Strixhaven, Episode 5: This Week in Brewing + Brew Review
Some sets have blue chip brew-arounds, cards that everyone is clamoring for, cards that shatter download records as soon as our new episode drops. Other sets have… Codie, Vociferous Codex? We asked our listeners which Strixhaven cards they most wanted to see in action, and the #1 request was the Curious Codex. A bold choice to be sure — suffice to say, there’s a reason we skipped this card during our preview episodes!
Meanwhile, we check in on the state of Modern and tweak out Narset’s Undoing to keep crushing in Pioneer. After that, the Brew Review returns with a look at two spicy lists submitted by listeners, featuring Emergent Sequence and Ecological Appreciation. This is going to be a wild season, let’s start brewing!
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Episode at a Glance
[3:19] Last Chance Qualifier with Narset’s Undoing
[13:30] The State of Modern after Kaldheim
[16:40] Is Skyclave Apparition Secretly a Villain?
[22:17] PieGonti’s Niv-Mizzet Deck Guide
[24:17] Strixhaven Hype Poll Results
[26:31] Codie, Vociferous Codex
[33:59] Our Strixhaven Top 5s
[40:39] Serum Visions Podcast
[44:18] Brew Review: Temur Koma by Odince
[55:26] Brew Review: Ecological Appreciation by DaviusMinimus
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 the magic, the gathering podcast for the spike road. Each week, we design new decks in modern and pioneer. We put our creations to the test and share our findings on the air. Coming up on the Roundup. Can you win with a talking textbook? Codie thinks so the brew review returns with some unlikely contenders.
That’s all coming up on episode five of Strixhaven season. Thanks for listening and enjoy the show.
David Robertson: [00:01:01] hello and welcome to the faintest brewing podcast. I am David Robertson, joining you from a snowy Minnesota under curfew joined as always by my guy on the left coast. He is Damon Alexander Damon. What’s up?
Damon Alexander: [00:01:14] Hey, it’s blue skies and 60 over here. I actually have a backpacking trip Olympic coast coming up this weekend that I was figured I’d have to call off to do a rain, but whether it looks great, you say it’s snowy, Minnesota.
David Robertson: [00:01:25] Yeah. We’re kind of getting the last like April shower slash rain slash sleet, whatever you want to call it. And of course, due to a sociopolitical events, the city is in turmoil for multiple other reasons. So yeah, quite a time to be alive in Minneapolis and a man who is no longer alive in Minneapolis. He is the CEO of the, of brewing podcast.
He is Cavedan online. Daniel Schriever. What’s up?
Daniel Schriever: [00:01:48] Yes, that’s true. David. I, I took my talents and my life essence to the East coast.
David Robertson: [00:01:54] Exactly. And then look what happens. I mean, whole God whole goddamn place is falling apart.
Daniel Schriever: [00:01:59] How has the view from curfew and lockdown? I mean, she’s the news from Minneapolis has been crazy
David Robertson: [00:02:04] curfew was at least 10 o’clock tonight. So you could go out to dinner. Um, if restaurants and bars were open, but yesterday was seven o’clock, which was crazy. I had to like leave work early, make sure I made it home before curfew.
Daniel Schriever: [00:02:18] Well, we’ve had a whole year of pandemic, uh, isolation and lockdown to get used to spending time on our own homes.We’ve learned that it’s a great opportunity to record some podcasts and talk about magic, the gathering.
David Robertson: [00:02:29] Absolutely. So at the top, we want to just give a quick reminder to people. If they enjoy the podcast and they would like to support us, they can go to patreon.com, backslash faithless brewing. We are releasing two episodes a week, one on Friday. That’s the one you’re listening to now. And one on Sunday today’s podcast is going to focus on a state of modern. We’ve got, um, a few, uh, sort of overviews of various formats. We have some cool, uh, brew reviews from people, and we’ll have a quick check in with Dan who played the last chance qualifier this morning.
