[mtgnexus] Random Card of the Day - Samwise the Stouthearted

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Post by void_nothing » 1 year ago

On the subject of cheating out no-mana-cost spells, Sram's Expertise gives you three extra permanents to exploit with Glimpse of Tomorrow.
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Post by 3drinks » 1 year ago

hyalopterouslemur wrote:
1 year ago
3drinks wrote:
1 year ago
Tuesday, September 13th, 2022; Sram's Expertise



Surely you can find some use for three bodies + a free < 3mv spell.
≤ We would also accept <= but < implies a mv equal to exactly 3 is forbidden.
The cost of typing on my laptop instead of my mobile this morning, I guess. Can't make that symbol on a physical keyboard.

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Post by The_Hittite » 1 year ago

3drinks wrote:
1 year ago
hyalopterouslemur wrote:
1 year ago
3drinks wrote:
1 year ago
Tuesday, September 13th, 2022; Sram's Expertise



Surely you can find some use for three bodies + a free < 3mv spell.
≤ We would also accept <= but < implies a mv equal to exactly 3 is forbidden.
The cost of typing on my laptop instead of my mobile this morning, I guess. Can't make that symbol on a physical keyboard.
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Post by Mookie » 1 year ago

I like the design of this cycle, but Sram's Expertise is a bit of a miss from me. Rishkar's Expertise, Yahenni's Expertise, and Baral's Expertise all have some synergy with casting the free spell. Rishkar's obviously lets you immediately cast one of the cards you draw, Yahenni's lets you immediately follow up your board wipe with a small creature, and Baral's technically lets you bounce a thing with an ETB effect and immediately replay it for value. But Sram's and Kari Zev's Expertise don't really have any corresponding synergies, which sort of bugs me.

As for Sram's in particular... yeah, three 1/1s is fine, and it is nice for white to have access to some free spellcasting (since it usually doesn't have many effects that cheat on mana costs), but... I'm just not that excited by it.

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Post by Serenade » 1 year ago

I do like cycles that highlight important, non-PW characters. Adding that lore makes them feel legendary, especially since getting 100 legends per set these days makes the classification almost meaningless.

NPH and Capenna had some creatures serving the praetors/demons. IKO had uncommon "of the" and Mythos cycles. If you do not rise to that spell-name level, you should not be a legend.
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Post by 3drinks » 1 year ago

Wednesday, September 14th, 2022; Reflecting Pool



Easily my fave of the 5c lands. Practically no downside, essentially it's a second Command Tower.

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Post by 3drinks » 1 year ago

The_Hittite wrote:
1 year ago
Alt+243


How do people figure out these random multi-button configurations. I was today years old when I learned how to do this. Heck, I didn't even figure out the | vertical line until I was on Giant in the Playground looking at class tables.

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Post by Dunadain » 1 year ago

3drinks wrote:
1 year ago
Wednesday, September 14th, 2022; Reflecting Pool



Easily my fave of the 5c lands. Practically no downside, essentially it's a second Command Tower.
Really? Personally not a huge fan. In five color decks your usually only worried about getting one of each color until very late game.
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Post by void_nothing » 1 year ago

Dunadain wrote:
1 year ago
Really? Personally not a huge fan. In five color decks your usually only worried about getting one of each color until very late game.
I see that point of view, and yet the utility of being able to pay for color-dense costs is great.
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Post by Sharpened » 1 year ago

Dunadain wrote:
1 year ago
Really? Personally not a huge fan. In five color decks your usually only worried about getting one of each color until very late game.
That's a short sighted way of looking at it. If your first land is a dual, you can tap it for 1 color and the Pool can give you the other.

It really shines when paired with lands that can give you everything but with restrictions - The vivids are well known, but things like Sliver Hive or Unclaimed Territory give you a nice rainbow without drawbacks.

The more lands you have that tap for multiple colors, the more the shines. The more complex your manabase - say if you want to run Kogla, the Titan Ape in the same deck as Scourge of Valkas and Unesh, Criosphinx Sovereign, the more value it brings.

I don't know that I'd often run it in a 2 color deck, but it is a solid option for decks with more. It's not a budget option, despite its multiple printings. I wouldn't consider it a staple, but it's a solid piece for the right deck.

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Post by Hawk » 1 year ago

Reflecting Pool is an awkward land. It's as good as your mana base, so if your mana base is bad it's not great. Its at its best in decks that both have incredible manabases (ability to quickly tutor out other 5C lands or fetch into Triomes) and have greedy costs (infamously when it was standard legal, it helped fuel decks that could run Cruel Ultimatum and Cryptic Command since it had a sorta quirky interaction with Vivid Creek et al). I will say I think it's gotten better over time - I feel like it's at its worst in a deck trying to slam out a 5-pip rainbow commander on turn 4/5 (so folks like Sliver Overlord, Garth One-Eye, Child of Alara) and significantly better in 5C decks that are a bit slower (The Ur-Dragon) or that lean heavier on one color than another or have significant generic mana in their commander's mana cost (Sisay, Weatherlight Captain, Kenrith, the Returned King, Esika, God of the Tree // The Prismatic Bridge, Go-Shintai of Life's Origin, Najeela, the Blade-Blossom, Morophon, the Boundless...hey look that's most of the top 10 most popular 5C commanders!). Obviously it functions in 3 or 4 color decks too, but 5C is where it can really shine.

