[mtgnexus] Random Card of the Day - Garna, Bloodfist of Keld

[Sinis]

Decanter is dreadful, but there are decks that really want it, I think. I'm sure as more effects like this get printed, Decanter will get aged out.

[materpillar]

Are you playing in a more casual meta? Decanter is a mana rock. It does mana rock things. Throw it in there and be happy when it randomly does helpful things.

Are you building a streamline murder machine? 3cmc rocks with almost no upside aren't really where you want to be.

[3drinks]

Saturday, July 30th, 2022; Controvert

Man, I really hate the use it or lose it nature of recover. I suppose this card had to cost four all the way around though.

[Sinis]

Saturday, July 30th, 2022; Controvert

Man, I really hate the use it or lose it nature of recover. I suppose this card had to cost four all the way around though.

See, I feel like this is a good instance of a balanced mechanic. It made you really think about things, allocate resources around a potential event. I felt like Controvert was appropriately costed, as a result.

[TheAmericanSpirit]

Laughably worse than forbid and much harder to control. I think recover costs need to be cheaper in order to balance the risk of the exile clause. As it stands, there's a reason many buyback cards get played but I've never seen a recover card ever hit the field.

[hyalopterouslemur]

Laughably worse than forbid and much harder to control. I think recover costs need to be cheaper in order to balance the risk of the exile clause. As it stands, there's a reason many buyback cards get played but I've never seen a recover card ever hit the field.

Recover definitely needs to be cheaper. But on something like this, I can see why. Like even on a flashback counter, I'd have it at 2uu/flashback 3uuu

[OneAndOnly]

I wish the card simply stayed in the graveyard if you didn't recover it. Not every deck has a dedicated sac outlet -- I probably wouldn't build recover.dec without one, but, yknow, Draft and Casual exist. I get the feeling the exile clause came about to clean up online play.

Flashback counterspell exists, but is way too expensive for either its initial or flashback cost.

[illakunsaa]

I don't think the card is bad just a little over costed. If the cast or recover were lightly cheaper it could be a pretty decent card.

I could see this being played in something like Derevi which can leverage tempo or Koma which has fairly easy time controlling the timing on recover.

I do think Fervent Denial is a better card but it is not good in every deck. It's good is decks that create a lot of mana and are limited in slots were to play interaction.

[Mookie]

Controvert looks... incredibly clunky. Four mana for a Counterspell is expensive, and if you want to buy it back and cast it again, that's another eight mana... assuming you have mana open to recover it when one of your creatures dies. As already called out, Forbid is a much better recurrable counterspell, and Spell Burst also exists. If you don't care about recursion, there are obviously plenty of cheaper options.

Interestingly, reading the recover preview article, recover was apparently designed as a nod to 'graveyard order matters' cards like Death Spark. Unfortunately, I think it's a miss overall. Death Spark's text reads as upside - if you can wrangle your graveyard into the right order with recursion (or just having a high creature density), then it represents free value. However, recover feels like downside - 'pay mana now, or lose it forever'. It may be better from a balance perspective - I could see a recursive counterspell being very problematic in the lategame - but it definitely feels bad to get your sweet card exiled. Might be interesting if it didn't have the exile clause and instead just gave you the option every time one of your creatures died.

[Gentle Giant]

While the feels-bad is definitely there (I don't really like it due to that too), I think not exiling the card would make it a much larger hassle to keep track of, especially when there's multiple or the game drags on. It's different than something like flashback because it requires you to track a trigger in the grave: an often not so visible/easily parsed place. I can already smell the missed triggers and resulting feels-bad from here.

[Hawk]

Like most folks have said, Recover was costed to be too mediocre for anything other than Triple Coldsnap limited. All the effects are overcosted at the front-end and then you have to be ready to snap off the recover at a moment's notice or lose your chance, and most of the recovery costs are similarly expensive. I've never seen a recover card played anywhere, and have only ever had Grim Harvest in the maybeboard of a few particularly graveyard-intensive decks (since it was one of the better instant-speed raise deads until a few years ago when Omen of the Dead got printed). In Controvert's case, most decks already hate to pay more than 3 for a counterspell and when they are, they're looking for stuff that generates way more immediate value like Cryptic Command or Dismiss compared to the incredibly slow and durdly value of this. When Forbid exists, this card is stone-cold unplayable even in a deck like Baral, Chief of Compliance.

