Strixhaven, Episode 1: Week 1 Previews
It’s Recruitment Week at Strixhaven University and the previews are coming fast and furious. New double face cards, a cycle of Elder Dragons, turn 2 kills with “super-prowess,” and a mechanic that tutors from the sideboard are just some of the early highlights. There’s plenty of juicy cards to brew around, so let’s dive in!
The remaining installments in this series can be found here:
Brewer’s Guide to Strixhaven, Part 2: Instants and Sorceries
Brewer’s Guide to Strixhaven, Part 3: Creatures and MDFCs
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
At a Glance: Cards Discussed in Part 1
Rowan, Scholar of Sparks / Will, Scholar of Frost
Shaile, Dean of Radiance / Embrose, Dean of Shadow
Plargg, Dean of Chaos / Augusta, Dean of Order
Valentin, Dean of the Vein / Lisette, Dean of the Root
Torrent Sculptor / Flamethrower Sonata
Clever Lumimancer
Dragonsguard Elite
Quandrix Apprentice
Witherbloom Apprentice
Lessons + Learn
Professor of Symbology
Elite Spellbinder
Rip Apart
Venerable Warsinger
Shadrix Silverquill
Galazeth Prismari
Tanazir Quandrix
Velomachus Lorehold
Strict Proctor
Blade Historian
Quintorius, Field Historian
Hofri Ghostforge
Thrilling Discovery
Go Blank
Curate
Flamescroll Celebrant / Revel in Silence
New: Full Episode Transcript!
Automated transcripts are not 100% accurate. Please use this transcript only for cursory reference. If you need to quote any of our content, please contact us.
Daniel Schriever: [00:00:00] You are listening to Faithless Brewing, a magic, the gathering podcast for the rogue deck builder. Each week we design new decks in modern and pioneer. We put our creations to the test and share our findings on the air. Today. We present part one Nabar brewers guide to Strix Haven. Can you look at May’s craft the lesson mechanic and the most exciting previews from week one? That’s all coming up on episode one StrixHaven season. Thanks for listening and enjoy the show.
David Robertson: [00:01:01] hello and welcome to the Faithless brewing podcast. I am David Robertson joined by Damon Alexander. Dan what’s up?
Damon Alexander: [00:01:08] Hey, I just finished reading Marie Kondo’s the life-changing magic of tidying up and she’s not talking about her favorite card game. So just came back from Goodwill half year dropping off two big bags.
David Robertson: [00:01:19] Excellent. And we are joined as always by the CEO of the fastest ruin podcast. It is Dan Schriever. He is caved in online, Dan what’s up.
Daniel Schriever: [00:01:28] Hey, I’m doing well, Damon. I think you’re like a year late to the tidying up trend. That was huge. Like when COVID first started.
Damon Alexander: [00:01:37] Yeah, I know. I mean, it’s kind of a eternal art form though.
Isn’t it really just making sure all your possessions sparked joy. Everything has a little place in your home.
Daniel Schriever: [00:01:46] I thought you were going to say you found a copy of the book at Goodwill and like brought up.
Damon Alexander: [00:01:52] No, I paid full retail for this thing.
Daniel Schriever: [00:01:55] Okay. The Netflix series is good. Yeah.
Damon Alexander: [00:01:58] The book is actually really good.
I’d recommend it to anybody who, you know, has any hoarding problems. I sometimes fall prey to this and I’m like, of course I’ll still wear my old UCLA sweatshirt. It’s great. I wear it all the time. I wore it two years ago.
Daniel Schriever: [00:02:11] Yeah. And it’s a huge topic, especially for collectors as magic. The gathering players typically are, what do we do with these boxes of old cards?
I wasn’t expecting you to leave with this statement. Honestly, I’m feeling all these feelings now that I buried and what a mess. Yeah.
Damon Alexander: [00:02:27] I just had a process, my childhood magic collection, actually, which I had carefully alphabetized
Daniel Schriever: [00:02:33] did the Gaea’s Cradle spark joy.
Damon Alexander: [00:02:35] It did actually. I managed to salvage those out of my collection a while ago.
Cause they were in a binder and I needed them for a legacy. But then I just had like just boxes of things that were not in the binder, you know, general whatever from Ice Age is worth $10 now,
Daniel Schriever: [00:02:50] Damon finance editor again. Well speaking of keeping things tidy and maybe we should get our housekeeping out of the way at the top because we got a big episode today.
David Robertson: [00:02:59] So a big welcome to our newest patrons, Joshua E and Zachary B and a thank you to Soren w who has increased their pledge. Just a quick reminder that you can support us@patrion.com backslash faithless brewing, and that we are now releasing episodes twice per week shooting for Friday and Sunday. You should be hopefully hearing this on a Friday.
This is the first official spoiler week for Strixhaven and a as Dan and tomato. We’ve got a ton of different cards to talk about today.
Daniel Schriever: [00:03:31] Yeah, we’re recording this on, I think day two of theStrixhaven recruitment week. So we’ve seen, I don’t know what 40% of the set does that sound about, right.
Damon Alexander: [00:03:41] Yeah, something like that.
So what is Strixhaven? Well, first off it’s a new magic, a release with 275 cards. There’s also a mystical archive with 63 additions to show up in the booster packs, but those are historic legal. They don’t really affect our formats. We’ll discuss those a bit. In the next episode, I going back to Strixhaven itself, or this represents a plane full of learning and college and studying all night and learning lessons.
There are five colleges in this world. The first is Lorehold, also known as Boros, a red, white, and they major in archeology. And they’ve got a spirits going on three, two spirits. This time, Prismari is blue, red theater and arts as usual. It isn’t is it, you know, spells matters type of Guild.
Quandrix is green, blue. And the major in that field is math. And I don’t think we really know too much about what is up with the summit cards just yet. Witherbloom is black green for the biological sciences looking to do typical gold garri things with a new type of insect soakin that they get a lot of.
And then lastly, we have Silverquill, white, black, and they focus on rhetoric.
Daniel Schriever: [00:04:49] So a world-building question for both of you, gentlemen, do you think this is a sign that magic is trying to appeal to like the youths echoes of like Wizarding school, Harry Potter, or conversely, is this supposed to be like magic a player base has gotten so old that we’re all now reminiscing and fondly about our college campus days?
Damon Alexander: [00:05:06] I think it’s probably a little of both. I mean, this is when it comes to this whole extended universe business. This is the way I kind of, I imagined wizards doing this in the future where they pick a kind of a common fantasy or fictional realm that is not currently part of magic, uh, such as Harry Potter, and then find a way to create it, but in a magic flavor versus just like actually having like Godzilla cards or Harry Potter himself, you know, like a Simic legend and mythic rare.
Daniel Schriever: [00:05:32] Well, that’s the way they always used to do it. And now they’re saying with universities beyond, they want the ability to more freely broker an IP crossover. Although I guess if they had a plan so that he went with Harry Potter, those plans have, I think been canceled.
David Robertson: [00:05:46] Yeah. I mean, it just feels like Ravnica with a new skin on it. The world building and magic is embarrassingly facile. All this stuff is just preposterous that people care about who is dating, who, or which planes walkers are going to come back as honestly, makes me embarrassed to be a magic fan.
Daniel Schriever: [00:06:04] Strongly disagree with you, David. I think I strongly disagree caring about the lore and the stuff that’s part of what makes the game so rich and fun.
I think it would be a better show if they had more focus on who was dating, whom like a little bit of like crossover with the bachelor, for example, that that would not be out of place. They’re just not leading into it. Hard enough. I think part of what you’re saying is that it feels a little bit like.
Even, they don’t believe it some of the time, like they, they tried out the tropes and a little bit of story, but it’s like, they don’t really own it enough beyond like a trailer video or something.
David Robertson: [00:06:34] Well, they should have abandoned the game and just create a reality show is what I’m hearing. It seems like the next move for wizards of the coast.
Daniel Schriever: [00:06:40] I got a lot of ideas along these lines. I mean, if anyone wants to talk about it, I’m happy to talk.
Damon Alexander: [00:06:46] I feel players are now invited to the first season as a rivals buyout for the second season,
David Robertson: [00:06:54] for the lowest rated season of the bachelor of all time.
Damon Alexander: [00:06:58] Dave, I love the heartache. I actually agree with that.
Yeah. This is one of the areas that magic, I think excels in the form of world-building both in the art direction and the art style too. I don’t really read the books too much, but I know people who do and they all seem to enjoy them. I just reread magic arena. The book from back in revise, I just read it over and over again, honestly, but then also like the way they map these mechanics from worlds that are not part of magic’s Pantheon before these sets and they map them into card mechanics in a way that I think they generally really kind of knock out of the park and it’s a lot harder than it sounds.
So back to strict Haven, then mechanics of the set are the following. First off we have MDF CS are returning the modal dual face cards that we all know and love, or perhaps hate and paper. If we ever play that again, they seem to be actually every set. Now, I don’t know exactly how we have a new mechanic or maybe just a relabeling of an old mechanic in the form of Magecraft, which is a kind of key word for whenever you Castro copying instant or sorcery spells, something happens depending on the major who’s crafting.
You have a new evergreen keyword, uh, known as the frost Titan itis, or actually the real there is ward. So the one I’ve seen so far as ward to ward makes it so that things targeting the warded creature or press permanent. I get countered unless the targeter pays the ward cost. Then we have a new mechanic in the form of learning and lessons learn is a keyword that lets you either rummage where you discarded card, we’ll learn a card as you portray your textbooks and destroy them along the way.
Or you can reach to your sideboard for a lesson and pull the lesson and put in your hand. So it’s an interesting way to go up a card and perhaps the lessons are good enough. This could be really good. Or maybe the lessons are all bad. And this is more of like a limited thing where CyBorD slots basically come for free.
