Card/Deck Single Card Spotlight
- Thread starter Dom Harvey
- Start date
This is a powerful card and the graveyard reshuffle effect is very interesting and good. However, I'm not sure of what decks are the best to use it, storm aside. Thoughts?
it's also totally fine in just straight-up UW control or whatever. reach the mid-game, go back to 7 cards for each of you, but then you untap and drop a planeswalker with counterspell backup or whatever and just win
i haven’t tried it but... outside a cube that has plenty of flippable cards? i think most of my cards in hand will be better than a free 2/2. maybe if i’m flooding?
Doesn’t this basically guarantee that you win any top deck war?
I would expect the answer as to whether it’s good or not is “how often do (some) decks in your cube find themselves in mutual top deck wars?”
I would expect the answer as to whether it’s good or not is “how often do (some) decks in your cube find themselves in mutual top deck wars?”
Onderzeeboot
Ecstatic Orb
The main problem with the card is that it "does" nothing. That is, you invest 3 mana (and probably all or a good portion of your resources in a turn) to put an artifact on the battlefield that can make Gray Ogres. It's great at upgrading land in the late game, but most of the time you will be better served with an actual creature.
It is also great if you have Eater of days kind of creatures. That would be a weird cube but could be fun.
Anyone given this a run? Cool, clunky, something else?
This an EDH only card, specifically for Aminatou and other blink decks. It's just way too slow and clunky in a regular match as a 2/2 factory which just isn't all that impactful. Unless you're using stuff like Aminatou, the Fateshifter, Thassa, Deep-Dwelling or Venser, the Sojourner to blink and cheat impact cards into play for cheap, it's incredibly lackluster.
they’re fine. can beat in a bit early but make nice top decks outside of the “need a bomb now or i lose” topdeck scenario. both are also nice in wildfire decks- let them go off once or twice then hit wildfire
The Dragonmaster has played nicely for me in the current MTG Arena cube. You usually don't play him early, but you can use him to double spell with a solid 4 or 5 drop when you have 5-6 lands so as to overload the opponent.
He is super vulnerable, so even if you get a dragon out of the deal, the opponent can come back. But if he is left unchecked for more than a couple of turns, it's rough.
He is super vulnerable, so even if you get a dragon out of the deal, the opponent can come back. But if he is left unchecked for more than a couple of turns, it's rough.
yeah, that’s kind of how i see these: 1 mana to break through ahead mid/late. you drop this guy and play some other thing quite easily, and yeah it’s a 1 drop but villain HAS to do something about it.
so a long time ago this was in my cube and was part of a theoretical three card mill combo with twincast and yawgmoth’s will (or, really, a 2 card with panoptic mirror lol) But the “deck” suffered from a few problems. Lack of tutors, lack of reason to take the card if you weren’t all in on mill, etc.
so it often went fifteenth pick.
But I’m a huge sucker for alternate wins for control decks, and since I last played it we’ve seen both lab maniac and delve printed, so I was wondering if anyone has had success with this in their lists as anything other than “only for that one guy who wants to cast it three times for the memes”?
Glimpse is a bit too narrow and fights with a ton of cool options in Dimir for that gold slot. My poison of choice is a Riptide Lab classic:
Gives you a win-con for grindy games, fuels self-mill strategies, and you can pull off Lab Man/Thassa's Oracle wins more readily. I added it on a whim after seeing a few people talk about it years ago around here and it's been a mainstay ever since. Innocuous card, but I've used it in a variety of strategies and often boarded it in as an alternate win-con in grindier matches. Orb is the greatest, all hail Mesmeric Orb.
Gives you a win-con for grindy games, fuels self-mill strategies, and you can pull off Lab Man/Thassa's Oracle wins more readily. I added it on a whim after seeing a few people talk about it years ago around here and it's been a mainstay ever since. Innocuous card, but I've used it in a variety of strategies and often boarded it in as an alternate win-con in grindier matches. Orb is the greatest, all hail Mesmeric Orb.
For something more incremental I’m running patient rebuilding which is slow but also a value engine. I kind of miss having burst mill “combo” (prior to glimpse I was trying to support a UR brain freeze deck, also eventually killed for the parts being useless to everyone else) But it sounds like maybe that’s still a narrow poisonous dream?
https://riptidelab.com/forum/threads/small-archetype-packages.3096/#post-89866
I made a post about this idea. It's basically mill-control. It's mostly real cards with mill effects tacked on. The downside I've found from trying to incorporate it is that the graveyard decks will get super fed and eat you alive and your whole deck gets negated by Eldrazi-like shuffle effects. I'm not sure how much, if any, true mill you want. I think it's better to play a long game where their deck is thinning than to play a do-nothing mill 10. The ZNR crab looks like a great blocker.
I made a post about this idea. It's basically mill-control. It's mostly real cards with mill effects tacked on. The downside I've found from trying to incorporate it is that the graveyard decks will get super fed and eat you alive and your whole deck gets negated by Eldrazi-like shuffle effects. I'm not sure how much, if any, true mill you want. I think it's better to play a long game where their deck is thinning than to play a do-nothing mill 10. The ZNR crab looks like a great blocker.
too bad he’s each opponent and not target player like Mr. hedron crab.
Thanks for the link to the other thread. It looks like it will be helpful in my consideration. I’m a little deep on the “decks not just cards” thing right now and trying to find both a fast and slow strategy for each of the 5 supported color pairs, baseline Dimir has been the one giving me the most trouble on the slow side. (Fast is zombie tribal, slow in this corner seems to end up 3 color a lot.)
it sounds like “mill you” is not where I want to be for that though (at least, not burst mill you)
I think it's typical for UB to end up as UBw or UBr and that's alright because it should have time and filtering to set up that kind of mana. UBx should be a natural color pairing between black's removal and blue's card draw and counterspells. Running generic blue and black cards should set up 'slow' UB without much effort. Flashback for additional value can easily overlap with what I assume is a graveyard-related zombie tribal theme. Having your own graveyard deck in fast UB and opponent mill in slow UB could be facilitated by "target player" mill cards. Not sure how viable that is, but it might have sufficient overlap.
This was my post from that same thread:
I still support mill and like it quite a bit.
is a start to a great compact mill/self-mill package
then there’s:
if you run heavy enough graveyard interaction that it is good enough to run just to target your own library.
and I like this as well
These cards can allow the same deck to both attack your opponents library and fuel your own resources. Add in Laboratory Maniac and you have some nice push pull imo. Baronesque with Delve and whatnot.
I still support mill and like it quite a bit.
Anyone given this a run? Cool, clunky, something else?
If this was the lower powered spotlight thread, I'd say it looks like an awesome inclusion honestly. I'd definitely would want some morphs as well as some blink effects to maximize it's value (and if you have some cards like Demon of Catastrophes, great). But in an environment slow enough the late game potential might be enough to make it playable already.
I for sure gotta test it!
It's certainly got my interest as a different route for a flicker deck to take.
Anyone given this a run? Cool, clunky, something else?
Some cards I've tested with. It sees some play but not a high pick.
Thanks for the Demon of Catastrophes tip!