I get why they cost recurrable counters like this - the boogeyman of 32 counterspells.dec was fueled by Forbid and that was the last time they costed a recurrable counterspell that way. Every counter since has paid for Forbid's sins, to ensure standard never again is oppressed in that way even though I'm pretty sure Randy Buehler only Top-4d the world championship with Forb-ian. It should be telling that I eschew Fervent Denial even in Sevinne, the Chronoclasm where the deck has so many ways to get more value out of it.

[3drinks]

Sunday, July 31st, 2022; Spectra Ward

[OneAndOnly]

The inevitable evolution of the White Ward cycle from Alpha. (Flickering Ward and Mom were just friends we made along the way.)

The P/T boost is nice, but since it relies on a creature being there, it could easily be +3/+3 or even +4/+4. Said creature would still be vulnerable to five other types of removal, and a five-mana spell really should move toward ending the game.

[Gentle Giant]

Ah Spectra Ward: I remember playing a prerelease of that set with the poorest of pools. This was my only wincon.. It was choosing between a curve that arguably only really started at 5 or so, but potentially strong, or a reasonable deck but with just nothing to win with aside from this card. Had an amazingly tight match with another poor sod where game two and three simply came down to whether he would be able to disenchant it or not (spoiler: he did, but we were joking throughout the entire match, great times!)

[hyalopterouslemur]

The inevitable evolution of the White Ward cycle from Alpha. (Flickering Ward and Mom were just friends we made along the way.)

The P/T boost is nice, but since it relies on a creature being there, it could easily be +3/+3 or even +4/+4. Said creature would still be vulnerable to five other types of removal, and a five-mana spell really should move toward ending the game.

As long as it's targeted or an aura added later (like Pacifism) or does damage, this stops it. Though yeah, it's not great, and still vulnerable to wraths or something like Mutilate or Black Sun's Zenith

The big problem is that this really can't go in an aura Voltron, despite the text. It still stops any auras added later, or for that matter any colored equipment (e.g., Behemoth Sledge). Activated abilities of colored permanents can't target this.

Mommy and Glory will still be my preferred protection cards, or even Flickering Ward for heroic synergy.

[Ruiner]

I really like this card in my Killian, Ink Duelist deck, where it costs less. Killian gets set up with a good set of auras and then this comes down to help seal the deal. You can't add more auras afterwards but you wait to drop it after he is already a decent threat, so that isn't a really big downside.

[Hermes_]

I've played this in my various voltron decks and it earn's its cost there

[BeneTleilax]

I feel like this marked the end of old-school all-in Voltron with Rafiq of the Many or similar. This was their dream card a year or two prior, a combination of protection and evasion with decent stat increases in what was then the primary voltron color, and then it wasn't enough in the face of increasingly versatile removal suites (and people just remembering to run removal).

[3drinks]

Monday, August 1st, 2022; Isareth the Awakener

[Serenade]

Was the corpse counter to remind us of the exile effect? Just wonder why it is not like unearth.

If I'm building this deck, I'm likely using Gyrus, Waker of Corpses instead for more colors.

[3drinks]

Was the corpse counter to remind us of the exile effect? Just wonder why it is not like unearth.

If I'm building this deck, I'm likely using Gyrus, Waker of Corpses instead for more colors.

Because it's not unearth. It's a variable cost based on it's power. Also, Gyrus is usually worse because this can pull out high power low cost dudes, like Rotting Regisaur where as Gyrus needs to be big enough to do the same. Also, Isareth's "mark" doesn't just automatically die on end step, which allows it to actually build an army from the dead.

[Dunharrow]

I have been torn on Isareth since it was first spoiled. On one hand, I love repeatable recursion. On the other hand, I hate that I can't loop the same creature over and over again.
I think it goes well with Athreos, Shroud-Veiled decks, but poorly in Karador, Ghost Chieftain or Marchesa, the Black Rose decks.
If I had a party deck I would consider this as there are not a lot of black wizards.

[OneAndOnly]

The counter is just a marker without any rules function, which makes it a non-bo with Chisei. But oh how I tried...

[void_nothing]

A fun little thick goth GF toolbox reanimator commander that I have considered building but just never have. The ability is nice and versatile but yeah it's sort of disappointing the ability doesn't say "If that creature would leave the battlefield while it has a corpse counter on it" or something and it's just a marker, although preventing loops is probably for the best.

Seconding the "use in Burakos, Party Leader/Athreos, Shroud-Veiled" idea.

[hyalopterouslemur]

Was the corpse counter to remind us of the exile effect? Just wonder why it is not like unearth.

If I'm building this deck, I'm likely using Gyrus, Waker of Corpses instead for more colors.

Because it lasts after EOT. Unearth is a one-turn effect, as are things like Corpse Lunge. The exile effect here is just to prevent most loops.