Daniel Schriever: [00:08:46] Yeah, learn. And lesson is the standout mechanic here. It’s so new and different and like potentially breaking the game kind of fascia. That reminds me a little bit of companion. Like, Oh no, we’re grabbing stuff from out of, out of non game zones. It’s also very parasitic. This will only work with cars that are printed in this set.
So we’re going to have to pay close attention to what all of the learning cards are and what all of the lesson cards are. But I’m sure we’ll, we’ll get to all of that in due time. So maybe at the quickest way to just get a feel for all this as a dive straight in. So let’s start off with some modal double face cards.
David, how about Rowan and will.
David Robertson: [00:09:22] All right. Rowan scholar of the sparks and will Scholar of frost is a two-sided Planeswalker Rowan scholar sparks his tuna red for a legendary Planeswalker Rowan. She says instant and sorcery spells you cast costs one cost less to cast. She starts with two loyalty. Plus one, she deals with one damage to each opponent.
If you have drawn three cards, this turn, she deals three. Instead, minus four, you get an emblem with whenever you cast an incident sources, you spell you a pay to Carlos manner. If you do, you may copy it and choose new targets will, is four and a blue for a legendary Planeswalker. Will he just like Rowan has a incident.
Sorcery spells you cast cost one Carlos, less to cast. He starts with for loyalty. He plus ones up to one target creature has base power and toughness equal to zero two until underturned minus three, draw two cards minus seven exile up to five target permanence for each permanent exile. This way its controller creates a four for blue and red elemental creature token.
Daniel Schriever: [00:10:25] So compared to a transformed Plains Walker, this actually gives you a pretty quick access to all of the abilities on either half. You just have to pay the appropriate men on three for everyone, five for will. That doesn’t mean this is an extremely versatile card. And yet when I look at the collection of these abilities, I don’t really want any of them, like I’m struggling to see which of these are the attractive abilities here.
Damon Alexander: [00:10:48] Yeah. Both his plans, walkers, remind me of the Planeswalker DEP cards. You know, these hits, you may have heard of like, Oko the trickster. As you try to Pithing Needle, your opponent’s Oko the four green blue version of Oko that actually all of his abilities, even though he costs twice as much are all worse than the real Oko email.
We have Mo Yan Ling a for blue blue for a five loyalty plans Walker with minus three, draw two cards, but she uptakes with plus two target hitter. Can’t be blocked. This turn. Trust me, that movie handling is not a very good
Daniel Schriever: [00:11:19] Planeswalker. So you’re saying this is intro deck Will and Rowan.
Damon Alexander: [00:11:23] I mean, the
MDFC aspect does perhaps help, you know, maybe handling I’ll always cost six manna, whereas your will cost first a five man, a second off, you know, and if you need to get a Rowan out earlier, Yeah, I’m not sure what deck wants these.
I mean, I guess like a storm deck wouldn’t mind this type of effect. I mean, they already play cards like Goblin Electromancer, but I’m not sure. They’re really excited about playing more. I’m not really sure. They’re excited about playing cards. They just get killed in combat.
David Robertson: [00:11:50] Yeah, I liked it. The front and back side have the same static.
So you can kind of build around either half. I like that. The will side pluses to let your red removal kill troublesome creatures that are typically too large for reds removal, especially in pioneer. But yeah, a lot of the abilities on there specifically are kind of weak. So I think, you know, it’s going to have to be the modal nature where, you know, Rowan can be played on turn four w leaving counter magic up.
If you just have one blue light, you can have two minute on a commerce bell will ramp naturally into Alrund’s Epiphany. So what we’ll have to see
Damon Alexander: [00:12:24] the promise that both our optics are just so mediocre.
Daniel Schriever: [00:12:28] Yeah, this fails the David Robertson test of having a meaningful benefit on the plus one, the static seems to hold most of the power.
If that was like a unique effect. If we didn’t have electric answer and barrel already, even if we didn’t have burglary, he got up storytelling. That’d be more inclined to start jamming Rowan into a bunch of decks. But given that we already have three good options for this effect, I don’t think I’m going to want this, but we’ll see.
Yeah.
Damon Alexander: [00:12:53] I mean, no surprise. The Eldraine version of these two is the superior one.
Daniel Schriever: [00:12:58] Okay. Moving on. There is a cycle of college, deans. These are also a double phase cards. A couple of these are interesting. The silver Quill deans are Shaile, Dean of Radiance and Embrose, Dean of shadow. Shaile is one and a white for a bird cleric, one, one flying vigilance tap, put a plus one plus one counter on each creature that enter the battlefield under your control.
This turn on the backside. Embrose. Two black, black four, a four for human warlock tap, put a plus one plus one counter on another target Creaser. Then Embrose deals to damage to that creature. Whenever a creature you control with a plus one plus one counter on it, dies, draw a card. So I wasn’t too keen on this, but David, you flagged some interesting interactions here.
David Robertson: [00:13:44] I think Embrose is totally unplayable. I would play this literally just for the front half. It’s an upgraded Zephyr Falcon for any legends fans out there. I liked it. It sort of is a rule of eight card with Luminarch Aspirant. I know when we were looking at Shatterskull Charger, Dan, you had highlighted Luminarch Aspirant works with it.
And because there were so few replicative effects, we’d never really explored that this is basically Luminarch Aspirant five through eight. If you wanted to play all four. Also cards like Goblin Rabblemaster, which is just a natural followup on turn three, adds two creatures to the board. So this can tap to functionally add to more power.
I think the real issue is that this card is, does not fit naturally into the like sort of Naya curve, which wants to play man alpha and turn one. So the power of man alpha in one might render this obsolete, but I also think this could see some play in like green tokens. There’s a bunch of green, white Plains walkers that make tokens.
Every turn Toski, Bearer of Secrets is a powerful card in that type of style. And Toski being a bigger threat instead of a one. One is also very relevant.
Damon Alexander: [00:14:45] I just might find cards like this to not be as good as they look, because it has to work out just right where you play shale, shale survives, and the next one, you play a creature and give it a counter Luminarch Aspirant S slot less of you.
It comes down on the turn to Amelia, gets a counter, gets a counter. Next turn counter. Next turn. If you draw one late with no cruisers in the board gets a counter. Doesn’t really ask a lot of questions for you to get those counters. Whereas shell just requires this kind of finicky interaction that I think is not, not good.
Meanwhile, decks that play a lot of tokens because that is where shell is good because her ability skills wider than Luna or aspirin, but tokens tax benefit by having, you know, their opponents removal get kind of blanked. If it’s one for one, whereas shale will just get fatal pushed. And your opponent’s like actually pretty happy that we could target
Daniel Schriever: [00:15:29] for it.
I lean more on the caution side. So I guess I agree with Damon in principle, although the backside is like not totally useless, I would never want to tap it. But the fact that it’s just like a decent sized body that protects, or it doesn’t protect, but it gives you a card back. If they start pointing your removal at your other creatures, that’s something, right?
I mean, the Luminarch Aspirant at that leader stage of the game is going to be worse than this four, four,
Damon Alexander: [00:15:52] when you have embryos out and at great hands, you’re just never gonna run out of stuff to do. If you play any number of creatures in your duck.
Daniel Schriever: [00:15:58] Yeah. Now you’re talking me out of this. All right, let’s go to the deans of lower hold.
The college of archeology. But front side is Plargg, Dean of Chaos, a two, two orcs Saman for one and a red as the activated ability tap discarded card, draw a card, also four and a red tap reveal cards from the top of your library until you reveal a non legendary non land card. With men of value three or less, you may cast that card without paying us men of cost the rest, go on the bottom.
That’s all Plargg. So two different capabilities on a two to the backside Augusta, Dean of Order two and a white for a one-three human cleric. This is an interesting allured effect. It says other tapped creatures you control get plus one plus other untapped creatures you control it gets plus O plus one.
And then it lets you choose whether your creatures are tapped around tapped. It says, whenever you attack you untap each creature you control, and then you may tap any number of creatures you control. So as soon as you go to the combat step, you get to sort of adjust your creatures the way you want them to be.
Some can be tapped, some can be untapped.
Damon Alexander: [00:17:03] Yeah. I feel like they got the school’s backwards. I mean, I guess Todd, just all your creators are going to be busy, tapping on tapping, et cetera. That feels pretty chaotic to me. Whereas Plargg is busy over there just trying to learn every turn.
Daniel Schriever: [00:17:15] Well, they’re the same school, right?
This is like good cop, bad cop, your department chair, and your director of graduate studies or whatever.
Damon Alexander: [00:17:21] Yeah. But in terms of which one’s the Dean of chaos, I feel like the white one is, but yeah. So I’m with the cards themselves as is magic cards. These ones are interesting. The red one lets you repeatedly loot every turn, which is pretty, pretty good bread.
Doesn’t really get this effect a two man in a repeatable way, most texts and read that want to loot. Typically you do it via spells. So just cathartic for union or merchant of the veil. But if you want a more reliable loot, this is maybe what you’re looking for. And with the foreigner read, like what if the only spelling your deck is see the truth?
You know, maybe I’d like some Bonecrusher Giants or Brazen Borrowers or whatever. There’s guaranteed to draw three.
Daniel Schriever: [00:17:56] You’re not guaranteed. It’s non-literary non land card, but it will have pictures
Damon Alexander: [00:18:02] to the, it was instant. Nevermind. Incident sorcery.
Daniel Schriever: [00:18:06] No, no. You’re you’re thinking like, why would there be some kind of synergy with spells and instance and sorcery is that’s crazy.
It’s not like a Wizarding school daily. What do you think about these?