And then Sunday, we’re going to go, uh, look at our first brews from Strixhaven. Our first card is Kasmina. So tune in then to see some sweet new bruise. So Dan, this morning, bright and early. You play the last chance qualifier in pioneer. Talk to us
Daniel Schriever: [00:03:19] about, yeah. So last chance qualifier, whenever you see that phrase, it’s kind of alarming, like last chance for what’s.
Like, I wasn’t aware that anything was, is magic online, going out of business. Like, I feel like any one of these days, it could just be your last chance to spend anything on magic online. It turns out that the season was ending and when the season ends all of the qualifier points that you accumulate from playing in leagues and the occasional challenge that evaporates, it turns out that I was supposed to have used these to join.
Showcase challenges and super qualifiers and stuff. And because I didn’t, I actually, I meant to play the one on Saturday, but I was, uh, basically knocked out from getting my second vaccine shots and wasn’t able to play that one. So yeah, this was it. I mean, me and 26 of my closest magic online peers were battling it out in pioneer, um, for a chance to qualify for something.
I’m not totally sure what we were battling for, but it was five rounds and you needed to win all five in order to get that precious qualification. Is that a prelim? It is essentially a prelim, but somehow more apocalyptic, you know, this is your last chance freely, or perhaps all the prelims in your life for preparing you for this final ultimate chance
Damon Alexander: [00:04:37] because the prelim was you qualify your points.
And I guess if it wouldn’t make sense to use your last qualifier points to get more qualifier points to expire,
Daniel Schriever: [00:04:45] Yeah. It’s like wishing for more wishes in a way, but then there’s like a last chance wish sale or something that you gotta like, make all your wishes. Basically. We had mentioned a few weeks back that I thought that David’s Sultai Narset bring to light lists was perhaps the best deck in pioneer and David.
I think you mostly agree with that sentiment.
David Robertson: [00:05:03] I said that sentiment and you agreed with him,
Daniel Schriever: [00:05:06] you inception, the enemy is so hard that I can no longer distinguish your own thoughts from mine.
David Robertson: [00:05:10] Yeah, exactly. You’re a part of the Nakamura corporation. So you understand, uh, you have to forge your own company to truly fulfill your father’s dying.
Wish
Daniel Schriever: [00:05:20] it’s just in my head now, like wake up, roll out of bed. Join last chance, qualifier. Best I can play any or Sultai Narset bring to light. I’d never actually played it in like a higher stakes event. And I felt like this would be the perfect time. The only change I made from the standard build that we’ve been working on is I cut the one Censor from the main deck to put in an extra Abrupt Decay.
But basically what we’re looking at here is fatal push Thoughtseize Sylvan Caryatid. Narset Parter of Veils and bring to light. These are your forums. That’s the sort of the core of the deck. And you round that out with some removal, um, two Valkis and two day’s undoing this. These are your primary targets off bring to light.
So if Narset is in play, you’re going to be bringing to light a Day’s Undoing a, to draw a fresh seven for you and erased, whatever the opponent had going on in their hand, but also when their graveyard and that’s become increasingly important in pioneer. If there, if that’s not possible, or if the board is basically a neutral, you’re going to bring to light for Tibalt and carry that to victory the old fashioned way as it used to be in cascade modern.
Um, yeah, so I got five matches here. I won game one and all five of the matches. So I really felt like the deck was set up the way I wanted to, but two of the matches, ultimately it slipped away. So I did not get the Five-O. I ended up three too, but, um, it sort of felt like I should have five or like kind of felt like I let the deck down a little bit.
Um, I split two matches against Jund food and. I beat Izzet Phoenix. I beat four-color transmogrify and I lost a close one on the final round to a green devotion.
David Robertson: [00:06:47] Yeah. I mean, I still love this deck. Um, you know, green devotion, I think the nut dropping reading devotion just beats every other deck. I don’t know that there’s anything you can do, you know, if they’ve got great draws?
Um, I have, I have like my match against Jund food. I mean, Kalitas is an all star there. You have two of them plus four tutors for him or her. I don’t know if Kalitas has a gender assigned to it’s. Um, but yeah, I mean, you know, I think this deck, it looks great going forward. I actually don’t hate the change.
