Oh, I'm jealous! I've stolen planewalkers prepped to ult before, but I've never ulted a Karn. That's sweet!
I've thought about the Velis Vel cards. Blades of Velis Vel would be the likely pick as it plays with Precursor Golem in 2 ways (making things golems but also I can pick one golem target and make my golems all bigger) but also make creatures bigger for Warstorm Surge, and Vanish Into Memory. I was thinking of them recently too because having a tribal spell for Aminatou's Augury would be neat.
Incidental mill doesn't do much for me. Something old and weird like Kyren Negotiations would be better at just ending the game, but ideally I'd like a card that does more than just end the game. I was looking at Soulherder from MH1 as something that both acts as a 4th card and potentially gives me incremental value with my etb creatures, but in testing it was a dead card as often as most combo pieces are while also not ending the game in the combo it was chosen for. The most fun I've had with things that trigger off of infinite Sakashima Sphere have been the constellation spells, Skybind and Forgeborn Oreads. The red one pings everyone to death in the combo, but also can situationally ping away creatures and plaenswalkers over the course of the game or draw cards with Swans. Also, kinda interesting with Mirrorweave is a plus. "whenever an enchantment enters the battlefield under your control, destroy target creature for each 2 creatures you control." Skybind doesn't even approach being good as that fourth combo piece, it exiles any number of permanents until end of turn, but it's just a fun card to begin with. I'm fairly hopeful they'll revisit constellation at some point and maybe throw more options my way.
Oh wow, I just realized that a new website means I probably won't have to click subscribe exactly 3 times to find out when people comment in a thread. Sweet!
you are focusing on the hair while I am focusing on the fact she is half naked.
Well yeah, wearing less clothing isn't a questionable aesthetic decision, turning a character with fire for hair into one with pink hair is. If Chandra was like a nun or something, I would definitely be questioning why the artist gave her that outfit.
Not really. I find the anime promo chandra from the japanese Jace vs chandra adorable.
Oh yeah that card is adorable.
That card has always confused me. It's not as though they were trying to illustrate a younger Chandra like these new cards from before her hair was perpetually fire. They just decided for the anime version that it would be properly anime to make her hair pink instead of just made of fire. How is hair literally made of fire not anime enough?
I think you're misunderstanding my position. I don't think people who toss it random decks are wrong. I think almost everyone who plays it is wrong and very very few people who play it are actually assessing its quality in their deck correctly over playing an alternative card.
It's almost never excellent, and in very few situations it is pretty good. It will affect your chance of winning much less than playing any of a huge pile of other cards when it is drawn, ranging from spells that can replace lands (expedition map, for example) to better quality utility lands.
I don't believe that it "shines exceptionally" I believe that it sometimes is okay in some archetypes, and people are usually incorrectly assessing how good it is.
I think people are wildly bad at assessing how much it hurts them as well. It absolutely affects your mulligan percentage to a non-zero degree, as well as subsequent mana screw. I would not be at all surprised to see it lose more games than it wins overall (for most decks).
Edit: Hell, find me the most tuned deck with a reliquary tower and I'll give you 10 better things to play. The closest deck I can think of is Dirk's Phelddagrif deck and even in that I could completely take or leave it. I think his mana would be better with a UG canopy land in that slot and also it's just a better card.
You clearly take your rejection of Reliquary Tower as a point of pride, so I'm not going to make any headway here. If you'd like to jump over into Zedruu and try and suggest anything "better" for a deck that's played between 1 and 4 no maximum handsize effects for 8 years and is well acquainted with the impact of cutting one, you're welcome to try but you won't succeed.
You have to understand how foolish you look from my perspective. I've played with the card extensively, I know the floors and ceilings. It doesn't matter how many times you put the card down, I have the hands on experience that you're contradicting, I'm not just going to say "well, I guess that was a fever dream after all." I guess when it comes down to it, if you play a Reliquary Tower and it loses you more games than it wins, that means you built your deck wrong and that might not be the Tower's fault.
Used to see this card all the time, not so much lately. I'd say it was amazing back when the format was almost all fatties and boardwipes, but I don't want to oversell it.
It's Excellent in so few situations that it does a disservice to actually good cards to describe it that way
Here's what you're missing: there's no such thing as a "situationally excellent" magic card, at least not in a meaningful way. Most of the cards ever printed are perfect in some situations and useless in others. To be excellent in multiple situations at all is excellent period. Once again, I agree that people tossing it in decks because they think it's somehow good in a vacuum are wrong, but it's your job building a deck to make your cards reach that excellence. From my experience, Reliquary Tower can be used in decks in multiple archetypes where it shines exceptionally. You're trying to judge cards by what they do if you shove them in any random deck, demanding a card fit almost anywhere before you consider it good. There is no reason to care about how good a card is in decks that shouldn't play it, that's totally meaningless. You should evaluate cards by what they do in decks that are built in a way that maximize their potential.
