Hello. Bit of an odd question: let's say I have a Mizzix of the Izmagnus on the field, and I have 5 experience counters. I want to cast Repeal on a Lotus Petal to up my storm count. Can I do this? Mizzix does not appear to be optional, and Repeal requires a specific cost for X, so it seems I'd be locked out of casting repeal on anything <cmc5 in this situation.
Out of Shadows of Innistrad so far, I personally am loving Odric, Lunarch Marshal and Sigarda, Heron's Grace with the caveat that I'm playing a more timmy-based multiplayer deck who's mantra is "there's no kill like overkill." So, I don't think my opinion matters that much in the 1v1 context. I just wanted to pop in and say, while it's hideously uncompetitive, there's something so satisfying about a mass swing with Dromoka, Norn, Akroma, Odric, Avacyn, Newlamog, and Vorinclex.
From my perspective, my meta knows to kill Sisay on sight, so I often have to run cards like Privileged Position and Steely Resolve to make sure she at least has a chance. New Sigarda is good at throwing another blockade in the way while I ramp up to perform the aforementioned red zone insanity. Personally I run both because they do different things: Newgarda is good at protecting a surprisingly human dense midrange base, but Oldgarda is good at stopping random multiplayer shenanigans like All is Dust or annihilator. Also, I've had good experience with Odric as, at the very least, he's not blocked by Teeg like Akroma's Memorial and the lifelink transfer can be very swingy. He's cheaper than the Memorial as well and, it took me a while to realize this, transfers Haste whenever anyone is wearing Swiftfoot Boots or Lightning Greaves which is amazing.
I have a bit of a complicated rulings situation. Short version: for reasons of sanity (and insanity), my playgroup has multiple Nekusar, the Mindrazer decks that are restricted (and therefore part of an incredibly weird, inbred meta) to "Nekusar only" games where there are 3-5 Nekusar decks in a single pod. The benefit is these games tend to be fast and don't muck up otherwise "civilized" EDH games. The downside is there are very... very complicated plays sometimes.
We've been playing a certain way, but I'm not sure it's correct. Key to this entire scenario is the APNAP trigger stack/resolve, to the best of my understanding, which ultimately determines who lives, dies, and is killed before getting to do anything. I think it's easier to start with a simplified scenario:
There are three Nekusar decks in play, each with their own Nekusar, the Mindrazer active on the field, henceforth called Players 1, 2, & 3. For the purposes of this scenario, we assume no one has any responses and adequate mana is available. No other cards will factor into this play. All players are at 14 life.
Player 1 is the active player. Turn order goes Player 1 > Player 2 > Player 3. Player 1 casts Time Spiral, and this resolves. Each player shuffles accordingly and draws 7 cards. No other plays are made. All Nekusar triggers go on the stack.
Player 1's 7 Nekusar damaging triggers go on the stack first. As the active player, Player 1's triggers will be the last to resolve.
Player 2's 7 Nekusar damaging triggers go on the stack second, according to turn order. Player 2's triggers will be middle to resolve.
Player 3's 7 Nekusar damaging triggers go on the stack last, according to turn order. Player 3's triggers will resolve first according to APNAP sequence.
Player 3's 7 damage triggers sequentially first, damaging players 1 and 2 down to 7 life. Player 3 remains at 14 life.
Player 2's 7 damage triggers sequentially second, damaging player 1 down to 0 life and player 3 down to 7 life. Player 2 remains at 7 life.
Player 1's state is checked and sees that Player 1 has taken lethal damage. Player 1 and all active, stacked effects are removed from the game.
Stack is concluded with players 2 and 3 at 7 life and proceed with the game. Player 1 has been eliminated.
Is this correct or is everyone dead? Basically, are all of player 1's triggers removed upon state check, resulting in the game proceeding without player 1, or do they resolve regardless of that player's state, resulting in an effective "everyone dies" scenario?
Hey Riley, I was just curious how 38 lands + ramp has been treating you. I've been trying to find a slot for my recently acquired Loyal Retainers, and if I can afford to cut an unneeded land (I'm running 39 + 11 ramp effects), I'd rather do that.
Also, how has Ulvenwald Tracker been working out? What about the ETBT manlands?