You made Abrupt Decay. I see all seven unmoored ego in the sideboard. That’s typically not a card. I like, so I don’t know what that was replacing from my sideboard. That was
Daniel Schriever: [00:07:25] replacing the second abrupt decay. So I just promoted an Abrupt Decay from the sideboard to the main deck. And then with the extra slot, I wasn’t really sure what I wanted.
I thought maybe I would bring the ego in against Niv-Mizzet, or maybe against Phoenix or who knows some kind of weird combo deck in practice. I never brought it in even against Phoenix. It’s just not important enough. I think the card I wanted there was Grafdigger’s Cage, but there’s this weird thing going on where a Grafdigger’s Cage is it’s all magic online specifically against the card.
Transmogrify you can just transmogrify through it as if it’s not there. And what that means is that, you know, a, you get some people fighting on Twitter about, Oh, look at my scumbag. Opponent was casting transmogrify even though I had the Grafdigger’s Cage in play, but the second thing is that’s. No, there’s almost like less incentive to play Grafdigger’s Cage when it’s, you know, one of his most important match-ups, it’s completely useless.
That also means you don’t have it when you’re going up against Jund food, which has a matchup, or I think I would also want to have access to the, the
Damon Alexander: [00:08:25] cage. Yeah. It’s an interesting kind of ethical situation because if the cage works and they have to play against transmogrified deck, you’re supposed to be a transmogrified they’re creatures and that’ll get anything due to the cage being symmetric.
But the problem is if it doesn’t work, that if you treat it like it does work, then you can install your own creature, but then you also can’t sell their kitchen. Cause they will still get the transmogrify effect. We got to get it. Yeah. Some a properly made Grafdigger’s Cage back to MTA. SHEEO
David Robertson: [00:08:49] yeah. And I think this is another case where, um, that too and a black card, that is a two one, and it is like a modal ability.
One of them is to exile and importance graveyard. That is a card because you can bring the light for it. I would play over soul guide lantern. And so in a future version of this list, I would not play any soul guide lanterns. Uh, you know, obviously cages, something a little different than lantern.
Specifically, it is good against the, the food deck where the two, one, you know, it’s not going to catch a, uh, a cat or whatever, and the graveyards are going to bring it back in response. But, um, just as a generic car, that hoses graveyards and has other, uh, value. I, I think, uh, that’s already just one sheet.
Yeah. The car
Damon Alexander: [00:09:26] David is excited about is the callous bloomage. I had to look it up to be fair.
Daniel Schriever: [00:09:33] I’m amazed that you pulled that one out Damon. I was about to supply the name for you, but
David Robertson: [00:09:39] what are the, for this deck is I’m wondering if the heroes downfall should be a commit to memory. Um, just a quick reminder to people commit to memory Serino, blue target non-line permanent or spell.
You put two cards from the top of your opponent and then aftermath. So cast from only from your graveyard memory, discard your hand. And both opponents draw seven. So obviously memory, very similar today’s on doing so that’s an effect that we already have access to commit is a little worse than Uro downfall sometimes, but other times it’s much better, you know, committing a Niv-Mizzet on the stack or a BT light beat, bring the light on the stack or whatever bulky on the stack is much better than letting something resolve, you know, letting them get a card or three and then blowing it up.
Obviously four is not always something you can BTL for, but that was another change I was thinking about, um, a little bit more flexible and, um, just that lingering aftermath, you know, at any point you resolve a Narset or flash in notion thief and it’s game on.
Daniel Schriever: [00:10:39] I really love the heroes downfall I’ve considered like, should, should we play two copies?
You know, it’s weird because you don’t see a lot of it. Murderous Rider slash Swift end is a much more common card out of like Mono black, but this deck doesn’t really want the card to be in the adventure zone. Um, prefer to just put it in the graveyard and recycle it with days on doing, I’ve come to rely on it as like my safety valve and all kinds of match-ups where you, you, you you’d like to sign out a lot of your removal, like most, if not all of it, but I like to have, you know, the downfall in there and the two Drown in the Loch and I wouldn’t really feel safe without at least one point and shoot type
David Robertson: [00:11:17] card.
Well, it is still a point in shoe card. It hits any permanent commit to memory.
