I think it has a lot of potential at most power levels high to medium-low, especially if the graveyard is even moderately important to a format. The format should have a UW tempo deck before consideration on inclusion, though. It doesn't really fit well into control, especially since it turns off your own Snapcaster Mage and co.
Card/Deck Single Card Spotlight
- Thread starter Dom Harvey
- Start date
i’m also considering Ludevic, Necrogenius as a decent defensive body early that can turn into a big threat later. am i crazy?
I have found Geist to be pretty mediocre AND polarizing unless I'm running a tempo/aggro Azorius section. Against control it is absurd no matter what type of deck you are. Against aggro it's decent if you are aggro yourself and dog poop if you are anything else. Overall I believe it doesn't up-tick your win % unless you are said aggro/tempo deck.
Am I wrong here?
I am considering it for a cut.
In my opinion it is also a quite boring (hexproof + it has to attack to do its thing) card that I've been sleeping on (sleeping on the cut, that is) because it's for me it's always been a gold standard of powerful Azorius cards and it has history from Standard domination and because it is from the original Innistrad set.
i haven’t run GST in a long time and don’t really feel the need to. it just doesn’t mesh with what my WU section wants to do, and i agree that it’s narrow and rather polar.
I have found Geist to be pretty mediocre AND polarizing unless I'm running a tempo/aggro Azorius section. Against control it is absurd no matter what type of deck you are. Against aggro it's decent if you are aggro yourself and dog poop if you are anything else. Overall I believe it doesn't up-tick your win % unless you are said aggro/tempo deck.
Am I wrong here?
I am considering it for a cut.
In my opinion it is also a quite boring (hexproof + it has to attack to do its thing) card that I've been sleeping on (sleeping on the cut, that is) because it's for me it's always been a gold standard of powerful Azorius cards and it has history from Standard domination and because it is from the original Innistrad set.
if you want to support a WU tempo deck, check out that new Dennick maybe?
Chris Taylor
Contributor
Solid idea. I'd likely be doing something similar if I hadn't just added this guy:
Geist has always been pretty polarizing. I'm usually against cards that have such a wide delta based purely on what your opponent is doing, so I wouldn't fault you for cutting it.
I have found Geist to be pretty mediocre AND polarizing unless I'm running a tempo/aggro Azorius section. Against control it is absurd no matter what type of deck you are. Against aggro it's decent if you are aggro yourself and dog poop if you are anything else. Overall I believe it doesn't up-tick your win % unless you are said aggro/tempo deck.
Am I wrong here?
I am considering it for a cut.
In my opinion it is also a quite boring (hexproof + it has to attack to do its thing) card that I've been sleeping on (sleeping on the cut, that is) because it's for me it's always been a gold standard of powerful Azorius cards and it has history from Standard domination and because it is from the original Innistrad set.
I'm not sure what aggro/tempo UW cards I do like, it's certainly playing against type.
Staggering Insight maybe?
Teferi, Time Raveler does decent work in this kind of archetype if you can stomach the passive.
Join me! I haven't had a chance to test this card out, so take this with a grain of salt, but if your decks can stomach taking a turn off and if you run cantrips than I think it's worth a shot. Being able to cast your cantrip for essentially free is big game (cantrip -> other spell at discount = free!), and drawing cards really helps UW grow as a spellslinger deck instead of being an offramp from Izzet.
i like it, IF you are big-reanimating in B and big-ramping in G. if you’re doing neither, it’s just a MUCH worse Curator of Mysteries. but the basic design of “cycle it now or make a fatty later” is great and the static effect is pretty deeceDoes anyone here like
?
EDIT: I'm thinking that it could be good with some reanimation.
fwiw it was a lynchpin of UB rez in its limited format
I was very happy with getting Waker and Godzilla (Titanoth Rex) pretty much back-to-back as "fair" reanimator payoffs, it's been good. Agreed with @blacksmithy that Curator of Mysteries is probably a more flexible and interesting card, but it doesn't direct your drafters in a specific direction as much.Does anyone here like
?
EDIT: I'm thinking that it could be good with some reanimation.
it just depends what you’re doing. if you’re not a “all fair all the time” environment and do big ramp and big reanimating, then Waker fills an important role as a target for those decks. but if you’re like me and you’re NOT doing those it’s just a bad strategic planning. i’d run both in a mid power format that had ramp and reanimator
Green is not usually a color in the spells archetype, but does the sheer power of Dragonsguard Elite make it viable as a sort of single card archetype UXg spells? It's a situation that doesn't come up so often, these color pie breaks combined with raw power. Quirion Dryad was a popular card in the distant past that filled a similar purpose. To me, the most interesting part of Elite is that it takes green to a completely new direction that isn't based on creatures nor on ramp.
Delite is the real deal, i will stan it all day. what a solid card
EDIT: to provide actual useful info here’s some good buddies i run with it plus some ideas for stuff that’s OK with it
Once Upon a Time
Abundant Harvest
Traverse the Ulvenwald
Green Sun's Zenith
Primal Might
Restore
Eladrimi's Call
Witherbloom Command
Decisive Denial
Manamorphose
Snakeskin Veil
Living Wish
Mage Duel
Rabid Bite
Basically any cheap fight/bite or cantrip in green is just gas
EDIT: to provide actual useful info here’s some good buddies i run with it plus some ideas for stuff that’s OK with it
Once Upon a Time
Abundant Harvest
Traverse the Ulvenwald
Green Sun's Zenith
Primal Might
Restore
Eladrimi's Call
Witherbloom Command
Decisive Denial
Manamorphose
Snakeskin Veil
Living Wish
Mage Duel
Rabid Bite
Basically any cheap fight/bite or cantrip in green is just gas
Last edited:
I think Green has what it needs to take an active role in a spells matter deck:
Jolrael isn't exactly a spells matter card, but if you are looking at UXg spells decks, you probably have some amounts of cantrips to trigger it in addition to some Green ones like blacksmithy mentioned (Explore and Manamorphose being the most universally playable ones).