Please go on tstorm. Tell me more about how reliquary tower is better at playing jin gitaxias than ancient tomb which by playing a signet on turn one is only helping get to 10 mana by a little but.
If you play reliquary tower over ancient tomb with a 10 mana general you are someone I disagree with.
If you play it over ancient tomb even with raff...well tomb creates a turn 3 raff on 3 lands and no other ramp so that's pretty alright.
Please come up with an actual single deck that wants reliquary tower over ancient tomb.
Edric is probably as close as it gets and the spikey edric decks have all cut reliquary because the deck is so color greedy. I could see it wanting neither.
Jin Gitaxias still isn't allowed to play signets, but that's beside the point.
I have Reliquary Tower in 2 decks. Zedruu, which is color hungry enough to often fizzle a second colorless (from when I played Sol Ring), has a pile of Howling Mines to break the symmetry on, tries to play everything at instant speed when possible, and often wins in turns that involve untapping my lands a couple dozen times making Ancient Tomb probably just stop producing mana at some point. The second deck I have is Taigam, Sidisi's Hand, my other deck that intends to play mostly on opponents turn, a relatively controlling deck. But it also has Mind's Eye and Null Profusion and Mind Over Matter in it, so yes, no maximum hand size is a seriously powerful effect there too.
I used to play Sasaya, Orochi Ascendant for a bit. There's a deck that seriously wouldn't care about Ancient Tomb, but got way easier to do its thing without a maximum hand size. On the subject of Kamigawa flip cards, Jushi Apprentice gets better. I had Hokori, Dust Drinker for a long time, and while that did have both Reliquary Tower and Ancient Tomb, I basically never wanted to draw Ancient Tomb after turns 1 and 2. I had a giant pile of artifact ramp in that deck and used my one land untap to get a white mana almost every time, and could go over 7 cards in hand for obvious reasons. (One of the most oppressive things about Hokori is that if people's only way of dealng with it is a board wipe, if it had Lightning Greaves on or something, you get to untap before that player, play out a bunch of cards real fast, and then recast Hokori.)
Do you seriously believe that these well thought out and tested uses of Reliquary Tower are wrong?
I'll gladly reconsider if you can list 100 reasons that are not aesthetic or budget related to put Reliquary tower in your deck over ancient tomb.
Situations are insufficient because "Opportunity to Turn 1 signet" beats 99 of the 100 gameplay situations.
If you can list 3 I would be very surprised.
There are 16 generals with flash, 2 of which can give half your deck flash, that you could build around playing on opponents' turns. That's a reason to not want to discard at your end step. Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur is one of those with flash. Can't play signets anyway, is that extra one mana toward your 10 drop going to outweigh losing most of those 7 cards a turn? Should I keep going?
tstorm, i like ya, you're good people, but you're alone on this mountaintop, man. Pokken is right, just because n00b players will sit with 20 cards in hand dragging out games because of their own decision paralysis doesn't mean Tower is a worthy slot. Bad cards do not make excuses that turn bad deck building and player skill into good. Again, hoarding cards in hand is a resource that is not being utilized in a meaningful way (see also, why Arc-Slogger is a good card or why Tainted Pact is a phenomenal tutour - because they provide an effect in exchange for a resource that is not actually iMPACTing the game), once you get beyond the max natural hand size (and even before that point, sometimes). And even then, your excess gluttony of resources is only protected until the first Wasteland comes up? Or Blood Moon. Still doesn't seem that safe of an investment when compared to the other options also vulnerable to the same level of disruption.
You know what's better? Tower of the Magistrate, and that is a card that is a nonbasic Wastes in nine of every ten games. But that one game where it's a difference maker, that one clutch play is better than any perceived benefit from R-Tower.
I know it breaks your heart to hear this, but not every deck is burn. There are many decks intended to outlast and outdraw your raw red efficiency that win the game with 7+ cards in hand.
No, we're not. It's a mediocre card that does an OK thing in some decks and is played a lot very incorrectly. In general people play way too many colorless lands in EDH and this do-nothing is stealthily costing people games by preventing them from casting their spells constantly.
While in an extremely casual meta people will sit by while someone durdles and holds a grip of 20 cards with a reliquary tower, that's not the type of thing that decent players let slide. You leave your board with low commitment you're the punching bag and you've got to start spending those cards to survive.
Almost everyone would be better off cutting it for either another color source or a better colorless land. I would go so far as to say these days that that is probably true of all decks, but that's just my opinion - there're so many dang things you can play in the colorless slot these days. It'd be a really good idea to re-assess.
