[mtgnexus] Random Card of the Day - Archfiend of Depravity

[3drinks]

Wednesday, June 29th, 2022; Dance of the Manse

[Lifeless]

Can't say I've ever seen this but it's interesting. The creature clause feels like a trap that exposes your resurrected board to more removal, but the card title is a pun so I'm calling it a wash. I don't have a deck that does these things because I'm a GW Enchantress purist but I would strongly consider this card if I was in UW.

[TheAmericanSpirit]

I actually kinda of dig it. 3 mana for a single target, 4 for 2, etc is pretty reasonable cost scaling. Plus the living furniture were easily the best part of the Beauty and the Beast, so it's an excuse to belt out "Be Our Guest" with some regularity too.

[Sinis]

I want Dance of the Manse to be good, but I feel like it just isn't. Too much restriction, too much mana, too much sorcery. If you pay , you kind of need more than 4 4/4s with some abilities. I guess it depends on how good those mv<5 artifacts or non-aura enchantments are.

Like, let's say you're playing w/u/x enchantress; what do you feel good bringing back with this?

[DirkGently]

I actually kinda of dig it. 3 mana for a single target, 4 for 2, etc is pretty reasonable cost scaling. Plus the living furniture were easily the best part of the Beauty and the Beast, so it's an excuse to belt out "Be Our Guest" with some regularity too.

x=1 for 1 target, but only if that target costs 0-1 mv.

High ceiling on this card, but practically speaking I think it's pretty hard to find a deck for. Are you playing artifact...dredge? And animating artifacts on-board is also generally a lot more effective since you can get damage from nowhere.

[3drinks]

I'd play it in Hanna, Ship's Navigator|inv. Seems tailor made to bring back a Hesitation to end the turn.

[Mookie]

I'm running Dance of the Manse in my Sharuum deck, but I don't think I've cast it yet. Still, it seems like a powerful effect - as always, I'm a sucker for mass reanimation, and the prospect of an asymmetric option that's cheaper than Roar of Reclamation / Open the Vaults is certainly attractive. That said, I definitely have mixed feelings about the animation mode - obviously, opening up your reanimated board to (mass) creature removal is a downside, but the particularly annoying thing is giving everything summoning sickness. Still, certainly a manageable downside, particularly if most of your stuff costs 5 or less.

[TheAmericanSpirit]

I actually kinda of dig it. 3 mana for a single target, 4 for 2, etc is pretty reasonable cost scaling. Plus the living furniture were easily the best part of the Beauty and the Beast, so it's an excuse to belt out "Be Our Guest" with some regularity too.

x=1 for 1 target, but only if that target costs 0-1 mv.

Well %$#%. I still stand by my B&tB comment at least.

[hyalopterouslemur]

It's not that bad. Once you get to 5, you get three for three or less.

I mean, mass reanimator spells should be like this, in all honesty. Unless they cost like 8-9 mana or have a downside. And if you treat this as a reanimator spell, then the costing makes sense.

[Legend]

Wednesday, June 29th, 2022; Dance of the Manse

I had the privilege more than once to build around Dance of the Manse in Limited where it was an absolute blowout. I loved it.

[3drinks]

Thursday, June 30th, 2022; False Prophet|puds

[TheGildedGoose]

Redundant name is redundant.

I considered it for Noble Heritage/Shadowheart, Dark Justiciar as a Recruiter of the Guard tutorable wipe/rattlesnake, but I'm not sure it's worth it.

[hyalopterouslemur]

He's kind of interesting in token decks, since you can simply sac all your creatures to something like Ashnod's Altar or Goblin Bombardment (or just your nontoken creatures if your outlet requires mana) and if you have no Grave Pact variants out (or are simply not playing black), you can wipe by sac'ing this.

The 2/2 is practically meaningless. He lives to die.

[3drinks]

I like that you can crew a bunch of vehicles, retain priority, then sac this and swing in unimpeded.

[PrimevalCommander]

Fantastic wipe if you play sac outlets. You really need a way to pop this at instant speed to make it shine. I even play it in my graveyard deck because I play a selection of sac outlets and can protect my creatures while exiling everyone elses. Also extremely easy to recur later should it be needed. Not for every deck, but honestly it has performed well for me and been difficult for my opponents since I can have an exile wipe on tap that is easy to tutor and recur.

[Mookie]

....I should really try out False Prophet sometime - an easy-to-recur, exiling board wipe seems really good. That said, you really want consistent access to a sac outlet - if your opponents get to pull the trigger instead of you, that can be extremely awkward... particularly since if you're the sort of deck running a bunch of sac outlets, you probably don't want your creatures to be exiled. Fetchable with Recruiter of the Guard too, which is nice.

