Re: Ghired, Conclave Exile - Triple Dipping Naya Lards
Posted: Fri Apr 07, 2023 7:00 pm
Thanks for the various thoughts, sorry for not responding in a timely manner. I'm still gestating the rock-paper-scissors protection/pump piece dilemma and didn't really have anything smart to say. Stalwart Pathlighter is nearly superior to Frontline Medic due to not requiring a swing to confer the benefit, leaning into the tempo vs. resilience musings from earlier. I like your thoughts on Clever Concealment - I've held up five "mana" for a Selfless Spirit Chord in the past, and this is actually cheaper.
MOM-wise, we gotta talk about sieges. It's not everyday that you get a new card type to evaluate.
Ghired is pretty well equipped to run sieges. The deck is not lightning fast at its aggro, but it can generate an incremental board presence and is happy to use some of the mid-game damage on battles.
MOM-wise, we gotta talk about sieges. It's not everyday that you get a new card type to evaluate.
Ghired is pretty well equipped to run sieges. The deck is not lightning fast at its aggro, but it can generate an incremental board presence and is happy to use some of the mid-game damage on battles.
- Invasion of Ikoria is the prime consideration, and could be argued to be the best of all the battles in a vacuum. The card is not as good as Finale of Devastation, with various shortcomings including:
- Only reaching Kiki in terms of copiers.
- Staying on the battlefield, not allowing for the potential Eternal Witness-mediated slow setup.
- In fact, not reaching Eternal Witness at all is a thing.
- Invasion of Gobakhan is the next best siege, and offers a rather tempting backside with some pump and protective shenanigans. The pump is not going to drastically change things in the current configuration of the build though, and the protective shenanigans can be more reliably accessed elsewhere.
- In a somewhat contentious move, another option enters the rock-paper-scissors of the protection/pump. Tribute to the World Tree is an Elemental Bond that pumps small things by 2 instead. Ghired is a small thing. This would confer a Skyhunter Strike Force-tier survival pump to the fragile commander while offering card draw, something that is not to be underestimated. The looked scary on paper, but I went goldfishing and it's fine most of the time. I've since deleted the numbers from the scratch pad I jotted them down in, but I want to say that 80-90% of the hands I pulled up were able to cough up the mana ahead of Ghired? The green-centric skew of the ramp options coupled with the chiselled land base are no joke. I think it's probably correct to run this thing, but whether Beastmaster Ascension is the cut is a different matter. Maybe Greater Good as I like retaining the Rhinos to help carry out the beatsticks' plans later?
- Orthion, Hero of Lavabrink would be going into the deck in a heartbeat if he had haste. That second ability would be ridiculous for cheesing stalled-out games where the deck got to overdraw and overramp but never quite closed out. The fact the copying costs two mana may lead to some clunky game states, but it is attack trigger friendly and not quite as aggressively telegraphed as Bramble Sovereign was. Plus if the post-Ghired turn is used to durdle for value, the odds of having seven mana for a cheap piece of beef into a copy go up. The sorcery clause on the ability feels a bit mean. The guy is a sensible include, and might chew out one of the lower tier copiers.
- Mirror-Style Master's floor is pathetic - a six-drop copier that does not grant an attack trigger, and then has to venture into combat to confer the benefit again. Things start to get cool as you consider other possible layers of what may be going on. Kalonian Hydras auto-copy themselves. The handful of equipment in the list (Blade of Selves and Lightning Greaves) count as modifications. Whipping this out after some Vigor-mediated counters appear, copying a bunch of stuff. A cute synergy with Tribute to the World Tree, but the affected creatures would be tiny. Heck, backup itself works quite nicely with being copied, as the token can deposit the ability somewhere else and get extra copies of the effect. This is kind of balanced out in this particular case as the ability is an attack trigger, not yielding immediate payoff from doing a Ghired populate of the Master token. There are a ton of ways to reap further benefit and the card is a riot. If I move away from attack trigger beef, this thing is going in immediately.
- Nesting Dovehawk reminds us of "gains" versus "has". You need to have the "has" wording of token creation for the freshly populated copy to be able to go into combat, a criteria that only Kiki, Mirage Phalanx and Twinflame fulfil. Only about half the copiers working properly with this is not great. To compensate, getting a copy of the Dovehawk leads to a sluggish exponential expansion akin to Ghired rocking Helm of the Host in the days of yore. Looking at this card reminds me to cough up for a Mondrak
- Given the slightly superior copy response of backup, I was hoping for some cool tech. Master is the coolest tech by a landslide, but Conclave Sledge-Captain is kind of amusing on paper. Stack all the backups on a single Rhino, watch it get silly with the Captain copied. However, this is quite easy to block out of relevance, and not particularly quick/efficient. Emergent Woodwurm is cute and offers nice dig depth, but feels a bit excessive at seven mana.
- Ghalta and Mavren are sublimely winmore, costing seven mana and practically boiling down to an extra Ghired trigger. The card reads very scary though, what with the seven mana 12/12 trampler with versatile upside.