by Phoenix Desertsong ![]() Dwarves fans in Magic the Gathering may be able to live the dream of playing Dwarf Tribal in Standard with Magda, Brazen Outlaw from the Kaldheim set. This Legendary Creature is just two mana to play (1 colorless, 1 Red) and gives all other Dwarves +1/+1. Also, whenever a Dwarf you control becomes tapped you create a Treasure token. Treasure tokens are neat enough, giving you an artifact that allows you to sacrifice it for one of any color of mana. It gets better with Magda, though, as you can sacrifice five Treasure tokens in order to search your deck for any artifact or Dragon card and put it onto the battlefield! Already, the wheels are turning for Commander players eager to brew a mono-Red Dwarf deck. The problem in Standard is that before any other Dwarves are revealed in Kaldheim, only four Dwarves exist in Standard. They are Rimrock Knight, Seven Dwarves, Staunch Shieldmate, and Torbran, Thane of Red Fell. The good news is all four of these Dwarves are playable to different degrees. Rimrock Knight is an aggressive 3/1 two-drop that also has the Adventure Boulder Rush, which gives a target creature +2/+0 at instant speed. That seems like an auto-include in any Dwarf Tribal deck. Seven Dwarves is a card that you can play seven copies of in a deck, and each copy pumps other all other Seven Dwarves by +1/+1. Magda would be happy to have these guys in the fold. The other two are the one-drop 1/3 Shieldmate, who becomes a heck of a lot scarier with Magda on-board, and Torbran. As we’ve seen in mono-Red Torbran is very good and his commitment to needing 3 Red mana in his 4-mana casting cost isn’t an issue here. He makes each of your red sources deal 2 additional damage, making Dwarves already a deck to be reckoned with so far. Any additional Dwarves in Kaldheim will make Magda significantly better, and we’ll return soon to cover those Dwarves, as well. Early in the Kaldheim spoiler cycle, we did get to see a Dwarf exclusive to the Theme and Collector boosters, Warchanter Skald. He’s a three-mana White Dwarf who plays into the equipment theme. Whenever he becomes tapped, if he’s enchanted or equipped, you get a 2/1 Red Dwarf Berserker creature token. Not bad at all! Magda is a good playable Legendary already, albeit it’s hard to say how competitive it would be. However, being able to tutor up artifacts or even a Dragon is pretty spicy, especially when it goes directly into play. Standard is full of interesting Dragons, especially Leyline Tyrant and Terror of the Peaks, but neither of them has haste. Korvold, Fae-Cursed King could technically be cheated into play with this effect, but then you couldn’t hard-cast him from hand. Interestingly, Gadrak, the Crown-Scourge, a three-mana Dragon who can’t attack unless you have four artifacts in play, however, may actually be playable in this Treasure happy deck. He also creates Treasure tokens himself for each nontoken creature that died in a turn, including your opponents. This formerly unplayable 5/4 flier suddenly looks interesting, except he doesn’t seem worth cheating into play with Magda’s ability whatsoever. Magda, Brazen Outlaw in Pioneer and Modern In Pioneer, Magda, Brazen Outlaw picks up help in both Red and White, especially thanks to Kaladesh and Aether Revolt. Aerial Responder is a solid 3-drop creature with flying, lifelink, and vigilance. Depala, Pilot Exemplar gives you another Lord that’s Vehicle-friendly, playing to the artifact-theme of Magda. Of course, the best Dwarf in Pioneer is Sram, Senior Edificer, who draws you a card each time you cast an Aura, Equipment, or Vehicle spell. Toolcraft Exemplar helps with that plan, too. While Depala is nice at pumping your Dwarves, it’s most likely that you want to look to cheap Equipment instead with that plan. In Pioneer, though, the Dragons are strong with Glorybringer and Stormbreath Dragon probably your best options with Haste. It’s well worth sacrificing five Treasures to get either of those Dragons! Modern doesn’t add much to the Dwarves, but it adds incredibly to the Equipment stock, plus you could even play the Mirrodin-block and Modern Horizons Swords, plus Stoneforge Mystic (who isn’t a Dwarf but who cares). You also get the option of playing Thundermaw Hellkite, which absolutely demolishes decks with lots of fliers. The potential core already exists for Standard, Modern, and Pioneer Dwarf Tribal lists, and that’s before you ever see the rest of the Dwarves in Kaldheim! Dwarf Tribal in Commander The only issue with Magda, Brazen Outlaw in Commander is that many of the best Dwarf creatures exist in White. That means that Depala, Pilot Exemplar, for better or worse, is a strictly better Commander than Magda. Even Mono-Red has a better option with Torbran giving all of your Red sources of damage those extra 2 points of hurt. She’s plenty good, but pretty much doomed to be one of the 99, and one of the 59 even in Brawl! That being said, Magda, Brazen Outlaw is a fun Dwarf Tribal card that will definitely see play in some context. Magda is hopefully just one of many fun, potentially powerful tribal synergy cards we will see in Kaldheim!
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by Phoenix Desertsong, Magical Gatherer & Trading Card Game Enthusiast ![]() For Magic the Gathering competitive veterans, Birthing Pod was one of the most powerful (and polarizing) cards ever printed. As a way to cheaply and quickly tutor bigger and better creatures from your deck, Birthing Pod decks dominated both the Standard and Modern scenes for quite some time. Eventually, the Pod was banned in Modern, pushed in Legacy where it never quite took off, and of course has become a solid card in Modern. Since the Modern banning of Birthing Pod, we’ve seen several “fixed” versions of the card. The most obvious was Prime Speaker Zannifar, a very good Legendary creature who had a few flings with competitive play, and is also excellent as a Commander. To a lesser extent, Fiend Artisan from the Ikoria: Lair of Behemoths served a similar function, but on a very brittle body to begin with, so its competitive scope has thus far been a bit limited. With the release of Kaldheim spoilers, though, Magic players were greeted with a new artifact that is yet another “fixed” version of Birthing Pod. However, despite their being some new restrictions to this card, it’s not quite as “fixed” as it would first appear. Let’s dig into this very spicy Pyre of Heroes. Pyre of Heroes VS Birthing Pod Without further ado, here is what makes this artifact, Pyre of Heroes, different from Birthing Pod. 2, T: Sacrifice a creature: Search your library for a creature card that shares a creature type with the sacrificed creature and has converted mana cost equal to 1 plus that creature's converted mana cost. Put that card onto the battlefield, then shuffle your library. Activate this ability only any time you could cast a sorcery. First of all, the Pyre limits you to a specific creature type. As we’ll see in a moment, Birthing Pod didn’t have this restriction. But, before we get into the pros and cons of Pyre of Heroes, let’s see what the card that inspired it does and circle back to comparing and contrasting them. Birthing Pod was a four-mana Green artifact. The ability was somewhat inspired by a very powerful Sorcery called Natural Order, so powerful that it became banned in pretty much every competitive format except for Legacy, Vintage, and Commander. It allowed you to sacrifice a Green creature you control, then put any Green creature from your library into play. Of course, it was limited to Green creatures, but that didn’t stop it from being a ridiculous card. What made Birthing Pod special is that it’s functionally colorless, thanks to the Phyrexian mana costs associated with many New Phyrexia set cards. So, instead of paying the Green mana, you could instead pay 3 colorless mana and 2 life to cast Birthing Pod. While in Commander the Birthing Pod is restricted to Commanders with Green in their color identity, this is not the case in ordinary Constructed decks. Yes, pretty much every Birthing Pod deck played Green creatures with powerful enter-the-battlefield abilities, but you could run any deck with Birthing Pod in it. Plus, it wasn’t restricted at all to Green creatures. Still, what Birthing Pod does is powerful, but seemingly very narrow when you first read the card at face value. (1}{Green/Phyrexian Mana), (Tap), Sacrifice a creature: Search your library for a creature card with converted mana cost equal to 1 plus the sacrificed creature's converted mana cost, put that card onto the battlefield, then shuffle your library. Activate this ability only any time you could cast a sorcery. While Birthing Pod did place deck-building restrictions on those pilots who wished to play it, there are so many creatures that naturally “curve” into one another that Birthing Pod simply created a ridiculous value engine, especially in the late game. The fact that its activation cost doesn’t even require colored mana makes it even more ridiculous. About the only safety valve built into this card is that you can only use the ability whenever you would be able to cast a sorcery (a.k.a. your own turn). Of course, there are ways that you can get around the restriction of tapping it once per turn. But, Birthing Pod is so powerful that one activation per turn is plenty enough to make it a busted card in competitive play. It’s not quite as bad in Commander, where having only a single copy limits just how often it actually comes into play. Of course, in Commander where the card pool is so huge, there are enough redundancies of this sort of effect that playing a “Birthing Pod” style deck is easy to do. All that being said, what makes Pyre of Heroes so special? First of all, it costs just 2 to play and 2 mana to activate. Yes, it is limited to searching a creature of the same creature type, but with how much Wizards of the Coast has pushed tribal decks, that’s not nearly as much of a restriction as you might think. Also, many creatures have one or two subtypes, making it easier than you’d think to find “tribal” cards that all work together. Is Pyre of Heroes More Like Aether Vial Than Birthing Pod? In effect, I see Pyre of Heroes as being more similar to a powerful artifact called Aether Vial. This isn’t a comparison that I saw mentioned early on when the Pyre was first spoiled. The Vial is a one-drop artifact that has made many tribal decks possible in Modern, Legacy, and Vintage. For reference, here is what Aether Vial does: At the beginning of your upkeep, you may put a charge counter on Aether Vial. (Tap): You may put a creature card with converted mana cost equal to the number of charge counters on Aether Vial from your hand onto the battlefield. In many ways, Aether Vial and Pyre of Heroes have more in common than they do at first glance. Of course, Aether Vial isn’t at all limited to tribal decks - the popular Death and Taxes archetype in Modern, Legacy, and Vintage is far from tribal for example). The idea here is that Pyre of Heroes can serve a similar purpose in purely tribal decks. Today’s Magic scene is littered with tribal decks, such as Warriors, Soldiers, Elves, Goblins, etc. Especially in Standard, Pyre of Heroes seems like a card begging to be included in many decks. One Standard deck extremely popular prior to the release of Pyre of Heroes is Dimir Rogues, which is a deck as you would expect runs Rogue creatures. Of course, seeing a seemingly obvious place for a card to contribute begs the question if it actually works within the context of the deck. With Rogues, the deck actually wants to keep its creatures in play in order to grind out value by milling cards from the top of an opponent’s library, or even your own library depending on the circumstances. You could build a version of the deck that would be built around Pyre of Heroes, but it would be somewhat awkward. Many other top decks in Standard aren’t Tribal at all, such as Gruul Adventures, Mono-Green Food, Temur Ramp, etc. However, Tribal themes have continued to be played up in recent Standard-legal sets, and whatever Kaldheim has to offer can mean brand new decks to brew around with Pyre of Heroes as a key value engine for consistency. What Magic the Gathering Tribes Benefit the Most from Pyre of Heroes?The most popular tribes in competitive Magic, especially when it comes to formats other than Standard, are Elves, Goblins, Dragons, and Merfolk. Elves probably don’t have a need for the Pyre, Merfolk already have Aether Vial, and Dragons don’t curve out from one mana up to really be consistent in most competitive formats (although it is doable in Commander thanks to a deep card pool and