It's usually not run in this deck. Let's look at same-turn and next-turn requirements for getting benefit from it. In both I'll assume only using lands for mana to cast it since it's going to be inconsistent to have fast-mana sources before going off, and because I don't want to look at optimal scenarios but instead look at liabilities.
To benefit from it same-turn, having tapped 3 mountains to cast it and exiling one of the tapped ones, you would have to have at least 4 other mountains (total 7) in play to benefit. And at that point you can make 8 R from those 4 mountains, but could have made 7 R without the Lens. That's not much of a ritual (unless you have way more lands). 2: That's a fairly late turn to have 7 mountains (at least in the combo-ish Arcane version).
To benefit from it on your next turn the requirements are a bit lower. You could have 3 lands on turn 3, cast this and exile one, then drop a new third mountain on turn 4 and have 6 mana. However, the Lens has to survive. If it gets blown up (and someone will gleefully do so if they are able) then the damage to your tempo is huge because not only are you down a land but you spent all your mana for a turn for naught. It's like a combination of missing a land drop and doing nothing for a turn. Even if one misses a land drop, there are things one should do to advance board position in early turns that are not "lightning rods".
Extraplanar Lens works better if it can stick around for a couple of turns, at least. It also works better not in early-game, but mid- or late-game when one has more lands. In my opinion it's the kind of thing I might run in Big Mana Green as third- or fourth-string mana acceleration since the ramp and the other land-mana accelerators greatly diminish the downsides of losing the Lens (and the imprinted land) before benefiting from it.
I'm also thinking of adding Fire diamond and Star compass because I can't afford the really good fast mana. Those would be my only rocks besides sol ring and ruby medallion but I'm not sure if rocks are really what this deck wants.
If you guys were to replace either goblin matron or recruiter with imperial recruiter, which would it be? It's more of a direct replacement for matron, but goblin recruiter tutoring on the top of the deck feels pretty bad if you don't have a cantrip.
If you're going to keep two of the three, you may want to test whether you prefer the mechanics of Goblin Matron or Goblin Recruiter - just give them both some chances to see how you feel about the way they work. Crazy Monkey, though, seems to only be running Imperial Recruiter at the moment.
If you want some cards to look at as far as cuts, I can comment on some:
Dualcaster Mage is going to have no synergy with Zada herself. It's interesting for some small synergies like copying a ritual or getting 7 creatures for 2RRRR instead of 3 for 1RR. It can counter a counterspell, which can be useful except you have to ask yourself how much mana you have available when you try to do things you'd want to protect from counterspells (like casting Zada and having mana for a cantrip). It can also go infinite with Twinflame/Heat Shimmer and a pre-existing target creature, but I don't like having that available. It would be hilarious to copy somebody's Expropriate, though.
You could possibly live without Guttersnipe and Purphoros. They can make winning easier (as can Psychosis Crawler), so to me that's a meta call as to whether they're necessary to stand a chance or not.
Treasonous Ogre is also a card not everybody can use well. I tend not to run it if I'm always finding myself low on life by the time I want to try to go off.
You can live without Sol Ring, too. If that's what makes the difference between going off promptly versus not going off in time, then you're just winning with Sol Ring and luck. Disclaimer: I don't run it in any of my decks.
Legion Loyalist is a nice little guy. I like the card, but I end up using other trample enablers like Temur Battle Rage (in your list) instead because it's also a damage doubler (double strike > first strike) and a possible defensive combat trick. I don't think I use any other trample enablers, though, because I focus on going wide and trample just matters a lot less then.
Harsh Mentor seems like a punishment card. Does it actually stop anybody from activating anything?
Magus of the Moon I can see also as a meta-dependent call. Is it to slow others down while you set up? Protect the combo turn? Does it paint a target on you?
I'd have to think a lot more to comment on most of that, but there are a few things I can think of to mention.
Firstly, I'd like to ask if there's anything specific that breaks your glass cannon in your meta? Or does it end up being a variety of stuff? Are you okay with it being a glass cannon so that when your opponents see how easily it can fold it's not as much of a threat in their minds when you reveal her as your commander?
Yeah, Seasoned Pyromancer is definitely good, but the price is way to much for a card that's only good in my janky glass cannon deck, so I may never get it since it's in Modern rather than rotating out of Standard ever.