Back when I was a new player and I played with new players, games went 50 turns with everyone durdling and spinning around doing nothing. But games just do not go that long anymore and people have stopped refusing to attack, so games go faster. As such it's a rare meta that gets to sit around amassing cards like that. And if you pass the turn with 20 cards you're rightly going to be public enemy #1.
----------------------------------
At the most fundamental level, if your deck has Reliquary tower but does not have Ancient Tomb you are wrong. And that's a pretty comical number of decks, even with AT being reprinted and fairly cheap.
So if you have reliquary tower and not one of those three you're just making a bad decision. It's fine, people make lots of questionable deckbuilding decisions for a variety of reasons and that's totally OK (budget, preference, etc.).
But defending it and calling it "excellent" is just not a very good assessment in my opinion. It's OK at best.
Please, reconsider everything you just said. I've certainly acknowledged there are people who play it in decks where it's not a good inclusion, perhaps referring to people as just "wrong" is a tad further than you want to go.
If you need me to list 100 situations where Reliquary Tower is playable over Ancient Tomb, I can do that. If you want me to list 10,000 situations where it generates more interesting gameplay than Ancient Tomb, that's not even a challenge.
I pronounce Brion Stoutarm as "bree-on" and everyone else I know calls him Brian.
You are wrong, I hope you know that. A lot, a lot of Magic names are either derivative of or actually factually real world names. I'm certainly not going to hold one name against you, but I've been in arguments with people who stare at even the most normal name and insist on making it seem more fantasy out of some misplaced belief that Magic characters can't have normal names. To this day, I don't actually know if "Alesha" is supposed to be read the same as "Alicia", but I have some friends who get a snarky message every time they print something like "Judith".
Reliquary Tower is an excellent card. Plenty of decks draw too many cards, and even more are rewarded for building a critical mass of resources safely in hand rather than play out into the format with 1000 board wipes a game and very few Thoughtseizes. I think anyone suggesting it isn't an excellent card is overcompensating to counterbalance the people who thoughtlessly throw it into any deck, and I don't think that's a particularly productive viewpoint.
The Haunt of Hightower gets bigger every time a card is put into your opponent's graveyard from anywhere. That's right, from anywhere. Creature dies? +1/+1. Discard or mill? +1/+1. Opponent plays Ponder? +1/+1. Opponent plays Pull from Eternity on themselves? +2/+2. This is the way I always wished Patron of the Nezumi would trigger, since the rats were like low maximum hand size discard spell stuff, but now I'm getting distracted. The point is, The Haunt can get very very big if your opponents don't kill it, it might even have like... uhhh... 21 power? Who knows!
I've thought about the Velis Vel cards. Blades of Velis Vel would be the likely pick as it plays with Precursor Golem in 2 ways (making things golems but also I can pick one golem target and make my golems all bigger) but also make creatures bigger for Warstorm Surge, and Vanish Into Memory. I was thinking of them recently too because having a tribal spell for Aminatou's Augury would be neat.
Incidental mill doesn't do much for me. Something old and weird like Kyren Negotiations would be better at just ending the game, but ideally I'd like a card that does more than just end the game. I was looking at Soulherder from MH1 as something that both acts as a 4th card and potentially gives me incremental value with my etb creatures, but in testing it was a dead card as often as most combo pieces are while also not ending the game in the combo it was chosen for. The most fun I've had with things that trigger off of infinite Sakashima Sphere have been the constellation spells, Skybind and Forgeborn Oreads. The red one pings everyone to death in the combo, but also can situationally ping away creatures and plaenswalkers over the course of the game or draw cards with Swans. Also, kinda interesting with Mirrorweave is a plus. "whenever an enchantment enters the battlefield under your control, destroy target creature for each 2 creatures you control." Skybind doesn't even approach being good as that fourth combo piece, it exiles any number of permanents until end of turn, but it's just a fun card to begin with. I'm fairly hopeful they'll revisit constellation at some point and maybe throw more options my way.
Says you.
Well yeah, wearing less clothing isn't a questionable aesthetic decision, turning a character with fire for hair into one with pink hair is. If Chandra was like a nun or something, I would definitely be questioning why the artist gave her that outfit.
That card has always confused me. It's not as though they were trying to illustrate a younger Chandra like these new cards from before her hair was perpetually fire. They just decided for the anime version that it would be properly anime to make her hair pink instead of just made of fire. How is hair literally made of fire not anime enough?
Yesterday's graveyard recursion was slow accumulated value. Today's is obscenity all at once. Yes, I would like to sacrifice my Bloodghast for Spirit of the Night and Sheoldred, Whispering One
You clearly take your rejection of Reliquary Tower as a point of pride, so I'm not going to make any headway here. If you'd like to jump over into Zedruu and try and suggest anything "better" for a deck that's played between 1 and 4 no maximum handsize effects for 8 years and is well acquainted with the impact of cutting one, you're welcome to try but you won't succeed.