Changelings who we will get to in a moment). Goblins are the one deck that may seem to benefit the most from Pyre of Heroes, as sacrificing Goblins for value is a theme of the deck to begin with. Thing is, Goblin decks are explosive enough to win the game without an added value engine like Pyre of Heroes. You could have builds, Red/Black builds for example, that become more consistent with Pyre of Heroes, but it would take a lot of testing to prove if those builds would be competitive enough to keep up with fast formats such as Modern. Where Pyre of Heroes could really shine is the Pioneer format, which has a much smaller card pool than Modern, and the Historic format on Magic Arena which has an even smaller card selection. Neither of those formats have access to Aether Vial, but do have access to cards like Fiend Artisan and Prime Speaker Vannifar that would potentially give the Pyre of Heroes some redundancy. Both Merfolk and Elf Tribal decks in those formats could be nicely boosted by Pyre of Heroes. What tribes could benefit most in Modern to me would be Allies, Slivers, and Changelings. Allies are probably the most interesting to me since Aether Vial has never really made them a winner in Modern, despite their massive support in Magic. There are enough synergies that have made them powerhouse decks in Commander, but not consistently in Modern. Yes, Allies decks have won events before, but they have often been relegated to “rogue” status. Slivers are a powerful enough deck to sometimes win an event out of the woodworks, but never consistently, even with the power of Aether Vial. Changelings are extremely deadly in Commander, and since they are all in the Modern card pool, give you plenty of options to work with. Both are at their best when you can play all five colors, which makes them often inconsistent and awkward in Modern. Pyre of Heroes, like Aether Vial, bypasses many of the mana-fixing issues that beleaguer these decks. For me, the best decks for Pyre of Heroes are tribal decks that operate best when they use the best cards they have in either four or five colors. That’s extremely easy to do in Commander, so I can see Pyre of Heroes being a staple in so many decks, as it’s purely colorless. A couple of other tribes that come to mind are Humans, Elementals, Vampires, and Zombies, but we’ll get into why I don’t immediately jump to those tribal decks in a moment. Pyre of Heroes as a “Win More” CardMany times that a card with an effect that’s been explored before is spoiled, people flock to it immediately because it’s both familiar and new. In many decks that want this sort of tutor effect, the decks are already able to find consistency with existing cards (such as Aether Vial or other tutor/recursion effects) or are synergistic within their tribes already that Pyre of Heroes is sort of just there as a “win more” card. For example, many decks have used the powerful tutor Collected Company to great effect, including Humans, Merfolk, and recently even Zombies. The aforementioned Slivers and Allies have also used Collected Company to great effect on the fringes of competitive play. As I’ve already mentioned, four and five color decks, which Humans and Elementals lend themselves to, can benefit from Pyre of Heroes. But, I’m not sure that there’s much that Pyre of Heroes can do at sorcery speed, which also costs you a creature, that Collected Company doesn’t do at instant speed, even with the obvious chance that “Co-Co” can whiff. Company decks are also very limited in that they have to play three-mana or less creatures, but in a way, that makes them inherently more consistent to begin with. Another place that I’ve considered Pyre of Heroes being good is in decks that don’t mind sacrificing, such as the aforementioned Vampires and Zombies. Clerics are another tribe that can actually benefit from sacrificing. Sacrifice-themed decks probably do well to consider Pyre of Heroes, but again, those decks (better known as Aristocrat decks) already have solid engines to power their strategy. As such, Pyre of Heroes becomes a card that’s nice to consider, but “win more” cards aren’t always good and can end up being dead draws at certain points of the game. Pyre of Heroes as a Budget Replacement for Birthing Pod (Or Even Aether Vial?)Besides four and five color tribal decks that benefit from a colorless tutor, Pyre of Heroes could also fill two other voids. One, decks that could play Birthing Pod, but don’t want to spend the extra $60+ for the play set can instead play Pyre of Heroes. The tribal restriction can actually streamline deck building choices as well as the consistency from playing tribal synergies. Colorless lords like Adaptive Automaton help that cause, too. The other voids are decks that would but can’t play Birthing Pod because of it flat-out being banned, like in Modern, or have color restrictions, such as in Commander. For example, can you imagine Mono-Brown Tribal, such as Myrs or even Constructs having access to a Birthing Pod-type effect? I’ve certainly thought about it, and Pyre of Heroes gets to benefit from artifact synergies that can abuse its tap abilities, too! I can see Wizard Tribal benefitting too, as well as other decks that may not tutor creatures as well, especially in Red and Blue - whereas White, Black, and Green naturally have many creature tutors available. Also, many colorless tutors exist, but they happen at much higher mana costs, such as Planar Bridge. Early game consistency created by Pyre of Heroes, especially in decks that can easily get back the sacrificed creatures, could be the key to helping some previously clunky decks create value where it would’ve been hardly possible before. In any case, Pyre of Heroes should be a solid budget replacement for Birthing Pod, plus give tribal decks a new weapon. Whereas Tribal decks have often won by power and toughness boosts and enter-the-battlefield synergies, Pyre of Heroes gives tribal decks an additional tutor while also enhancing the boost and ETB effects. It’s also a pseudo-draw engine that cashes in early-game plays into more value. Yes, I even expect tribes that like lots of their kind in the graveyard, such as Rogues and Zombies, will eventually develop builds that utilize Pyre of Heroes. All in all, I could write for days about Pyre of Heroes just from a speculative standpoint. I can’t wait to see some of these potential brews I’ve conceptualized actually played in real life Magic. We will definitely be revising this article in the future to see just how Pyre of Heroes fares in actual gameplay. Pyre of Heroes is one of the more fascinating “rabbit hole” type cards we’ve seen in quite some time. I’d love your thoughts on this card. Am I on to something with my esoteric ramblings about tribal deck consistency? Please let me know what you’re thinking about this and other Kaldheim cards! Happy magical gatherings! DISCLAIMER: Portions of LifeSuccessfully.com Magic the Gathering related content are unofficial Fan Content permitted under the Wizards of the Coast Fan Content Policy. The literal and graphical information presented on this site about Magic: The Gathering, including card images, the mana symbols, and Oracle text, is copyright Wizards of the Coast, LLC, a subsidiary of Hasbro, Inc. The content on this website is not produced by, endorsed by, supported by, or affiliated with Wizards of the Coast. by Phoenix Desertsong, Old School Duelist ![]() Cascade has always been one of my favorite mechanics in Magic the Gathering since the days of the Alara Reborn set. Bloodbraid Elf was the first card to become a competitive staple with the mechanic. Now, Apex Devastator from Commander Legends takes Cascade to a brand new level. What does Cascade do exactly? When you cast this spell, exile cards from the top of your library until you exile a nonland card that costs less. You may cast it without paying its mana cost. Put the exiled cards on the bottom of your library in a random order. Yes, ten mana is a lot to cast a card. But, not only do you Cascade once when you cast him, but rather four separate times consecutively. The initial reaction from many Commander players was that this card was simply too high a mana cost to be much use to any competitive deck builders. But, is that actually true? Cascade has been a pretty good strategy in Commander, thanks to cards printed exclusively in Commander products such as Yidris, Maelstrom Wielder, as well as Maelstrom Wanderer printed in Planechase. Commander Legends took Cascade to a brand new level with a handful of new cards, including a couple of Legendary Creatures. We’ll take a look at these potential Commanders in particular and how Apex Devastator fits in with them. Averna, the Chaos Bloom and Apex Devastator A three-mana, three-color creature, Averna costs just one Green mana, one Red mana, and one Blue mana to cast. While Averna doesn’t cascade herself, her ability does directly impact other cards with Cascade in a big way. Typically, when you Cascade, any lands that you reveal are sent back to the bottom of the library. Averna now gives you the option to put a land card from among those revealed cards into play tapped. Obviously, Averna, the Chaos Bloom allows you to quickly mana ramp up to your larger cascade spells, such as Apex Devastator. But, the Devastator offers a unique opportunity to put into play not just one, but up to four land cards into play in one fell swoop. With several other key Cascade cards printed in the set all falling well below the nine-mana threshold of Apex Devastator, you can cause a ridiculous Cascade of Cascade effect, as cards played with Cascade are still technically cast. Apex Devastator appears to be an immediate auto-include in any Averna decks. Imoti, Celebrant of Bounty and Apex Devastator The second, and perhaps even more powerful of the two Cascade Commanders in the set, is Imoti, Celebrant of Bounty. This five-mana Blue/Green Legendary Creature is a mere uncommon and has Cascade herself. Being that Imoti lacks Red in her color identity, it seems she is better suited as a complement to other Cascade Commanders. However, I believe her effect covers the potential weakness of her inability to access cards outside of colorless, Blue, and Green. Any card that you cast with a converted mana cost of 6 or more automatically has Cascade when Imoti is in play. This is a perfect combination with another Commander Legends Legendary Creature called Brinelin, the Moon Kraken. The 8-mana Kraken doesn’t have Cascade itself, but has an ability that whenever you cast the Kraken or a spell that costs 6 or more mana, you can return a nonland permanent to its owner’s hand. This is good both for reusing your own Cascade creatures or obviously bouncing opponent’s cards. Apex Devastator is an auto-include in Imoti decks, since Imoti lends herself to playing many six-mana or higher cards. Being able to potentially cast four cards with that high mana cost all in a row - all of which can gain their own instances of Cascade with Imoti in play - is probably a game-ender in Imoti’s favor. While ten mana is certainly a lot, Cascade decks tend to have plenty of ramp tools available to them. It doesn’t hurt that many of the mana ramp spells and mana rocks get cast for free by Cascade triggers on a regular basis. You very likely won’t wait until your tenth turn to cast Apex Devastator. One last deck that can definitely use Apex Devastator is the Hydra Tribal Commander Gargos, Vicious Watcher. As Gargos makes Hydra spells cost 4 less to cast, this 10 mana behemoth suddenly costs just 6, but still offers his Cascade ability as a 10-drop. That’s some serious value. Many other Commander decks are giving Apex Devastator a shot as a potential blowout card. Of course, Cascade triggers are inherently random, meaning you have as much of a chance as hitting a one-mana card as an eight-mana card. But, free card advantage can never be overlooked. How would you use Apex Devastator? by Phoenix Desertsong, Old School Duelist ![]() Guardian of Tazeem from Magic the Gathering’s Battle for Zendikar set may not look incredibly exciting, but this rare Sphinx creature had potential to be a pretty sweet weapon in control decks. The Guardian is a 4/5 flyer for 3UU, already solid stats for a mono-Blue creature. It also has a Landfall ability. Whenever a land comes into play on your side, you tap a target creature an opponent controls. If that land is an Island, that creature doesn't untap during its controller's next untap step. The cool thing about the ability is that the land in question doesn't have to be a basic Island. So, if you have dual lands such as Breeding Pool, Hallowed Fountain, or any other nonbasic land that has the