...on the flip side, I'm generally a bit hesitant to play cards that require me to jump through hoops - white has access to so many premium board wipes that I'm not convinced that a two mana discount over Farewell is worth it. I think you really want to be able to take advantage of False Prophet's uniqueness - specifically, the fact that as a creature, it's significantly easier for white to recur than any of its sorcery-based board wipes, among other perks.

[NZB2323]

If he destroyed instead of exiled, I'd run him in my cleric tribal deck, but the anti-synergy with Ravos, Soultender is too much.

And I've never understood how the name and picture correlate with exile. He encourages a bunch of people to run off a cliff and they don't die? They somehow get exiled? He even asks in the flavor text if people are willing to die for Serra's love but then they don't die?

[3drinks]

If he destroyed instead of exiled, I'd run him in my cleric tribal deck, but the anti-synergy with Ravos, Soultender is too much.

And I've never understood how the name and picture correlate with exile. He encourages a bunch of people to run off a cliff and they don't die? They somehow get exiled? He even asks in the flavor text if people are willing to die for Serra's love but then they don't die?

It's more literal than that. He's using people's faith and leading them to salvation....except it's just their death. The people were too blinded by said faith to realize it was only a false coming of Serra.

[DirkGently]

Redundant name is redundant.

Lol, you edgelord you. It's a fantasy setting, they can have real prophets if they want. Not this guy, though, apparently.

As others have said, it's a strong card with fairly narrow application.

[Jonas Ukulore]

My signature card! Have been playing it since forever in my Ayli deck.

[wildfire393]

I've always been fond of this as a wrath in creature-sac based decks. You need a sac outlet to get the most value out of it, but that also allows you to let your own creatures dodge the exile to be recurred later. Creatures are easy to tutor, especially with 2 power and toughness so Recruiters grab it, It's situational, but fairly strong.

[NZB2323]

If he destroyed instead of exiled, I'd run him in my cleric tribal deck, but the anti-synergy with Ravos, Soultender is too much.

And I've never understood how the name and picture correlate with exile. He encourages a bunch of people to run off a cliff and they don't die? They somehow get exiled? He even asks in the flavor text if people are willing to die for Serra's love but then they don't die?

It's more literal than that. He's using people's faith and leading them to salvation....except it's just their death. The people were too blinded by said faith to realize it was only a false coming of Serra.

Except it's not their death because they get exiled and never die.

[TheGildedGoose]

If he destroyed instead of exiled, I'd run him in my cleric tribal deck, but the anti-synergy with Ravos, Soultender is too much.

And I've never understood how the name and picture correlate with exile. He encourages a bunch of people to run off a cliff and they don't die? They somehow get exiled? He even asks in the flavor text if people are willing to die for Serra's love but then they don't die?

It's more literal than that. He's using people's faith and leading them to salvation....except it's just their death. The people were too blinded by said faith to realize it was only a false coming of Serra.

Except it's not their death because they get exiled and never die.

I don't know, Salvation looks pretty dead to me.

[Hawk]

A classic rattle-snake card, maybe the ur-example alongside No Mercy in the same block. "Sure, go ahead, attack in to my False Prophet and see how false that profit is".

In 2022, it occupies a weirder space in multiplayer MtG. In general, our understanding and card evaluation has grown beyond the original "Animal Framework" from Anthony Alongi (can't find the original, but here's a 2011 primer on the subject and here's a bit of an older 2002 treatise from Anthony himself). I'd say it's more accurate to say that in that conception, modern Commander is all about powering out your "Gorilla" cards with a resilient "cockroach" engine to survive and get there, and a sprinkle of "spiders" to punish bad play and turn the game around. So, playing a 4 mana card that relies on your opponent's actions or other game pieces from you just isn't where most decks want to be these days. Heck, even in this thread, the talk is less about using this as a rattle snake and more about how to build an engine to turn it into a Cockroach or a Gorilla, and then of course for most decks we realize that with hundreds of thousands of options, we could just play Wrath of God.

Getting off my "old man talks about the styles of the times of nineteen-dickety-two" train, this is also tough to use because the decks that are most likely to be able to exploit it (Aristocraty decks with plenty of on-board ways to sac this at instant speed on demand) are the ones that are likely to be least-enthused by its exile effect. It can still have a home there, but it's a pretty niche card.

[Myllior]

@Hawk hit on the reason I no longer run it in Ayli: I specifically want to avoid mass exile so I can recur creatures. I did run False Prophet early on, where clever stacking of triggers can partially get you around this, but it's simpler to just avoid it altogether. Not to mention that repeatable mass exile can slow games to a crawl; it doesn't make for a fun game.