Finally, I'd like to say that I've recently become a convert to Birthing Pod. Even though it's blocked by Teeg, my one time testing it has been amazing: Rofellos > Harmonic Sliver > Ranger of Eos > Revillark > Sun Titan made me a believer.
Hey Riley, listened to you on CommanderCast, so just wanted to say wooooooooo I guess.
Also, I'm curious about some of your card decisions between now and back in the June-ish build. I'm curious why you decided on Congregation at Dawn when you spoke so badly about it in earlier posts. Did you decide that it was good after all or was it more "I'll take any and all tutors I can get?" mentality?
Also, your earlier builds ran the following cards, and I was wondering why they're not in your current build:
-Benevolent Bodyguard
-Reveillark (I think you were running this, or maybe I was mistaken)
-Grand Abolisher
-Fiend Hunter
-Phyrexian Revoker
Still following your thread from time to time, though I don't contribute much since, well, I don't play in 1v1 MTG, but it's always nice to get some new ideas from. Keep up the good work!
Mwahahaha. I think it's a sign that your Norin has "come of age" when your friends look at the deck you're playing and say "I don't want to play, anymore."
I mean I didn't win a single match, but I never had so much fun losing.
Highlight of the night:
"YAWGMOTH'S WILL oh wait..."
(flips coin 'cause Planar Chaos is out)
DAMMIT
"That's okay, Regrowth"
DAMMIT
Gaka, I've been wanting to build this deck for a while now, and the opportunity finally came around when I dismantled my awful Jor-Kadeen deck for it.
And, not to blatantly stroke your ego or anything, but the deck is brilliant.
It's one of those hilarious decks that's kind of a sleeper; just looking at the decklist would not fill your average, unknowing victim person with complete and utter, unmitigated terror. But the synergy, my God, just a playtest with only HALF of your decklist in place (the rest filled with random red goodstuff) was enough to make me a believer. Getting a chance to see your careful analysis in your primer made me realize all these intensely subtle interactions and card selection choices that I hadn't even considered, and every day playing the deck is like Christmas.
As someone who has a Savra deck and has been working on her fairly recently, I can give some advice based on my own experiences.
As has been mentioned before, I do have to reaffirm the statement that you need a good deal of sac outlets as she doesn't enable herself. In a sense, your deck needs to support the general, rather than the other way around for more obvious generals (i.e. Uril the Miststalker). With that said, I'd also encourage you to focus more on the cheaper and more effective sac outlets. Something like Phyrexian Plaguelord or the aforementioned Hell's Caretaker are good options, whereas other things like Drooling Groodion might be cards you want to avoid simply because the mana cost is too prohibitive whereas other cards like Cateran Overlord are obviously not viable due to their sac effects not doing anything relevant most of the time. Some of my favorites are Carrion Feeder and Bloodflow Connoisseur, but I've seen people run cards like Vampire Aristocrat, Flesh-Eater Imp, Bloodthrone Vampire, or Fallen Angel which are not bad, but I don't prefer them due to how temporary their effects are.
The strength of Savra is dependent entirely on the deck. If you have a weak deck, Savra will crumple. If your deck is strong, Savra will do well.
Due to the obvious themes that Savra suggests, you'll want to stock up heavily on creature recursion effects (preferably repeatable ones like Genesis, Phyrexian Reclamation, or the oh-so synergistic Malevolent Awakening), as well as make a good chunk of your deck creatures in general. If you can find a creature-based option, I'd suggest going for that instead of the creatureless whenever reasonably possible. In other words, go with Shriekmaw instead of Doom Blade or Farhaven Elf instead of Far Wanderings, or say Bloodhusk Ritualist instead of Mind Shatter or Graveborn Muse instead of Phyrexian Arena. Things like that. I'd recommend about 30+ creatures in your deck at minimum. Of course there will be obvious exceptions to which there are no creature-based options, but their overall power outweighs the loss of synergy (Necropotence, Genesis Wave, etc).
Due to Savra's life cost in enabling the Grave Pact effect, as well as black's tendency to demand life for your card-draw effects, I'd focus no small amount of your deck towards synergistic life gain effects which enable your overall strategy while at the same time keeping you alive. It's all too easy to nickel-and-dime your life total until you find yourself in single-digits and well within kill range. Cards like Miren, the Moaning Well and Disciple of Griselbrand or Gutless Ghoul are cards that further you towards your overall strategy while keeping you out of death range from a random Karrthus, Tyrant of Jund to the face. Synergistic cards that feed off your overall strategy, like Sangromancer or Deathgreeter are also good options. Also, there are plenty of cards that can be lopsided to your advantage, like Braids, Cabal Minion that you should always keep an eye open for.