land type Island, you get to freeze creatures for a turn each time you play one of them. Best of all, if you happen to make all lands Islands - such as with Stormtide Leviathan or the Enchantment Prismatic Omen if you're also in Green - every land you play has that effect. What held back Guardian of Tazeem from competitive play is that it was vying for deck space with Icefall Regent in Standard. The Regent can keep a creature tapped down as long as it's on the battlefield. While on paper the Guardian of Tazeem can tap down a lot more things, having to depend on a land-drop makes it less consistent. Also, the Regent being a Dragon made it fit better into many Dragon-centered strategies at the time. The only competitive play that Guardian of Tazeem has seen over the years was in occasional Azorius Aggro deck lists. Even in decks that relied on staying ahead on tempo and winning the game in the air, it was still relegated to sideboard action. About the only consistent home for Guardian of Tazeem came years later in Commander, with the printing of the Sphinx tribal lord, Unesh, Criosphinx Sovereign. As Unesh makes Sphinx spells you cast cost 2 colorless mana less, pretty much every mono-blue Sphinx becomes playable in that context. Like many creatures who have been useful but on the fringe in competitive play, Guardian of Tazeem has found its niche in Commander. The Guardian has also found a home as a tempo piece in Patron of the Moon and Meloku, the Clouded Mirror decks, which involve a lot of Islands leaving and entering play on a regular basis. As generally weak as Battle for Zendikar was as a set, the Guardian of Tazeem was far from one of its weaker cards. by Phoenix Desertsong, Old School Duelist ![]() Chameleon Colossus has always been a fairly valuable Magic the Gathering card. It was originally printed in Morningtide and saw some play in Standard back then. With his versatility and power level, the Colossus has remained popular in tribal decks in casual “Kitchen Table” Magic, EDH, and even Modern. The price of Chameleon Colossus dropped over time thanks to reprints in Archenemy, From the Vault: Twenty, and Commander 2015. But, thanks to increased play in Modern sideboards and new Tribal decks popping up in Commander all the time, all printings of Chameleon Colossus have been on a steady rise in demand. Chameleon Colossus in Elves For years, Chameleon Colossus saw a lot of play in Elf decks, thanks to the fact that he's a Changeling. The protection from black is also very useful, as a good deal of popular removal cards are black. That was especially true during his early days in competition. It also means decks with primarily black creatures can't block him. Since the Colossus can double its own power as many times as you can pay 2GG, he can deal a ton of damage, too. So, he made a great versatile companion to Elves decks since he counted as an Elf himself. While Elf decks aren’t nearly the force they once were in competitive play, Elves have never stopped being a popular tribe. But, with the printing of Craterhoof Behemoth in Avacyn Restored, Chameleon Colossus became pushed to being a sideboard option in Black-heavy matchups. Chameleon Colossus in Modern Sideboards While Chameleon Colossus is a strong, efficient creature, four mana creatures that don't have an immediate impact on the board don't see much play in Modern. But, fortunately for the Colossus, he has that protection against black going for him. As it turns out, most of the best removal spells in Modern are still predominantly black. So, has he found any home besides Elves sideboards? Red/Green Scapeshift decks began to adopt a single copy of the Colossus in the sideboard, as did Gruul Land Destruction and Tooth and Nail combo decks. These seem like somewhat odd places for him to go. But, having 4 toughness means he's out of Lightning Bolt range, plus much of the other best removal - Dismember, Fatal Push, Terminate, etc. - can't touch it. All of these decks also depend on keeping a threat on the board, which Chameleon Colossus certainly is. Four mana to double his power and toughness is very doable in these decks. Plus, Protection from Black means that Chameleon Colossus can block major threat creatures like Death's Shadow all day. For what it's worth, the Colossus can also block Bloodghast, Gurmag Angler, and Tasigur, the Golden Fang, not to mention any other Black creature that sees play in Modern. So, just to have a fairly difficult to remove wall against big Black creatures is worth playing Chameleon Colossus in the sideboard of a number of Modern decks. Chameleon Colossus in Commander / EDH According to EDHREC, Chameleon Colossus is played in over 3400 EDH decks. Being a Changeling, it's not surprising that he's found his way into a number of tribal decks. The protection from Black also means that he's somewhat tricky to remove and also can block big Black creatures from getting through on the ground. Most recently, Chameleon Colossus has been picked up by popular Tribal Commanders such as Ayula, Queen Among Bears (obviously, Bear Tribal) and Morophon, the Boundless (all sorts of Tribal). For years, the Commander deck playing Chameleon Colossus the most was Reaper King. This is somewhat unsurprising, since as a Changeling, he automatically counts as a Scarecrow, which Reaper King boosts by +1/+1. Reaper King also has another ability that whenever another Scarecrow enters the battlefield under your control, you destroy a target permanent. So, not only does the Colossus become a 5/5 for 4 mana, but he takes out a permanent when he enters. That makes him and any other Changeling an automatic play in the Reaper King deck. Kaseto, Orochi Archmage has also given Chameleon Colossus a home. Not only is the Colossus perfect for the Snake Tribal deck. but Kaseto can make creatures unblockable. If that creature is a Snake, Kaseto also gives it +2/+2. With the Colossus's ability to double his power and toughness, he can deal a whole ton of damage that can't be blocked. Ouch. Arahbo, Roar of the World, the Cat Tribal Commander, has also taken full advantage of Chameleon Colossus. Not only is the Colossus a very big Cat, but Arahbo can give the Colossus +3/+3 at the beginning of combat, plus he can give him trample AND double his power and toughness. On top of the Colossus being able to double his own power already, you get a very massive trampler. Major ouch. Other Commanders who like to have Chameleon Colossus in the deck include Ezuri, Claw of Progress, Atogatog, Seton, Krosan Protector, Xenagos, God of Revels, Ishkanah, Grafwidow, Gishath, Sun's Avatar, and more. Should I Run Out and Buy a Copy of Chameleon Colossus? Really, any printing of this card is worth having in your Magic the Gathering card collection. If you’d like a cheap foil copy, the From the Vault: Twenty version is worth considering. Anyone who plays Green in Commander or casual play should pick up at least a copy of Chameleon Colossus. It fits into many tribal strategies and will always find homes in casual and Commander decks somewhere. by Phoenix Desertsong, Old School Duelist ![]() Void Winnower from Magic the Gathering’s Battle for Zendikar set is quite an odd Eldrazi. All “can’t even” and other “odd” jokes aside, the mythic rare Winnower is pretty unique in its abilities. Nine mana for an 11/9 body is already pretty good. Being unable to be blocked by creatures with even converted mana costs gives it a rather unusual form of evasion. But, Void Winnower goes even beyond that, preventing opponents from casting spells with even converted mana costs. Obviously, this is a Limited bomb that you can likely drop before turn nine in the typical draft or sealed deck, thanks to all of the colorless mana ramp available in that set. But, how good is it in Constructed? For starters, creature tokens can’t block Void Winnower, since they have a 0 CMC. According to an official judge ruling from Wizards of the Coast, 0 is considered even. Mathematical debates aside, it’s going to be fairly tough to chump block this guy. Then again, plenty of removal options exist at odd converted mana costs, so there are definitely ways to deal with this behemoth. What Void Winnower seems best at is being a metagame answer to the big even converted mana cost spells in Standard. At the time of Void Winnower's release, these were Ugin, the Spirit Dragon at 8 mana and Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger at 10 mana being the chief concerns. With Eldrazi Ramp a legitimate deck archetype, especially in Modern, Void Winnower became a legitimate candidate for sideboard play. It can randomly hose a number of decks if their key cards have even converted mana costs. Void Winnower Makes Things Not Even in Pioneer While Void Winnower made a few Top 8 appearances in 2015 and 2017 in Modern, it took awhile for the true power of Void Winnower to be realized. This was a card that for years could be had for as little as a couple of dollars. But, in 2019 with the invention of the Pioneer format - which includes cards from Return to Ravnica forward in its card pool - Void Winnower would soon find new life. It took until 2020 with the release of Fires of Invention to truly see Void Winnower suddenly become a competitive powerhouse. Fires of Invention is a silly enchantment that gives you the ability to cast just two spells in a turn, but it can be any spell with a mana cost equal to or less than the number of lands you control. That means by turn 9 you can play the Void Winnower and another card in one turn. By that point in the game, it’s going to be tricky to stop the Winnower from taking over the board. Void Winnower in Commander / EDH In EDH, Void Winnower is a “just say no” card that will lock some Commanders out of the game. It’s a pretty mean card in the format. While someone will probably find an answer to it in a multiplayer game, it will wreak havoc while it remains in play. It may come down to using Swords to Plowshares on it and gaining the controlling player 11 life. The fact it can help your team get through for extra damage is also another big consideration. Also, because it's colorless, Void Winnower can be included in a wide variety of decks. Naturally, the Commanders that will want to use Void Winnower the most are those that can sometimes cast him for free (Rakdos, Lord of Riots and Animar, Soul of Elements) or cheat him into play (Mayael the Anima and Jhoira of the Ghitu). Also, with the release of Commander Legends, Void Winnower found a new home in Belbe, Corrupted Observer decks. Belbe’s ability can net you a ton of colorless mana, making Void Winnower easy to cast. It also helps that Commander Legends also released Apex Devastator, a ten-drop Green creature that cascades 4 times - literally allowing you to play 4 spells that cost 9 mana or less for free in a row straight from your deck. Void Winnower is an obvious include in any deck that features the Devastator. Pretty much any Commander deck can make use of Void Winnower if you can somehow get him into play on the cheap. Because it doesn't have an on-cast trigger, it's actually a big threat and always worth putting into play no matter how you do it. Void Winnower is definitely a keeper. How would you use Void Winnower? by Phoenix Desertsong, Old School Duelist ![]() Tainted Remedy is a Magic the Gathering card from the Magic Origins set. Time and again, this Enchantment has been compared to Sanguine Bond, a card that was once worth $10 before it was reprinted into dust. Because of how valuable Sanguine Bond became, Magic finance speculators have loved this card for years. So, what's so great about this card? The card Tainted Remedy does something similar but something that's a bit different than Sanguine Bond. Whereas Sanguine Bond is an instant win combo with Exquisite Blood. That's because they did opposite things. Sanguine Bond would make an opponent lose life whenever you gained life and Exquisite Blood had you gain life whenever your opponent lost life. If you control both of these Enchantment cards on the field at the same time, they create an infinite loop which allows you to drain any and all opponents of all of their life totals, giving you an easy win. Tainted Remedy instead gives you the ability to build a deck that lets you play cards that would ordinarily gain life to instead cause your opponent damage. Early on, it wasn't hard to see Tainted Remedy as a sideboard card to thwart decks that gain tons of life, especially in Modern and Legacy. It also has a great synergy with Beacon of Immortality. The Beacon allows you to double a target player's life total, and with Tainted Remedy in play, it instead deals damage equal to twice that opponent's life total