Spark of Creativity is almost certainly great for Zada storm decks, arcane or not. Trading up to instant cards for the remaining cantrips that wait until the next upkeep is worth the reduced synergy with arcane. We've even seen more ways to recur key arcane cards to hand in the form of shreds of sanity.
Considering how corner case a lot of the great spells for Zada can be, I am pleasantly surprised at the quantity of test-worthy to playable cards that have come out in the last year. Now if only Whirler Virtuoso didn't have blue, that would be a decent energy outlet.
The abilities of Pia and Kiran Nalaar and spikeshot elder are similar in damage output only when overblaze gets involved. The Elder has synergies with the result of the pump spells that increase power, while Pia and Kiran are more effective when considered as a token source. I prefer to play both, treating the sacrifice ability on Pia and Kiran as more of a backup plan when compared to the elder.
My quick search indicated that the Elder was a cheaper card, but I'd rate Pia and Kiran more important because it helps to have a critical mass of token sources.
Alright boys, we solved the format, let's go home.
I was actually thinking along the lines of buyback with haze of rage or reiterate. Keeping it in mono-red a hand with 5 lands, flame jab and haze of rage would go infinite with the total life cost being 12 if all costs were paid by treasonous ogre.
the first 6 spells are flame jab, which ends up net positive on life cost/gain. By the time storm count is 11, you've net lost 12 life.
Everybody's talking about the 50-damage part of Aetherflux Reservoir, but what about the other part? Do you think this could be a utility artifact for Storm decks? It potentially serves as both survivability and an alternate kill condition when your storm doesn't quite make it all the way to killing the table.
Until I read this I had misread it as 1 life per spell. So that means that this can net mana via treasonous ogre...
I run a Xenagos, god of revels with a large number of mana dorks. There have been occasions when I dropped a malignus and attacked all out with camouflage at one player with 4-5 face down creatures.
Yes, you're right about it not working so well with cloning effects. It is however worth testing, as you mentioned. We need as many bodies as possible for Zada.
It combos so well with creatures that create tokens when they enter the battlefield. Also, combined with Cloudstone Curio, the amount of triggers will be crazy. That stack's gonna be all over the place, lol.
I don't play with the curio, and I had been moving away from the 3 mana - 1 token creatures in favor of spells for goblinslide and young pyromancer. This is the main reason for my hesitancy calling her an auto-include for my build.
This is the best Zada card ever Harnessed Lightning now we just need enough outlets for Energy
I commented during SoI that I was looking for another good ritual. If E or EE can be spent well, this may become another (more conditional) battle hymn or a second desperate ritual. We will have to wait and see if energy has a good outlet here.
Based on the poll it looks like this thread will be modified become more of a primer resource. I'll leave the polls open until Friday to give a full week of voting opportunity.
I lack familiarity with the options lyonhaert proposed means that I will be follow whichever is chosen for our use. I'll PM you my email today.
As to what gets covered, I think it would be worthwhile to break the deck down to its constituent parts for discussion. We could cover groups of cards to include for arcane and the pros/cons/strategy of that package. We could then do the same for toughness packages, token sources, pump spells, rituals, and continue until we've covered every angle. As we work through these options, we included everyones decklists and discuss how each package was implemended differently, with varying synergys.
That's my vote at least, though I suppose we could put the intended structure and composition to a vote over the next week. I'll try to be more active on here on weekends.
I have had a brief discussion with lyonhaert and would like the input of everyone with a vested interest in Zada a simple series of questions, as you may have assumed from the sudden presence of a poll. The first and perhaps most important question is whether a more universal resource for Zada is something you might be interested in.
The second and polling question is, for everyone that is interested in a more "primer"-esque resource, would it be beneficial to turn this thread into that resource, or would the discussion be better served with a clean slate? The reason to ask is specifically, as you may have noticed, I am not able to post/update frequently. If this resource is desirable and the existing discussion in this thread is worthwhile (which I believe to be the case), then the first post will be reworked into a compilation of work from anyone who is experienced and able to put forward their contributions. This would likely be done in some other location/collaborative software so that everyone involved could create, submit, and review content. The final product from that would then be uploaded by me into the first post, and I would try to keep it up to date on at least a weekly basis.
This is a relatively new idea and how public/private the creation group will be is open to discussion. Please let me/us know your preferences and whether you'd be interested in putting together a given section of the deck/strategy/stack interactions. As most other Zada decks haven't had as much traffic, I anticipate that we could cover most or all of the variations between storm and midrange with packages from goblin to arcane or toughness.
I've been thinking along the same lines. My main reason not to go into the zap and flare package described by gxmiter has been my smaller-than average goblin package, plus casting costs. By replacing creatures when they die, outburst effectively reduces/negates the drawback of losing smaller creatures. Now the only tradeoff would be losing something like mogg fanatic or young pyromancer too early.
With the additions of otherworldly outburst and Distemper of the Blood to replace some of the permanents/goblin only pump, I've been exploring retooling the pump list to allow for finally cutting balduvian rage and even getting another cantrip by slotting in zap and flare, which is a big deal.
I play this in my thematic Teferi, Temporal Archmage deck, and it checks the flavor box, fits my phasing theme, and happens to synergize with a primary win condition by tapping for more than one.
It may not be the best enabler, but it can be intermittently explosive with it's namesake.
My first EDH deck was sisters of stone death, and it was a terrible theme deck in 2009. Every creature had deathtouch or was along the lines of stone-tongue basilisk. I threw in all sorts of single target removal along the lines of terror and played lure effects.
I may have had 2-3 cards that ramped, and a large number of high cost creatures/removal.