Damon Alexander: [00:11:22] Yeah. It comes back fast. Committed memory is like, it’s never like a truly great magic card. Uh, it’s a good point of it. It does. Like the back half in this deck was Narset is quite powerful.
David Robertson: [00:11:33] I mean, you can replace the growth spiral.
There’s there’s room for it somewhere. Um, that’s a card that’s going to be my next 75 for
Daniel Schriever: [00:11:39] sure. You can maybe cut the second days on doing. Yeah. Yeah. Hmm.
David Robertson: [00:11:43] Okay. Well, you, you went three to the list. Still feels great. Obviously, if you ever want to farm ticks and pioneer, it’s a fun thing to do. The fact that you have an amazing match up against all your Ryan decks and all the nib decks, just it’s awesome.
You know, people keep saying to Niv-Mizzet is the best deck in the four minutes. Just like, I think I’m like 13 and one against Niv-Mizzet or something. I mean, it’s just not even close.
Daniel Schriever: [00:12:05] Yeah. The problem is that nobody listens to us. Like if they actually listened to us and played this, we maybe see different results, but objectively by the numbers, NIV is the winningest deck.
Um, Claudioh has been just absolutely crushing with NIV. Uh, I think he won a last chance qualifier yesterday with native and came in, uh, I don’t know, second or something on one of the big tournaments over the weekend. Um,
Damon Alexander: [00:12:27] I know do make, has been, uh, D did well over the weekend with four o’clock transmogrify
Daniel Schriever: [00:12:33] well, that’s all pioneer.
David Robertson: [00:12:35] That’s the one point I want to make is this deck is poised to do well at these tournaments specifically because it lines up against the decks you’re expecting to play in the top eight. So, if you can kind of get through some of these medullary, match-ups when you get to the finals, you’re going to be playing great players and they’re going to be playing decks that are very poorly positioned against
Daniel Schriever: [00:12:50] you.
Yeah. I think that you’re actually really strong against almost everything except like Llanowar elves. And there aren’t that many of those decks around,
Damon Alexander: [00:12:58] I mean, you have four fatal push. I mean, someone’s just got to have those draws at the right time. I agree with David that the green devotion deck, sometimes they just have insane draws know like, all right, well, I can deal with this as long as they don’t talk to anything in the next turn and they flip it over and it’s a Nissa or whatever.
And they’re like, okay, well, I can probably stabilize with this. I just need like another turn. And they’d flip over a Vivian and they, they have these straws
Daniel Schriever: [00:13:20] sometimes. Yeah. I mean, this is a removal based deck and Planeswalker is, are notoriously strong against removal. They always puts you ahead. They, they end up being a two for one for the division player plus tempo, and they already had a man advantage on you.
Like it’s very tough to come back from being on the draw, even against that. So it goes, I mean, devotion is actually not a very good deck right now. All things considered. Speaking of just big picture state of the format, I came across a really excellent write-up on the modern subreddit by the user of Bamzing, who does a great service to the modern community by basically scraping the league results, challenge results and the showcase results every week, uh, highlighting the interesting decks, giving a metagame breakdown and sort of tracking changes week by week.
And Bamzing has been doing this for a couple of months now and basically collected all their thoughts on everything that has happened. From the end of the Zendikar rising season through the release of called high and all the way up to the present day. So kind of like where we’re at in modern now, you know, we had that massive banning with, uh, Uro Field of the Dead Mystic sanctuary Tibalt’s trickery, Simian spirit guide, cascade rule change.
I mean, that all happened just smack dab in the middle of Kaldheim season. Um, it was a great trip down memory lane, just reading this summary and at the very end of it Bamzing was kind enough to sort of give their take on where, where things sit in modern right now. So, Damon, what, what is the summary here of the state of the
Damon Alexander: [00:14:42] format?
Yeah, so balancing States and I, you know, I think this is dead on that. The tier one decks are agreeing. What Heliod he labels us the best deck. Um, heart disagree of course has some certain problems with the MPG interface. Uh, Jund shadow with Lurrus as a companion is that labeled the second best deck, blue red prowess model, green Tron, and Amulet Titan round out the top five.
