I really love Ajani because he's a powerful toolbox that falls at the right place on the curve for the decks that will use him best and he never feels too oppressive. 5 mana is a big chunk in my low-curve-centric format, and he doesn't pump out creature tokens, so that's great, too. It's true that he's so good that you don't need a +1/+1 counter theme in your deck to make him good, but he's crazy fun when he can show up in those decks, and he's pretty much one of my favourite walkers now.
Card/Deck Single Card Spotlight
- Thread starter Dom Harvey
- Start date
Chris Taylor
Contributor
I agree with everything you've said, but I'll caution that he always felt like he needed to die the turn he resolved or you were just losing on the spot when I ran him.
Like at one point I cast him, put 3 counters on a Birds, and passed. My opponent attacks him down to 2, looks at his hand, looks at the board, and just scoops em up.
Good lord what if I'd had blockers.
I've always wanted an 'Overrun' effect in WG - but not actual Overrun - and Collective Blessing was a little too expensive to be practical. Sounds like Ajani is just the ticket!
There's also overwhelming stampede. More splashable than Overrun, and sometimes better if you have something beefy. I made the switch to this from overrun and have been very happy with that. The ceiling is much higher and it goes in more decks.
Grillo_Parlante
Contributor
Chris Taylor
Contributor
Grillo_Parlante
Contributor
Dom Harvey
Contributor
Onderzeeboot
Ecstatic Orb
Dom Harvey
Contributor
I really want to like Victimize because the Conspiracy version is the hotness, but it never worked out over here. 3 mana isn't too much, but the sac-1-for-2-tapped proved too detrimental in my environ. The sacrificing was okay, but 2 targets in YOUR YARD, entering TAPPED, at sorcery speed... Well, who has the time? You can't always get good value off of it, and even if you did, you still needed to be pretty far ahead to take a turn off for two tapped dudes of questionable heft that can't even do anything for a turn. It simply takes too many things going just right to pay off; otherwise, it's usually a sign you've already pretty much won and could have done so just as well with Dread Return (both leave you with two bodies, after all). Compared to spending 1 more mana for CoCo and Victimize just had to go. (PS: running double CoCo is amazing and I owe safra forever for giving me the idea).
(Edit: not saying Victimize vs CoCo is the best comparison, but considering "fun cards" against each other across colours helps me personally in evaluating them. A best-case-scenario takes significantly more work in my opinion for Victimize to be awesome than a best-case-scenario for CoCo, and I find CoCo subjectively more fun. YPMV.)
(Edit: not saying Victimize vs CoCo is the best comparison, but considering "fun cards" against each other across colours helps me personally in evaluating them. A best-case-scenario takes significantly more work in my opinion for Victimize to be awesome than a best-case-scenario for CoCo, and I find CoCo subjectively more fun. YPMV.)
Victimize was great in Conspiracy, and i think largely because of all the cycling dudes that let you set up big value plays with your typhoid rats or whatever dumb critter you had out. I wonder how victimize would do in a multiplayer cube?
Grillo_Parlante
Contributor
Personally I think it looks a lot more easily abused than Sulfuric Vortex, especially in a lower-powered environ. Easier to splash, easy to mitigate the damage enchanted creature may do to you by keeping yourself safe behind some fatties (or Temporal Isolation), and is a removal check on your opponent. Heck, a U/R deck holding up mana to counter their removal could prove to be the combo deck to beat. Lust's removal check is more easily met, granted, but 3 damage is a lot more than 2, and it's not symmetrical. Nobody likes losing to Stab Wound, and I'm pretty sure Lust is more powerful than Stab Wound since at least the Wound takes a very specific target to be a win-con, and can thus be played around way easier.
Chris Taylor
Contributor
Depends on how many creatures you can afford to take a beating from/Block each turn.
Spellskite? Fine attacking you each turn. Elite Vanguard? Okay, little worse
Hero of Bladehold? Little less so. Something like Vengevine is no slouch either.
Spellskite? Fine attacking you each turn. Elite Vanguard? Okay, little worse
Hero of Bladehold? Little less so. Something like Vengevine is no slouch either.
this seems like it would be a lot of fun to throw on a utility creature, e.g. a Noble Hierarch, or a value blocker, like Augur of Bolas
i'm gonna put this in the Sphinx's Tutelage category of "sounds dumb, but just miiiight be worth it" and try it out
i'm gonna put this in the Sphinx's Tutelage category of "sounds dumb, but just miiiight be worth it" and try it out
The peasant guys loved it back when I was into that thing. I don't remember ever playing it
Idk how late or relevant this is but I spent a minute or so sitting here confused as to why Chris accused him of masturbating the culprit...
Chris Taylor
Contributor
Caught Red Handed
Lube is for casuals
Guys stop.
Hey so does anyone run Hydra Broodmaster? I'm flummoxed between trying either her (him?) or that new tree guy from BFZ at the 6-spot. I do love me some playable monstrosity in Green, but I also love GY recursion.
EDIT: Crap this would have been better in Fight Club sry everyone
EDIT: Crap this would have been better in Fight Club sry everyone
I ran Hydra Broodmaster for a while, and was really high on him in the beginning, because in a game where you're not too far behind and aren't in danger of dying, he can plop an impressive amount of power onto the board. However, he's lacklustre in most other scenarios; he has a huge 'echo' cost, takes a while before he can stabilize the board, doesn't block flyers, doesn't himself have evasion, and isn't Wrath-proof. There were a lot of games we played where its owner just didn't have time nor space to pay for monstrosity, and a vanilla 7/7 for six isn't the best rate in the world.
Having said all that, green is pretty thin on cubeable six-drops, so I would encourage you to try him out yourself if you're at all curious!
Having said all that, green is pretty thin on cubeable six-drops, so I would encourage you to try him out yourself if you're at all curious!