instead. It makes for a deadly two-card combo, especially in a typical one-on-one duel. While the Tainted Remedy combo with Beacon of Immortality isn’t quite as foolproof as the Sanguine Bond and Exquisite Blood combo. But, if you can pull it off, it’s extremely effective. The question is, would Tainted Remedy be a card that would see competitive play as the Bond/Blood combo did during its time in competitive Standard play. As predicted, Tainted Remedy did see some sideboard play, as seen in some U/R Prowess lists in Standard. Tainted Remedy even popped up in Modern a bit, too, as seen in this Abzan Midrange deck. But it wasn’t adopted to the degree that many thought it would be. Still, there’s been enough casual and Commander interest to keep this card on a steady rise over the past two years. Tainted Remedy in Pioneer With the release of Aria of Flames in Modern Horizons, Tainted Remedy found a new deck. While the deck never took off competitively in Modern, the invention of the Pioneer competitive format - which has a much more limited cardpool for deck builders to work with - brought new interest in playing with Tainted Remedy. The Aria of Flames and Tainted Remedy combo isn’t an instant win. But, since Aria of Flame gains each opponent 10 life when the Enchantment enters play, it puts your opponent at a severe disadvantage when you also have Tainted Remedy in play. An Aria of Flames deck also plays many other burn spells, which will allow you to finish off an opponent without having to put another copy of Aria of Flames into play. Tainted Remedy in EDH / Commander While Tainted Remedy hasn't taken off in competitive play, there are enough people building decks with it in EDH (more popularly known today as Commander) to give it a value of a few dollars on the secondary market. In particular, Tainted Remedy sees play in decks led by Selenia, Dark Angel, Mogis, God of Slaughter, Mathas, Fiend Seeker, Kaervek the Merciless, and Kambal, Consul of Allocation. In particular, Tainted Remedy is a great Enchantment in a Mathas, Fiend Seeker deck because of the Legendary Creature's ability. Mathas' creates bounty counters on opponent's creatures. When creatures with bounty counters on them die, each opponent draws a card and gains 2 life. But, Tainted Remedy would make each opponent take 2 damage instead. Because of how narrow its effect is, Tainted Remedy isn't a card you'd see being reprinted to death as Sanguine Bond has. What it does is pretty unique and it can hose a lot of decks that depend on lifegain effects. It’s one of those stash-away cards that could become competitively relevant all of a sudden if the right lifegain combo deck comes along in Modern or Pioneer. While Tainted Remedy likely doesn't have a price ceiling of $25 or more like Exquisite Blood, it’s not impossible for this to be worth more than a few dollars per copy in the next few years. If there’s a great combo piece to go along with Beacon of Immortality printed in the future, this card's value could rise quickly. In any case, Tainted Remedy is a great card to have in your Magic the Gathering collection. Updated 11/17/2020 by Phoenix Desertsong, Old School Duelist ![]() With the release of the Ixalan set in Magic the Gathering, Mono-White Vampires became a competitive deck. Previously, Vampires had been in Black and Red, with the occasional Black/White Vampire. Ixalan released a number of mono-White Vampires, including the Legendary Creature Mavren Fein, Dusk Apostle. Mavren’s ability gives you a 1/1 Vampire creature token with lifelink whenever one or more of your nontoken Vampires attack. While one token doesn't seem like a huge deal, the incremental advantage adds up quickly. The added ability of lifelink on those tokens also makes it much harder for your opponent to wear you down over the course of a game. It also helps that available to those Mono-White Vampire decks was Anointed Procession, a token-doubling Enchantment. Add to that early Mono-White Vampire decks often played Angel of Invention which pumps all of your other creatures by +1/+1, suddenly making those tokens suddenly twice as scary! With Vampires being a popular tribe in Magic the Gathering, there's also a lot of casual demand for Mavren Fein. Vampires are a huge deal at the kitchen table, and Vampire Tribal Commander decks also want Mavren. A few select decks play the Dusk Apostle more than others, including decks led by Edgar Markov, Vona, Butcher of Magan, and Elenda, the Dusk Rose. While Mono-White Vampires didn’t become a long-term contender, Mavren Fein, Dusk Apostle is still a good card. Especially in Commander where Vampires love creating tokens, the additional tokens from Mavren are a great complement to an already powerful tribe in the format. The only downside is that many Vampire decks don’t play White, but those that do are happy to have Mavren Fein around to help press the attack. by Phoenix Desertsong, Old School Duelist ![]() Gaining life is a very popular thing to do in Magic the Gathering. While most life-gain specific cards don't become widely adopted in competitive play, they are a huge part of casual "kitchen table" Magic. However, there is a lot to like about Sanguine Sacrament, an instant from the Ixalan set. Not only can this card gain you some life, but you even have the chance to reuse it over the course of the game! Let's break it down. Sanguine Sacrament is an instant that costs XWW. This means you must have two White mana and enough mana to pay for X to make it worth casting. Already, this seems like a fair investment, as later in the game, you can pump quite a bit of mana into this card. Being at instant speed means you can potentially use this card gain yourself enough life in order to not be dealt lethal damage. Best of all, you gain twice as much life as you pay for X.
Now, to make this card "worth" casting, you need to be able to invest quite a bit of mana into X. However, there is one thing about this card that makes it potentially valuable: when you cast it, you put it at the bottom of your library instead of putting it in your graveyard. That's actually a really big deal. Because this card is an instant, you can use it early in the game when you may not otherwise have a play in order to gain some quick life, even if it's only 2 or 4 life. Every point of life matters in Magic. While this card wasn't going to see much play in Standard nor Modern, there is the possibility that this card may still see play in a semi-competitive combo deck. A deck that can produce a good deal of mana can make great use of this card. The real place for Sanguine Sacrament to shine is in Commander (EDH), where life-gain is not only useful, but can be an asset. There are many win conditions in Magic that involve having a certain life total, and this is one way to potentially gain yourself enough life to satisfy them. There's Felidar Sovereign, for example, which lets you win the game if you have 40 or more life at the beginning of your turn. Sanguine Sacrament being at instant speed means that you can cast this card at the end of an opponent's turn. It can be a quick and dirty way to gain enough life to let the Sovereign win you the game. It's not the only way to win with this card, but it's one of the more popular ones. In EDH, there's also a popular creature called Rhox Faithmender that doubles any lifegain effect that you may have while he's on the battlefield. Also, a popular enchantment called Sunbond gives its enchanted creature as many +1/+1 counters as points of life that you gain. Sanguine Sacrament definitely belongs in any MTG deck that runs those cards. Sanguine Sacrament is worth keeping an eye on because it does something that's popular in casual Magic, and casual Magic players make up the majority of the player base. It can fit into a wide array of strategies, and while it's not a primary card to enable a strategy, it does complement them. Lifegain is always going to be good in Magic. Also, since it has the ability to either keep combo decks alive with its effect or even win the game by increasing your life total beyond a certain level, it's always going to have some demand. by Phoenix Desertsong, Old School Duelist ![]() Winterflame from Khans of Tarkir is no Fire // Ice. Whereas Fire // Ice, a popular Legacy card, was a split card which let you choose which half to cast, Winterflame gives you the ability to get one or both effects. Most of the time, you would choose both. But it’s not quite as good as the classic split card. Fire for 1R gave you the option to split the 2 damage between one or two creatures or players. Ice gave you the option to not only tap a target permanent for 1U, but also drew you a card. Winterflame is definitely a powered down version of these two effects. It only allows you to tap creatures, which isn’t quite as useful as Ice, plus you don’t get the benefit of drawing a card. It’s much weaker than Electrolyze, which is basically Fire except that it also draws you a card, also for 1UR. It’s a weaker version of those two cards. Adding drawing a card as a third option while still only allowing two to be chosen would have made this much better. As it is, Winterflame probably wasn’t even good enough to be a rare. Although Khans of Tarkir turned out to have plenty of powerful cards, Winterflame was certainly not one of them. It didn’t really see any sideboard play. Even in Commander, a format that tends to adopt many competitively shunned spells, only a handful of Melek, Izzet Paragon decks bothered to include this card. Outside of Khans of Tarkir Limited (drafts and sealed deck), this card was pretty much a dud. by Phoenix Desertsong, Old School Duelist ![]() If any Magic the Gathering deck archetype was boosted more than Humans by the Avacyn Restored set, it would be Angels. Being that the premier card of the set Avacyn, Angel of Hope is an Angel, this should have probably been an obvious consideration of Wizards of the Coast Research & Development. It couldn’t be overlooked that once relatively unplayable Angel cards suddenly have a bit more value because of this set. In particular, Requiem Angel is very glad Avacyn is now free of the Helvault! (See, something good did come out of that awful mythic rare from Dark Ascension!) Requiem Angel is a 5/5 flyer with a six mana casting cost (5 colorless, 1 White) with a decent effect. Whenever another non-Spirit creature you control dies, you put a 1/1 white Spirit creature token with flying onto the board. For 6 mana, this is OK. She gets better alongside Herald of War, also from Avacyn Restored, who can reduce the casting costs of your Angels for each +1/+1 counter on the Herald. This means you can cast Requiem Angel for as little as one mana, not that it would happen often. Requiem Angel was a neat card, but she never really saw Standard play, which shouldn’t be too surprising due to her position on the mana curve. Requiem Angel in Commander / EDH Interestingly enough, Angel Tribal Commander decks, such as Sephara, Sky’s Blade, aren’t the key home for Requiem Angel. Rather, she’s great in the Commander decks that can best take advantage of the Spirit tokens she creates. Notably, unlike a lot of creatures who generate tokens when other creatures die, Requiem Angel doesn’t care if those creatures are tokens or not, which is a major plus in decks who basically thrive off of their token generation. No Commander has recruited her as much as Teysa Karlov, whose ability to copy triggered abilities and give creature tokens vigilance and lifelink makes Requiem Angel an obvious include. Her predecessor from Guildpact, Teysa, Orzhov Scion, has also recruited Requiem Angel to create the 3 white creatures she can sacrifice in order to exile a target creature. For quite some time, Ghave, Guru of Spores was the Commander she was paired with most. This seems a strange pairing until you consider that Ghave decks produce a lot of tokens, especially Saprolings. So, when any of those Saprolings die, especially when sacrificed using Ghave’s ability, you get a Spirit token. Another Commander who takes advantage of Requiem Angel is Jazal Goldmane. This makes sense since Jazal can boost the flying Spirit tokens the Angel creates. It makes even more sense when you consider Requiem Angel was re-printed in the same Commander 2014 deck as Jazal. Token-happy commanders such as Thalisse, Reverent Medium, Emmara Tandris, and Darien, King of Kjeldor also co-opt her services on more than a few occasions. While she’s hardly any sort of token deck staple, Requiem Angel is a good one to have around for those Commanders who can maximize her abilities. by Phoenix Desertsong, Old School Duelist Q: How much are 100 Magic playing cards worth?