Generally, don't play Savra unless you can use her immediately and she will have an immediate impact. This sounds obvious but is a lot harder to remember in gameplay. If she won't do anything RIGHT NOW, it might be better to hold off.
Savra shines well against creature-based decks but does progressively worse the less dependent your opponents' deck is on creatures. Due to this, mass sweepers are generally not as important for you as they would be for other decks (if you do it right, no one can keep their creatures around for too long, anyway). Those you do run will want to be versatile (Pernicious Deed against non-creature permanents, and you'll always want to watch out for the mass token dumps like Storm Herd or White Sun's Zenith. Generally, token decks will be problematic for you, along with anyone running Tajuru Preserver / Sigarda, Host of Herons the latter of which practically shuts off our entire deck strategy... which sucks, but oh well.
I was thinking that was the case, but I was curious if anyone had any insights. I guess Lyzolda was just a bad choice to begin with.
EDIT: You saying Counterbalance just reminded me of this one small, legacy tournament I won at a local card shop some years back. They were good decks for the time, make no mistake (Madness/Threshhold, Ichorid/Bridge, Countertop), but I managed to win it because my traditional white-blue control deck was... well, no one expected it. I distinctly remember the countertop guy staring blankly at my Return to Dust and asking aloud "do I even have anything in my deck that costs 4?" This edit was unimportant; I'm just old and like to reminisce.
I apologize in advance if this has been asked before in this thread, but it was a question that I'd been wondering and was curious if any of the more competitive, experienced people have any experience on the matter. The question is basically the thread name in a more literal sense:
Can a "competitive" deck actually BEAT a "casual" deck in a game?
Now, with that said, let me qualify that question with some parameters: I'm not asking can a tuned, optimized Vendilion Clique beat a noob, semi-pauper Ib Halfheart, Goblin Tactician (or equally bad) deck. That's not even a question worth considering. The question I ask is far less obvious: in a developed, EDH, semi-competitive, multiplayer metagame where cards like Sol Ring, Necropotence, Mana Drain, and original dual lands etc. are both used and healthily respected, can a hyper-tuned, metagame defined deck like Edric, Spymaster of Trest or Geist of Saint Traft or Lyzolda the Bloodwitch have a favorable, or dare I doubt, plausible chance?
I ask because I was recently helping a friend who wanted to make a viable 1v1 deck for when my playgroup doesn't have the chance to get together into our big multiplayer formats (due to scheduling conflicts, family duties, work responsibilities, etc). I helped him tune up his Lyzolda deck with the cards he had available in an attempt to at least refine it in the right direction that would help make it a genuine threat. I took a cue from the 1v1 competitive Lyzolda primers and had him add some of the obviously good cards (i.e. Carnophage, Lightning Bolt, Anathemancer, Jackal Pup, etc), and we tested to see how it ran.
It was a disaster.
It could barely perform against my WORST deck, and against my better and best decks, it just rolled over and died. To put it bluntly, Seal of Fire and Smother does a whole lotta nothing when you're staring at a card as fat as Wickerbough Elder (hardly a tournament staple), and Inquisition of Kozilek stares helplessly at Damnation or even Akroma's Vengeance with nothing it can do. Even when we made some allowances for the variables of multiplayer EDH (i.e. Distress instead of the Inquisition, Victim of Night instead of Firebolt), it still just didn't work. It's opening was relatively solid, but after a while it just got steamrolled by the massive power that could be leveraged against it because it just. could. not. punch. through. 40. life.
I don't know if this is just a unique problem with Lyzolda in particular or whether it's a more endemic problem that wouldn't be solved with another general. Now there are probably some generals that would rofflestomp in either situation (do decently/well in a 1v1 french tourney or at the kitchen table), but I was just curious if anyone had any insights on that matter.
How does a French-rules, optimized, 30 life, 1v1 EDH deck fare against a power-built, multiplayer, casual rules built, 40 life EDH deck?