David Robertson: [00:18:15] Uh, I think this car is really cool. You’ve highlighted some cool interactions with Augusta. I am a little curious about this verbiage when you, whenever you attack. So I don’t think it’s an at the start of the combat setup. I think you actually have to have a creature attacking to trigger her on tap, tap thing, but yeah, you have a bunch of creatures highlighted here, Magda, Emmara, you know, all these cards that have inspired where they pay off of a untap, you can do that all at the same time.
Plargg also has like a similar effect to Jace, Vryn’s Prodigy. So if you built a deck around a bunch of a two man, uh, legends that. Loose, or I guess in his case, rummage, you can start to have very consistently see that piece on turn two.
Daniel Schriever: [00:18:57] Yeah. Just like clean Roger. And we don’t have a ton of those in red.
And so now you have a rule of eight situation with JVP.
Damon Alexander: [00:19:04] Yeah. We’ve played a lot of Sarkhan, Fireblod the rummaging spot then by far the most of us, but I’ve played Sarkhan in a paper tournament before. I didn’t do very well
Daniel Schriever: [00:19:16] highlight one line here. So we, we had a week on Magda, brazen outlaw. One of the cars we were most excited for from call time a bit, let down by the lack of good dwarves, but there was a cool sequence you could do.
If you had a one drop to work, say a Toolcraft Exemplar than a Magda on turn to well, what happens? You attack with the dwarf UDL to damage. You get a treasure. That’s all fine. If you follow it up with Augusta on turn three, now you attack with Magda and that took off exemplar. That’s going to give you two treasures.
You will also get Augusta’s untapped trigger, which will untakeable through your creatures. And then you can then immediately tap them again. With the ability. You’re now adding four more treasures of that turn. So you’ve got a total of five treasures just from this one, two, three sequence, and you can get five men off that and you can sack that mid combat to get an embark leave.
At this point, your took off his employer would be five power, I think. So it would be, could potentially be dealing 12, just off of the two of our, for example, our alone on the one hand, it’s a dream sequence one, two, three. But on the other hand, if you just put these cards into your deck, you’ll, you’ll get this some of the time.
And if you don’t, you can always use Plargg.
David Robertson: [00:20:22] Yeah. And you don’t have the normal problem where you want to play a bunch of these legends, but you can get like park flooded. First of all, park discards himself. If you don’t want to play Augusta or it’s not a car that you want. And then the backside means you can have both in play at the same time.
So it really solves a problem that plagues a lot of these legends that you want to see very frequently.
Damon Alexander: [00:20:41] Yeah. I call it the oops, all Jolraels problem. After that, our Jolraels week.
Daniel Schriever: [00:20:46] So were any of the other college deans of interest to you guys?
Damon Alexander: [00:20:50] Yeah, the Golgari school Valentin, Dean of the Vein and Lisette, Dean of the Root.
These seem interesting to me. So Valentin is a black for a one-on-one vampire, a warlock with menace and life link. If a non token Christian opponent controls would die, exile it. Instead when you do it, you may pay to, if you do create a one, one black and green pest creature token with when this creature dies, you gain one life.
But then on the flip side, you have Lisette at two green, green for a four for human Drood. Whenever you gain life, you may pay one. If you do put a plus one plus on counter on each creature you control, and those creatures gained trampled to one of the turn. So, these are kind of like a budget Kalitas and a budget Archangel of Thune, but packaged together in a way that first off is much cheaper, like much cheaper than Kalitas and a little bit cheaper than Archangel Thune.
And secondly, like are synergistic with each
Daniel Schriever: [00:21:40] other. You’ve paid an absurdly high compliment to this cars. And in, so doing, you have insulted both Kalitas and Archangel with Thune. I demand a retraction. This creature doesn’t do anything. I mean, I think the useful thing about Valentin is that it’s a one man of legend in black.
So if you want to build like a Mox Amber deck or something, you can do that now. But I mean, there’s text on both halves is almost blink,
Damon Alexander: [00:22:05] literally rest in peace for your opponents creatures or whatever is not blank. Can he just comes down sometimes pretty slow. Every time Kalitas dies to fatal push you traded down on man up pretty badly.
If they push your Valentin in, like, it’s fine. Meanwhile, this actually solves one of the problems with Archangel of Thune is like a value mid-range card in the sense that it gives your creatures trample. And so with Archangel of Thune, sometimes like you’ll wind up with a pretty big squad, but you actually like don’t win.
You know, you’re one term behind as you’re pulling on Shump blocks or whatever. And this, this stops that meanwhile, coming down a whole turn earlier, like yeah, you have to pay mana to do this, but you also kind of like have a whole extra turn ahead to, to start leveraging this.
Daniel Schriever: [00:22:45] David, the tie-breaking, what is yours?
David Robertson: [00:22:47] I like the Valentin half. I agree with the Damon. I think it as a legitimate hate piece, the fact that it’s cheaper is a pretty attractive there. Isn’t the problem is graveyard Hayden modern is good enough that I don’t think this makes it, but in pioneer, I could see this being good specifically against Jones sacrifice.
If that debt continues to be okay in the format.
Daniel Schriever: [00:23:07] Hmm. Okay. Prove me wrong. I guess we’ll move on one final MD UFC card Torrent Sculptor slash Flamethrower Sonata, worse than not up of interest for two reasons. One, this is a creature with the new ward mechanic as Damon has nicely explained, but second, this is an MDSC where the front half is a creature and the back half is a sorcery, the creature side to blue blue for a Murphy Oak wizard to two with ward two.
So a little bit of frost tightened protection. When Torrent sculptor enters the battlefield exile and instant or sorcery card from your graveyard, put a number of plus one. Plus my counters on it equal to a half that cards man of value rounded up. So you just get a large creature, essentially. That is a little bit hard to target.
The back half is a removal spell that allows you to discard potentially a highest EMC thing is to feed to the Toronto sculptor. One on a red sorcery, Flamethrower Sonata, discard a card, then draw a card when you discard an incident or a sorcery card this way, flame through us and auto deals damaged equal to that cards, man, of value to retarget creature or Planeswalker you don’t control.
So a couple of related questions here is this worth, trying to set up, I mean, is, and sculptor enough of a draw and say, you know, format for a 66. Let’s say if we can set that up somehow for manna for a five, five with some protection. Secondly, do we think philanthropy is useful enough as a, as a removal spell that we wouldn’t mind having access to either half.
I
Damon Alexander: [00:24:37] am not a huge fan of cards like Flamethrower Sonata, having to discard a piece of gas to kill something that never feels good. And the thing is that if you don’t, you should just go down a card off this interaction. You’re paying one in a red to discard and then draw a, which was way below rate for me, it comes down to.
Does the kind of one, two punch to Flamethrower, not your way into, you know, a treasure trove is hitting the bin to make a six, six torrent sculptor. I, is that worth it? I mean, like it’s not the worst, but I’m not convinced that like a, you know, a six, six ground pounder with war two is really gonna win a lot of games.
David Robertson: [00:25:14] Yeah. It’s also a card you can’t really ramp too, right? Because you have to spend one of your first turns like cycling a six man of sorcery or something to make it reasonable. And then your deck that’s mostly spells and just this, it won’t have a lot of repeatable effects. So it’s the only card in the deck really that’ll be aggressive.
So I think it’ll be like poorly positioned in terms of like your, a plan in the kinds of decks that would be able to most often play this on turn four as a five, five or six, six
Daniel Schriever: [00:25:41] wizard seems to have anticipated that problem by printing a number of cards in Prismari that are like really expensive sorceries with a secondary ability to pay two and just card them to make a treasure token.
So that on turn two, you could make your treasurer put the large incident of sorcery into the graveyard, then play your tour and sculptor on turn three. It’s almost like they’re trying to encourage you to build this deck and just see what happens. Yeah.
Damon Alexander: [00:26:04] But I feel like going down a car to make a big ground pounder is typically a losing strategy.
David Robertson: [00:26:10] I mean, green can play a five, five on turn three, basically without doing anything ex or unturned to, without doing anything extra. So we’re having to go down a car to play a car that might be that big. It just doesn’t seem. And there’s no other cards in blue that are like that. So we only have like four of them.
What if we don’t draw a torrent sculptor? What? We draw a bunch of our giant expensive spells that we cycled away for our
Daniel Schriever: [00:26:32] treasures. Well, there’s living in lower if you want that. I mean, that’s sort of a similar card. It doesn’t have word, but it’s something. As I know
Damon Alexander: [00:26:40] after I Act of Treason in my opponent’s Living Lore and treasure cruise, keep you Vancouver.
Oh, I’ll never forget that.
Daniel Schriever: [00:26:47] Oh my God. Okay.
Damon Alexander: [00:26:49] Torrent Sculptor is maybe the upgrade award too, to like, you know, when an ETB is choosing opponents an expert from that opponent, then we’re talking.
Daniel Schriever: [00:26:57] Okay. Fair enough. Fair enough. All right. Moving on Magecraft, David, take us through some of these magecraft cards.
David Robertson: [00:27:06] All right. The cards of relevance for magecraft, especially I think are Clever Lumimancer. So that is one white for an O one human wizard, magecraft. Whenever you cast or copy an incident of sorcery spell a Clever Lumimancer gets plus two plus two until end of turn. So sort of like a super prowess, although it’s not triggered by artifacts or anything like that.
And then Dragonguard Elite. So that is one in a green for a two, two magecraft. Whenever you cast or copy incident starts to spill. Put a plus one plus one counter on dragon guard elite, and then it has four green, green colon, double the number of plus one plus one on dragon guard elite. I don’t know that you’ll ever use that ability, although when you do, it’s going to feel great.
But the kinds of decks that are going to play Clever Lumimancer and Dragonguard Elite are probably going to kill the opponents or give up along before they get to six lands in play. A
Daniel Schriever: [00:27:58] lot of people are afraid of the Clever Lumimancer talking about revolutionizing prowess and modern turn to kills.
