MTG Salvation

Clemency of Flames needs to have the order of its two lines of text switched because instants and sorceries resolve their effects sequentially from the top down. As written, you could Blaze your opponent to zero life, then apply the reverse Angel's Grace, which would of course just cause the player to lose as soon as the turn ends.

I like the tap-for-indestructible idea. It makes these cards more interactive than previous iterations on the mechanic. I'm a little concerned with how wildly the 'animation' requirements and activated abilities vary amongst these cards, though.

The green one looks like the most complete of the bunch, as it has an easy activation requirement that synergizes well with both the activated ability and means of protection. It's also huge and unstoppable.

The white one has a much less sensible design. The requirement to attack and block is incredibly winmore, so much so that you will rarely attack or block at all. The activated ability, by contrast, is incredibly oppressive. Who need to block when all opposing creatures are dead? It doesn't so much synergize with the animation as cause the game to grind to a halt.

The blue one is just weak. Attacking and blocking requires specific support, and it has a non-synergistic activated ability that pales in comparison with the rest of the abilities you gave.

The black one is probably where you want this cycle to be. The animation is difficult, but it enables itself with an appropriately powerful activated ability. Five mana is probably high enough to dodge the usual sorcery requirement for this type of ability.

The red one is in the same category as white, as it has a difficult animation and a grotesque activated ability. Precombat life loss/damage is an even narrower category than what the blue one has, and the red one will more frequently cost you a card to use. The activated ability probably shouldn't exist on any card of this cost in any form. You drop this on turn 3 and curve into destroying a land every turn for the rest of the game. Awful.

Instead of Arcane Adaptation, try running Ashes of the Fallen. It basically does the same thing in this deck, except it's cheaper and colorless.

Try using her with Desecrated Tomb. You'll get a 1/1 flying bat token with every snake you make for yourself.

A goofier accomplice to Pharika would be Toshiro Umezawa. You give your opponents small, easy to kill creatures, and then you get to cast instants from your graveyard when they inevitably die.

Quote from user_938036 »

A while ago someone made a red card that did exactly this.

I remember that. It was super cheap to cast and worked on any player's creature for that player's commander. I didn't particularly like the gameplay implications.

I like this version a lot more because it's more about wacky versatility than, well, locking your opponent out of their commander for the rest of the game. Restricting the ability to cards that could otherwise be commanders makes sense, even if it does lessen possibilities.

If I had one suggestion, it would be to have the ability ignore color identity. I know that rules changes have since removed the mana production restriction, but explicitly calling it out could skirt some potential confusion.

Quote from WarMachinePrime »

Weird that they ban an answer instead of a threat.

I want heavy bans in Pioneer. Yes I'm weird. But they need to ban problematic threat cards not problematic answer cards.

I'd love to see the following bans.

Arclight Phoenix
Supreme Verdict
Teferi, Time Raveler
Once Upon a Time
Dig Through Time
Treasure Cruise
Thoughtseize

Yep, I know weird picks. But this format is quickly pricing me out of it.

Odd that you'd criticize the banning of non-threats and proceed to put Supreme Verdict and Thoughtseize on your personal ban-wishlist. Targeted discard and powerful sweepers are far more important to maintaining a healthy format than any protective spell.

Actually, I'd argue that Veil of Summer isn't really an answer at all, at least not in the classical sense of the two cards I mentioned above. If I were to set definitions for threats as cards that win games and answers as cards that stop threats (the two are obviously not mutually exclusive), then protective spells are more threat than answer precisely because they exist primarily to stop answers. Modern Infect sure as heck doesn't run Vines of Vastwood to stop threats, and neither do decks that run Veil. I mean, how many times in pioneer has Veil been cast to stop an actual threat instead of an answer?

Yeah, soulbond can't be used on other players' creatures...

I made Top 8 in the 72-player MCQ, going 5-1 over the first six rounds into an ID in round 7. Unfortunately, I scrubbed out in the first round of the single elimination due to some incredible mana flood.

I faced a lot of Oko in the tournament, including the middle four rounds that I played, and I went 3-1 against them. Those Oko matches were bookended by an Azorius deck that never really interacted with me in a meaningful way and a Golgari adventure deck that sputtered in games 2 and 3 after beating me in game 1.

I ended up playing a playset of Noxious Grasp for the tournament alone, though I'd never get away with that in my LGS meta. I was highly relevant and useful every time I drew it, except when my opponent had Summer Veil.

