[mtgnexus] Random Card of the Day - Mithril Coat

[DirkGently]

One of the more interesting/viable doctors. That said, the synergy with any "exile cards from the top of your library until..." cards (and in particular The Day of the Doctor) makes him reasonably scary. If they're playing Ryan Sinclair as the partner and aren't casting many spells, maybe consider that you might get 1-hit-KOed by an all-lands deck...

[folding_music]

the sort of card I wouldn't play because the title bugs me? This isn't entirely a problem with UB - there are plenty of cards in New Capenna which I'd never play and plenty of cards in 40K which I would. the name of the card is simply too incongruous for me to enjoy having it in the deck. also he's a white/red human who doesn't fit in Firesong and Sunspeaker >:3

[pokken]

I am frankly just so damned tired of everything killing everything all the time :D I'm not building decks that require creatures to stick on the board much anymore.

[3drinks]

Saturday, March 23rd 2024; Verdant Command

Exactly the kind of niche card I like to staple extra value on to justify it's deck slot. And that one time you destroy someone's emblem ult with this will make it all worth it. Just for the look on that person's face that just got blown out by squirrel command.

[3drinks]

But... does any of this excite me? Not really, no. I feel like the UB cards I'm willing to play tend to be very neutral in flavor, to the extent that I could see them printed into a normal Magic set. Displaced Dinosaurs and Orcish Bowmasters are fine to me - MTG also has dinosaurs and orcs. However, I rarely find myself wanting to run legendary UB cards. To me, there is extra friction when adding UB cards to decks because UB cards just feel less interesting - regardless of power level - unless they're from a series I actually care about.

I'm so glad I both know ken, burning brawler (Aisha of Sparks and Smoke since @mtgnexus doesn't recognize SF I guess...) and it's something that interests me enough to play. For this reason. Street Fighter in Magic was cool but being able to actually visualize a brew with them is the best kind of Universe Beyond product.

[Toshi]

Sure, Return to Nature is more fail-safe, but if you can make use of the gy exile or pw silver bullet regularily enough, it is super cool.

I've been running it in Gallia of the Endless Dance for a while now, mostly for the tokens. But sure enough the other modes have come in handy many times!

[DirkGently]

Making 2 tokens is fine if that's something your deck wants. The other modes are very low-impact/niche though, so I'd never run this without wanting green Raise the Alarm already.

[Mookie]

Verdant Command looks like a miss to me. Charms and commands tend to play better than they read due to the extra flexibility, but I'm not sure if that is enough to save it. 'Make two tokens + gain 3 life' is a fine default, but I don't think I would run it just for those modes in most decks. I would want to be able to get value from the other two modes - countering a planeswalker activation or a reanimation effect can be quite impactful, especially since your opponents are unlikely to see it coming. However, I think these modes are also pretty niche and not relevant in most games.

In general, I would prefer something like Scavenging Ooze, Froghemoth, or Endurance that is consistently relevant in most games. Verdant Command be a blowout occasionally, but I think it will be underwhelming in most games.

[Guardman]

I love Verdant Command and think it is very underrated. The fallback is a Raise the Alarm with 3 life attached, which is a pretty good fallback. But the highpoints on this card are amazing and can be literally game winning. I've used it to stop an PW ultimate and get rid of a key card in the graveyard at instant speed. I think this deserve a slot in a lot more decks than it is currently in.

[Serenade]

The squirrels not being surprise blockers always bugged me from a use standpoint; it remains a fair-costed card.

I am probably using Return to Nature then Turn the Earth in this slot instead.

[3drinks]

Sunday, March 24th 2024; Back to Basics

[BlackbirdPlaysMTG]

Sunday, March 24th 2024; Back to Basics

This and Blood Moon are the bane of my existence. My mana bases are really greedy 🤣. I generally run enough interaction to remove these effects, and I know which players in my LGS tend to run these, so I can play around them at least a bit.

[Serenade]

This and BM/MotM are on our house-ban list. I disagree with said bans because I think these are fair cards that help mono-color decks compete.

B2B has an elite name. It has elite flavor text. Great art that looks gorgeous against the old border. A cheap enchantment that forces slower games? This might be my favorite card.