I don't own any, and haven't prioritized it as I don't own any 5C Commanders currently and the only ones I've ever built are Sliver Queen and Urza, Academy Headmaster where, again, I feel like this underperforms. For 5C Lands it's obviously worse than Command Tower and I'd also generally rank it below Mana Confluence and City of Brass (which are really helpful to make it function anyways) and only about even, deck depending, with Path of Ancestry, Cavern of Souls, Exotic Orchard, and Forbidden Orchard.

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Post by Dunharrow » 1 year ago

3drinks wrote:
1 year ago
The_Hittite wrote:
1 year ago
Alt+243


How do people figure out these random multi-button configurations. I was today years old when I learned how to do this. Heck, I didn't even figure out the | vertical line until I was on Giant in the Playground looking at class tables.
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Post by Serenade » 1 year ago

I like it over checklands in three color decks because untapped. I've gotten away from both lately, though.

I just now finally got a City of Brass, so I do want to try that out wherever I was using RP.
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Post by hyalopterouslemur » 1 year ago

For something more universal, City of Brass, Mana Confluence, Shimmering Grotto, or Cavern of Souls works wonders with this. You can also use painlands or to a more limited extent three-color taplands with it, like if you don't have any plains, but you do have this, and you need w now, so you play Jungle Shrine.

It also helps you cast more than one spell of a given color per turn, or something like Heroes' Downfall or Counterspell. Or just activate abilities.

Meteor Crater, however, is far less useful. Note that Bloom Tender is actually very useful since it actually gives you anywhere from just g to a full wubrg.
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Post by TheAmericanSpirit » 1 year ago

I thought this was a better land before I owned one. It has some fail cases where it has been more than a little annoying for me, especially when I need to curve out. Still, a very cool land and I'm glad its pricepoint has finally dipped. I could even see it eventually joining Exotic Orchard in the precon purgatory of infinite reprints.
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Post by Dunharrow » 1 year ago

it can add colorless which is something to think about if you play any cards with colorless costs.
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Post by Jemolk » 1 year ago

Reflecting Pool is a great card. It can smooth out awkward mana situations better than you might think, especially in 5c, where it's not all that unusual in my experience to technically have all five colors, except that one specific land is your only source for two of them, or for the many times you need to cast something with double pips of a color that you only have one or, or that you need two of one color and one of a second, but the second source of the first color is your only source of the second. There's just a lot of situations where a 5c land can be really useful even after you already have the ability to make mana of each color, and this one doesn't deal damage to you, enter tapped, or place a restriction on your mana. It's not always a 5c land, but it is one often enough for me to count it as such.
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Post by DirkGently » 1 year ago

How good it is depends on how good the rest of your manabase is, and what sorts of costs you need to play.

I don't run it that often, but it's not bad. There's just a lot of strong fixing lands in competition with it.
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Post by RxPhantom » 1 year ago

I've put Reflecting Pool into a lot of 3-color builds and have been happy with how it performs. I can't remember the last time it didn't deliver. It's definitely not some trap like Temple of the False God.
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Post by Treamayne » 1 year ago

3drinks wrote:
1 year ago
The_Hittite wrote:
1 year ago
Alt+243

How do people figure out these random multi-button configurations. I was today years old when I learned how to do this. Heck, I didn't even figure out the | vertical line until I was on Giant in the Playground looking at class tables.
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Re: Reflecting Pool - if you have it, I think it's worth playing in many casual 3 color decks (especially if many of your duals ETB Tapped), but I don't think its worth $20+ just to have one. Also decent in some niche applications, like with Storage Lands.
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Post by Legend » 1 year ago

I opened so many Reflecting Pools when Tempest was on shelves that I started getting disappointed. It was so weird.
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Post by Jemolk » 1 year ago

RxPhantom wrote:
1 year ago
I've put Reflecting Pool into a lot of 3-color builds and have been happy with how it performs. I can't remember the last time it didn't deliver. It's definitely not some trap like Temple of the False God.
Hey now, Temple of the False God is only a "trap" if you're not playing enough lands. At 38 lands, the card almost never fails me. I'm genuinely baffled by the people who insist it's only even up for consideration in land-ramp-heavy green decks; it's at its best in grindy blue decks without access to green at all and which mostly get mana just by making land drops turn after turn. There, a free Rampant Growth as the upside is absolutely worth the much rarer downside of having an inactive land for a bit. I think people see the card as a trap largely because when it works, it doesn't generally seem to be making the difference, but when it's dead, it absolutely does. Even so, I still maintain that decks are often stronger with it than without it.

Reflecting Pool also delivers, and is only dead if it's your literal only land, so that makes it less of a risk, but still. Temple is a fine card. Just not one you jam into a random 32-land mono-red deck or some such.
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Post by Mookie » 1 year ago

The recent reprint made Reflecting Pool significantly more affordable, so I could see justifying its inclusion in some decks these days. When it was $20, I think it was a hard pass. Sure, it's a painless City of Brass... but it doesn't really fix your mana because it can't produce colors you don't already have access to. That helps if you have heavy mana costs (like Cryptic Command or Cruel Ultimatum), but if you want to splash for a few off-color cards, it goes down in value significantly. It's obviously unusable on turn 1 (barring Exploration) and generally doesn't become actually good until later in the game after your manabase has developed somewhat.

....still, it does seem like a reasonable inclusion in slower or 5C decks. I generally prefer Exotic Orchard though.

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Post by Krishnath » 1 year ago

I run one in my Ur-Dragon deck, another land that taps for one of any color is really good in that deck. Not that it helps with mana fixing, because if you don't have access to all five colors already, it won't give you the color you are missing. However, it does make cards that cost two of one color a bit easier to cast, which is why I run it.

That said, now that Dominaria United is released, I am considering changing up the color base a bit.
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