Wanted to say thanks for this thread; it's given me some great ideas on what to do for my own Niv Mizzet deck. I've been easing into it slowly (due more to skepticism than anything), and I've got to say that I'm pleasantly surprised by how much better the deck has gotten, just from a few small changes.
So kudos for all your work. I've found it very helpful!
Well, I can only speak from my own perspective, like you said.
Currently I swapped out Weathered Wayfarer for Sigarda. Maybe prime time would be the better idea. I guess I should test it out and see.
Honestly I think the elephant in the room is that Sisay just doesn't have access to blue or black and that white/green has, historically, been a really weak color combination. Can WotC print cards that will change this dynamic? Maybe, but I'm just not sure how much tweaking can be done since that stark fact will always sit there. Sure, Knight of the Reliquary and Fauna Shaman are great additions to the team, but do they stack up to Thoughtseize and Spell Snare? I don't know. I think just a simple, philosophical discussion the matter would be beneficial.
My favorite part was the final player, Karador, ended the game by giving a weak, perplexed "...what happened?"
From my perspective, my meta knows to kill Sisay on sight, so I often have to run cards like Privileged Position and Steely Resolve to make sure she at least has a chance. New Sigarda is good at throwing another blockade in the way while I ramp up to perform the aforementioned red zone insanity. Personally I run both because they do different things: Newgarda is good at protecting a surprisingly human dense midrange base, but Oldgarda is good at stopping random multiplayer shenanigans like All is Dust or annihilator. Also, I've had good experience with Odric as, at the very least, he's not blocked by Teeg like Akroma's Memorial and the lifelink transfer can be very swingy. He's cheaper than the Memorial as well and, it took me a while to realize this, transfers Haste whenever anyone is wearing Swiftfoot Boots or Lightning Greaves which is amazing.
*crickets*
I'll see myself out.
We've been playing a certain way, but I'm not sure it's correct. Key to this entire scenario is the APNAP trigger stack/resolve, to the best of my understanding, which ultimately determines who lives, dies, and is killed before getting to do anything. I think it's easier to start with a simplified scenario:
There are three Nekusar decks in play, each with their own Nekusar, the Mindrazer active on the field, henceforth called Players 1, 2, & 3. For the purposes of this scenario, we assume no one has any responses and adequate mana is available. No other cards will factor into this play. All players are at 14 life.
Player 1 is the active player. Turn order goes Player 1 > Player 2 > Player 3. Player 1 casts Time Spiral, and this resolves. Each player shuffles accordingly and draws 7 cards. No other plays are made. All Nekusar triggers go on the stack.
Player 1's 7 Nekusar damaging triggers go on the stack first. As the active player, Player 1's triggers will be the last to resolve.
Player 2's 7 Nekusar damaging triggers go on the stack second, according to turn order. Player 2's triggers will be middle to resolve.
Player 3's 7 Nekusar damaging triggers go on the stack last, according to turn order. Player 3's triggers will resolve first according to APNAP sequence.
Player 3's 7 damage triggers sequentially first, damaging players 1 and 2 down to 7 life. Player 3 remains at 14 life.
Player 2's 7 damage triggers sequentially second, damaging player 1 down to 0 life and player 3 down to 7 life. Player 2 remains at 7 life.
Player 1's state is checked and sees that Player 1 has taken lethal damage. Player 1 and all active, stacked effects are removed from the game.
Stack is concluded with players 2 and 3 at 7 life and proceed with the game. Player 1 has been eliminated.
Is this correct or is everyone dead? Basically, are all of player 1's triggers removed upon state check, resulting in the game proceeding without player 1, or do they resolve regardless of that player's state, resulting in an effective "everyone dies" scenario?
Also, how has Ulvenwald Tracker been working out? What about the ETBT manlands?
Finally, I'd like to say that I've recently become a convert to Birthing Pod. Even though it's blocked by Teeg, my one time testing it has been amazing: Rofellos > Harmonic Sliver > Ranger of Eos > Revillark > Sun Titan made me a believer.
Also, I'm curious about some of your card decisions between now and back in the June-ish build. I'm curious why you decided on Congregation at Dawn when you spoke so badly about it in earlier posts. Did you decide that it was good after all or was it more "I'll take any and all tutors I can get?" mentality?