A: This is one of the more interesting Magic the Gathering finance related questions I’ve been asked. It really comes down to what is in those 100 cards. If it’s mostly land cards, then the stack is relatively worthless. If it’s 100 commons and uncommons, typically no vendor will buy them, since typically stores buy in bulk of 1000 at a time and pay about $3-5/thousand. If there are rares in the pile, you’re looking at least $0.08 to $0.10 per rare, and likely more depending on what the rare is. A stack of 100 rares, for example is going to get you likely $8 or more from a local game store that buys Magic cards. But it’s more likely to be a mixture. It is true that you can buy lots of 100 Magic the Gathering cards for anywhere between $4 and $8 online. Some have more rares than others, and some will have more duplicates than others. But as far as selling them yourself, if there’s nothing of substantial value among the 100 cards, you’re probably looking at a value of between $0.25 and $1. You can learn a lot more about what Magic cards are worth in my post: Magic Card Values: What Are My Magic the Gathering Cards Worth? by ElspethFTW, Old School Duelist ![]() Boros Affinity in Pauper? Pauper is a highly competitive tournament format in Magic the Gathering. It is a format of only common cards, with a relatively small ban list. For years, the format really shined on Magic Online, but now, it has become supported in Paper Magic, as well. What's great about Pauper is the sheer amount of competitive decks you can play. This particular deck, a Boros Affinity deck, once went 4-0 in a Daily Event. While this list we’re looking at today is from 2013, the archetype is still very viable. The best part about this list, is that in MTGO terms, the deck only costs about 10 tix. As you'll discover though when we peruse the list, about 8 tix of that is for the 2 copies of Pyroblast in the sideboard! In paper, it's a mere $40 or so. This is a ridiculously cheap deck! Affinity was always a strong archetype in Pauper, but wasn't getting 4-0 in Daily events until this list popped up. So, what makes this Pauper Affinity deck different? Let's take a look! The Deck List! Creatures 4 Ardent Recruit 4 Vault Skirge 4 Court Homunculus 4 Porcelain Legionnaire 4 Glint Hawk 3 Auriok Sunchaser Non-Creatures 4 Bonesaw 4 Bonesplitter 4 Galvanic Blast 2 Prophetic Prism 2 Lightning Bolt 1 Flayer Husk Land 7 Plains 4 Great Furnace 4 Ancient Den 3 Boros Guildgate 1 Mountain 1 Vault of Whispers Sideboard 3 Stone Rain 2 Lone Missionary 2 Journey to Nowhere 2 Flame Slash 2 Pyroblast 2 Smash to Smithereens 2 Electrickery The Creatures! While this is not a typical Affinity deck, having Artifacts does indeed matter quite a bit here. Starting off with our Ardent Recruit, we have a 1/1 guy that has a Metalcraft ability that gives him +2/+2. Metalcraft is attained by having at least three artifacts on the battlefield. Since the artifact lands (Great Furnace, Ancient Den, and the lone Vault of Whispers) count towards activating this ability, you're most often going to be getting a 3/3 creature for 1 mana! Vault Skirge is a Pauper stalwart. For 1 and a Phyrexian mana (black or 2 life) you have a 1/1 flyer with lifelink. With the one copy of Vault of Whispers in the deck, it's possible to cast it without paying the 2 life. But being an artifact itself, as well as having lifelink, it's worth paying the life just for the creature (especially if casting Skirge gives you Metalcraft!) Having four of these in the deck guarantees a pesky 1/1 flyer with lifelink that gets better with the equipment in the deck! Next we have four Court Homunculus. The Court Homunculus is similar to Ardent Recruit, in that it costs a single white mana, except that it gains +1/+1 as long as you control any other artifact. What's especially interesting about him, though, is that he himself is an artifact. If you simply control another Court Homunculus, it becomes a 2/2. If that wasn't enough, we have a full playset of another Pauper favorite, and one-time Tempered Steel stalwart, Porcelain Legionnaire! For two and a Phyrexian mana (White or two life), you get a 3/1 with first strike. Being able to play him on Turn Two is ridiculous, and he himself is also an artifact! Glint Hawk is a fun little card which used to abuse Mox Opal when it was legal in Standard. But the Hawk became relatively forgotten outside of some Pauper Affinity builds. But in this deck, Glint Hawk works well with the several 0 drop artifacts in this deck. Also, if you would miss a land drop anyway, you can bounce an artifact land back to your hand in order to replay it. The Hawk is a 2/2 flyer, so this down-side really isn't too bad. You have a full playset of these, as well. The last creature is a trio of Auriok Sunchaser. It's a 1/1 for 1W, but its Metalcraft ability gives it +2/+2 and flying! A 3/3 flyer for 2 mana is pretty silly. Non-Creature Lineup! As if the deck couldn't win with just its creature lineup alone, the non-creature spells are pretty interesting, too! The first one is a zero drop, Bone Saw, an equipment that has an equip cost of 1, and gives the equipped creature +0/+1. Seriously, though, you're rarely going to care about equipping this. Mostly, it exists to more easily activate Metalcraft, and to give you something to bounce for Glint Hawk. Next is a full playset of Bonesplitter. It's probably the best equipment in Pauper outside of perhaps Armadillo Cloak. It's a staple in White Weenie, which has been a very competitive strategy in Pauper over the years. Bonesplitter costs only 1 to play and only 1 to equip. It gives a creature +2/+0, and with the flyers in this deck, you can get in some cheap evasive damage very early on! Galvanic Blast is an okay burn spell until you see that it deals 4 damage to target creature or player if you have Metalcraft! Without Metalcraft, it's just a Shoc. But with how often you’ll have Metalcraft, the 4 Galvanic Blasts can almost win you the game on their own! Paired with the 2 Lightning Bolt in the main board, you have plenty of both removal and direct damage. Lastly, we have Prophetic Prism and Flayer Husk. Prophetic Prism is a two-drop artifact that draws you a card when it enters. It also allows you to filter your mana, which is very important in this deck! The Flayer Husk is a Living Weapon equipment that comes into play with a 0/0 creature token attached to it. The Husk gives its equipped creature +1/+1, so it's a nice cheap creature. When the creature dies, or you find a better target for the Husk, it gives that creature +1/+1 for an equip cost of 2. It's not quite Bonesplitter, but it works well. The mana base is 7 Plains and 1 Mountain, with 4 Great Furnace (the red artifact land), 4 Ancient Den (the white Artifact land), 3 Boros Guildgate (red/white), and a single Vault of Whispers (for help with casting the Vault Skirges). The Sideboard! As is the case with many Pauper decks, the majority of the cost of the deck comes from a single card in the sideboard. In this case it's Pyroblast. Basically, what Pyroblast does for a single red mana is counter any target blue spell or destroy any blue permanent. If you don't want to spend the $8 or so to acquire them, though, you could probably just switch them out for 2 more copies of Lightning Bolt. The rest of the sideboard is typically Pauper staples. 3 Stone Rain lets you keep decks off of their most important lands or colors. 2 Lone Missionary can be boarded in against more aggressive decks or burn decks. Gaining that 4 life can certainly be a big deal in certain matchups, especially where this deck will need to race often. For creature removal, we have 2 Journey to Nowhere, 2 Flame Slash (which deals 4 damage to target creature, but is at sorcery speed), and the aforementioned Pyroblasts. We also have Electrickery, which with its very cheap overload cost murders all 1 toughness creatures on your opponent's side of the board. Lastly we have Smash to Smithereens, which is played in many sideboards in other formats. It's excellent artifact removal that also deals 3 damage to that artifact's controller, all for 1R! Impressions of the Deck It's easy to see how this deck wins. It requires very little mana to get going and can survive land destruction and artifact destruction, since it plays plenty of copies of 1 and 2 drop cards. The most expensive card casting cost wise in the deck is technically Porcelain Legionnaire. That will be boarded out in certain match-ups anyway! The best part about this deck's creatures is that they are bigger than their mana costs would lead you to believe. There are plenty of flyers in this deck, and the Bonesplitters alone can lead to some very quick damage. The creature line-up can hold down both the air and ground quite well! Also, the deck has a nice burn package in it. The only thing I'm not crazy about in the deck is probably the lone Flayer Husk. I'd personally run a third Lightning Bolt, and I'm not sure the deck needs the Vault of Whispers or a fourth Legionnaire, either. If I removed these, I'd max out the Bolts. The main reason I feel this way is that 4 Blasts and 4 Bolts in some combination can kill a player outright. But the list, as is, should work fantastic, as it proved in that Daily Event. Side-boarding doesn't look too hard with this deck, either. Honestly, the sideboard probably will only be relevant in mirror matches or against Delver decks. The deck is quick enough that it can win in a hurry. I can see card advantage perhaps becoming an issue, but each card you play delivers a ton of value. Also, the power of each card you can swing with makes up for that. You don't have to overextend yourself with this deck in order to win, which I really like. This deck picks up where White Weenie really started failing. As long as you have that single red source and Metalcraft, this deck can beat you in the air, on the ground, and with pure burn spells. I still want to see 4 Bolts mainboard, and this is something I'll be playing around with myself. If you're looking to get into competitive Pauper, this is the deck to try, I'd say! Minus the Pyroblasts, you're looking at a maximum $6 investment. Not much to lose here, especially since the artifact lands are the majority of that expense, and they're always good to have in Pauper! Plus, you may have the majority of the cards already if you've been playing online for awhile, if not all! Congrats to twoduckcubed for authoring and piloting this 4-0 to victory! Here is the deck list! If you’re looking for a newer, albeit more expensive (30+ tickets / $70), version of this Boros Metalcraft deck, check out this tournament winner piloted by Klybby in October 2017. by ElspethFTW, Old School Duelist ![]() When compared to his predecessor in the original Zendikar, Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet is easier to cast with a potentially much more devastating ability. He only costs 4 mana to the Bloodchief of Ghet’s 7 mana casting cost, meaning he gets into play much sooner. Also, the Bloodchief has a tap ability, which while good, it doesn’t beat the Traitor’s ability. The Traitor of Ghet causes any opponent’s non-token creature that dies to be exiled and you get a 2/2 Zombie token out of it. Also, you can pay 2B and sacrifice a Vampire or Zombie, except himself, to put 2 +1/+1 counters on Kalitas. He even has lifelink! In Standard, Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet proved himself to be a major competitor, making him a $20-25 card in mid-April 2016. He’s pretty good in Modern, too! Because of this, his price tag put him a bit out of reach for some Commander players for some time. When he left Standard, however, his price dropped closer to $12, allowing for more people, especially EDH players, to fit him into their collections. There are so many good mono-Black Commanders already. But Kalitas not only can get you an army of Zombie tokens while shutting off any graveyard-based strategies. He can also make himself bigger, meaning he could potentially take out players on his own. So, why hasn’t Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet become more of a player in EDH where it seems like he would be very powerful? Part of the problem is that he prevents any decks that work at all out of the graveyard to function, while still being able to use your own graveyard. Basically, he can draw hate very quickly. As a member of the 99, he’s still quite useful, but again he draws a lot of hate. Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet is definitely one of the more powerful Legendary creatures from recent sets. The pieces are there for him to lead formidable decks, and perhaps a bit too formidable for your everyday Commander group to want to deal with on a regular basis. EDHREC has a good sampling of decks with Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet as the Commander. You can check out their Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet page to get an idea of what sorts of EDH decks people build around him. by ElspethFTW, Old School Duelist ![]() The Legendary Dragons of Kamigawa are some of the more memorable cards from Champions of Kamigawa. Two of them are considered to be very good, two more of them are pretty good in Commander, but one has never really caught on as a Commander himself. This is the Green Dragon, Jugan, the Rising Star. His effect is good enough that he’s seen play as part of the 99 in some decks. But can you build around him? Since Jugan’s ability is all about +1/+1 counters, you sort of want to go all out on this theme. Unfortunately, a lot of the best counter-abusing cards are in White. So in Green, you’ll want to take advantage of all of the token producers and use cards that can benefit from having a bunch of counters placed on them. On top of lots of ways to ramp your mana and create lots of tokens, there are plenty of ways to make your token army deadly. Thanks to one TappedOut user with a decent Jugan Commander list, I was able to come up with this deck list below. Whereas the list I found focused primarily on tokens, I found other cards to blend the counter and token strategies in even better ways. Commander Jugan, the Rising Star 3ggg Creatures (16) 1 Sakura-Tribe Elder 1g 1 Champion of Lambholt 1gg 1 Eternal Witness 1gg 1 Fertilid 2g 1 Lifeblood Hydra xggg 1 Nissa, Vastwood Seer 2g 1 Wild Beastmaster 2g 1 Bloodspore Thrinax 2gg 1 Fangren Firstborn 1ggg 1 Forgotten Ancient 3g 1 Fungal Behemoth 3g 1 Ant Queen 3gg 1 Bane of Progress 4gg 1 Hydra Broodmaster 4gg 1 Rampaging Baloths 4gg 1 Avenger of Zendikar 5gg Spells (45) 1 Hardened Scales g 1 Helix Pinnacle g 1 Earthcraft 1g 1 Regrowth 1g 1 Revive 1g 1 Sword of the Animist 2 1 Arachnogenesis 2g 1 Ashnod's Altar 3 1 Awakening Zone 2g 1 Beastmaster Ascension 2g 1 Blasting Station 3 1 Cultivate 2g 1 Deep Reconnaissance 2g 1 Harrow 2g 1 Journey of Discovery 2g 1 Kodama's Reach 2g 1 Nissa's Pilgrimage 2g 1 Nissa, Voice of Zendikar 1gg 1 Search for Tomorrow 2g 1 Squirrel Nest 1gg 1 Beacon of Creation 3g 1 Explosive Vegetation 3g 1 From Beyond 3g 1 Harmonize 2gg 1 Hunting Wilds 3g 1 Into the Wilds 3g 1 Parallel Lives 3g 1 Seer's Sundial 4 1 Skyshroud Claim 3g 1 Doubling Season 4g 1 Eldrazi Monument 5 1 Freyalise, Llanowar's Fury 3gg 1 Garruk, Primal Hunter 2ggg 1 Nissa's Expedition 4g 1 Nissa, Worldwaker 3gg 1 Primal Vigor 4g 1 Restock 3gg 1 Caged Sun 6 1 Death's Presence 5g 1 Nissa's Renewal 5g 1 Akroma's Memorial 7 1 Boundless Realms 6g 1 Howl of the Night Pack 6g 1 Praetor's Counsel 5ggg 1 Decree of Savagery 7gg Lands (38) 36 Forest 1 Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx 1 Oran-Rief, the Vastwood by Phoenix Desertsong, Old School Duelist ![]() Many of the Legendary Creatures in Magic the Gathering’s Legendary-happy Kamigawa Block are absolutely terrible as Commanders. A few of them are actually pretty cool. One you rarely hear about is Infernal Kirin. Similar to his Blue counterpart, Cloudhoof Kirin, he has an ability that activates whenever you cast an Arcane or Spirit spell. Unlike Cloudhoof, though, who mills cards from the top of a target player’s deck, Infernal Kirin causes players to discard cards equal to the converted mana cost of the card you cast. This makes it a lot more hit or miss. But, it can be potentially devastating, as well. There are plenty of good Spirit and Arcane spells, but not nearly as many in Black as there are in Blue. However, the good news is that there is plenty of support for discard in Black. So while all-out Spirit Tribal is necessary for Cloudhoof Kirin, the same is not true of Infernal Kirin. The Spirits and Arcane spells you do play in an Infernal Kirin deck are somewhat random. But because it’s the converted mana cost of the cards you care about, they don’t even really have to be all that good to begin with. It’s a fun deck to try, even if it’s not the most consistent at following the Commander’s gameplan. You can actually build an Infernal Kirin deck for as little as $50! If you're looking to build something fairly competitive around Infernal Kirin, you can build either a Spirit Tribal deck or a Discard themed deck. How would you play Infernal Kirin? by Phoenix Desertsong, Old School Duelist ![]() Ghoultree is one of my favorite rares in Magic the Gathering's Dark Ascension set. I don’t think it’s hard to see why. Yes, it costs 8 mana to cast, but it’s a 10/10 Zombie Treefolk (awesome creature type combination, by the way) that costs 1 less to cast for each creature card in your graveyard. It’s not impossible to see Ghoultree being cast for as little as 4 or 5 mana as the game progresses. The single Green mana cost means that you don’t have to be playing strictly mono-green to cast him. Many of the more powerful Green cards have multiple Green mana symbols for a reason. Having only one means that you can potentially cast him for just a single mana. That’s a lot of value. This card is full of flavor, and it’s actually a good card. Kudos to the design team on this one. It never became any sort of competitive staple, and certainly didn’t help top 8 any Star City Opens or Pro Tours. But, it definitely helped win a Friday Night Magic tournament or two. Zombie decks were extremely powerful during the original Innistrad era and this guy saw play when Return to Ravnica came around. Just as an out-of-nowhere big guy it was hard not to find a way to jam him into a fun brew. Obviously, Ghoultree is a good card in EDH, where the likelihood of him being cast for a single green mana is not only possible, but likely. Sapling of Colfenor smiles upon this guy as a strong Treefolk ally. Doran, the Siege Tower doesn’t mind having him around, either. Jarad, Golgari Lich Lord and Sidisi, Brood Tyrant love having a ton of creature cards in the graveyard, so why not get a 10/10 for one mana? There are definitely applications. Being a Zombie doesn’t hurt his cause, either. Just having a 10/10 beater without trample isn’t the best thing in Commander. But, if Ghoultree is cast for next to no mana or cheated onto the battlefield some other way, he can become a Zombie Elephant in the room that someone needs to deal with. by Phoenix Desertsong, Old School Duelist ![]() With the printing of Modern Masters 2017, plenty of Magic the Gathering cards often played in the Modern format saw huge drops in price due to their being reprinted in the set. This led to Modern decks being built at an astonishing rate, including Eldrazi Ramp. One of the cards featured in that highly competitive deck is Matter Reshaper, which wasn’t reprinted in Modern Masters 2017. The Matter Reshaper only costs 3 mana to cost, but one of those must be a true "colorless" mana. In Eldrazi decks, this is really never going to be a problem. His “when it dies” effect is also very powerful. When the Reshaper dies, you look at the top card of your deck. If it’s a permanent card that costs 3 mana or less, he puts it into play, including if it’s a land. If the card isn’t a permanent that costs 3 mana or less, you put it into your hand. Either way, he can easily replace himself by putting another card into play or another one in your hand. Sure, if Matter Reshaper gets removed from play (exiled) by a removal effect like on Path to Exile or Swords to Plowshares, you won't get the ability. But, more often than not, you'll make sure that he dies. In any case, if he hits the graveyard, you will get something out of him, either way, which is important for keeping tempo. The height of Matter Reshaper’s popularity was in February 2016, as Eldrazi decks were rampaging through the competitive Standard scene. In October, when cards from Oath of the Gatewatch were no longer eligible to be played, there was suddenly a huge supply available. As Modern isn’t nearly as popular as Standard when it comes to competition, his value has suffered over the years, making him one of the cheapest Magic the Gathering playable creatures out there. This rare creature from Oath of the Gatewatch is probably one of the more underrated Eldrazi. Years on, he still sees a good amount of play in a variety of Modern and Legacy Eldrazi decks. As part of a smaller set that was opened a lot, there are a lot of copies out there. If you’re planning on playing Eldrazi any time in the future, this is a card you want a play-set of on-hand (four copies). Eldrazi is his best deck, obviously, and while that’s the only niche he really fits into, that's a highly competitive deck archetype that's not going anywhere. by Phoenix Desertsong, Old School Duelist Worst Fears was playable in Standard. Is it good in other formats like EDH? ![]() Worst Fears is a mythic rare card from Magic the Gathering’s Journey into Nyx set. A quick look at the card from veteran Magic players saw the popular effect of the Mirrodin artifact Mindslaver on a sorcery. That seems pretty good, until you realize you only get one shot at it, as it’s removed from play after you cast it. Controlling your opponent's turn is always fun. Yes, Worst Fears does cost eight mana - seven colorless and one Black - which is a bit pricey. But, considering that casting Mindslaver costs 6 mana to cast and the activated ability costs 4 mana, this is a relative bargain. Unlike Mindslaver, though, you can't reuse this card, as it's exiled as soon as it's played. As an artifact, there are many ways to get Mindslaver back into play and use it again. That reusability is why the original Mindslaver is so good, after all. Being a one-shot effect, is this really worth playing? Still, Worst Fears can be a pretty scary card. Especially late in the game, being able to control an opponent's turn can be devastating. Also, having only a single black mana in its mana cost makes it playable in a wide-array of control shells. Even then, many players consider Worst Fears a waste of a mythic rare slot. Then again, I can understand them not wanting to print an effect like this at rare for Limited purposes - even if it was on Mindslaver back in the original Mirrodin days. In today’s Magic, being able to draft this at rare would have made it too much of a problem. That’s why when Mindslaver was reprinted in Scars of Mirrodin, it was bumped up to mythic rare. Just as it was in its original Standard heyday, it was yet again an important card in that Standard format, as well. Modern Tron made heavy use of Mindslaver to great effect for many years, so it was thought Worst Fears could be played a bit in Constructed. Of course, eight mana is a lot, regardless of the format it’s being played in. But, the 8-mana sorcery did sneak into a few Standard decks back in 2014. It did see play in a few Mono-Black Devotion decks, a major competitor during Theros block Standard. One 8th place Standard PPTQ UB Control deck ran a copy in the sideboard. Pro Ali Aintrazi even played a mainboard copy of Worst Fears in his January 2015 Sultai Delve deck at a Standard Open in Washington DC. A "Mono Green" deck even ran one copy in its sideboard, as this Green deck splashed Black mana for Pharika, God of Affliction and Doomwake Giant. Since early 2015, it hasn't seen much in the way of competitive play, in Modern, or otherwise. Worst Fears does see some play in Commander. The Commander who's made the best use of this sorcery is Jeleva, Nephalia's Scourge. Jeleva has an ability to exile cards from the top of your deck, and you can cast any instants or sorceries from those exiled cards without paying their mana cost. This means you can play Worst Fears for free whenever you want. In other Commander decks, it's just not really worth an 8 drop slot. The later in the game Worst Fears is played the better, so it's a good effect. But, since you only get one shot at it, you had better play it at the perfect time. Really, it's best if you can find a way to cast it for free. Otherwise, it's not worth casting in most decks. While it had its uses back in its Standard legal days, nowadays you'd be better off with Mindslaver. by Phoenix Desertsong, Gaming Successfully Staff On October 8th, 2017, Wizards of the Coast revealed a new logo for Magic: the Gathering. As with anything new, there were mixed reactions. Here it is: This new logo is meant to be in line with the logo for Magic the Gathering: Arena. My initial reaction to this news was definitely surprise. The other reactions I've seen have ranged from "hate it" to "I don't hate it." I'm not seeing many positive reactions so far, although there are a few.
