MTGNexus

I used him at the helm of a mono-black zombie tribal deck, it was okay. He can definitely be impressive when kicked but my opponents usually saw it coming and had their counterspell or their board wipe ready. I guess it performs better in the 99 as it can then caught opponents by surprise?

Meh, I am not a huge fan of this card just for boringness, but anything that starts to make close to its mana cost in bodies gets my Phyrexian Altar juices flowing so I can't completely hate it

pokken wrote: ↑

2 years ago

Meh, I am not a huge fan of this card just for boringness, but anything that starts to make close to its mana cost in bodies gets my Phyrexian Altar juices flowing so I can't completely hate it

Huh... it sure loops real strongly with Altar and Haakon, Stromgald Scourge, doesn't it? Makes infinite mana/bodies/death triggers with a cost reduction of only 2, infinite etb and death triggers with just 1 reduction, and gets you 9 triggers per 1 spent without any help.

There's a discord were a handful of us are going to do a Geth Challenge, where we each build a Geth, Lord of the Vault deck (meta-gaming our builds allowed, but not oppressively) and then we'll play them against each other. Josu Vess, Lich Knight is going in mine, along with some other kicker/flashback things.

I've seen an Ayara get this off early. Sometimes it's just neat to see 10mana dumped into one spell.

I tried to run this so many times and it just never pulled it's weight. It seems like it can bring so much to the table but I've just never been able to kick it and have it resolve. Partly luck I think. I do like that you can recur it and recast it, but usually that would be win more or a combo win.

This is one of those cards that seemed okay on paper when I first saw it but then I never really thought about it again. A 4/5 menace for 4 is solid and 20 power worth of menace bodies for 10 is actually pretty decent return, and both it and the tokens have good typing in Zombie + Knight, it just doesn't actually *do* enough to the point where I'm not sure where I'd run it. Ayara, First of Locthwain does seem like a decent place for it, or some kind of Knights build with Haakon, Stromgald Scourge in it, but just... eh?

Wednesday, February 23rd, 2022; Josu Vess, Lich Knight

I really like this card. Relevant tribes for some decks with Knights/Zombies. A lot of power with menace if kicked, but not too much of a slouch if not kicked. The menace and immediate capability to block really sells it over something like Army of the Damned.

But, if I'm being honest, it often just eats a wipe or a counter. It's not especially resilient, since you can't leverage the kicker in a reanimate. Not a reason to not play it, but it's a very fair and very soft win-con.

I like Army of the Damned and Empty the Pits better in my monoblack deck. Flashback and flash are both upgrades over Josu.

Myllior wrote: ↑

2 years ago

To my understanding, Static Orb and Winter Orb only affect players during their own untap steps, so Seedborn Muse gets around them by minimal tapping on the turn before yours, while still allowing full resource access on the remaining players' turns.

I meant gets around Stasis.

Anyway, Josu Vess is an interesting card. Get 8 knight tokens for ten mana. The Haakon, Stromgald Scourge loop is the best thing about him, though there are easier ways to loop.

Thursday, February 24th, 2022; Riftsweeper

Not even exile is beyond the reach of GBx Recursion.deck

My favorite description of Worldfire: "Riftsweeper has a lot of cleaning to do."

Riftsweeper is an interesting card. Recurring cards from exile is an extremely rare ability - Pull from Eternity and Mirror of Fate are the only two alternatives I can think of, ignoring the Eldrazi processors (which only hit opponents' cards). If you can recur something like Expropriate that self-exiles for balance reasons, or recur a key combo piece, that is a pretty powerful ability. However, the fact that it shuffles the card back into the deck means it is usually only useful from a theoretical perspective - unless you have a tutor or some other way to actually fetch the shuffled card, it is unlikely you will see it again anyway... and if you do have a tutor, you might as well just fetch a redundant version of the card you want. As a result, Riftsweeper is often just a Grizzly Bears.

Still, there are a few use cases I see for it. One is alongside cards like Oblivion Ring and Flickerwisp - you can use Riftsweeper to remove a flickered card more permanently. This also works against stuff like suspend (which was the original use case of Riftsweeper, back in Time Spiral block). The other use case that comes to mind is if you're building around a single card, such as Thassa's Oracle or Panharmonicon - if you don't have any redundancy or other copies of a key card, then recurring it in case of exile is better than nothing. Still a pretty niche use case though - most effects worth building around are printed on more than one card.

