as for his first two abilities, i was going for a, "You exist at my whim" feeling. He makes you sacrifice stuff every turn, he can make anything that gets in his way disappear for next to know cost, and He hits ultimate very quickly, even when using his minus ability. He cost's 9 colored mana, He's allowed to be extremely powerful
Nicol bolas, the omnipotent
UUUBBBRRR
Legendary Planeswalker - Bolas
Opponents play with their hands revealed
+3 Each opponent sacrifices 3 nonland permanents
-1 Exile target permanant or spell. You may activate this ability any time you can cast an instant.
-12 Each opponent discards their hand, sacrifices 7 permanents, and puts the top seven cards of their library into their graveyard. Then exile each opponents graveyard. you may put any number of permanents exiled this way onto the battlefield under your control.
starting loyalty: 7
just an idea i had floating around in my head. Any thoughts?
with the new mythics spoiled right out of the gate, i thought that i would make a speculative deck based around the most flashy of them. a friend played a similar deck in a proxy match. did pretty well. sorry for the link deck, but proxies were necessary. https://manastack.com/deck/azban-reanimation-ikoria
basic premise is self-mill--> reanimation. some pretty big creatures to reanimate
so yeah, this is the deck i made. Took my standard superfriends deck and amped it up to pioneer. as i said in the title, combo will probably tear this deck a new one, so I'm not going to make it until the combo winter is over. any thoughts?
EDIT: a mod changed the title of this post, the original one was: would this be a decent deck after the combo winter ends?
ok, it sounds crazy. But there is a bit of evidence
1. Ashiok is U/B. both of which are grixis colors.
2. ashiok's name and aesthetic both suggest indian. Bolas has known about Kalandesh (the only Indian plane) for a while now as he worked it into his plans. Kalandesh is also the home of the aetherborn, a race of beings with some similarities to ashiok. Who says that nicol didn't just make a more long lived and powerful aetherborn as a minion.
3. ashiok's powers have apparently eroded the top part of his head. if he was an Aetherborn construct, then it would make sense that it wouldn't be powerful enough to stay together infinitely.
4. Ashiok's power is mind based. a specialty of bolas.
5. ashiok was on the meditation plane, a super secret plane that almost no one knows about. How does he know about it? if he was bolas's minion, it would make more sense.
6. just look at him. he looks artificial. no one has skin THAT pale.
so, what do you guys think? could he be a construct of bolas? or am i just crazy?
ah, sorry. My mistake. Misread the gatherer rulings. Yeah, you'd have to cast expansion targeting a spell, then go infinite, but that wouldn't work because then the first spell would be copied by ral. so the combo dosn't work.
1. You activate Ral's -2 without killing him
2. You play Explosion with x=0.
3. you choose Expasnion for the copied Spell.
4. You copy explosion with the new copy.
5. you once again choose expansion.
doing this oever and over creates an infinite ammount of "whenever you copy a spell" triggers. Because ral's passive is to ping your opponent whenever you cast or copy a spell, this creates infinite damage. you then kill the opponent
playtested it and found some success. I also discovered a combo that actually might be more effective than my main combo. If you cast Explosion for 0, and you copy it with ral, the CMC of the spell is 4. Copy that with the copy, then do that as many times as you want. And because of ral's passive, you can just ping them to death. needs some more fine-tunning, but then again, don't all decks?
yeah, having too many mana rocks was something i ran into while playtesting. much less of them now. The copy spells that you are suggesting though, just don't fit my combo. Their perfectly good cards, but this deck wants to hit you for 20 in the face, not 6 or 9. Repeated gives he enough copies to one-shot my opponent. The spells you suggest have to have multiple copies in order to take effect.
so, i Decided to make a pioneer deck. Everyone I've talked to says you need to be able to win on turn 4. That basically leaves agro and really fast combo as the only viable options. So, i decided to do a favorite of mine. Ral, Storm conduit-->Repeated reverberation-->Skewer the critics/Lightnin strike/Skulllcrack, to deal 22 damage to my opponents face.
the rest of the deck is just draw and control.