Then you can customize it to support your themes.
Going tokens could be Call of the Herd, Mouth // Feed, Lovestruck Beast and Grizzly Fate instead of more classic creatures.
Going for the GY? Life from the Loam, Winding Way, Grapple with the Past and Gaea's Blessing can do some work.
Maybe you add Berserk, Blossoming Defense and Charge Though to go tall with your guys and support a RW heroic deck.
Some X spells to complement your GW Cryptolith Rites decks also?
Jolrael isn't exactly a spells matter card, but if you are looking at UXg spells decks, you probably have some amounts of cantrips to trigger it in addition to some Green ones like blacksmithy mentioned (Explore and Manamorphose being the most universally playable ones).
Then you can customize it to support your themes.
Going tokens could be Call of the Herd, Mouth // Feed, Lovestruck Beast and Grizzly Fate instead of more classic creatures.
Going for the GY? Life from the Loam, Winding Way, Grapple with the Past and Gaea's Blessing can do some work.
Maybe you add Berserk, Blossoming Defense and Charge Though to go tall with your guys and support a RW heroic deck.
Some X spells to complement your GW Cryptolith Rites decks also?
I'd say it's certainly possible to make UXg spells a thing nowadays, but the only issue is that it doesn't currently have the power ceiling of other long standing G/x strategies. It's kind of in the same position that U/R artifacts decks were in until around the printing of WAR and Modern Horizons where they received a handful of real solid cards in a 3-4 month span. You're still at the point where you're playing a few suboptimal options to make ends meet relative to the "average" offering in other archetypes. It's the same issue I ran into when I'd try to jam cute stuff like Filigree Familiar and Vault Skirge in my cube to make Artifacts a thing but they were mostly meh unless the stars aligned.
Like Lovestruck Beast is just really strong and pushed in general for just about any G/x deck, the token aspect is just a cute extra part of the card. Something like Jolrael looks much less appealing unless you have a very specific environment where you can generate a ton of bodies in a two turn cycle to clog up the board. I think you're like 3-4 support cards away from making this a fully realized archetype, but there's no telling when that might come to fruition.
Like Lovestruck Beast is just really strong and pushed in general for just about any G/x deck, the token aspect is just a cute extra part of the card. Something like Jolrael looks much less appealing unless you have a very specific environment where you can generate a ton of bodies in a two turn cycle to clog up the board. I think you're like 3-4 support cards away from making this a fully realized archetype, but there's no telling when that might come to fruition.
Chris Taylor
Contributor
Okay hear me out:
i don’t know if i agree with that analysis. i’ve been running it and it’s very strong in my environment. green is a supporting color for the archetype, and not a main color, but it’s here. you have good payoffs in green and your enablers are simply good spells in any color you pair green with.
I imagine at high power levels it really requires a lot of fixing. The cost to splash a green card is then low enough that it's just a card, not a green card.
What are these good payoffs for green? The ones Nanonox mentioned above?
Wait are we talking bout the card or the archetype? I think Elite is good in a vacuum, but I don't think the other options listed in @Nanonox's post are quite at the same level.
I think part of it might also be that your environment is super low to the ground which gives it more potential to shine. I think it can work somewhere like your cube with a lot of card draw and lean mana curves, but I'm not sure if it can function in the "average" cube that leans more midrange-y normally with a glut of value 3s and 4s.
i will concede that two facets of the archetype’s success are
1) good fixing (often based in green) so that the deck has access to the best spells and spell amplifier creatures (Delite, Sedgemoor, YP, Snappy, MMentor, etc)
2) low curve with high cantrip/interaction density so that the deck can reward itself for running lots of card selection and removal by having these creatures go hog wild.
in lower power… i still think the cards are really good but you may struggle to properly support them and/or they may negate other stuff in the environment if you do properly support them.
EDIT: personally i think the archetype is extremely cool and worth cutting some nicher stuff to have the slots to make it work
Yeah I'm a fan of Dragonsguard Elite as a scalable Goyf-like threat in 2021, I just think that its inclusion in my environment would be kind of a trap for now. I think part of it may be that Magecraft makes me shortcut to spellslinger which isn't really a G/x thing in my environment, though in reality this probably goes pretty hard in something like the typical G/R shell that includes damage based removal. I'll probably revisit it at some point.
Last edited:
YEEEESSS! GR aggro burn is so cool! i love that flavor of it.
you can also have fun in lower power with the aggressive token producing spells
you can also have fun in lower power with the aggressive token producing spells
If you're looking for a Dragonsguard Elite that neatly slots into everyone's cube, why not
Yes, it doesn't do copies, but very few run copying spells in their Cubes anyway
Imo the starting power and toughness doesn't matter as much if the other player is going to be removing it early. Because even at this power level you're probably running shock and volcanic hammer variants.
But yes the starting toughness makes a difference, I just dunno if it'll make that much of a difference.
Yes, it doesn't do copies, but very few run copying spells in their Cubes anyway
Imo the starting power and toughness doesn't matter as much if the other player is going to be removing it early. Because even at this power level you're probably running shock and volcanic hammer variants.
But yes the starting toughness makes a difference, I just dunno if it'll make that much of a difference.