I don't hate it. I think it's fine, especially since card backs aren't being touched. While many people don't love the Deckmasters card backs, it makes no sense to change them, as then the backs don't fit the older cards. We probably won't see the card backs ever change, even though most people in this day and age use card sleeves. (By the way, Deckmasters was used on the backs initially because Magic: the Gathering was meant to be part of a series of Deckmasters games. For example, Arabian Nights was meant to be a separate stand-alone game. This, of course, never happened, but to remain consistent, the card backs had to remain the same.) What are your thoughts on the new Magic: the Gathering logo? Do you think it reflects the brand today as Magic moves into a new era? by Phoenix Desertsong, Old School Duelist ![]() Helm of the Gods is an equipment from the Magic Origins set that costs only 1 mana to cast with an equip cost of only 1 mana. The Helm gives its equipped creature +1/+1 for each enchantment you control. In decks that live and die with Enchantments, this artifact is definitely worth considering. Does it work in competitive Constructed play? Green/Black Constellation decks during the Journey into Nyx Standard era could use it. Heroic decks could use it, too, especially those that used a lot of Auras - which are also Enchantments. But, the Helm never really fit into any of those lists. Also, the Standard decks in Standard which could have used the Helm best when it was released lost all of the Theros cards a few months later in October 2015. However, with the release of Dragons of Tarkir, SaffronOlive of MTGGoldfish came up with a Standard "Bogles" deck featuring Conifer Strider and Sagu Mauler. It used the full four copies of Helm of the Gods and was a fairly fun deck. But, it wasn't a big winner or anything. Bogles decks in Modern could use it. But, again, it doesn't fit in what is already a deck vulnerable to dead draws. Modern Prison decks could find a slot or two and stick it on one of the few creatures in the deck. But, that is hardly a top tier deck, and it's more like cute tech than a true upgrade. Helm of the Gods in Commander / EDH In 60-card Constructed decks, there isn't much room to give. In Commander, though, Helm of the Gods can fit into a variety of decks because you have 99 slots to consider. Also, Commander decks have plenty of ways to tutor for it. Trinket Mage can grab it, being a one mana artifact. Being an equipment, Quest for the Holy Relic, Steelshaper’s Gift, Stoneforge Mystic, and Stonehewer Giant can also seek it out. You could get it with the creature Relic Seeker from Magic Origins, too. The Helm is a card that gets better as you go through the game. You just play it as soon as you need it. It could be a game-ender, and even a +2/+2 boost is worth the investment. Unlike an Aura, an Equipment is usually going to stick on the board when the equipped creature is gone. Immediately what comes to mind are Commander decks with a heavy Enchantment theme. This includes Tuvasa the Sunlit, Daxos the Returned, and the hated Zur the Enchanter. It also includes Voltron Aura-loving commanders like Bruna, Light of Alabaster, Krond the Dawn-Clad, and Uril the Miststalker. With such a minimal commitment of mana, the Helm could deal those last few points of Commander damage you need for the win. It can go on any creature, though. Any Commander deck that loves enchantments can use the Helm. Helm of the Gods will never be a money card, but bigger and better enchantments are printed all of the time in Magic the Gathering. If an Enchantment-happy deck is going to be in play for you, the Helm at least needs to be in your deck-building toolbox. by Phoenix Desertsong, Old School Duelist Nissa, Vastwood Seer saw a lot of Standard play during her heyday. As a double-sided creature, it seemed very unlikely that we'd see her reprinted any time soon. Of course, From the Vault: Transform did offer a reprinted version of several Transform cards, including the Seer. So, that reprint may have limited the rise in her price, but it hasn't stopped it.
The Vastwood Seer Found Homes in Pioneer Decks Since leaving Standard, the Vastwood Seer has seen only a little bit of competitive play in Modern as a part of the occasional Kiki Chord deck. But, with the rise of the Pioneer format, Nissa, Vastwood Seer has found a home in updated Bant Collected Company decks and a version of "The Rock" Green/Black "good stuff" deck built around the card Seasons Past. While little more than a Borderland Ranger on her front side, her back-side, Nissa, Sage Animist, is a fairly good planeswalker. Nissa, Vastwood Seer does not transform into a planeswalker until you control at least seven lands in play. But Nissa, Sage Animist is worth the wait. Her first ability allows you to draw a card, and if it’s a land card, put it directly into play. That’s already pretty good. She can also create a 4/4 legendary token. But her ultimate is extremely good, which can untap 6 target lands, and turn them into 6/6 Elemental creatures permanently. While all of these abilities were good in Standard, there are far more opportunities for her to transform in EDH. Nissa, Vastwood Seer is Gaining Value Back in Mid-August 2017, Nissa, Vastwood Seer sold for around $6-7. Even her foil is only fetching about $18. While a multiplier of 3 is fine for a foil, one that is ubiquitous in Commander as Nissa, Vastwood Seer is likely to be much higher than that. Not to mention, this is a double sided mythic rare card. You would think her foil price would have a multiplier closer to 4, such as with Jace, Vryn’s Prodigy. However, with her inclusion in competitive Pioneer decks, Nissa's price has risen to over $10, although due to the presence of the FTV foil, her Origins foils aren't even double the nonfoil price. That's great news for players who love to foil out their decks. As a card that once peaked at $32, there’s plenty of room for Nissa, Vastwood Seer to grow. While it’s doubtful that she’ll hit $30 again without being in a Top 8 appearance in Pioneer. But, her foil price could easily reach that again. That would mean her non-foil version would probably follow suit in price to about $10-12. It’s hard not to see yourself doubling your money on Nissa, Vastwood Seer in a few years. Nissa, Vastwood Seer is Just a Role Player in Commander / EDH While not a big deal in multiplayer as a Commander (only about 230 decks on EDHREC), Nissa, Vastwood Seer does see play in over 5700 decks as a member of the other 99. While Borderland Ranger is a good card in that format, her planeswalker side is even more valuable in that format than in Standard. She’s also a very good Commander in 1v1, although that format doesn’t drive prices in the way that multiplayer does, at least not currently. If you're looking to play Nissa, Vastwood Seer, now is as good a time as any to pick up copies. It is fairly easy to predict that her price will rise considerably as time goes on. It is fairly easy to say that Nissa, Vastwood Seer is a solid buy. As the Pioneer format grows, it's likely Nissa, Vastwood Seer will find other homes, as well. DISCLAIMER: The writer currently owns no copies of this card for any purposes. by Phoenix Desertsong, Old School Duelist ![]() Every so often, we come across cards that seem to only see play at the fringes of competitive play, but seem to have far greater potential on paper. One card from Hour of Devastation that has shown clear signs of being such a card is Wildfire Eternal. It has been one of those cards that still show movement on various popular card selling platforms that don't show up often in competitive play. Cards like these that we come to term “casual hits,” So, for a card that’s seen little Standard play outside of an occasional Red/Green Energy deck, what’s so special about Wildfire Eternal? First of all, Wildfire Eternal has a very interesting conglomeration of creature types: Zombie Jackal Cleric. There aren’t a lot of Red Zombies running around, so he has that going for him. Second of all, he has the Afflict mechanic. This allows him to pair well with a Legendary Creature from Hour of Devastation, Neheb, the Eternal. Wildfire Eternal's Afflict 4 means that if he is blocked, that defending player loses 4 life. That’s pretty powerful. The fact that Wildfire Eternal only has 1 power isn’t really that big of a deal, since he has 4 power. He also has a very powerful second effect. While it’s hardly a unique ability, being able to cast an instant or sorcery card for free from your hand is very powerful. This can happen whenever Wildfire Eternal attacks and isn’t blocked. There are plenty of good cards that you can threaten using this ability. It makes an opponent have to decide between losing 4 life and potentially having you cast a powerful card. All this for 4 mana is not a bad deal at all. This is a far more powerful creature than the last one that had a similar ability, Oracle of Bones. That Minotaur had this ability when it entered the battlefield if its Tribute wasn’t paid. What’s a Tribute, you ask? In this case, it meant that the Tribute ability didn’t activate if an opponent decided to let the Oracle gain two +1/+1 counters. The Oracle was a fragile 3/1 without the Tribute, so making it into a 5/3 was a fair trade-off most of the time. While the Oracle of Bones did see some play in Standard, it didn’t really make many waves as it was a vanilla 5/3 most of the time - although it did have haste. While Wildfire Eternal doesn’t have haste, you can potentially get a lot of value from his attacks. But his lack of being able to immediately attack is probably why he saw little Standard play. This by no means makes him a bad card overall. Was There a Deck in Standard for Wildfire Eternal? There was a deck for Wildfire Eternal in Standard, however. It’s a variation on some of the Approach of the Second Sun combo decks which enjoyed some success. Here’s one variation of it on Deckstats called Second Eternal Sun: Lands (23) 3 Aether Hub 1 Blighted Cataract 9 Island 6 Mountain 4 Spirebluff Canal Spells (33) 2 Abrade 4 Approach of the Second Sun 2 Censor 4 Disallow 2 Essence Scatter 3 Glimmer of Genius 2 Harnessed Lightning 3 Hieroglyphic Illumination 2 Negate 2 Reason // Believe 3 Saheeli Rai 4 Slip Through Space Creatures (4) 4 Wildfire Eternal Sideboard (15) 2 Commit // Memory 1 Essence Scatter 3 Fevered Visions 2 Hour of Devastation 2 Sphinx of the Final Word 2 Sweltering Suns 3 The Locust God This is a pretty cool deck that Wildfire Eternal plays a big role in. Approach of the Second Sun is a pretty cool win condition if you can happen to cast two copies in the same turn. Wildfire Eternal allows you to potentially cast at least one copy for free. Slip Through Space, in particular, is a cute way to get him through without being blocked. Saheeli Rai is a great way to copy your Eternal and give that token haste so that you can get instant value from him. Reason / Believe is a great way to dig through your deck in its first half, and Believe can help you cheat a Wildfire Eternal into play. Is this Wildfire Eternal & Approach of the Second Sun combo deck any good? It has the pieces to be good, certainly. We’ll see how it actually performs in the long run. Wildfire Eternal in EDH Of course, if Wildfire Eternal is not going to see much play in Standard or Modern, why not EDH? After all, casting an instant or sorcery for free in EDH is a big deal. Unsurprisingly, he’s been included in a few Neheb, the Eternal decks so far. But he hasn’t been an auto-include in any EDH deck yet. Still, there are some very powerful cards that he can allow you to cast for free. In the early going, Wildfire Eternal saw play in some Nicol Bolas and Nekusar, the Mindrazer decks in order to cheat in some very useful spells. He'd later find a home in Neheb, the Eternal EDH decks, as well as Jodah, Archmage Eternal and Jeleva, Nephalia's Scourge decks. In Nicol Bolas, casting Dark Intimations, a five-mana spell with three colors in its casting cost, for free, is very strong. Slave of Bolas is a fun card to cheat in, as well - stealing a creature, giving it haste, then sacrificing it. Dropping Cruel Ultimatum, a seven-mana spell with lots of color requirements, is even better. While nowhere as exciting in Nekusar, dropping a Past in Flames or Reforge the Soul for free is certainly useful. While you won’t see him in a competitive Modern deck any time soon, and probably much in Standard, either, Wildfire Eternal is a useful card nonetheless. Its foil price is around $3, which is not a high number for a useful rare. It could rise over time if it finds more permanent homes, but clearly it already has some demand. Whenever you have a free card attached to another card, it’s going to see play somewhere. If it’s a casual hit, you should be sure to hold onto it. Wildfire Eternal is definitely a keeper. by Phoenix Desertsong, Old School Duelist ![]() The Commander 2017 pre-constructed decks for Magic the Gathering introduced a number of strong cards for the Commander format. One of these is a one-mana Equipment called Bloodforged Battle-Axe. It's like an improved version of Bonesplitter, except that this axe can actually copy itself! At only 1 mana to cast and 2 mana to equip, Bloodforged Battle-Axe gives the equipped creature +2/+0. Also, whenever that creature deals combat damage to a player, you create a token that's a copy of Bloodforged Battle-Axe! That's a pretty awesome way to stack up Equipment in a hurry! This Battle-Axe offers a very minor initial investment that can copy itself many, many times over. Also, the tokens then can copy themselves. So, if a creature has multiple Bloodforged Battle-Axes equipped, it can create a whole token of Battle-Axe tokens in a hurry. Another great thing about the way Bloodforged Battle-Axe is worded, a creature with double strike that successfully deals damage to a player can cause this Equipment to be copied twice! On the second trigger, you can end up with three total Axe tokens, because the first token will copy itself, as well! If you have something like Parallel Lives or Doubling Season in play, it becomes all the more ridiculous. Plus, there's another Equipment in Commander 2017 called Hammer of Nazahn. This legendary artifact allows you to immediately attach an Equipment that comes into play to a creature. That means all of those tokens can be equipped right away for free! It also doesn't hurt to play something like Puresteel Paladin to make equip costs cost zero mana instead, allowing you to use these tokens quickly. Imagine a deck that plays Hellkite Tyrant having a card like this. With the Tyrant's instant win condition of having 20 artifacts in play, you may be able to automatically win a lot of games just having a bunch of copies of this Axe in play! Interestingly, as of late 2019, we still haven't seen this really happen. There are many advantages to having a card like this, especially in decks that care about how many artifacts you have in play. There will be plenty of Commander decks that will find a slot for this one-mana artifact, even some that may not be 100 percent Equipment based. Any deck that benefits by having a lot of artifacts in play can find a home for this unique Equipment. Unsurprisingly, the Commander who uses Bloodforged Battle-Axe the most is the very Legendary creature that you would most expect: Nazahn, Revered Bladesmith. Not only can the Cat Artificer fetch the Hammer of Nazahn and put it straight into play, but it can get other Equipments to your hand. The Battle-Axe also sees a lot of play in Akiri, Line-Slinger decks - who loves the additional artifacts that the Battle-Axe creates, and other Equipment-happy Commanders such as Balan, Wandering Knight, Syr Gwyn, Hero of Ashvale, Valduk, Keeper of Flame, Sram, Senior Artificer, Kemba, Kha Regent, and more. How would you use Bloodforged Battle-Axe? by Phoenix Desertsong, Magical Gatherer On April 27, 2017, Felidar Guardian was Emergency Banned in Standard effective 4/28/17. This was because the Saheeli Rai & Felidar Guardian Infinite combo - also known as the Copy Cat combo - was overrunning Standard. I saw this coming, as did many other people. Of course, you can still try Copy Cat Combo in Modern, if you'd like. But for reasons I'll outline below, the combo isn't nearly as potent in older formats as it proved to be in Standard. On the initial spoiling of the combo, my reasoning was that it would become a bit too powerful for Standard. Initially, I received some backlash for this opinion. I expected more support. Of course, there would be an eventual realization that Felidar Guardian was ruining the format. As it turned out, myself and others who thought it would be a disaster were completely correct. While it was nice to be vindicated, it was a bit depressing that Wizards so clearly overlooked a design blunder. The Origins of the Saheeli Rai & Felidar Guardian Combo Saheeli Rai was way too cheap at $5 for the longest time. The planeswalker was already part of a couple of infinite combos in Modern with Liquimetal Coating and Altar of the Brood or Disciple of the Vault. But, a competitive list never came out of it. Still, sooner or later, players knew that a card would be released that would make the 3-mana planeswalker part of something broken, right? So, this happened!