David Robertson: [00:28:05] There certainly are available to turn to Kilz or, you know, whatever we would call like a virtual turn to kill. It’s not that hard to do, you know, 14 or 16, which is the one threat. I mean the removal and modern is great, so it can compensate if it wants right now, the best prospects are blue. Red splashing for a third color is not free.
The best prowess colors in pioneer are red, white. Although they don’t play that many white lands. So if you want to maximize your chance of getting white lands on turn one, you do have to alter the manna base. It’s not free. I do like that. It’s a wizard because Wizard’s Lightning is a car that red, white pine prowess is looking to play in pioneer.
You can cut the garbage, like two minute to one that does two when it comes into play and just replace it with this and just be a lot more aggressive. And I think dragonguard elite looks like a card that would work well with sort of the Nivmagus Elemental package. I know Gerry Thompson and Brian Gottlieb had taken that too.
I don’t know if it was a pro tour or a grand Prix way back in the day. I don’t know, 10 years ago now they got absolutely wrecked by Jund. But now Jund is a boomer deck that no one believes in, in modern. So maybe there’s time with, you know, that rule of eight again, where we can have in the Nivmagus Elemental, dragonguard elites Clever Lumimancer.
You just take all the damage. But when you cast, you know, flusterstorm or something on a, on all your crappy little pumps, bells, and then. Sack them all to the Elemental and then the triggers all worked for elite and Lumimancer. You can do a ton of damage really fast.
Daniel Schriever: [00:29:33] Yeah. So walk me through this interaction here.
So you’re saying you want to put a bunch of useless Storm copies of something on the stack they have Nivmagus Elemental can then exile those for a permanent plus two plus two bonuses. Does that also work with magecraft for each storm? Copy. You get a trigger of matrix.
David Robertson: [00:29:51] Yeah. So the way that storm is worded explicitly makes it work.
So it says, create a copy for every spell. That’s already been cast this turn and copying spells, uh, triggers the major craft ability. So you’re dragging our elite, we’ll see all those copies and it’ll get permanent puzzle, impossible encounters. And then before you’re Flusterstorming your own spell, let’s say so before those Flusterstorms counter, or your flash pact, whatever, or Manamorphose or what have you, and you just sack them all to new mega.
So each copy of the Flusterstorm and gives a permanent plus two plus two to the new Megace and a permanent plus one plus one to the dragon guard elite. Not to mention all the previous spells you cast in the turn to get your storm count up. They all trigger dragging our to lead as well.
Damon Alexander: [00:30:32] Yeah, I’ve taken Nivmagus Elemental.
Flusterstorm deck through a legacy league. The strength of that deck there is that you can play for flusterstorm’s main deck and not feel too bad in a format where a good chunk of the field is playing for ponder for brainstorm. They’re typically almost always live. And when they’re live and you spew off extra copies, then your native make us elemental is around to eat them up in modern.
If you play for flusterstorm main deck, I think you’re going to hit a lot of match-ups where that card just doesn’t do enough for you. But so many interesting idea. I feel like these cards are mainly balanced simply by their colors that if w blue or red got clever illumined answer, it was blue. That’s given, flying too, because that’s just how this works.
The car Rio would probably be overpowered.
Daniel Schriever: [00:31:13] Philosophically, it just feels like two different ways to use the Clever Lumimancer. I mean, one is saying this is as good as a prowess crusher, perhaps better than prowess creatures. So let’s just throw it in a prowess deck. The other is saying no magecraft requires the cast or copy to be relevant, the copying thing.
And let’s do something weird with storm, I guess. We’ll have to see I’m sure people will be trying both, especially with the clever aluminum answer.
Damon Alexander: [00:31:37] Does Clever Luminacer go into pioneer. I like the Feather type techs. You can cast reckless rage and targeted Lumimancer and not feel bad.
David Robertson: [00:31:46] Yeah. I mean, I think, I think it’s going to be a card that changes the way that red, white burn is played.
And I mean, the feather ducks are not anywhere near as good as burned, but they see some play and maybe this will push them up to be almost as good as their red, white burn
Damon Alexander: [00:32:02] wood, a modern deck plate. Clever Lumimancer in there, like the burn Poros burn.
David Robertson: [00:32:08] Yeah. I’m less sure about that. I think the way that they sometimes have to like sequence our spells, like don’t cast on their turn, this isn’t a threat until you cast your first spell changes the math a little bit.
Daniel Schriever: [00:32:19] So there hasn’t been a variant of red prowess that splashes white for three copies of myth realized, which has kind of like a prowess creature. That’s a little bit hard to kill because it’s only a creature when you want it to be a creature and it acquires permanent counters. So it just grows huge. If that’s like worth doing, if it’s worth adjusting your manna base for another one man of threats, you could conceivably just swap out the myth, realize and put the loom answers in.
Instead in any case, I mean, these are kind of straightforward. As concepts cast spells get big. There are other magecraft cards that give you different payoffs. Two of them actually give you like a card every time you cast or copy an incident of sorcery spill there’s Archmage Emeritus draws a card, although that’s a bit expensive at four minutes for a two to Quandrix Apprentice.
Two two for blue green, and it’s magecraft trigger is whenever you cast or copy is centers or sorcery. You look at your top three and you can pick a land and put that into your hand. That one, I think might be underrated. I mean, that’s a lot of card advantage. It gets you cards faster than men and six potentially in exchange for being a vulnerable creature.
Do you have any hope for this one? It’s
Damon Alexander: [00:33:32] interesting. I mean, can you play four of this and some sort of blue, green, X spells, heavy deck, and then just like play a way lower land count or do you actually need a high land count to, you know, make this final answer reliably and all of a sudden, I just want to kind of flooded.
David Robertson: [00:33:49] Yeah. I mean, I think you need to think you want this to hit, right? So you’re playing an underpowered card. So you’re going to want to play like 24, 25 lens to make sure that your spells actually pay you off.
Damon Alexander: [00:34:00] Yeah. I feel like you have to find probably two lands to make this worth it.
Daniel Schriever: [00:34:04] Hm. Okay. Yeah. That’s a bit of a long shot.
It’s
Damon Alexander: [00:34:08] close. I might get there. We also have a Golgari one that creates a nice splinter twin combo that is much cheaper than the professor Onyx one with chain of smog. This is a black green for a Tutu that combo kills in the same way.
David Robertson: [00:34:23] Although Clever Lumimancer also does it’s worth noting. True.
Daniel Schriever: [00:34:27] Turn one, turn faster. Clever Lumimancer turned to chain of smog for the win. All right. So those are a magecraft cards and M DFC is the next big mechanic is learning and lessons of which we have. We’ve got some of them so far. We’re going to talk you through all those, but I think before we do that, we will take a short break.
And we will come back with the rest of the spoilers after these messages, has this ever happened to you? I can’t figure out which magic. The gathering podcasts to listen to Friday, Friday, Friday, the greatest minds in modern tech building come together and the person was brewing recorded in the area adjacent to lumen field in Seattle bank, stadium, Minneapolis, and the Gallo motor sports.
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David Robertson: [00:36:59] I’m back. So as Dan intimated, before the break, there is a new mechanic. So the mechanic is learn, learn as attached to instance sorceries and come into play and enter graveyard abilities. Learn asks you to either rummage discard a card and then draw a card. Or you may search your sideboard for a lesson.
A lesson is like a super type that is so far attached to sorceries. Is there a non sorcery lesson looks
Daniel Schriever: [00:37:31] like they’re
David Robertson: [00:37:31] all sorcery sorcery so far. And so these are basically just attached to normal a card. So there’s two and a red do three damage to any target plus learn there’s one in a white for a two, one.
When this two, one creature enters the play, learn a pop quiz to an, a blue draw card and learn. So if you’re tutoring, that’s like a three minute and central card plus full tutor, the question becomes, how good are these lessons going to be? And how much is that extra space or spaces that they take out of your sideboard?
How much of a cost is that?
Damon Alexander: [00:38:06] Yeah, so far the lessons we’ve seen are definitely not obvious slam dunks for our formats, but the cards we have so far are confront the past, which is X black for a sorcery lesson. Choose one return, a Planeswalker card with men value X or less from your grade or to the battlefield, or remove twice as Welty cutters from target plans, walking opponent controls.
Then we have Teachings of the Archaics two, and a blue for a sorcery lesson. If an opponent has more cards in hand than you draw two cards. And instead of you draw three cards, if important has four or more cards in hand than you, then we have reduced memory. One white, white XL target, non land permanent its controller creates a three to red and white spirit creature, token illuminate history, two red, red discard, any number of cars and draw that many cards.
Then if there are seven or more cards in your graveyard, create a three to red and white spirit creature token. It’s kind of like a Valakut Awakening. We have Environmental Sciences, which is two color lists for a searcher library, free basic land, putting your hands, shuffle up and gain two life PEs summoning of one.
And then to uncle Gary hybrid manna create two, one, one black and green PEs creatures. With when this creature dies, you gain one life. The Boros one is one and then two boroughs hybrid for a three to red and white spirit creature token. Lastly, we have Academic Probation, one in a white, uh, choose one.
First choice is choose a non-line card name, the opponents can’t cast spells with the chosen name until your next turn or choose target and online, permanent until your next turn. It can’t attack or block and it’s activated buildings. Can’t be activated. So a mini detain or a mini meddling. MEJ Oh, that is short-lived.
Daniel Schriever: [00:39:51] So let’s just zero in, on Professor of Symbology. Before we really understood what the learning lesson mechanic was. You see this card, it’s one in a white for a two, one core cleric ETB learn. See you’re thinking, okay. Liron, can’t be that good. Cause this is a fairly on rate. Creature. Cleric has a decent tribe.