There are also some creatures somewhat like Iron Myr that one might consider, too, like Hedron Crawler, Plague Myr, and Walking Atlas. Wily Goblin isn't quite as good, but we just need a little bit of mana from our creatures while using Twinflame/Heat Shimmer to help us get through our attempt to reach critical mass, and I like how the Treasure can wait to be used (unlike, say, Akki Rockspeaker). As backup for Skirk Prospector, your playgroup might allow Mons's Goblin Waiters, or you might try Phyrexian Altar (which would work with Pashalik Mons). Since my playground allows Waiters, I should definitely find space for Mons, hahahaha.
Edit: Also, Precursor Golem probably makes the best backup Zada, especially if you can cast a cloning spell like Twinflame/Heat Shimmer on it more than once.
Tectonic Reformation definitely isn't terrible. It could potentially come down early and help fix one's hand with extra mana unspent setting up during the turn, but that's really only 2-3 turns worth and very dependent on having surplus lands in hand. Faithless Looting gets about the same number of cards in that situation. To some degree I'd rather draw Reforge the Soul when it comes to non-creature rummaging.
Cavalier of Flame only works with it at all in Cav's death trigger since its ETB discard wheel effect is mutually exclusive to the "Cycling R" that Tectonic Reformation give your lands, but many other things work with Cav's death trigger, too. Even drawing too many and having to discard down to hand size.
But I like how you're thinking about the deck! There was a time I was running Titan's Strength and was going to run a handful of the red cycling lands like Forgotten Cave so that, while comboing off, I could use TS to scry through the rest of the deck if creatures outnumbered my library and selectively draw specific cards between copies of TS.
Seasoned Pyromancer is not worth $27 in EDH. I'll wait until it rotates out of Standard, I guess.
I've got some bad news for you... Seasoned Pyromancer will probably only keep creeping up in price. It's not in Standard; it's from Modern Horizons. It's a Modern card. Thanks, Modern!
Firestorm is a good card. I've run it in my Zada build before, though it was more of an instant-speed finisher if I had more creatures than anybody's life total and somebody put something on the stack that I couldn't otherwise dance around. Pashalik Mons could be useful, indeed.
I'm uncertain on the "more polished" part. They have been recently refining the rules in some ways, but anytime they have to clarify how things work with a ruling on each relevant card, to me that says something's not inherently clear. I don't know what the impetus behind the splice revision was.
2. I don't think peteroupc is right. Even in comment #17 of your rules thread here he says that Overload's text-changing effect isn't copied (implying that copies won't be Overloaded I guess), but also links to a thread that says they are. I think he's just hung up on the text-changing part. Shiffrin even says in that third Twitter thread that Overload is copied.
The way I interpret this is that the resultant text-change is itself not directly copied, but the choice to splice and what was spliced are copied which has the result of performing the text-change on each copy separately. So we're still good, but keep those tweets on hand if you run the Splice package.
Okay, so I think that with the first tweet you linked to, spliced spells that are copied with Zada will copy the spell as is, including the text changed due to splice, right? Man, all this back and forth has me really confused and bummed out...
"including the text changed due to splice" — Technically no, I think, but only because you said "text changed". We know that text-changing effects don't copy, but choices such as splicing do copy (and according to Eli Shiffrin everything should still work how we expect).
Here's how I imagine it working a bit more step-by-step with this splices-copy-but-text-changes-don't business. This may not be 100% accurate, but it's what I'm using to make sense of this still-working-but-differently-now:
You cast Unnatural Speed and while casting choose to spliceDesperate Ritual and Overblaze onto it. The splicing changes the text of the spell on the stack to add both spliced spells' texts. So now that spell, Unnatural Speed, splices: Desperate Ritual, Overblaze says,
"Target creature gains haste until end of turn. Add RRR. Each time target permanent would deal damage to a permanent or player this turn, it deals double that damage to that permanent or player instead."
You target Zada with both targets in the text.
Zada's trigger goes on the stack, resolves, and copies the spell to all applicable creatures you control.
Imagine that each of those copies initially look like Unnatural Speed, splices: Desperate Ritual, Overblaze because the choices got copied, but the copied text is initially just,
"Target creature gains haste until end of turn."
Then the splices of each copy, individually, kick in and change the text of the spell they're attached to (before the copying is finished) to make sure it says,
"Target creature gains haste until end of turn. Add RRR. Each time target permanent would deal damage to a permanent or player this turn, it deals double that damage to that permanent or player instead."