Also, your earlier builds ran the following cards, and I was wondering why they're not in your current build:
-Benevolent Bodyguard
-Reveillark (I think you were running this, or maybe I was mistaken)
-Grand Abolisher
-Fiend Hunter
-Phyrexian Revoker
Still following your thread from time to time, though I don't contribute much since, well, I don't play in 1v1 MTG, but it's always nice to get some new ideas from. Keep up the good work!
I mean I didn't win a single match, but I never had so much fun losing.
Highlight of the night:
"YAWGMOTH'S WILL oh wait..."
(flips coin 'cause Planar Chaos is out)
DAMMIT
"That's okay, Regrowth"
DAMMIT
And, not to blatantly stroke your ego or anything, but the deck is brilliant.
It's one of those hilarious decks that's kind of a sleeper; just looking at the decklist would not fill your average, unknowing
victimperson with complete and utter, unmitigated terror. But the synergy, my God, just a playtest with only HALF of your decklist in place (the rest filled with random red goodstuff) was enough to make me a believer. Getting a chance to see your careful analysis in your primer made me realize all these intensely subtle interactions and card selection choices that I hadn't even considered, and every day playing the deck is like Christmas.I feel like such a hack putting in worthless garbage like Crimson Hellkite and Akroma, Angel of Fury.
One of my friends who has a mono-red "chaos" deck (Squee) looked it through and generally came out with a "meh, it's alright."
The fool even gave me a Beetleback Chief and Warp World. The poor, poor fool.
However, I'm going to have to curse you. My wallet is very angry at you.
That is all.
As has been mentioned before, I do have to reaffirm the statement that you need a good deal of sac outlets as she doesn't enable herself. In a sense, your deck needs to support the general, rather than the other way around for more obvious generals (i.e. Uril the Miststalker). With that said, I'd also encourage you to focus more on the cheaper and more effective sac outlets. Something like Phyrexian Plaguelord or the aforementioned Hell's Caretaker are good options, whereas other things like Drooling Groodion might be cards you want to avoid simply because the mana cost is too prohibitive whereas other cards like Cateran Overlord are obviously not viable due to their sac effects not doing anything relevant most of the time. Some of my favorites are Carrion Feeder and Bloodflow Connoisseur, but I've seen people run cards like Vampire Aristocrat, Flesh-Eater Imp, Bloodthrone Vampire, or Fallen Angel which are not bad, but I don't prefer them due to how temporary their effects are.
The strength of Savra is dependent entirely on the deck. If you have a weak deck, Savra will crumple. If your deck is strong, Savra will do well.
Due to the obvious themes that Savra suggests, you'll want to stock up heavily on creature recursion effects (preferably repeatable ones like Genesis, Phyrexian Reclamation, or the oh-so synergistic Malevolent Awakening), as well as make a good chunk of your deck creatures in general. If you can find a creature-based option, I'd suggest going for that instead of the creatureless whenever reasonably possible. In other words, go with Shriekmaw instead of Doom Blade or Farhaven Elf instead of Far Wanderings, or say Bloodhusk Ritualist instead of Mind Shatter or Graveborn Muse instead of Phyrexian Arena. Things like that. I'd recommend about 30+ creatures in your deck at minimum. Of course there will be obvious exceptions to which there are no creature-based options, but their overall power outweighs the loss of synergy (Necropotence, Genesis Wave, etc).
Due to Savra's life cost in enabling the Grave Pact effect, as well as black's tendency to demand life for your card-draw effects, I'd focus no small amount of your deck towards synergistic life gain effects which enable your overall strategy while at the same time keeping you alive. It's all too easy to nickel-and-dime your life total until you find yourself in single-digits and well within kill range. Cards like Miren, the Moaning Well and Disciple of Griselbrand or Gutless Ghoul are cards that further you towards your overall strategy while keeping you out of death range from a random Karrthus, Tyrant of Jund to the face. Synergistic cards that feed off your overall strategy, like Sangromancer or Deathgreeter are also good options. Also, there are plenty of cards that can be lopsided to your advantage, like Braids, Cabal Minion that you should always keep an eye open for.
Generally, don't play Savra unless you can use her immediately and she will have an immediate impact. This sounds obvious but is a lot harder to remember in gameplay. If she won't do anything RIGHT NOW, it might be better to hold off.