Core is not so relevant. Then you realize that learn actually tutors from your sideboards. So it’s an insane ability to one that casts the granted half a Fae of wishes. If I’m imagining that all cars were lessons, which they’re not, obviously that would be totally insane, you know, granted costs for, and then you have to pay two more to get the creature, half professor of symbology.
You’re just getting the creature right away. Plus you’re getting some selection out of your lessons, curriculum. Okay. So maybe the lessons have to be terrible if they’re going to give you a cheap rate, all of these learning cards, I mean the ones that you listed, David, it doesn’t seem like you’re paying that much more for the learn mechanic.
Uh, it’s valued roughly at draw card or maybe a slightly worse than draw card. Does that sound about right?
David Robertson: [00:40:51] Yeah, I think that’s correct.
Damon Alexander: [00:40:53] If you look at the, you know, pop quiz blue, one to blue draw card, learn, you know, op cos blue too, uh, just draw a card. So you’re paying two more manna for
David Robertson: [00:41:02] learning. Yeah.
But there’s no three minute instant draw to in playing near at all. So that effect
Damon Alexander: [00:41:09] is. Yeah. Yeah. So somewhere between one and two are managed to learn. Yeah. I mean, if you look at Stoneforge mystic, you’re like, Oh wow. This is like one in a white and a demonic tutors, your whole deck for any card you want, as long as it’s a batter skull.
I mean, the restriction to only getting lessons is a pretty important part of this puzzle and of the lessons so far. I certainly wouldn’t be compelled to start trimming valuable sideboard slots for any of these
Daniel Schriever: [00:41:36] straight up. No, these are not worth the cyborg slots. Well, I
Damon Alexander: [00:41:40] wouldn’t say like I’m straight up, like, you know, my, my mind is made up or anything, but I’m a little bit skeptical.
I mean, first off, if you’re gonna go for this, you’ve got to probably play, you know, at least four professor of symbology, maybe even more learn if you’re going to try to build a flexible sideboard, but that means that you need to actually have like a few different lessons in your sideboard. Maybe even doubling up on the best ones.
It’s now you’re giving up, you know, four or five sideboard slots.
Daniel Schriever: [00:42:04] Yeah. I mean, I guess you can always rummage if you don’t want to, or if you run out of lessons
Damon Alexander: [00:42:09] discarded here, maybe that’s the trick. Your first professor of symbology gets you a lesson and you just play a second one in rummage and discarded.
Did you really learn at all?
Daniel Schriever: [00:42:20] I mean, it sounds crazy to give up your entire sideboard and yet we’ve seen decks that use Karn, the great creator as a forum and give their entire sideboard over to that card. You know, a pretty good version of the green Planeswalker deck and pioneer just doesn’t even use a sideboard is just four Karns and 15 cards and which targets
Damon Alexander: [00:42:38] well, the pioneer one also plays creatures that are Vivian, uh, targets.
It’s not quite that simple.
Daniel Schriever: [00:42:44] Okay. Yeah, but we have, you know, team between Professor of Symbology and the second learn card of your choice. You can duplicate that effect, duplicate that
David Robertson: [00:42:52] construction. You can tell they were super conservative with all of these lesson cards. You’re paying a ton of extra Manoj, uh, for what they would typically give you.
So unless they slip off and print a really good lesson, You aren’t quite in getting a car’s worth on that tutor effect. Whereas Karn gets a tutor artifacts that are priced to be, you know, worth their manta cost more or less at any point in the game.
Daniel Schriever: [00:43:15] So you’re not impressed by turn to professor of symbology.
You turn three Spirit Summoning and make a three, two,
David Robertson: [00:43:20] no. Well, I do think that the, the rummage ability has to be something that your deck is somewhat interested in. So you can actually play, you know, some number of learned cards and maybe only take us slaughter to us so they can, you know, if there’s some synergy in your deck, you know, professor of symbology is a card I’m interested in playing just in general and like adjust guy God Pharaoh’s gift list in pioneer.
And so if you maybe had one Illuminate History or some other type of effect, that was like borderline playable, where you kind of have this car that has synergy with your main plan, the romance part, and then you found a way to pay off like the one or two cars you might want to tutor for.
Damon Alexander: [00:43:58] Yeah, David has called out elsewhere in these notes, the card Rielle, the Everwise seems to have her stock go a little bit up with some of these new cards and yeah.
If you have a reel out, then actually you just take the, probably the rummage line and go up a card. Meanwhile, if you go over and get illuminate history, you are going up a ton of cards along the way.
Daniel Schriever: [00:44:17] Yeah. We have to give them an incomplete score until we see the rest of the lessons and the rest of the learn cards.
I think it’s a really difficult puzzle to solve, but I think it’s definitely worth our attention once we get the chance to actually try this. Oh
Damon Alexander: [00:44:29] yeah. We’re only at the first midterm of this quarter, so I’m not ready to give out grades just yet.
Daniel Schriever: [00:44:35] All right. Let’s move on. One person who has earned top marks is Paolo Vitor Damo da Rosa, the reigning world champion.
Now the world champions get their own magic card. So Paulo’s card is the elite Spellbinder too, in a way it’s for a three, one human cleric with flying. When elite Spellbinder enters the battlefield. Look at target opponent’s hand. You may exile a non land card from it, ending on the end card. No restrictions on that for as long as that card remains exiled, its owner has to pay two more to cast it.
David Robertson: [00:45:08] Yeah. This card seems really sweet to me. It’s a human, so it can go in modern humans. It does let you see their hands. So it combos with Meddling Mage if you blink it, because there are some white decks that are playing other vial and modern that have know a fem rate, et cetera, you don’t give them the car back.
You just start, keep remove more and more cards from their hand. And there’s also three on flying. So that has a lot of history in these types of decks. It’s like your whisper, et cetera, as a car, that’s just like a. What tempo attacker that is, is actually paying you off for all the time that you’re buying by making all their spells cost.
Two more. I think this car is really cool.
Damon Alexander: [00:45:44] Yeah. It’s also a cleric for party matters and a Campbell’s messy with Drannith Magistrate. If you actually have the tuna while drowsy, I forget the name. You can perhaps get some sort of lock going where during your point of straw step, you flicker your lead Spellbinder.
And once that card goes to exile with the Drannith magistrate out, it’s not coming back.
Daniel Schriever: [00:46:04] Oh, interesting. Drannith magistrate lives again, the fish it out of your bulk spoons.
Damon Alexander: [00:46:10] Yeah. That’s the real question here is, do you want to be playing with magistrate? I mean, when companions were a big thing with Aero running around transmission, it was actually a pretty legit magic card, but then the companion Nerf actually, uh, stopped the magistrate’s ability to interfere and Uro got banned.
So now it’s just, you know, trying to stop the random snapcaster mage.
Daniel Schriever: [00:46:31] So I’ve come around on Elite Spellbinder when I first saw it, I was like, well, this seems worse than Kitesail Freebooter because Kitesail Freebooter or it takes the card away permanently. Spellbinder still lets them cast it. But then I thought back to all the times, I actually played against humans and modern.
And when they do freebooter you, you eventually have to like break out of the prison with a series of removal spells, which you can often do, you know, a lightning bolt, a push and a breed, et cetera. And all of a sudden you’re out of the prison and they have nothing left. Now, if something is being texted, failure is in play, then that becomes a lot less attractive.
So Elite Spellbinder actually provides that value attacks. No matter what, even if they have the lightning bolt ready to go to kill the Spellbinder right away. But whichever card you care to take out of their hand is going to be permanently text. And to manna is a ton in modern, especially if you’re envisioning some kind of aggressive humans beat down plan.
So it’s possible that they might just never get out of the prison, even though they are allowed to cast that car from exile, they just won’t have time.
Damon Alexander: [00:47:29] Yeah. Modern humans really typically can give the opponent a so little time that there’s too many attacks is all the, it needs to make it. Miss will not be in their hand at all.
Meanwhile, there’s a lot of games where humans just kind of pinks away with one, two free booters. And this is with three power is a meaningly meaningfully faster clock
Daniel Schriever: [00:47:46] Paolo of course, a worthy champion. In the previous video, he talked about how he kept trying to give the card flash and R and D said, no, that’ll be a little too good, perhaps, but seems good enough as is moving on to another car that it seems good enough.
We have rip apart red, white sorcery. She was one rip apart deals, three damage to target Creaser or Planeswalker or destroy target artifact or enchantment. So look a charm with four modes at sorcery speed. This just feels like a Abrade quality modern staple pioneer staple. For all time. What do you guys think?
Dan? I
Damon Alexander: [00:48:25] saw a tweet that was like Lightning Bolt was the original red command with three separate modes deal three to a creature deal, three to a Walker, a deal through to a player. And I feel like you’re channeling that with your a, this is four modes here, but sure. Okay. Four modes. Why not? So it sort of seems like an upgrade to Abrade, but losing being an instance that’s big.
I’m not sure that that makes up for it.
David Robertson: [00:48:47] This car is also a Boros hit in Niv-Mizzet, especially in pioneer. That’s super important. There is no Lightning Helix in pioneer. So I expect this BA one of main decouple card in pioneer Niv-Mizzet and probably a two or three of them, the board, depending on what the format might need.
The fact that just removal you can play that also just randomly kills, you know, troublesome, permanent types that you don’t get to just get for free with Teferi anymore is really cool.
Damon Alexander: [00:49:15] Yeah, it does feel a bit like a Boros Abrupt Decay.
Daniel Schriever: [00:49:18] The trick with all these cards that are so modal is you can always think of a similar car to the exact same amount of costs that does something a little bit more efficiently.