So basically I imagine the copied splicing choices acting look proofreaders going, "One sec, just gotta fix this before we can move on."
2. I don't think peteroupc is right. Even in comment #17 of your rules thread here he says that Overload's text-changing effect isn't copied (implying that copies won't be Overloaded I guess), but also links to a thread that says they are. I think he's just hung up on the text-changing part. Shiffrin even says in that third Twitter thread that Overload is copied.
The way I interpret this is that the resultant text-change is itself not directly copied, but the choice to splice and what was spliced are copied which has the result of performing the text-change on each copy separately. So we're still good, but keep those tweets on hand if you run the Splice package.
Apparently with Modern Horizons rule updates splice might not work like it used to with this deck. Meaning that if you splice Desperate Ritual on Unnatural Speed the splice effect won't be applied to the copies of Unnatural Speed. Hopefully I've misinterpreted this rule and Zada can still abuse the 'splice onto arcane' mechanic. Otherwise, the once glorious jank will only exist in the past...
I think you've misinterpreted. The only relevant thing I could find in the release notes was this, among the rulings on the cards in the set that have Splice:
If a spell is copied, choices made while casting it are copied, so the copy will have the same abilities spliced onto it as the original.
Combine this with the fact that you splice onto a cast spell as you cast it. When you're done casting it is when Zada's trigger will be put on the stack, so everything is already spliced when her ability finally copies the spell.
To benefit from it same-turn, having tapped 3 mountains to cast it and exiling one of the tapped ones, you would have to have at least 4 other mountains (total 7) in play to benefit. And at that point you can make 8 R from those 4 mountains, but could have made 7 R without the Lens. That's not much of a ritual (unless you have way more lands). 2: That's a fairly late turn to have 7 mountains (at least in the combo-ish Arcane version).
To benefit from it on your next turn the requirements are a bit lower. You could have 3 lands on turn 3, cast this and exile one, then drop a new third mountain on turn 4 and have 6 mana. However, the Lens has to survive. If it gets blown up (and someone will gleefully do so if they are able) then the damage to your tempo is huge because not only are you down a land but you spent all your mana for a turn for naught. It's like a combination of missing a land drop and doing nothing for a turn. Even if one misses a land drop, there are things one should do to advance board position in early turns that are not "lightning rods".
Extraplanar Lens works better if it can stick around for a couple of turns, at least. It also works better not in early-game, but mid- or late-game when one has more lands. In my opinion it's the kind of thing I might run in Big Mana Green as third- or fourth-string mana acceleration since the ramp and the other land-mana accelerators greatly diminish the downsides of losing the Lens (and the imprinted land) before benefiting from it.
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R Zada Arcane Storm
RBU Marchesa
GWU Estrid
GWR Samut?
URB Kess
(R/W)(U/B) Akiri & Silas
BWR Alesha
R Neheb Dragons
G Nylea Wurms
W Darien
U Tetsuko
old thread
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R Zada Arcane Storm
RBU Marchesa
GWU Estrid
GWR Samut?
URB Kess
(R/W)(U/B) Akiri & Silas
BWR Alesha
R Neheb Dragons
G Nylea Wurms
W Darien
U Tetsuko
old thread
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R Zada Arcane Storm
RBU Marchesa
GWU Estrid
GWR Samut?
URB Kess
(R/W)(U/B) Akiri & Silas
BWR Alesha
R Neheb Dragons
G Nylea Wurms
W Darien
U Tetsuko
- Dualcaster Mage is going to have no synergy with Zada herself. It's interesting for some small synergies like copying a ritual or getting 7 creatures for 2RRRR instead of 3 for 1RR. It can counter a counterspell, which can be useful except you have to ask yourself how much mana you have available when you try to do things you'd want to protect from counterspells (like casting Zada and having mana for a cantrip). It can also go infinite with Twinflame/Heat Shimmer and a pre-existing target creature, but I don't like having that available. It would be hilarious to copy somebody's Expropriate, though.
- You could possibly live without Guttersnipe and Purphoros. They can make winning easier (as can Psychosis Crawler), so to me that's a meta call as to whether they're necessary to stand a chance or not.
- Treasonous Ogre is also a card not everybody can use well. I tend not to run it if I'm always finding myself low on life by the time I want to try to go off.
- You can live without Sol Ring, too. If that's what makes the difference between going off promptly versus not going off in time, then you're just winning with Sol Ring and luck. Disclaimer: I don't run it in any of my decks.
