually provides a pretty solid output - getting to Path to Exile a bunch of expendable tokens is pretty good. It works particularly well if you have Omnath, Locus of Rage or another landfall-based token producer, since you can just keep ramping for as many lands as you have available. Throw in Lotus Cobra and you can actually get all the fetchable lands out of your deck (since it doesn't specify 'basic land').

I'll also note that green doesn't have that many sac outlets available. Greater Good is powerful, but requires you to be sacrificing big creatures. Evolutionary Leap is probably the best option, but its cost can make it tricky in multicolor decks. Beyond those, you'll probably be running colorless / artifact options, of which there are many, but few I would run specifically for their payoff.

[3drinks]

I'll also note that green doesn't have that many sac outlets available. Greater Good is powerful, but requires you to be sacrificing big creatures. Evolutionary Leap is probably the best option, but its cost can make it tricky in multicolor decks. Beyond those, you'll probably be running colorless / artifact options, of which there are many, but few I would run specifically for their payoff.

Yeah, in colourless I'm a fan of Claws of Gix for it's ubiquity.

[BeneTleilax]

Never seen this outside of boring Bloodghast loops. I'm kind of glad it's fallen off, tbh.

[Serenade]

I ran Hazezon for years and always drew this at the wrong time.

[PrimevalCommander]

I never got to play Perilous Forays much when it was in it's heyday. It always seemed to put in more work for my opponents who played it than it ever did for me. Bit expensive for a sac outlet, but still good in land decks. I'd probably play it in an Omnath, Locus of Rage deck, seems worth the cost there.

I've got it in the sideboard of my brother's Obuun, Mul Daya Ancestor deck which plays Angry Omnath and a host of other landfall effects. We'll see if it makes it into the deck at some point.

[Igzex]

The thing with this card is why spend 7 mana and two cards on the field for two lands when I can spend 7 mana and no cards on field to cast Boundless Realms and have Yes amounts of land?

[Mookie]

The thing with this card is why spend 7 mana and two cards on the field for two lands when I can spend 7 mana and no cards on field to cast Boundless Realms and have Yes amounts of land?

This exact situation actually came up for me recently. I decided to cut a bunch of basics from my Samut deck to power up Hermit Druid... which left me with too few basics in the deck to still run Boundless Realms (I usually want 12+ basics to fetch, since some will usually be filtered out by Cultivate effects). However, I'm still running Perilous Forays because it can fetch up nonbasics like Canopy Vista and Alpine Meadow.

[hyalopterouslemur]

It's good for getting duals like that. Also token decks have plenty of creatures (relying heavily on entry/death triggers as they do) and really need more mana to make more creatures. It can also be activated in response to a wrath; note that I don't have to pay for it all at once.

And of course Enchantress. In fact, several of my decks use Sphere of Safety already.

So there are a few times I would prefer it to Boundless Realms.