Overall, Corpse Knight was an absolute all-star. It forced through life loss in situations where I could not attack, tore through opposing life totals in conjunction with Worthy Knight, and acted as a valuable source of reach to enable Knight of the Ebon Legion. Sorin and Archon were decidedly less than impressive in the Oko matchup, unfortunately.

You would probably better off swapping Witch's Oven and Cauldron Familiar out for something like Pitiless Pontiff, Plaguecrafter, or Priest of Forgotten Gods. The combo, with two pieces, is decent, but it needs other combo pieces present to really get rolling. The cat, by itself, is a pretty underwhelming 1-drop, and the oven is, quite frankly, a lousy sac outlet when you're not doing something busted with the food tokens. With only four cards that make food and two cards that use food in a profitable manner, that just doesn't seem enough.

Quote from Gutterstorm »

Interesting that Typhons are a kind of creature rather than a specific creature.

Pegasus and Medusa (well, not in MTG, but in many other media) welcome Typhon to the club.

Quote from Jiyor »

@ haloreaper117- Your uninformed. Standard has only ever had fetches in them three times in M:tG’s history. The only time they caused a problem was when WotC, after saying for years fetches are fine in Standard without fetchable dual lands, included them in a Standard with fetchable duals.
And the shuffling taking up to much streaming time is a hollow excuse because not enough people watch streams of players playing games with real cards because there boring to watch. The heavy stream watchings are from Arena where shuffling time isn’t an issue.

Of all of the standards with fetch lands, wouldn't that make the ugly Khans-BFZ format the most salient to pioneer precisely because the format has fetchable duals?

Quote from pzbw7z »

Six-drops seem awfully ambitious, but I have certainly played some games where I've gotten to six mana but many games just don't. I'm interested to hear how this plays out for you. Does the Archon make Witch's Vengeance more appealing for the side-board?

Excluding the odd complete non-game, I've had more games where I have hit six mana than ones where I have not. On certain board states, dropping Archon is akin to Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite in some ways. It just ends games. It's not always relevant, of course, but then it's pretty easy to side out.

I don't think I would ever put Witch's Vengeance in this deck's sideboard, for any reason. It's too darn unreliable. Sure, the best-case scenario is a Plague Wind against a tribal deck or a deck that happens to line up tribally, but knights is already one of standard's few tribal decks. I would expect the card to be like Victim of Night most of the time, in that it has some huge blind spots. Sure, it would be a sideboard card, but that would beg the question of what I would board it in against. Most of the good times to use the card are actually decent matchups, and I'd like to use my sb slots for either really popular matchups (like Oko) or really bad matchups (like Fires of Invention decks or anything else with lots of sweepers).

Quote from pzbw7z »

The thought has occurred to me that twenty-four lands just might be too many - even if one is a Blast Zone. What are you running? Are you running anything over three-CMC?

I'm on 24 lands as well, including two Castle Ardenvale and a full playset of Castle Locthwain, so I can dig my way out of flooding pretty quickly. I also have five cards over 3-CMC, consisting of three Sorin, Vengeful Bloodlord and two Harmonious Archon.

This could get away with being Orzhov, and almost even mono-black if you keep the current wording, which still excludes permanents and spells.

Using reminder text to refer to permanents doesn't work because, well, it's too clever. It's clever in the same way that the wordings of certain Hearthstone cards, such as Zephrys, who tells players to "wish for the perfect card," are clever, in that it prioritizes its cleverness over clarity. Magic is a game that overwhelmingly prioritizes clarity to the point that people who write its rules text are willing to create clunky pieces like Syr Konrad, the Grim or every discard-matters card in Amonkhet. Those examples are generally unpopular, especially given how popular clever and ultra-concise wordings are with many custom card creators, but they get the job done.

If you want to keep the card's wording clever, I would expand the reminder text to include spell copies as well, which are non-card entities quite distinct from tokens. If you want a wording that gets the job done, simply expanding the rules text to "Choose up to two cards, nontoken permanents, or noncopy spells and exile them." would suffice. Mentioning spells and making the card an instant also conveniently gives the card a reason to be blue as well.

Quote from pzbw7z »

The deck is tremendously improved. I won all four matches and the tournament.

Congratulations, that's impressive. Corpse Knight is a really cool card that I didn't consider myself, so I'm considering running it over Wintermoor Commander. Commander is a fine card in many aspects, but it sometimes doesn't feel impactful enough.

I'm taking my own Orzhov Knights brew to a big MCQ this weekend, so the news that another player is succeeding with the deck, especially versus Oko, is heartening.