MTG Salvation

Quote from tstorm823 »

I would have built my shrine to Zedruu even if it was just for my own enjoyment, but I'm ecstatic to have people like you helping me absolutely ruin the statistics on EDHREC's page for Mirror of Fate.

I've got to confess. You've certainly influenced my love for both Mirror of Fate and Vedalken Orrery.

So, Llanowar Tribe has worked me into a frenzy. With its printing, I now suspect 6-drops will be especially important. Between Arbor Elf, Utopia Sprawl, Overgrowth, and Llanowar Tribe, there are just so many ways to get to 6 by turn 3 with only 4 or 5 cards.

7 mana, 4 cards:Land, Arbor Elf —> Land, Overgrowth
6 mana, 4 cards:Land, Arbor Elf —> Land, Llanowar Tribe
6 mana, 4 cards:Land, Arbor Elf —> Arbor Elf, Utopia Sprawl
6 mana, 4 cards:Land, Arbor Elf —> Utopia Sprawl, Utopia Sprawl
6 mana, 4 cards:Land, Utopia Sprawl —> Land, Llanowar Tribe
6 mana, 4 cards:Land, Utopia Sprawl —> Arbor Elf, Arbor Elf
6 mana, 4 cards:Land, Utopia Sprawl —> Arbor Elf, Utopia Sprawl
6 mana, 5 cards:Land, Arbor Elf —> Land, Utopia Sprawl —> Land
6 mana, 5 cards:Land, Arbor Elf —> Land, Utopia Sprawl —> Utopia Sprawl
6 mana, 5 cards:Land, Utopia Sprawl —> Land, Overgrowth —> Land

That's SO MANY. And now you don't need exactly Overgrowth or some ludicrous number of Arbor Elves and Utopia Sprawls to get there. You can just play Llanowar Tribe in conjunction with two lands and any 1-drop. And sure, you could have always made 6 by turn 3 with something like Greenweaver Druid, but those lines always required 5 cards: a 1-drop, a 3-drop, and 3 lands. Llanowar Tribe now makes those same lines one card shorter, significantly increasing the odds you'll assemble them.

I'm at a loss. This card is fine, but what deck would ever want to really play it?

EDIT: I just realized it grants you protection in addition to all of your creatures, so I suppose it could be used as a possible option against storm? Even still, I'm unsure...

A friend of mine started theorycrafting exactly this kind of deck with me last night. These are the conclusions we reached:

Astral Drift looks like it has potential, and while some of the other cycling payoff cards like Drake Haven don't look too terrible, almost all of the available cards with the cycling mechanic themselves look downright atrocious. Granted, there are some exceptions, notably the lands, but most of the available spells look way too poor for Modern. This led us to the conclusion that the cycling lands would need to make up the bulk of what we cycle, and that in turn makes Life from the Loam really good as a 2nd cycling payoff card, putting the deck in at least GW.

Because the deck is going to want to play a significant number of Secluded Steppe, Tranquil Thicket, and probably Scattered Groves, it's going to be difficult to reliably cast mana dorks on turn 1. Too many lands come into play tapped, and it's likely that some that don't still won't always produce green because they're either colorless utility lands or because they're something like basic Plains or Flagstones of Trokair. This, combined with the fact that there isn't any intrinsic value in blinking a card like Noble Hierarch, led us to avoid mana dorks in general. Fortunately, there is a valuable ramp spell available to us in Edge of Autumn. Aside from Street Wraith, it's the only other "free" cycler, and playing tapland on 1 -> Edge of Autumn on 2 is a reasonable curve. It also helps fuel Life from the Loam in the midgame, and being able to tap out on turn 3 to cast Astral Drift while simultaneously being able to cycle a card if need be is nothing to slouch at.

Another observation we made is that, because Astral Drift comes down on turn 3 at the earliest and because almost no cards cycle for free, you're almost never going to blink something before turn 4. And if what you want to blink is a creature of your own, it would help tremendously if that card only cost 2 or 3. That way, if you curve into tapland -> 2-drop -> Astral Drift, you have both mana and a target to blink when you cycle a card turn 4. And that works even if you don't make your 4th land drop (or if your 4th land enters the battlefield tapped). Alternatively, if you curve into tapland -> anything -> 3-drop, then a 4th untapped land on turn 4 also allows you to play Astral Drift and still have 1 available with which to cycle a card and blink whatever 3-drop you played.