You know, maybe it does it at instant speed or maybe it also targets a player, but it just doesn’t give you all the modes. The reason why, despite all that Abrade still found a home in modern is that it just turns out that your sidebars thoughts are texts. And if you can put a car like Abrade into your sideboard that comes in against artifact, decks and creatures, for example, it’s just worth it.
And rip apart, it takes it to that to an even further extreme. It’s like a mini Skyclave apparition. It hits almost everything. Yes, that’s slightly worse than whatever its competitors are. But the point is you’ll just have something relevant to bring in, in match-ups where quantity of interaction matters.
So we’ll see, moving on, David, you’ve highlighted a card, a venerable warsinger. Do you wanna tell us about this one?
David Robertson: [00:50:08] Yeah. So one, a red and a white for a three-three spirit cleric. It has vigilance and trample. Whenever it deals combat damage to a player, you may return target creature card with manna value X or less from your graveyard to the battlefield where X is the amount of damage venerable war singer deals to that player.
So this is not modern playable, obviously dies to bolt, but I do think there’s kind of a little interesting mini combo and pioneer. A selfless savior is a card that can save a warsinger from removal. If you like, and then come back. If it ever hits them for at least one damage and it does trample and then Gor-clan Rampager is a card that you can tap.
Two-minute minute on, give plus four plus four and train a trample, which it already has to this it’ll do seven damage minus whatever their toughness was. And then Gor-Clan Rampager will actually come back into play. So that interaction is actually quite powerful. A two man of 44 that has haste, functionally and possibly saves your creature in combat is really, really powerful.
So, I don’t know if that’s playful or not, but I just wanted to highlight that that interaction exists in pioneer and it’s possibly worth exploring. Yeah.
Damon Alexander: [00:51:14] Getting double duty after Gor-Clan rampager is a pretty powerful,
Daniel Schriever: [00:51:19] that is pretty sweet. Gor-Clan is a card that has seen some play in the past in modern the
Damon Alexander: [00:51:25] yellow, typically with a death’s shadow lurking around.
Daniel Schriever: [00:51:28] All right. One of the high profiles cycles in this set is a cycle of legendary elder dragons. These are the founders of the colleges. Shadrix Silverquill, three white black four, a two five flying double strike. At the beginning of combat on your turn, you may choose to each mode must target a different player.
So the three modes that choose from target player creates a two, one white and black inkling and creature with flying. Target player draws a card and loses one life. Target player puts a plus one plus one counter on each creature they control. So you got to read this one carefully. If you play this during your pre combat main phase, you will get this trigger at the beginning of combat.
So it was kind of like enter the battlefield trigger almost as good. Then you have to choose. Do I want to do this or not? You either choose two modes, one for you, one for your opponents or you choose none. Obviously a multiplayer, this gets very fun with politics and whatnot, but do you think there’s any home for this and one V one,
David Robertson: [00:52:33] it’s a really interesting ability and it creates all kinds of decision trees based on what you have in your hand, based on what they have in their hand.
I think this card is playable. I think tapping out for five man hours against other mid-range decks is tough, but I liked that against like the admissible often just give you a card and putting plus one plus one on their creatures doesn’t do anything. It is also like a pretty quick clock to five double strike in the air that could make a inkling creature, which is basically like a wind Drake I return is, is actually pretty good.
But yeah, will, we’ll have to see, I mean, it’s such a strange ability. We’ve never seen anything like it before, so I’m interested to explore it. Yeah.
Damon Alexander: [00:53:14] And just by itself, I mean, in theory, this could be hitting for eight turn after you play it. If you choose to give yourself counters both times, if you make your opponent draw two along the way, then Delta total 10 damage with one card.
Although you have of course, major punnet draw two cards, and it’s less, the question is how often do the Mozy give your opponent? You know, not really benefit them. David already mentioned one case. Like he gets new visit where they don’t really care about getting counters on their creatures. And so you can play it immediately draw a card.
And this is kind of like a nice pseudo ETB almost, but it’s also possible. There’s a lot of match-ups where this ability is pretty awkward. And if it is awkward, then I feel like you’re not getting your money’s worth.
Daniel Schriever: [00:53:53] David also points out that forcing them to draw is very cute with notion thief in play.
So maybe you’re an Esper Narset notion thief deck, when you play Shadrix and they don’t get to draw, or perhaps you get their draw. Well, actually it doesn’t work for the Narset food for thoughts. All right, let’s go to the Prismari college. Damon. Tell us about Galazeth Prismari. Sorry.
Damon Alexander: [00:54:15] Two red blue for a three for Venezuela of his Mari entry.
I’ll competent. I don’t have a translation. Dan. I can kind of guess
David Robertson: [00:54:28] it’s two, a blue and a red for a three, four flying dragon. When it enters the battlefield, create a treasure token, and then it has the passive text artifacts you control have tap, add Amanda of any color. Use this man, not only to cast sorcery and instance.
Daniel Schriever: [00:54:42] See David has majored in language arts in a prison where he counts. He just snapped that off. He didn’t need to consult a translation. So I thought this card made me appreciate just how good Urza is, because whenever I thought of, Oh, here’s a cool thing I can do with this granting my artifacts, the ability to tap from Anna.
I’m like, Oh, well, that’s right, Urza already does that. And then I lost all interest in this, but even you pointed out some other possible Holmes.
David Robertson: [00:55:09] Yeah. So I agree with you that Urza is a really stupid car that should never going to print it, but it has been printed. And it basically renders this irrelevant in modern, but in formats where you don’t have access to Urza, this is very interesting.
So in pioneer, there’s already a dragon deck and that dragon deck has already playing for goldspan dragons. So you have a steady stream of clues you can generate. I think this is also an interesting card to play with a Mazemind Tome, a card that a Dan tried to talk to him and I and two. And eventually we came around to this car being very powerful.
If you have a Mazemind Tome in play after this resolves and you get your treasure, you now have your Silumgar’s Scorn. And so I think that’s having an, an artifact in play. In addition to the treasure, it makes is very important to do that. Another car I’m really interested in playing is a pillar of origins.
So this is two man out. When it comes into play, you name a creature type and it taps for a man of any color, but it can only be used to play that type. So if you have a deck that’s basically dragons, maybe some adventure cards and then spells, which is basically what the blue red dragons list is. Pillar of origins now taps for any color to cast either dragon or insert and sorcery.
So it’s basically just like a, to manna, a rainbow man, a rock, and that’s very powerful. Now you probably have to play for, and I think that’s something that I’m actually willing to do. So the way that this synergizes in the same way that Goldspan Dragon does where you can hopefully cast it and have your scoring up at the same time is really intriguing to me.
I think this car is going to be really cool.
Daniel Schriever: [00:56:32] Cool. I’m not sold on pillar of origins, just because the Prismari dragon only lets them tap to cast instance and sorcery is so it’s going to be a deck that doesn’t have that many creatures in it. But to me, maybe I’m coming around maybe just like three, four flying, make a permanent treasure.
Permanent treasure. You don’t have to sacrifice right away is just good enough in control. The other dragons are talking about, you know, goldspan will come down and they’ll get more from your treasures, et cetera. All right, we’ll mention the other two dragon founders. I don’t think these have much hope for constructed, but in quadratics we have Tanazir Quandrix, three green blue for a four, four, or flying trample.
When Tanazir Quandrix enters the battlefield double the number of plus one plus possible counters on target creature you control. So maybe this is the deck full of zeros, zero fractal tokens with counters on them. I think that’s the idea here. Also whenever Tanazir Quandrix attacks you may have of the base power and toughness of other creatures.
You control become equal to 10 as yours, power and toughness until the end of the turn. So you can attack and everything becomes a four, four. So for me, this does not pass the Mulldrifter test, right? The effect you get when you cast it, doubling some counters is. Yeah, you gotta work for that to even do anything.
And even then it’s not really worth a card. The second ability requiring me to like then on tap and attack with it and have other creatures that want to get become four, four is miss just asking too much.
David Robertson: [00:57:59] Yeah, I do think you need to find a way to give it haste or somehow have that doubling of pulse and pulse ones be like adding three or four extra power to the board to even be worth it.
Damon Alexander: [00:58:09] I always breathe a sigh of relief when a Simic mythic spoils with an obvious EDH slant.
Daniel Schriever: [00:58:16] Yeah. And how about Velomachus Lorehold, Damon?
Damon Alexander: [00:58:20] Yeah, this is five red, white for a five, five Eller dragon just got their coronavirus shot, flying vigilance haste. Whenever it attacks look at the top seven cards in your library, you may cast an incident of sorcery spelled with men of value, less than or equal to Velomachus Lorehold’s power from among them without paying as manic costs. Put the rest on the bottom of your library in a random order. So again, kind of wordy, but when it attacks, you gotta to look at the top seven and cast in certain source, we spell they cost five or less for free.
Daniel Schriever: [00:58:51] This one, doesn’t cut it for me either.
Obviously once you see seven men a year, you’re looking at some alternative ways to get it into play, whether that’s renovation or. I don’t know, Magda or something weird like that. So the payoff, I better be huge. And the trouble that I’m seeing here is that there’s no way to control what you get off the attack trigger.
It looks at your top seven in your library, and that’s hard to set up. It’s like not worth setting up, but basically if it like cast something on your graveyard, you could, you could be guaranteed to get something sweet or cast out of your hand, but it doesn’t do that. It kind of forces you to also fill your deck with exciting cards for it to cast.
And I think that just put it all together is too much to ask.
Damon Alexander: [00:59:30] At some point I built a HEB, relentless assault deck for EDH goldfish. A few times it was a fun puzzle. I’ve never actually played it with other people. And there are a lot of relentless assault type cards in magic. And so in theory, if you have enough of those in your deck, you have a pretty high chance of hitting them.