It was all in on a concept, a habit I keep to this day.
With humility in play. As soon as I activate genju it will become a 1/1 that cannot tap for mana and all bonus effects of the land (such as citadels indestructibility) will also be gone and genju will be a 1/1.
Now if I had the black genju on the same land as genju. If I pumped it 5 times and then activate genju of the realm and then played humility I would still have 6/6. But no other abilities.
Actually, each modifier of humility is interacting with each modifier from the activation of Genju at the same layer. Timestamp order takes over from that point.Rulings reference.
What this means is that with humility out, you can still have an 8/12 tramper in a world of 1/1s
wait If it was attached to a darksteel citadel would it still have indest as well?
also i thought that humility continuously checks for creatures, but not for bonuses. (Meaning all creatures are base 1/1)
Take this with appropriate quantity of salt as this is nor the rulings subforum and I am not a judge.
I don't think so, No. Darksteel citadel would lose indestructible because it doesn't have a modification to gain indestructible. Effectively, humility takes away everything that is not granted by a modifier, as it does not apply in the applicable layers and allow timestamps to take effect. This actually includes removing the ability to activate other abilities (including tapping for mana) once the lands are creatures, and therefore impacted by humility.
EDIT: to the second question, there is a layer that applies power and toughness modifying effects. Both the animation of the land and humility create said modifications, and they take effect in timestamp order. Simply, humility applies, then the Genju modifier applies and the result is 8/12.
Spark of Creativity is way better than panic, aleatory or balduvian rage because it nets cards during the storm turn. The printing of shreds of sanity allows someone using arcane spells to cast them, then re-cur them to their hand for splicing.
Considering how corner case a lot of the great spells for Zada can be, I am pleasantly surprised at the quantity of test-worthy to playable cards that have come out in the last year. Now if only Whirler Virtuoso didn't have blue, that would be a decent energy outlet.
My quick search indicated that the Elder was a cheaper card, but I'd rate Pia and Kiran more important because it helps to have a critical mass of token sources.
I was actually thinking along the lines of buyback with haze of rage or reiterate. Keeping it in mono-red a hand with 5 lands, flame jab and haze of rage would go infinite with the total life cost being 12 if all costs were paid by treasonous ogre.
the first 6 spells are flame jab, which ends up net positive on life cost/gain. By the time storm count is 11, you've net lost 12 life.
Until I read this I had misread it as 1 life per spell. So that means that this can net mana via treasonous ogre...
It's a somewhat niche card.
I don't play with the curio, and I had been moving away from the 3 mana - 1 token creatures in favor of spells for goblinslide and young pyromancer. This is the main reason for my hesitancy calling her an auto-include for my build.
I commented during SoI that I was looking for another good ritual. If E or EE can be spent well, this may become another (more conditional) battle hymn or a second desperate ritual. We will have to wait and see if energy has a good outlet here.
She's a legendary Thopter Engineer/Ghirapur Gearcrafter and a decent mana sink, but I'm not convinced. She doesn't work as well with twinflame/heat shimmer either.
It's worth testing.
I lack familiarity with the options lyonhaert proposed means that I will be follow whichever is chosen for our use. I'll PM you my email today.
As to what gets covered, I think it would be worthwhile to break the deck down to its constituent parts for discussion. We could cover groups of cards to include for arcane and the pros/cons/strategy of that package. We could then do the same for toughness packages, token sources, pump spells, rituals, and continue until we've covered every angle. As we work through these options, we included everyones decklists and discuss how each package was implemended differently, with varying synergys.
That's my vote at least, though I suppose we could put the intended structure and composition to a vote over the next week. I'll try to be more active on here on weekends.
The second and polling question is, for everyone that is interested in a more "primer"-esque resource, would it be beneficial to turn this thread into that resource, or would the discussion be better served with a clean slate? The reason to ask is specifically, as you may have noticed, I am not able to post/update frequently. If this resource is desirable and the existing discussion in this thread is worthwhile (which I believe to be the case), then the first post will be reworked into a compilation of work from anyone who is experienced and able to put forward their contributions. This would likely be done in some other location/collaborative software so that everyone involved could create, submit, and review content. The final product from that would then be uploaded by me into the first post, and I would try to keep it up to date on at least a weekly basis.
This is a relatively new idea and how public/private the creation group will be is open to discussion. Please let me/us know your preferences and whether you'd be interested in putting together a given section of the deck/strategy/stack interactions. As most other Zada decks haven't had as much traffic, I anticipate that we could cover most or all of the variations between storm and midrange with packages from goblin to arcane or toughness.
With the additions of otherworldly outburst and Distemper of the Blood to replace some of the permanents/goblin only pump, I've been exploring retooling the pump list to allow for finally cutting balduvian rage and even getting another cantrip by slotting in zap and flare, which is a big deal.
It may not be the best enabler, but it can be intermittently explosive with it's namesake.
I may have had 2-3 cards that ramped, and a large number of high cost creatures/removal.
It was all in on a concept, a habit I keep to this day.
Take this with appropriate quantity of salt as this is nor the rulings subforum and I am not a judge.
I don't think so, No. Darksteel citadel would lose indestructible because it doesn't have a modification to gain indestructible. Effectively, humility takes away everything that is not granted by a modifier, as it does not apply in the applicable layers and allow timestamps to take effect. This actually includes removing the ability to activate other abilities (including tapping for mana) once the lands are creatures, and therefore impacted by humility.
EDIT: to the second question, there is a layer that applies power and toughness modifying effects. Both the animation of the land and humility create said modifications, and they take effect in timestamp order. Simply, humility applies, then the Genju modifier applies and the result is 8/12.