[Dunadain]

It's certainly more palatable then Ruination but even if there wasn't a stigma around these cards, I'd still never run them in a 4 player game with no sideboards.

👎👎

[Treamayne]

Sunday, March 24th 2024; Back to Basics

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This, like so many other purported "anti-ramp"/"anti-greed" cards tends to fail at it's intended task. At least, in my experience, the rampant Ramper and 1k Manabase barely notice the interference and the tap-lands-budget casual player becomes irrelevant for the rest of the game (or until it's removed).

Fine for what it is, possible niche inclusion based on local Meta - but please don't slot this in a deck then pat yourself on the back for "playing anti-ramp". . .

[Mookie]

Fun fact: I traded a foil Paradox Engine for my copy of Back to Basics. This was when Paradox Engine was still legal, and both were close enough in price to do a straight trade - I think around $30 or so? Paradox engine was banned soon afterwards and I felt like a genius... then B2B got reprinted and its price crashed, bringing the two back in line in price. Looks like both prices have recovered a bit, with B2B being slightly more, but it's certainly interesting to track their relative prices over time.

I ran Back to Basics in Thada for a while, but it's currently out - not due to power level or anything, but because I often felt bad playing it in my (relatively casual) meta. It's a nice option to have in the toolbox for more competitive metas though. It's somewhat high variance in how it performs - I've seen some players be set back to 1-2 basics and no other lands, but there are also some decks with a bunch of basics that just ignore it. It doesn't really punish ramp or other land-based strategies (since most ramp effects fetch basics), but it can be backbreaking for multicolor decks running 3+ colors, and game-ending for 5-color decks.

Ideologically, I'm not a fan of MLD or stax effects, but B2B feels pretty fair to me. Armageddon punishes people for playing lands instead of relying on mana rocks, but that doesn't feel like something that is appropriate to punish - every deck has to play lands to function. On the other hand, B2B, Blood Moon, Primal Order, and Thalia, Heretic Cathar punish playing lots of nonbasic lands, which feels like a more deliberate choice. I think most decks can function fine if they lose 2-3 lands, particularly if the game is slowed down to the disruption. If you're losing the majority of your manabase, then that's probably because you made a deliberate choice to cut basics more than necessary.

Overall, I would say it's a meta call, but a strong one. If I have one critique, it's that it particularly punishes decks running tapped lands - this is a reason why I'm willing to run Evolving Wilds but I consider the Bad River cycle unplayable. Someone running a bunch of untapped duals will be annoyed by it, but they do have access to their other colors at least once. I'm also not a fan of stax effects that protect themselves - if B2B taps down the lands someone needs to cast a Disenchant effect, then that feels pretty bad. I think it's better in this regard than Blood Moon, at least - monored has very few options for enchantment removal.

[DirkGently]

Ah, nonbasic hate. One of the semi-regular discussions we get to have on this forum.

In normal commander, I think these effects are overrated. Here's why.

First and foremost, in order to exploit such effects you need to run few nonbasics yourself. Nonbasics are really good, though. This is especially problematic for B2B because blue has pretty limited nonbasic hate options, so you're essentially weakening your land options every single game in order to exploit 1 card in the 99 that you usually won't draw. And if you're playing multicolor, eschewing nonbasics is going to significantly weaken your fixing options, and fixing is very important. Yes, B2B is a powerful card, but is it worth making your lands worse in order to support 1 strong card? I would argue that it is not. It feels strong when you play B2B and it wreaks a lot of havoc, so weighted against the constant but minor detriments of a subpar manabase it seems like a good choice, since those are less visible, but I think this is just a mistake in how people evaluate cards.

Red has a much better situation with Blood Moon since they can run plenty of nonbasics and they just become mountains - no big deal. Or if they want to commit to full basics, they can at least include more nonbasic hate in order to get better value from the sacrifice of not running strong nonbasics.