REALLY, WIZARDS!? You just brought back Splinter Twin combo... in STANDARD! But, is it, really? Splinter Twin & Deceiver Exarch proved to be such a ridiculously powerful combination in Standard that me and a good many other players left competitive Magic for awhile because of it. Two card combos are absurd when they are so easy to perform on turn four on a consistent basis. The combo was quite simple. You'd play Deceiver Exarch at the end of an opponent's turn since it had flash. Then the next turn, while an opponent is tapped out, you drop the 4-mana Enchantment Splinter Twin. This enchantment allows you to tap a creature to make a copy. However, because you're copying Deceiver Exarch, which has the ability to tap or untap a permanent, each of the copies can untap the original Exarch. This means you can tap and untap the Exarch an infinite number of times to make as many copies as you'd like. You just make enough copies to deal lethal damage to your opponent, and you can attack with them immediately since those copies have haste. Sure, there are ways to disrupt the combo. But even against smart sideboarding, the combo proved consistent enough to spawn its own archetype. The only reason it stopped in Standard was that Rise of the Eldrazi, and thus Splinter Twin, left Standard at rotation in October. Many players, myself included, refused to play Modern competitively as long as the combo was the heart of a powerful deck archetype there, too. Modern also had Pestermite, which is a similar card to Deceiver Exarch. This gives you two creatures that could create the combo. Wizards finally banned Splinter Twin after deciding it was finally time for that combo not to be a deck anymore. While Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker still does the same thing as Twin, it's harder to cast. Kiki-Jiki can still work as a win condition, but it's not the main condition of any deck anymore. So, is the Saheeli Rai & Felidar Guardian combo just as good as Splinter Twin, or is it even worse? Ordinarily, Felidar Guardian is just a good card on its own. But alongside Saheeli Rai, you can create infinite madness. You use Saheeli's -2 ability to make a token of the Felidar Guardian. That token uses its ability to "blink" Saheeli Rai. This means she comes back with full loyalty counters on her. Then you get to use the -2 ability again to continue the process. You rinse and repeat until you have enough Guardians to swing in for lethal damage. Yes, those tokens have haste. What makes this combo better in some ways is that even if it’s disrupted, either Saheeli Rai or Felidar Guardian can find other targets to make good on their abilities. The Guardian can blink any permanent you control. This means even lands! You can blink a tapped land and tap it again for extra mana! Yes, using the Exarch's flash ability to enter on an opponent's end step can be better. A lot of times you'd tap down an opponent's land to make responding to your combo with counter magic more difficult. In Modern, you can play Exarch in this deck, too! In fact, you can build a really, really good Jeskai Control deck with these two cards! Saheeli Rai can even Scry 1 for you and deal 1 damage to each opponent! Then you get to play all the counter magic and burn spells your typical Jeskai deck would already play! Saheeli can also copy other creatures and artifacts you control. So you can still get value from either half of the combo even if the other half becomes somehow unavailable. Fortunately, as good as the interaction between these cards are, it's not quite as dominant as the combination of Splinter Twin & Deceiver Exarch became. There are instant speed ways to deal with the Guardian, like Fatal Push with Revolt active. There was Declaration in Stone in Standard, and Fatal Push, as well. But the Declaration was Sorcery speed, so it was often too late of an answer. It’s also possible to burn away Saheeli before the Guardian can copy her. This is actually fairly easy to do since she brings herself down to a single loyalty. So, it’s a bit easier to disrupt than Deceiver Exarch and its 4 toughness was during its Standard days. In Modern, you can stop the combo from resolving with Abrupt Decay targeting Saheeli Rai, particularly if you use it in response to the planeswalker’s ability. Even though the -2 ability would take priority, by the time the copy of the Guardian resolves, there will be no Saheeli Rai to blink. Saheeli Rai can be dealt with quite quickly with Lightning Bolt, as well. Path to Exile and Dismember will do the trick, too, just as they always did for dealing with Deceiver Exarch. So, this combo is also a bit easier to stop in Modern than Twin was. Still, this combo was still a strong one to build around in Standard. Many players are shocked that no one at Wizards R&D caught this very obvious combination. Some people called for an emergency ban of Felidar Guardian. One Twitter user also demanded an apology from Wizards for their oversight. It seemed that Wizards committed an extremely obvious design blunder. Aether Revolt was already considered an overpowered set as it is, so creating a new infinite condition seems just absurd. Is the Saheeli Rai & Felidar Guardian Combo Really Broken? As good as this combo is on paper, many people thought it was more of a "fixed" Splinter Twin combo, if anything. The argument was that there wasn't a lot of card selection spells in Standard right then. This meant that consistent Turn 4 wins are a lot less likely than they were years back. However, while the Saheeli Rai/Felidar Guardian deck wasn't quite as consistent as Splinter Twin combo decks were, it proved to be an effective win condition. Did one or both cards actually need to be banned? There was the sentiment that it would likely take the printing of other cards to bring this deck to a dangerously over-powered level. However, with Wizards now making banned and restricted list announcements more often, players decided that if it did become too busted, it would be dealt with. In the early going of Aether Revolt being legal in Standard, Saheeli Rai & Felidar Guardian combo decks performed quite well. Jeskai Saheeli was the most successful build at the outset. A Jeskai Saheeli deck placed 7th at SCG Columbus. There were also four-color Saheeli decks performing well, known as 4-Color Copy Cat Combo. Even in Modern, Copy Cat Combo saw early success, at least on Magic Online. In paper Magic, the deck quickly won at least one major Standard event. Dylan Donegan of MTG Card Market took down SCG Richmond with his Jeskai Saheeli deck! So while the archetype hadn't broken the format just yet, it quickly became clear that the combo was definitely a good one to build around. As a deck that could win, players battled to find the best version of this deck! By late April 2017, so many Copy Cat combo decks had won an unbelievable number of events. It finally became clear to Wizards that the Copy Cat combo had actually become almost just as bad as Splinter Twin had been. It was announced that Felidar Guardian would be emergency banned in Standard as of 4/28/2017, as to not ruin a brand new Standard format featuring the widely praised Amonkhet set. Was the Copy Cat combo a design blunder on the part of Wizards? Clearly, this particular interaction was overlooked. It was definitely a strong enough combo to be at the core of a Standard deck from the get-go. Fortunately, Wizards recognized that Copy Cat combo was becoming oppressive in the format, before it became the Splinter Twin combo in Standard all over again. Of course, another deck would take Copy Cat Combo's place in needing the banhammer. But that was for a much different reason, and that's a whole different story altogether. But, Copy Cat Combo is still a deck in Modern. Decent Modern builds of Copy Cat Combo saw some competitive play. in the wake of the Standard banning. One of these builds was a deck called Saheeli Evolution. It's more of a creature toolbox deck that runs the Copy Cat Combo plus the Kiki-Jiki and Restoration Angel infinite combo. While they are potent win conditions, Modern wouldn't be overrun by them. In 2019, Saheeli Rai and Felidar Guardian gained some valuable new allies. The upgraded Four Color Copycats deck benefited from the release of several cards from Modern Horizons. They included the snow artifact Arcum's Astrolabe - a card powerful enough at common that it was banned in Pauper - which not only draws a card when it enters, but even helps mana fix for the deck. It gained further card draw from the snow creature Ice-Fang Coatl, which has flash and flying, along with conditional deathtouch if you control three or more snow permanents. Since the deck plays snow-covered lands in order to play Arcum's Astrolabe, that's easy to do. Four Color Copycats also benefits from the addition of two new planeswalkers. One is Wrenn and Six, the value engine that has benefited many top decks in Modern by both retrieving land cards from the graveyard and being a "Gut Shot on a stick." The other key addition is a single copy of Throne of Eldraine all-star Oko, Thief of Crowns for his Beast Within-like ability and the ability to swap an artifact or creature for an opponent's creature with mana cost 3 or less. Basically, the deck gained a nice value engine, which makes it much easier to pull off the Saheeli Rai and Felidar Guardian combo in short order. Copy Cat Combo BANNED Early in the Pioneer Format! Now, with the Pioneer Format being announced, Copycat Combo was not only a playable deck in the non-rotating format that begins with Return to Ravnica. In fact, it was so playable that people are already expecting either Saheeli Rai or Felidar Guardian would get banned in the early days of the format. That would indeed be the case, as before competitive play began, Felidar Guardian was banned in Pioneer (along with Leyline of Abundance and Oath of Nissa). Clearly, based on the deck's dominance in Standard and the unofficial Frontier format (which began with Magic 2015 core set), Wizards decided to nip the problem in the bud before the deck overran the new format. So, if you want to play Copy Cat Combo, which is actually a pretty fun deck when it's not owning the format, it's still alive and well in Modern. How much longer it will stay alive there, though, remains to be seen. |
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