Returning cards from exile is indeed rare - after the few Mookie mentioned, you have more specific and narrow cards like Karn, the Great Creator and Runic Repetition. I've put a lot of reps in with those two because they're extra good in Daretti, Scrap Savant and Sevinne, the Chronoclasm - I'd also play Pull from Eternity if I owned one and could be bothered to track it down.

If Riftsweeper was White or Red and could be played in those self-exiling decks I'd be intrigued. Green makes it a little awkward, and makes it hard for me to say where it's home should be. It's a bit too narrow to run it as a "just in case my card gets O-ringed" defense. More awkward is that rather than putting that card back in hand or back in your 'yard to abuse again, the card goes back in the library. That means even in decks where it seems this should be good (commanders loaded with self-exiling effects like Varolz, the Scar-Striped, The Mimeoplasm, Kethis, the Hidden Hand, etc.) this seems a bit mediocre.

I've had Riftsweeper in my Spider Spawning deck ever since I 'netdecked' it from BDM because there's some flashback stuff and potential for graveyard getting wiped. I'm not sure I've ever really used it, though.

A friend used this in a deck that tries to recur The Great Aurora as much as he can. I can't help but to feel that at this point I've painted my main playgroup as a bunch of deranged trolls.

Runic Repetition is very limited.

Most of the time you're using this guy for his ability to get around the uniqueness rule. He can also mess with imprint, haunt, and the like.

I used to run Riftsweeper in my self-mill deck as a way to recur key cards if my graveyard ate an exile effect. That never really happened. I did blow out someone's Extraplanar Lens once though. That felt delicious.

Where Riftsweeper shines is in Slide decks. Well, maybe it will never shine that bright, but it will find uses. If you play a pretty convoluted wincon, it's also great to be able to put that back into your library should it get exiled.

I used to play it in Karador, Ghost Chieftain rebel elves, where I really really didn't want Skyshroud Poacher gone forever, and elvish harbinger and various others could find riftsweeper.

Igzex wrote: ↑

2 years ago

A friend used this in a deck that tries to recur The Great Aurora as much as he can. I can't help but to feel that at this point I've painted my main playgroup as a bunch of deranged trolls.

Deranged trolls are the most fun.

I guess I could see this being used to rip your own stuff out of exile if you have ways to easily tutor your stuff out, but I think I probably wouldn't ever run this unless I have a meta reason to, and that seems rare to me.

Friday, February 25th, 2022; Battlemage's Bracers



The one thing missing on Illusionist's Bracers ...but now it costs mana as a safety valve. Does it still measure up?

This one is sick in Osgir, the Reconstructor decks!

Riftsweeper is solid in a Maze's End deck to make it a lot more difficult to prevent the gate win permanently. Also, yes, does some work in 5c cycling, which can go through the deck fast enough by late-game that finding the card again isn't necessarily a huge problem.

Battlemage's Bracers seems fantastic in any deck that revolves heavily enough around activated abilities. Yeah, the mana cost to copy is noteworthy, but haste is excellent. It's also worth noting that it costs less to equip than Illusionist's Bracers, so if it was already out on the battlefield (since these cost exactly more to cast), that first ability copy costs the same total of . Is a good card.

Safety valve booooo.

I've considered Battlemage's Bracers for my Samut deck, which is built around tap abilities, but I don't think it makes the cut. Haste is certainly a fantastic ability to grant, but I already have access to it in the command zone. More importantly, the additional mana tax means it no longer combos with Seeker of Skybreak and generally makes it less convenient to use. I've noticed myself cutting a lot of 'add value if you pay mana' cards from my decks over time - Mentor of the Meek, Lifecrafter's Bestiary, etc. - they just always feel bad to use. I don't expect Battlemage's Bracers to be any different here.

That said, if you are running a deck that doesn't have easy access to haste, I could see it going up in value. Lightning Greaves and Swiftfoot Boots are still better ways to grant haste, but combining the two effects in a single card slot can be relevant. The additional tax is also less painful if you're not planning to untap your creatures repeatedly - if it's only once per turn, that is a lot more manageable.