- Legion Loyalist is a nice little guy. I like the card, but I end up using other trample enablers like Temur Battle Rage (in your list) instead because it's also a damage doubler (double strike > first strike) and a possible defensive combat trick. I don't think I use any other trample enablers, though, because I focus on going wide and trample just matters a lot less then.
- Harsh Mentor seems like a punishment card. Does it actually stop anybody from activating anything?
- Magus of the Moon I can see also as a meta-dependent call. Is it to slow others down while you set up? Protect the combo turn? Does it paint a target on you?
- Is Chaos Warp this removal? If it's a combo piece with Zada, then Reality Scramble is far better.
Some of my fun cards, though: Flaring Pain, Glorious End, Myr Battlesphere, and Chancellor of the Forge.old thread
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R Zada Arcane Storm
RBU Marchesa
GWU Estrid
GWR Samut?
URB Kess
(R/W)(U/B) Akiri & Silas
BWR Alesha
R Neheb Dragons
G Nylea Wurms
W Darien
U Tetsuko
Firstly, I'd like to ask if there's anything specific that breaks your glass cannon in your meta? Or does it end up being a variety of stuff? Are you okay with it being a glass cannon so that when your opponents see how easily it can fold it's not as much of a threat in their minds when you reveal her as your commander?
Yeah, Seasoned Pyromancer is definitely good, but the price is way to much for a card that's only good in my janky glass cannon deck, so I may never get it since it's in Modern rather than rotating out of Standard ever.
As for Fire Diamond and Coldsteel Heart, I've sometimes run even cheaper-to-cast ones like Mox Amber and Chrome Mox but generally prefer mana from creatures or rituals. In your Maybeboard, Ancient Tomb ain't a bad choice, and Mana Crypt/Sol Ring/Mana Vault are alright if you don't end up with too many of those since we end up needing a lot of red mana. You might consider Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx. Priest of Urabrask is also a card I like since he's basically free or converts 2 into RR.
There are also some creatures somewhat like Iron Myr that one might consider, too, like Hedron Crawler, Plague Myr, and Walking Atlas. Wily Goblin isn't quite as good, but we just need a little bit of mana from our creatures while using Twinflame/Heat Shimmer to help us get through our attempt to reach critical mass, and I like how the Treasure can wait to be used (unlike, say, Akki Rockspeaker). As backup for Skirk Prospector, your playgroup might allow Mons's Goblin Waiters, or you might try Phyrexian Altar (which would work with Pashalik Mons). Since my playground allows Waiters, I should definitely find space for Mons, hahahaha.
Edit: Also, Precursor Golem probably makes the best backup Zada, especially if you can cast a cloning spell like Twinflame/Heat Shimmer on it more than once.
old thread
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R Zada Arcane Storm
RBU Marchesa
GWU Estrid
GWR Samut?
URB Kess
(R/W)(U/B) Akiri & Silas
BWR Alesha
R Neheb Dragons
G Nylea Wurms
W Darien
U Tetsuko
Cavalier of Flame only works with it at all in Cav's death trigger since its ETB discard wheel effect is mutually exclusive to the "Cycling R" that Tectonic Reformation give your lands, but many other things work with Cav's death trigger, too. Even drawing too many and having to discard down to hand size.
But I like how you're thinking about the deck! There was a time I was running Titan's Strength and was going to run a handful of the red cycling lands like Forgotten Cave so that, while comboing off, I could use TS to scry through the rest of the deck if creatures outnumbered my library and selectively draw specific cards between copies of TS.
old thread
old thread
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R Zada Arcane Storm
RBU Marchesa
GWU Estrid
GWR Samut?
URB Kess
(R/W)(U/B) Akiri & Silas
BWR Alesha
R Neheb Dragons
G Nylea Wurms
W Darien
U Tetsuko
Edit: Because I'd rather have a second Prismatic Vista.
old thread
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R Zada Arcane Storm
RBU Marchesa
GWU Estrid
GWR Samut?
URB Kess
(R/W)(U/B) Akiri & Silas
BWR Alesha
R Neheb Dragons
G Nylea Wurms
W Darien
U Tetsuko
old thread
old thread
old thread
R Zada Arcane Storm
RBU Marchesa
GWU Estrid
GWR Samut?