From that point, my friend and I took a look at what creatures we could blink to get good value out of. While there are plenty of good 3-drops in this category, good blinkable 2-drops are a little more scarce. Here are the most notable 2-drops we found (sorted by color):

Knight of the White Orchid
Lone Missionary
Wall of Omens

Dusk Legion Zealot
Ravenous Rats
Stitcher's Supplier

Arboreal Grazer
Elvish Visionary
Nest Invader
Satyr Wayfinder

Coiling Oracle
Glowspore Shaman
Meddling Mage
Tidehollow Sculler

Phyrexian Revoker

Unfortunately, while there were a handful of blue cards that would be okay to blink, there weren't that many 2-drops that we were all that happy to proactively play. (Cards like Omenspeaker, Augur of Bolas, and Fblthp just don't look that great in comparison to something like Wall of Omens.) We also knew we wouldn't be red from the start (to sort of differentiate this deck from a Hollow One deck), so we didn't pursue that direction at all.

Of the cards listed above, the ones we were most excited about were Wall of Omens and Nest Invader. Wall of Omens provides card advantage in addition to a solid body with which to block, something a slower deck like this one might find valuable. Nest Invader provides multiple bodies, and allows the deck to ramp into Astral Drift on turn 3 while simultaneously having both a blink target and a mana available with which to cycle a card. Lone Missionary was also quite tantalizing, but because we foresaw there being a plethora of other GW cards that gain life higher up on the curve that we might also want to play (things like Knight of Autumn, Thragtusk) we decided to omit the Missionary. Satyr Wayfinder is another card we're curious about. It doesn't provide cards as reliably as Wall of Omens, and its body isn't as valuable, but it may potentially synergize with other cards in the deck beyond Life from the Loam, so we're keeping our eyes on it.

The sweetest thing we found about black is that it grants access to repeatable discard in the form of cards like Ravenous Rats, but because Astral Drift is a long blink, the discard loses a lot of its value since there's no way to get the creature to return on the opponent's draw step. (This is also why blinking Frilled Mystic is unhelpful.) Despite this fact, a card like Tidehollow Sculler may be a direction worth taking the deck, and things like Sin Collector or Chittering Rats might also be worth pursuing.

So far, we now have a deck that looks like this:

We don't know if those numbers are right, especially on the cycling lands. Hell, I guess we don't even know if those cards are right, but we do feel pretty good about where we're starting.

From this point, we decided to include a few of the remaining cyclers that I haven't talked about yet.

This knocks the cycling count up a smidge while giving us a versatile removal spell in Cast Out. (Again, we're not exactly sure what the right number of cycling cards should be. We just know that it needs to be relatively high to ensure Astral Drift can activate reliably enough, and that what cyclers we do have likely need to cost 1 if they aren't altogether free. That, or they need to do something else aside from drawing a card when you decide to cycle them.)

Because we knew the deck would be primarily if not entirely GW, we knew what little removal the deck did have ought to be flexible. Cast Out does that by exiling a smattering of card types while also being an instant. That's especially useful once Astral Drift is in play since it allows us to play the game either proactively or reactively depending upon the situation. If there's a card that has to be answered, we can use the 4 we held up to cast Cast Out. If they don't force us to react, we can just cycle a few cards, and eke value out of whatever we have in play. And because Restoration Angel both has flash and synergizes with everything else we're blinking, we thought it would also make a good addition seeing as it would mean our opponents wouldn't always know exactly what we're doing with 4 open mana and would give us another kind of proactive play.

So, that's pretty much where we're at right now. Of the GW cycling cards, the only ones we thought stood any chance (apart from the lands and Astral Drift anyway) were Edge of Autumn, Dissenter's Deliverance, Cast Out, Renewed Faith, and maybe Street Wraith. Dissenter's Deliverance and Renewed Faith both suffer from the fact that it just might be better to play some kind of creature with an ETB effect that does either of those things than it is to play the actual cycler. Street Wraith is also kind of a gamble since, while it is a free cycler, I'm not sure if this deck will want something like Traverse the Ulvenwald (it might), and there really isn't any use for Street Wraith beyond being Astral Drift fodder, so there's a real opportunity cost to playing it.

Anywho, I guess we're now just going to fill out the deck with other miscellaneous cards, Eternal Witness, Kitchen Finks, etc., and make adjustments from there once we playtest it.

Quote from jaccjacc_m »

What do the T&N players think about LLanowar Tribe? Better that Overgrowth?

"Better" is hard to qualify. Llanowar Tribe is more vulnerable than Overgrowth, but it makes more mana in the absence of cards like Arbor Elf. I'm definitely going to play Llanowar Tribe in addition to Overgrowth. They just look like the best ramp cards you can possibly play after turn 1 by a large margin.