The second problem is innate to hate effects in commander - you don't have control over where the hate goes. If you're already ahead then it may not matter, but if you're behind, it can be dangerous to weaken other players. You want the archenemy to be most effected by B2B, which often won't be the case - and that situation could easily change, too. Maybe B2B is a great play initially because the player in the lead had a lot of nonbasics, but (probably because of B2B) he falls behind, and now you want his help against someone else but he's too hampered by B2B to offer much support, and in fact may continue to want to kill you in order to resolve the problem B2B has created.

That might be less of an issue if you could assume everyone else was playing a lot of nonbasics, but (thirdly) commander is a wacky format and it's hard to predict what people will play. Plenty of people will run a high proportion of basics, even if it's suboptimal, because the rats in their brain are worried they won't be able to cast their 15th Cultivate or whatever. My favorite absurd example involves this very card - talking to someone at prerelease who played in a budget commander league with a $100 limit, and they were running 5c with all basics in order to support B2B and BM - which occupied the majority of the budget for the entire deck at the time! Against other decks that were probably running a lot of basics to stay under budget anyway!

All of this is besides the fact that I think these effects usually create unfun game experiences. BM and B2B I think are significantly less egregious than Ruination, since they can actually be solved by most decks without major permanent impact, but unlike BM I think B2B is too nasty for a deck with moderate nonbasic counts to realistically tolerate unless everyone is similarly effected. That makes this must-remove, or must-remove-the-owner, which isn't a fun dynamic, especially if neither of those players is the archenemy. Blood moon can theoretically be operated under with a decent number of basics, which makes it the most tolerable and best designed of the popular nonbasic hate imo.

[pokken]

The issue I have with b2b is that it primarily punishes properly designed budget mana bases in multicolor decks very badly. So you end up with some dudes three color deck with tons of cheap duals getting annihilated while fetchy McGee fetches basics.

I just don't like playing things that mess with people's mana in general outside of mana dorks and rocks.

I have heard all the arguments about how problematic mana it makes lands strategies but I really never see exploration.dec destroying the meta anywhere. :shrug:


I'm not playing blood moon or wave of vitriol or b2b or ruination. I just don't like the texture of the game.

[yeti1069]

Saturday, March 23rd 2024; Verdant Command

Exactly the kind of niche card I like to staple extra value on to justify it's deck slot. And that one time you destroy someone's emblem ult with this will make it all worth it. Just for the look on that person's face that just got blown out by squirrel command.

You can put this on Isochron Scepter!

[3drinks]

Monday, March 25th 2024; Animal Friend

[yeti1069]

Monday, March 25th 2024; Animal Friend

What a weird card.

[BlackbirdPlaysMTG]

Monday, March 25th 2024; Animal Friend

I wonder why they didn't go for mole-rats, since those are more in tune with Fallout lore. Card is... eh. Making a 4/4 should be doable if your deck is built around auras and equipments. But if you are equipping your creature/commander with 4/5 aura's and/or equipments you probably should probably set the bar a bit higher and go for a 1-2 turn kill. This card doesn't contribute to that.

[Guardman]

I've been playing around with a Kodama of the West Tree deck for a while (my main problem is figuring out the mix of themes), but this is a card that seems tailored made for it since throw it on something like Timber Paladin or Kami of Transience and swing hopefully getting a modified creature. Might be too cute, but it seems like the right deck for it.

[DirkGently]

Multiple 1G cards that make a squirrel in a week? Weird.

This is one of those cards where the effect is reasonably strong, but it's hard to imagine where it'd be worth running. Voltron decks don't really care about making random X/X tokens, and token decks don't generally have a good evasive target to trigger this multiple times, nor additional auras/equipment to make it more exciting than 1 token per turn.

Guardman I think hit the nail on the head for the perfect use case with go-wide-ish modified synergy decks (kodama or Chishiro, the Shattered Blade), since they both care about the token and also have additional eq/auras lying around. Pretty niche but I could see it being good there.

[Ruiner]

I could see running this in many Voltron style decks just because it is a cheap source of token generation. Having cheap disposable chump blockers for a voltron deck can be rather handy, as at least in my experience I don't tend to want to throw away my few creatures I am running. It's also rather handy if you expect a lot of Edict type effects in your local playgroup.

I don't think it's a must have, but it's pretty playable.