Savra shines well against creature-based decks but does progressively worse the less dependent your opponents' deck is on creatures. Due to this, mass sweepers are generally not as important for you as they would be for other decks (if you do it right, no one can keep their creatures around for too long, anyway). Those you do run will want to be versatile (Pernicious Deed against non-creature permanents, and you'll always want to watch out for the mass token dumps like Storm Herd or White Sun's Zenith. Generally, token decks will be problematic for you, along with anyone running Tajuru Preserver / Sigarda, Host of Herons the latter of which practically shuts off our entire deck strategy... which sucks, but oh well.
Hope that helps.
Edit: elaboration
EDIT: You saying Counterbalance just reminded me of this one small, legacy tournament I won at a local card shop some years back. They were good decks for the time, make no mistake (Madness/Threshhold, Ichorid/Bridge, Countertop), but I managed to win it because my traditional white-blue control deck was... well, no one expected it. I distinctly remember the countertop guy staring blankly at my Return to Dust and asking aloud "do I even have anything in my deck that costs 4?" This edit was unimportant; I'm just old and like to reminisce.
Can a "competitive" deck actually BEAT a "casual" deck in a game?
Now, with that said, let me qualify that question with some parameters: I'm not asking can a tuned, optimized Vendilion Clique beat a noob, semi-pauper Ib Halfheart, Goblin Tactician (or equally bad) deck. That's not even a question worth considering. The question I ask is far less obvious: in a developed, EDH, semi-competitive, multiplayer metagame where cards like Sol Ring, Necropotence, Mana Drain, and original dual lands etc. are both used and healthily respected, can a hyper-tuned, metagame defined deck like Edric, Spymaster of Trest or Geist of Saint Traft or Lyzolda the Bloodwitch have a favorable, or dare I doubt, plausible chance?
I ask because I was recently helping a friend who wanted to make a viable 1v1 deck for when my playgroup doesn't have the chance to get together into our big multiplayer formats (due to scheduling conflicts, family duties, work responsibilities, etc). I helped him tune up his Lyzolda deck with the cards he had available in an attempt to at least refine it in the right direction that would help make it a genuine threat. I took a cue from the 1v1 competitive Lyzolda primers and had him add some of the obviously good cards (i.e. Carnophage, Lightning Bolt, Anathemancer, Jackal Pup, etc), and we tested to see how it ran.
It was a disaster.
It could barely perform against my WORST deck, and against my better and best decks, it just rolled over and died. To put it bluntly, Seal of Fire and Smother does a whole lotta nothing when you're staring at a card as fat as Wickerbough Elder (hardly a tournament staple), and Inquisition of Kozilek stares helplessly at Damnation or even Akroma's Vengeance with nothing it can do. Even when we made some allowances for the variables of multiplayer EDH (i.e. Distress instead of the Inquisition, Victim of Night instead of Firebolt), it still just didn't work. It's opening was relatively solid, but after a while it just got steamrolled by the massive power that could be leveraged against it because it just. could. not. punch. through. 40. life.
I don't know if this is just a unique problem with Lyzolda in particular or whether it's a more endemic problem that wouldn't be solved with another general. Now there are probably some generals that would rofflestomp in either situation (do decently/well in a 1v1 french tourney or at the kitchen table), but I was just curious if anyone had any insights on that matter.
How does a French-rules, optimized, 30 life, 1v1 EDH deck fare against a power-built, multiplayer, casual rules built, 40 life EDH deck?
So kudos for all your work. I've found it very helpful!
Currently I swapped out Weathered Wayfarer for Sigarda. Maybe prime time would be the better idea. I guess I should test it out and see.
Honestly I think the elephant in the room is that Sisay just doesn't have access to blue or black and that white/green has, historically, been a really weak color combination. Can WotC print cards that will change this dynamic? Maybe, but I'm just not sure how much tweaking can be done since that stark fact will always sit there. Sure, Knight of the Reliquary and Fauna Shaman are great additions to the team, but do they stack up to Thoughtseize and Spell Snare? I don't know. I think just a simple, philosophical discussion the matter would be beneficial.
Random ideas that came to mind:
Drop of Honey/Porphyry Nodes (they get around protection/shroud/hexproof...)
Ghostly Prison and/or Windborn Muse
And random jank:
Icatian Javelineers
Freyalise Supplicant
Planar Collapse
Hornet Sting
Last Breath
Reprisal