Quote from Gruul_Me_Harder »

Also in regards to the tribe - this may be heresy, but I could see a future where it replaces Garruk Wildspeaker and the list goes down a Coco avenue. Garruk can sometimes be clunky, and also sometimes only produces 2 mana...so a 3 drop that effectively ramps the same could be really beneficial.

I don't think it's heresy. In fact, I cut my Garruks a long time ago. He was always too vulnerable, and especially so without cheaper creatures to block for him. Granted, I'm not a Nykthos deck exactly, so he isn't as crucial for me as he probably is for other players, but Llanowar Tribe will often come down sooner than Garruk (it's a lot easier to make 3 on turn 2 than it is to make 4), and will frequently tap for just as much if not more during most stages of the game without also being any more vulnerable on average.

Cloud Cover is an oft-neglected favorite of mine.

So, to cast this card you need at least two black and/or green creatures on the battlefield in addition to five cards in your graveyard with the caveat that every additional creature you have on the battlefield can reduce the number of cards you need in your graveyard by one. Obviously, if you're tapping seven creatures to cast Hogaak, you're doing something wrong, so this will really only see play in graveyard-based decks.

So, Llanowar Tribe is pretty absurd. It's the only 3-drop that unconditionally taps for 3 in all of Magic. Hell, even at four mana you don't see cards unconditionally tap for 3 with the exception of Thran Dynamo, so the fact that Llanowar Tribe is Modern legal is downright striking. Granted, it suffers from all the same drawbacks that most mana elves do. It's soft to removal. You can Bolt it. You can Push it. Still though, when it comes to sheer quantity of mana produced, there's no contention. Llanowar Tribe makes more mana than any comparable card. (And virtually every other 3-drop that makes 2 is creature anyway.)

With two lands, any dork on one, and Llanowar Tribe on two, you're set up to cast six drops on turn three even without a third land.

Well, I'm not sure what to think right now. Message boards like MTGS were always a big part of my childhood, and I really hate having to give them up because places like Reddit aren't the same. The anonymity, the upvote structure — it all leads to a place where the written word is disposable, and where popular ideas completely overshadow unconventional or contrarian ones.

Something I've always valued in message boards is that, while writers have always been free to dump their thoughts in a careless manner, the mechanics of message boards don't encourage it to the extent social media does. People like me will just spend their time meticulously crafting their posts in such a way that their ideas are shared with as much clarity and refinement as possible. I don't know why that is exactly. All I know is that the overall format here is just better for having conversations.

And that's what I think I'm ultimately afraid of losing. I'm afraid I'll lose the ability to have meaningful conversations with people about Commander and about Magic: the Gathering at large. Nothing is ever going to beat a face to face conversation with someone, but there's only so many people I can reach due to physical distance. The Internet, and message boards specifically, have always been the next best place to go.

So, I'm super giddy about Llanowar Tribe. Tapping for three unconditionally on 3-drop is completely unheard of. Hell, with the exception of Thran Dynamo, you can't tap for three unconditionally on a 4-drop either. If you can cast this card, it is undoubtedly one of the best at ramping period.

My Modern Tooth and Nail deck is also pretty stoked.

Quote from NZB2323 »

Quote from Manite »

So, for our list of major mythic legends from Magic's past, we have:



I wonder who the red and green members will be?

For green I’d guess Gaea. I’m not sure about red.

Doesn't green already have two mythics? I don't think this is a cycle.

Quote from Dutch253 »

Quote from ilovesaprolings »

Dirk says phelddagrif

Ummm, ok?

He's talking about this.

Wow. I was underwhelmed by Sword of Truth and Justice, but Sword of Sinew and Steel is real scary.

I had actually intended to publish a guide on the best mana ramp in Commander, but I stopped working on it about 75% of the way through (as is tradition for me). I should probably go back and finish that.

To answer the question in your title, you first need to make a distinction. Are you looking for the best ramp cards in green? Or are you looking for the cards that ramp the best in green? Because those two things aren't exactly the same. It's not too difficult to construct a hierarchy of ramp cards based on how good they are at ramping, but it's very difficult to construct the same hierarchy based on how good those cards are in general in part because a card's worth always depends upon context; you start getting really apples to oranges comparisons that way.

Quote from Dunharrow »

I honestly cannot think of a fair thing I would want to do with Urza. Commander players like building synergistic decks, and his two main synergies are busted.

I like Urza just from a ramp perspective. I mean, how many additional artifacts do you need to have in play before Urza becomes viable? At least two for sure. Maybe only one? A 4-drop that not only produces color but also refunds mana the turn you play it is a rare breed, and even more so for blue. I know I'll be jamming him in decks he likely has no business being in just for that reason alone. He's just such a good card whether you're committed to an artifact theme or not.