When you hit them, you taking a lot of combat step. You do the whole thing again. I think you go effectively infinite. As long as a five, five flying vigilance haste, I was getting through each time we were putting in dies pretty quickly. But how do you get to seven managed juggernaut into play in the first place?
David Robertson: [01:00:02] Yeah, noting like in a dragon deck, if you’re casting goldspan on five, it just naturally casts a seven drop on the next turn. Even if it dies so seven Manoj somehow, or if you’re playing Nissa or something, these man doublers still haunting this world. You can catch a seven drop. I like it maybe as the, at the top of a control finishing deck, there’s a bunch of RAs that like wrath other creatures, but not it a time warp is very exciting on five it’s sort of simulates what Damon’s describing, you know, like a relentless assault type effect when it gives you an entire new turn, escaped to the wilds as a car that helps you ramp to Velomachus, as well as being a sweet card to actually hit with Velomachus.
So there’s something there.
Damon Alexander: [01:00:40] Yeah. I mean, in hasten, his card is actually pretty legit.
Daniel Schriever: [01:00:44] Okay, well, let’s, let’s look at some cheaper creatures things that we can actually cast earlier in the game. We have Strict Proctor, one and a white for a one-three flying spirit cleric, whenever a permanent entering the battlefield causes a trigger.
The ability to trigger, counter that ability unless its controller pays too. So some similarities to cards like torpor Orb or hushbringer Tocatli honor guard. However, strict Proctor prevents all triggered abilities, not just from creatures and the controller of the attributability. It has the option to pay for it.
So what difference does that make, does this open up new space? Yeah. So
David Robertson: [01:01:22] it was a hit card. This is actually much worse. Like the other cards you name can actually just lock out like blink decks. They don’t actually Cass bell. So it just, it just locks their whole deck out. If you just make them pay two more eventually just, you know, Vial in their skyclave apparition with two colors Manoj up and they solve your hate problem.
But I love this interaction with Lotus field. This is already a deck I’ve explored quite a bit in pioneer, and this is just another extra piece that does it while also being a blocker. So in turn two, you can play strict Proctor play Lotus field before your opponent gets priority and Lotus fields trigger.
It won’t happen. So it’ll just enter the battlefield tapped and next turn you’ll have access to six Manoj and that’s going to be an insane,
Damon Alexander: [01:02:02] yeah, you can actually get, if you play Blood Sun, you have a nice rule of eight on that effect. It used to be that you have, you know, for blood Sun and Lotus field, but sometimes you just don’t draw the blood Sun.
He draw a lot of Lotus fields.
Daniel Schriever: [01:02:13] I was going to ask whether you were interested in brought back as your copy is five through eight cause Strict Proctor actually shuts off blood sun’s cantrip. So they kind of gumbo,
David Robertson: [01:02:23] well, you can just play around it though. You don’t ha I would play like, as a one or two off, I was already playing the one in blue instant to counter permanence.
So maybe just add this as like the fourth one, or like two of the three of those plus for the blood sons, ironically, once blood sun or a once a Lotus is in play. You just have the manner to make Blood Sun camp trip, if you like.
Daniel Schriever: [01:02:43] True. Yeah. The other interaction worth exploring is Kroxa and Uro. Although Uro was taken from us with Strict Proctor in play, unlike a Torpor Orb you’ll, you’ll get both triggers on the stack and you’ll have the option to pay, to make them discard a card.
So let’s say you have four men, a Kroxa that comes down to triggers. You want the stack, you declined to pay for the sacrifice trigger. So you keep your Kroxa up, but you can pay two to make them discard an extra card. Of course, that, that option to build this Torpor Orb Kroxa that has existed for a long time.
But the problem with a torpor effects were just too weak to make it worth it. So, I guess it depends on whether their strict Proctor was just like good enough against the field
David Robertson: [01:03:21] thing worth noting in modern Strict Proctor’s interaction with karoo lands. So yes, you can play it and then a karoo land, but there is an entire deck that has a ton of crew lands and just letting them play that and not bounce.
Sometimes it is a positive, but other times it’s not. So if your opponent just gets to dump a bunch of cement, grill chambers into play on the next turn and then cast a Titan, that’s going to be a feel bad. I mean,
Daniel Schriever: [01:03:45] I think it’s still worth it because they won’t get the Titan’s trigger unless they pay it kind of shuts off their Amulet of vigor, it undos the Amulet of Vigor effect.
Yeah.
Damon Alexander: [01:03:55] Yeah. It feels like it buys you like, yeah, like a Turner too against Amulet Titan. So the question is, are you playing a deck that can capitalize on that turn?
Daniel Schriever: [01:04:02] Let’s take a quick look at Blade Historian, David
David Robertson: [01:04:05] blade historian for red white hybrid man for a two, three human cleric. It says attacking creatures, you control have double strike.
The first thing I thought of when I saw this was that this might be a better window to pay off. One of the things we haven’t liked about Winota is that it’s filled with these seven Angrath’s marauders. And if you don’t actually hit them in your top six, if you draw them, let’s say, they’ve just stuck in your hand.
This is a card that sort of simulates add granting, double strike to attack in creatures is kind of like having creatures do double damage. It’s not exactly the same, but it’s a card you could reasonably cast. It’s a card you could reasonably Eldritch evolution into if you already had a window to in play.
Yeah. So, and, and, you know, just a normal two, three that just grants, double strikes, all your creatures. That’s like a kind of overrun, like effect that you might just want the curve topper on, on an agro deck. What do you think.
Daniel Schriever: [01:04:50] Yeah, I agree. A hundred percent.
Damon Alexander: [01:04:52] Yeah. What’s interesting is the double strike is different than what marauders does.
So one downside is for example, double double strike is just double strike. Whereas marauders keep doubling on the other hand, double strike is better letting pitchers survive through combat. And so actually, I wonder if you don’t cut all the marauders, but you maybe like do a two, two split or something.
So you get the benefit of the Casabella blade historian without getting, you know, over too many double strike effects.
Daniel Schriever: [01:05:17] I’ve said before that I think marauders is the card single-handedly holding back Winota, I think people just need to give up on that card and replace it with anything else, whether that’s Geist-Honored monk or Maja, Bretagaard protector.
So if Blade historian is the card that convinces people to finally let go of an uncatchable seven drop. I think that we know the decks will just become that much more powerful. That’s my hypothesis. We’ll see how it plays out. Yeah. Although
Damon Alexander: [01:05:40] one slight problem is that the Winota typically aren’t strictly Boros and this card is a little tricky to cast if you are playing Naya.
Daniel Schriever: [01:05:48] Yeah. I mean, it also has applications outside of Winota. It’s just a reasonable curve. Topper Lord double or triple lord effectively. I think this is a scary card. Interesting. One to pay attention to sticking with Lorehold. We have a weird one. Quintorius, field historian. So not, not the blade historian, but a field historian and uncommon legendary elephant cleric three, right?
White, red, excuse me. Three white red for a two for spirit creatures. You control get plus one plus, Oh, whenever one or more cards, leave your graveyard. Create a three-two red and white spirit creature tokens. So this is kind of the excavation theme of the archeology college, a very weird effect, but.
Getting cars to leave. Your graveyard is doable. You know, you can do it with escape. You can do it with scavenging news. David has had some success with Titan’s nest in the past, which will actually trigger this every time you exile any car from the graveyard. So it’s possible to actually get a ton of three, two spirits with in play.
That’s interesting, but what actually makes this car really exciting for me is a curious interaction that was pointed out to me by a judge Rob, in one of our faintest brewing community leagues, a few weeks back or rather a few months back when we were testing out some commander legends cards and he was building around the card, Tormod, the Desecrator, which has almost the exact same template of whenever cards, leave the graveyard.
You you’d get some zombie tokens. And what he discovered was that if you re animate Tormod, but in this case, we’d be reanimating. Quintorius. Quintorius has enters a battlefield and it knows that it came from the graveyard. So would actually retroactively. Counts itself, leaving the graveyard as a trigger.
If you use blood for bones as the card that brought her back, it will also know that a card had left a graveyard and went to your hands. So blood for bones returning Quintorius automatically brings with it. Two more spirit, creature
tokens,
David Robertson: [01:07:41] noting that these spirits do not fly. I’m glad Dan added a note here because I just, in my mind, I was picturing these three, two spirits as flowers.
I was like, wow, this is adding a ton of power, the board. Plus it’s giving them pulse on Paseo, but they don’t fly, but they still get hustle and bustle. So you’re describing a play that would leave you with a two, four and two, four twos in play,
Daniel Schriever: [01:07:58] correct? Yes. And presumably the rest of your deck has some other way to exile things.
I’m imagining this is probably going to be pioneer. So maybe get’s cat oven, maybe it’s Deathrite Sharman who knows escaping cars actually called us this to trigger twice as well as we even just escaping Ox of Agonas gives you one spirit. For the ox leaving in the battlefields or leaving the graveyard rather.
And his second spirit for exiling your pile of eight cards. Yeah, what’s
Damon Alexander: [01:08:24] interesting is that this guy’s stats at a five man of value to four actually make it pretty resistant to a lot of the commonly played removal in pioneer. On the other hand, the music comes down, you know, literally cost five at a cast.
And so that’s where these lines that either cheated to play via blood for bones or alternatively can get a lot of value from it. The turn it hits via either Titans nest in some five cloud monstrosity or with cat oven. So you get the three twos that are ready to go as four twos on your next turn seemed like interesting directions to go.
Daniel Schriever: [01:08:53] All right, moving on. Any interest in Hofri Ghostforge?