You have to understand how foolish you look from my perspective. I've played with the card extensively, I know the floors and ceilings. It doesn't matter how many times you put the card down, I have the hands on experience that you're contradicting, I'm not just going to say "well, I guess that was a fever dream after all." I guess when it comes down to it, if you play a Reliquary Tower and it loses you more games than it wins, that means you built your deck wrong and that might not be the Tower's fault.
Used to see this card all the time, not so much lately. I'd say it was amazing back when the format was almost all fatties and boardwipes, but I don't want to oversell it.
Here's what you're missing: there's no such thing as a "situationally excellent" magic card, at least not in a meaningful way. Most of the cards ever printed are perfect in some situations and useless in others. To be excellent in multiple situations at all is excellent period. Once again, I agree that people tossing it in decks because they think it's somehow good in a vacuum are wrong, but it's your job building a deck to make your cards reach that excellence. From my experience, Reliquary Tower can be used in decks in multiple archetypes where it shines exceptionally. You're trying to judge cards by what they do if you shove them in any random deck, demanding a card fit almost anywhere before you consider it good. There is no reason to care about how good a card is in decks that shouldn't play it, that's totally meaningless. You should evaluate cards by what they do in decks that are built in a way that maximize their potential.
Jin Gitaxias still isn't allowed to play signets, but that's beside the point.
I have Reliquary Tower in 2 decks. Zedruu, which is color hungry enough to often fizzle a second colorless (from when I played Sol Ring), has a pile of Howling Mines to break the symmetry on, tries to play everything at instant speed when possible, and often wins in turns that involve untapping my lands a couple dozen times making Ancient Tomb probably just stop producing mana at some point. The second deck I have is Taigam, Sidisi's Hand, my other deck that intends to play mostly on opponents turn, a relatively controlling deck. But it also has Mind's Eye and Null Profusion and Mind Over Matter in it, so yes, no maximum hand size is a seriously powerful effect there too.
I used to play Sasaya, Orochi Ascendant for a bit. There's a deck that seriously wouldn't care about Ancient Tomb, but got way easier to do its thing without a maximum hand size. On the subject of Kamigawa flip cards, Jushi Apprentice gets better. I had Hokori, Dust Drinker for a long time, and while that did have both Reliquary Tower and Ancient Tomb, I basically never wanted to draw Ancient Tomb after turns 1 and 2. I had a giant pile of artifact ramp in that deck and used my one land untap to get a white mana almost every time, and could go over 7 cards in hand for obvious reasons. (One of the most oppressive things about Hokori is that if people's only way of dealng with it is a board wipe, if it had Lightning Greaves on or something, you get to untap before that player, play out a bunch of cards real fast, and then recast Hokori.)
Do you seriously believe that these well thought out and tested uses of Reliquary Tower are wrong?
There are 16 generals with flash, 2 of which can give half your deck flash, that you could build around playing on opponents' turns. That's a reason to not want to discard at your end step. Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur is one of those with flash. Can't play signets anyway, is that extra one mana toward your 10 drop going to outweigh losing most of those 7 cards a turn? Should I keep going?
I know it breaks your heart to hear this, but not every deck is burn. There are many decks intended to outlast and outdraw your raw red efficiency that win the game with 7+ cards in hand.
Please, reconsider everything you just said. I've certainly acknowledged there are people who play it in decks where it's not a good inclusion, perhaps referring to people as just "wrong" is a tad further than you want to go.
If you need me to list 100 situations where Reliquary Tower is playable over Ancient Tomb, I can do that. If you want me to list 10,000 situations where it generates more interesting gameplay than Ancient Tomb, that's not even a challenge.
You are wrong, I hope you know that. A lot, a lot of Magic names are either derivative of or actually factually real world names. I'm certainly not going to hold one name against you, but I've been in arguments with people who stare at even the most normal name and insist on making it seem more fantasy out of some misplaced belief that Magic characters can't have normal names. To this day, I don't actually know if "Alesha" is supposed to be read the same as "Alicia", but I have some friends who get a snarky message every time they print something like "Judith".
Hazzenko: From the Shadows Comes the Haunt of Hightower
The Haunt of Hightower gets bigger every time a card is put into your opponent's graveyard from anywhere. That's right, from anywhere. Creature dies? +1/+1. Discard or mill? +1/+1. Opponent plays Ponder? +1/+1. Opponent plays Pull from Eternity on themselves? +2/+2. This is the way I always wished Patron of the Nezumi would trigger, since the rats were like low maximum hand size discard spell stuff, but now I'm getting distracted. The point is, The Haunt can get very very big if your opponents don't kill it, it might even have like... uhhh... 21 power? Who knows!