URB Kess
(R/W)(U/B) Akiri & Silas
BWR Alesha
R Neheb Dragons
G Nylea Wurms
W Darien
U Tetsuko
old thread
old thread
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R Zada Arcane Storm
RBU Marchesa
GWU Estrid
GWR Samut?
URB Kess
(R/W)(U/B) Akiri & Silas
BWR Alesha
R Neheb Dragons
G Nylea Wurms
W Darien
U Tetsuko
old thread
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R Zada Arcane Storm
RBU Marchesa
GWU Estrid
GWR Samut?
URB Kess
(R/W)(U/B) Akiri & Silas
BWR Alesha
R Neheb Dragons
G Nylea Wurms
W Darien
U Tetsuko
Here's how I imagine it working a bit more step-by-step with this splices-copy-but-text-changes-don't business. This may not be 100% accurate, but it's what I'm using to make sense of this still-working-but-differently-now:
- You cast Unnatural Speed and while casting choose to splice Desperate Ritual and Overblaze onto it. The splicing changes the text of the spell on the stack to add both spliced spells' texts. So now that spell, Unnatural Speed, splices: Desperate Ritual, Overblaze says,
"Target creature gains haste until end of turn. Add RRR. Each time target permanent would deal damage to a permanent or player this turn, it deals double that damage to that permanent or player instead." - You target Zada with both targets in the text.
- Zada's trigger goes on the stack, resolves, and copies the spell to all applicable creatures you control.
- Imagine that each of those copies initially look like Unnatural Speed, splices: Desperate Ritual, Overblaze because the choices got copied, but the copied text is initially just,
"Target creature gains haste until end of turn." - Then the splices of each copy, individually, kick in and change the text of the spell they're attached to (before the copying is finished) to make sure it says,
"Target creature gains haste until end of turn. Add RRR. Each time target permanent would deal damage to a permanent or player this turn, it deals double that damage to that permanent or player instead."
So basically I imagine the copied splicing choices acting look proofreaders going, "One sec, just gotta fix this before we can move on."old thread
old thread
old thread
R Zada Arcane Storm
RBU Marchesa
GWU Estrid
GWR Samut?
URB Kess
(R/W)(U/B) Akiri & Silas
BWR Alesha
R Neheb Dragons
G Nylea Wurms
W Darien
U Tetsuko
1. Pretty sure Eli Shiffrin's (Magic Rules Manager) clarifications override anybody's opinions in that thread:
- https://twitter.com/EliShffrn/status/1135936204237463552
- https://twitter.com/EliShffrn/status/1131688437109600256 (in which peteroupc contradicted Shiffrin)
- https://twitter.com/EliShffrn/status/1144298755144859648 (in which Shiffrin clarified no functional changes)
2. I don't think peteroupc is right. Even in comment #17 of your rules thread here he says that Overload's text-changing effect isn't copied (implying that copies won't be Overloaded I guess), but also links to a thread that says they are. I think he's just hung up on the text-changing part. Shiffrin even says in that third Twitter thread that Overload is copied.The way I interpret this is that the resultant text-change is itself not directly copied, but the choice to splice and what was spliced are copied which has the result of performing the text-change on each copy separately. So we're still good, but keep those tweets on hand if you run the Splice package.
old thread
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R Zada Arcane Storm
RBU Marchesa
GWU Estrid
GWR Samut?
URB Kess
(R/W)(U/B) Akiri & Silas
BWR Alesha
R Neheb Dragons
G Nylea Wurms
W Darien
U Tetsuko
Edit: Found the rules thread you alluded to. I'll read up on it tomorrow.
old thread
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R Zada Arcane Storm
RBU Marchesa
GWU Estrid
GWR Samut?
URB Kess
(R/W)(U/B) Akiri & Silas
BWR Alesha
R Neheb Dragons
G Nylea Wurms
W Darien
U Tetsuko
old thread
old thread
old thread
R Zada Arcane Storm
RBU Marchesa
GWU Estrid
GWR Samut?
URB Kess
(R/W)(U/B) Akiri & Silas
BWR Alesha
R Neheb Dragons
G Nylea Wurms
W Darien
U Tetsuko
But yeah, that one rocks.
old thread
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R Zada Arcane Storm
RBU Marchesa
GWU Estrid
GWR Samut?
URB Kess
(R/W)(U/B) Akiri & Silas
BWR Alesha
R Neheb Dragons
G Nylea Wurms
W Darien
U Tetsuko