Damon Alexander: [01:08:58] Yes, this is three red, white for a four or five dwarf cleric, a legend that gives spirits. You control pulse one pulse, one trample and haste. And then if have you have played Dota two, there’s a hero called Wraith King. That does the exact same thing as this.
Whenever another non-tech creature you control dies exile is if you do create a token as a copy of that creature, except as a spirit in addition to his other types. And it has when this creature leaves the battlefield return, the exiled card here, graveyard. So it kind of gives all of your creatures a second shot at life.
What do you guys think?
Daniel Schriever: [01:09:28] I mean, I’m thinking IP crossover. This is going to be a perfect secret layer opportunity. Yeah, it reminds me a little bit of Mikaeus, the Unhallowed, I guess. It might just be too much, man. Too much work. Yeah.
Damon Alexander: [01:09:42] As far as Lorde effects go plus a plus one, trampling haste is a very strong combination of keywords and stats.
I mean, almost certainly if you’re getting any number of spirits in play like this threatens lethal really fast. Meanwhile, if you’re putting out rats, all your other creatures will get to stick around in their spirit form, even though hopefully himself will die
David Robertson: [01:10:04] up next, we have thrilling discovery, thrilling discovery, red, white sorcery, you gain to life.
Then you may discard two cards. If you do draw three cards. So similar to cathartic reunion, although the, uh, discard is not part of the cast in cost, or do you guys think this
Daniel Schriever: [01:10:20] will be the other card that might break modern? If the one man, a magecraft creature is going to make the prowess players really excited, thrilling discovery as the dredge players dreaming of a return to a tier one or tier zero status, a dredge deck will typically have for cathartic reunion as the best red enabler forestry corn, because that’s a nice one drop and then some number of something else that’s something else might be a Burning inquiry.
It might be a merchant of the Vale. Thrilling discovery will not replace cathartic reunion, but you know, it’s just more copies. If you adjust your mental base, you can potentially start every game with a cathartic reunion.
Damon Alexander: [01:10:58] Trust me is that dredge checks actually are pretty happy or at least not unhappy if cathartic union gets countered because at least they got those things we didn’t put into the graveyard, this card, actually the fact that you only this card when it resolves, isn’t that big of an upgrade for dredge.
I actually, maybe you say downside, if it gets smelled stared or whatever, then you don’t get your Stinkweed Imp in the graveyard. So what I wonder is, are there any kind of like graveyard matters, Boros decks that would be unhappy to get their retargeting encountered, but are okay with one discovery getting countered, like some sort of like Jeskai Phoenix deck or something, you know, Phoenix techs need to have the cards in hand.
They just play with our community gets counter. They discard T phoenixes they’re in a lot of trouble. I take your silence is coming up with some awesome bruise on that idea. So up next is Go Blank two and a Blackberry sorcery target player does cards, two cards, exile, all cards from that player’s graveyard.
So it’s basically a mind rot with an upgrade.
Daniel Schriever: [01:11:52] Usually these cards are not of interest were constructed butts butts. I have a sinking feeling that this exile, all the cars from target player’s graveyard is actually like worth it. Like I would not be unhappy to have this in my deck. The problem with incidental graveyard value, every deck likes to have something that, you know, comes back eventually, but is not so much of a focus that the opponent is incentivized to play graveyard hate.
And this is what made Uro so strong. It’s like, if I can go after your Uros while you didn’t, you didn’t spend any resources to like get access to the Uro from the graveyard. So the opponent is going down and resources trying to fight your graveyard, go blank. Even though it’s kind of brute force in a mid range deck, this is just a two for one that incidentally shuts down whatever they were doing.
And I think you’d be happy to like, have access to this. Maybe two copies.
David Robertson: [01:12:42] I do agree with you, Dan. This is probably designed with Uro in mind. This is exactly the kind of card that we wish we had access to where we could. Play something that wasn’t embarrassing, you know, soul guide lantern exiling and Uro just doesn’t do that mantra you’ve.
But if you’re making them actually discard two cards, you’re, you’re kind of in parody on cards and you’ve exiled, not just the Uro, but all the other cards that the second Uro would need to escape the first time. So, you know, as usual they like printing fatal, push the set after they had to ban copter out of standard.
They got a little too cute. Yeah. This
Damon Alexander: [01:13:15] card I think was actually pretty good. One of the fail modes of mind draw it. So mind rod has, I guess maybe three fail modes. One is where you’re drastically behind on board. And it’s useless too, is when you’re putting those no cards in the hand, that’s useless. Three is when they discard to graveyard matters cards and this at least closes that one while also providing extra value.
Guess whatever’s already in there graveyard, of course, it’s, you’re up against a bunch of Orvar, the all form combo decks or things like that. This card is not very good, but I think that alone is a pretty meaningful upgrade.
David Robertson: [01:13:45] So speaking of graveyard and Phoenix, Dan, you kind of highlighted this next card is maybe something those types of decks might want.
So this is Curate one in a blue instant look at the top two cards of your library, put any number of them into your graveyard and the rest of back on top of your library at any order, draw a card. So this functions, identically, mechanically to surveil, which people are familiar from, from the third visit to Ravnica.
What do you like about this card,
Daniel Schriever: [01:14:10] Dan? I think it’s best in class for the two men. Thought scour slash Preordain effects, thought scour is a car we don’t have access to. And pioneer, if we did, it would make a Phoenix. Absolutely terrific. But usually with thought scour is always that it doesn’t actually provide any selection because you’re just blindly mill too.
And you just get the next car down. So it’s not a car that’s necessarily advancing your game plan. That much curate has given you all of the above. It’s much better than Discovery / Dispersal, because it is an instant, I think it’s slightly worse than omen of the sea, just because omen of the sea plays so nicely with your, I am, but there’s a class of decks, like the Phoenix decks that value the incident as mill more.
And they’re going to be happy with curate.
Damon Alexander: [01:14:52] Yeah. And actually I’d like to have a spells and their graveyard omen in the seat doesn’t fit that bill. And this does it in two ways, both itself and whatever it throws in the bin along the way.
Daniel Schriever: [01:15:02] All right, one last card for today before we call it sits Flamescroll Celebrant slash revel in silence.
This is a modal double faced card creature on the front. Instant in the back, the creature side, one in a red two, one human Shumon, whenever an opponent activates an ability that isn’t a mental ability, flames, cruel celebrant deals, one damage to that player. Also an activity disability, one in a red to give it plus two plus, Oh, until end of turn.
So this is a decent aggressive Creaser, two one for two of the pumps itself. If you have extra metal lying around and incidentally pings them, if you don’t want that, you can have a white, white instance on the backside, revel in silence, your opponents can cast spells or activate planes, Walker, loyalty abilities, this turn, then exile at revel in silence.
So for the price of double of a normal silence effect, they can’t catch anything. They also don’t get to uptick on their to or whatever.
David Robertson: [01:16:02] Yeah, it’s a really interesting card. So harsh mentor was a car that was printed, got a lot of hype and basically saw no play. This is one less toughness than that. And did harsh mentor do to damage instead of one, but I really liked this card, actually.
I like a two on the can pump itself. It’s a little more threatening than harsh mentor just as a body. I think the ability is actually a little bit more relevant. If you look at ducks like Jund sacrifice or like Heliod or whatever, and then the backside and pioneer, at least as a hard counter for bringing to light and is very good against salty ultimatum as well.
So just having that, if you’re going to play the extra white that I’m suspecting that the major craft one drop is going to ask you to do just having this in reserve, seems like a worthwhile endeavor to strap onto basically a two drop that’s on curve. I mean, you’re, you’re not sacrificing that much in the power of your, to drop, to, to play the flame scroll celebrant half.
Damon Alexander: [01:16:58] Yeah, I agree with David. You get a lot of flexibility in this card, both the front half as this , you know, any sort of Shang is involving a cat combo, anything like that, this card all stops. And then you have this backside that maybe you only has the backside, you know, one in every 10 games, but maybe when you do it, once those games for you, I can’t
Daniel Schriever: [01:17:18] remember the last time I actually put silence in a deck.
What are some scenarios where you actually get a card out of that effect? Or is it just, you know, a one-term anti-fog essentially,
David Robertson: [01:17:29] well, Bring to Light, Sultai ultimatum. This is a hard counter for, but additionally, you can cast it like the turn after they showed onto the skulls in their upkeep. So all those spells go away.
So they like play showdown on turn for you just upkeep this. They can’t, they can’t do any of the casting of the spells. So obviously that’s not an exchange you want to make, but it’s the exchange often where Flamescroll celebrant would be bad that. Turn right. They’re going to play creatures that are bigger than it.
There’s going to blanket. So this at least gives you some play there.
Damon Alexander: [01:17:58] Yeah. There’s fringe cases where your opponent has to life in a counter spell on hand and you have a lightning strike. This lets you drop the counter spell.
David Robertson: [01:18:07] You could cast it response and response to Snapcaster Mage, you know, stopping it from getting cryptic command.
You know, all these things are slicing pretty thin, but like Damon saying, you do a one on a 20 times, that’s the story you tell your friends, the other times you just played like a pretty good, you know, grizzly bear and got in there a bunch of times.
Damon Alexander: [01:18:23] Yeah. This guy wants to be in playable. I think what actually will expand our minds in terms of when silence is good.
Daniel Schriever: [01:18:29] I’m ready to have my mind expanded. So I think that’s all the previous we have time for today. Next week, we’ll hopefully have the entire spoiler revealed and we will take you through all of the greatest hits of StrixHaven. At that time. In the meantime, we’re going to call it here. Check back on Sunday.
When we tell you a little bit about our testing results from our Kaldheim potpourri from last week, as well as all the latest news in the multi-verse. This concludes part one of our brewers guide to Strixhaven tune in on Sunday for a look at the mystical archive and download the latest deck list.
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