Is this decent? or am i just a fool playing an unusable combo?
as for his first two abilities, i was going for a, "You exist at my whim" feeling. He makes you sacrifice stuff every turn, he can make anything that gets in his way disappear for next to know cost, and He hits ultimate very quickly, even when using his minus ability. He cost's 9 colored mana, He's allowed to be extremely powerful
UUUBBBRRR
Legendary Planeswalker - Bolas
Opponents play with their hands revealed
+3 Each opponent sacrifices 3 nonland permanents
-1 Exile target permanant or spell. You may activate this ability any time you can cast an instant.
-12 Each opponent discards their hand, sacrifices 7 permanents, and puts the top seven cards of their library into their graveyard. Then exile each opponents graveyard. you may put any number of permanents exiled this way onto the battlefield under your control.
starting loyalty: 7
just an idea i had floating around in my head. Any thoughts?
https://manastack.com/deck/azban-reanimation-ikoria
basic premise is self-mill--> reanimation. some pretty big creatures to reanimate
2x slaughter-priest of Mogis
1x Thief of sanity
1x Flux channeler
1x God-Eternal Kefnet
2x Nicol Bolas, The ravager
2x Fires of Invention
2x aid the fallen
2x The Elderspell
3x Thought erasure
3x angrath's rampage
2x read the bones
1x Tibalt, rakish instigator
2x ashiok, dream render
3x Narset, parter of veils
1x Chandra, pyromaster
2x Ral, storm conduit
1x Liliana Vess
2x Ashiok, nightmare muse
2x Sarkhan the masterless
2x Nicol Bolas, Dragon-God
1x Nicol Bolas, God-pharaoh
3x Mountain
3x island
2x Temple of Malice
2x Temple of deceit
2x Temple of Epiphany
2x Drowned catacomb
2x Dragonskull summit
3x Sulfur falls
4x ceremonious rejection
4x abrade
4x Infinite obliteration
1x leyline of the void
1x By force
1x into the story
so yeah, this is the deck i made. Took my standard superfriends deck and amped it up to pioneer. as i said in the title, combo will probably tear this deck a new one, so I'm not going to make it until the combo winter is over. any thoughts?
EDIT: a mod changed the title of this post, the original one was: would this be a decent deck after the combo winter ends?
1. Ashiok is U/B. both of which are grixis colors.
2. ashiok's name and aesthetic both suggest indian. Bolas has known about Kalandesh (the only Indian plane) for a while now as he worked it into his plans. Kalandesh is also the home of the aetherborn, a race of beings with some similarities to ashiok. Who says that nicol didn't just make a more long lived and powerful aetherborn as a minion.
3. ashiok's powers have apparently eroded the top part of his head. if he was an Aetherborn construct, then it would make sense that it wouldn't be powerful enough to stay together infinitely.
4. Ashiok's power is mind based. a specialty of bolas.
5. ashiok was on the meditation plane, a super secret plane that almost no one knows about. How does he know about it? if he was bolas's minion, it would make more sense.
6. just look at him. he looks artificial. no one has skin THAT pale.
so, what do you guys think? could he be a construct of bolas? or am i just crazy?
1. You activate Ral's -2 without killing him
2. You play Explosion with x=0.
3. you choose Expasnion for the copied Spell.
4. You copy explosion with the new copy.
5. you once again choose expansion.
doing this oever and over creates an infinite ammount of "whenever you copy a spell" triggers. Because ral's passive is to ping your opponent whenever you cast or copy a spell, this creates infinite damage. you then kill the opponent
(note: Does anyone know how to add tags to the cards. Example: sideboard?)
2 Niv-Mizzet, Parun
Spells
4 Repeated Reverberation
4 Lightning Strike
4 Opt
4 Quench
3 Negate
2 Dig Through Time
3 Expansion // Explosion
2 Ionize
4 Skewer the Critics
4 Ral, Storm Conduit
1 Narset, Parter of Veils
1 Tibalt, Rakish Instigator
Lands
9 Island
10 Mountain
3 Sulfur Falls
1 Leyline of the void
2 Eidolon of the great revel
4 ceremonious rejection
2 fry
2 by force
2 treasure cruise
3 izzet staticaster
so, i Decided to make a pioneer deck. Everyone I've talked to says you need to be able to win on turn 4. That basically leaves agro and really fast combo as the only viable options. So, i decided to do a favorite of mine. Ral, Storm conduit-->Repeated reverberation-->Skewer the critics/Lightnin strike/Skulllcrack, to deal 22 damage to my opponents face.
the rest of the deck is just draw and control.
Is this decent? or am i just a fool playing an unusable combo?