Then taking a half notch down in power level, we have listed red, white burn, possibly with Lurrus. Some people do some people don’t. I think that they probably all should, but I’m not a burden player. Then we have, uh, nips highlights. Yorion optional Mono taxes. Yorion optional Esper control a K S burka.
Uh, I guess that’s a Esper plus Kaya’s guile or something. And then tier two, is everything else sometimes applied tier three though. Yeah, this writeup is really good. I mean, Reading through this. It’s just like, Oh man. I remember like a year ago when we had this cascade, like running around wait, that was like two months
Daniel Schriever: [00:15:39] ago.
Yeah. Crazy. How much things changed? Um, and I’m wondering like the effect of Simian spirit guide being, being gone from the format. So one thing that banding identifies is a complete lack of spell based combo. Uh, you can consider green, white Heliod as creature based combo, but spell based whether that’s, you know, ad nauseam storm, oops, all spells, uh, various as foretold decks.
Um, these things are really. Not top contenders anymore. Like you just don’t expect to see them in the leagues. And when you do, you’re not really scared of them. And I’m wondering why that is. And if that’s ever going to change.
Damon Alexander: [00:16:16] Yeah. I guess blue, red storm, for example, has been around. I think that I can still probably fine.
I think if you’re a good pilot, you can probably register a tournament. And I don’t think you’ve lost too much equity, but it hasn’t gotten a whole lot better. I mean, Birgi, didn’t, I guess really bring the deck to the next level or anything as far as I can tell. And so the deck has kind of mostly just been treading water while, you know, Greenlight Heliod picked up Skyclave apparition.
Uh, all these other decks have gotten steady upgrades.
Daniel Schriever: [00:16:40] You feel like Skyclave apparition is like the, the big villain, the secret villain in modern right now, he
Damon Alexander: [00:16:45] a villain, it’s just a very good card. Um, but I think that the role it plays, I mean, it’s interesting. It makes jace the mind sculptor, someone has just looked terrible, um, in a way that it used to not be where, you know, you put it on somebody creatures in place.
You’re guaranteed on tap with it no longer. Um, but it feels sufficiently fair to me that I wouldn’t call it a villain maybe. I mean, it’s interesting premise though.
David Robertson: [00:17:06] Yeah. I mean, at first I was kind of excited cause white had just not been getting the right kind of cards, but I just hate anything that collapses, text boxes.
And so like all permanents being exactly the same. And literally the only question they’re asking is are you paying more than four? Which in modern, you basically aren’t with a very few exceptions, specifically, some of the big banner decks you’re talking about. Yeah. I mean, I hate to say it because like itself you cars are actually like on the modern power level.
I don’t think this is a car that if I had to do over again, it would be printed exactly as it is, but it felt like it was the right power level before they banned a bunch of other stuff like excelling, Uro felt like awesome that, okay, finally, we have a car that does it and also is, you know, reasonable against roadblock, prowess, et cetera, or whatever.
But now that like Uro’s gone, it feels like this, this car is like power to beat Uro and not just like punish everything else.
Damon Alexander: [00:17:58] The fact that hits artifacts and enchantments, you know, Aria flame used to be a nice sideboard trick out of storm in a white duck is like, Oh, I guess my kiss smart card kills your electric dancers.
And you’re already in terms of other spell based combo. I think that probably the Neobrand players graduated sixth grade and rotted junior high and have much more homework.
Daniel Schriever: [00:18:16] Okay. All right. I’ll allow it. It’s a cheap shop, but I’ll allow it. Well.
Damon Alexander: [00:18:22] Where are they then? Where are the new rent players then was
Daniel Schriever: [00:18:24] your answer?
They’re waiting for my campaign against Force of Negation to be successful, but I’m putting that on hold. And so we can revisit this Skyclave apparition discussion.
Damon Alexander: [00:18:33] Wow. So you’re shooting at slipping, all the answers, trying to bring us back into the ships, passing the nightmare. I
Daniel Schriever: [00:18:39] see. Well, to be clear, I’m not saying that these cars need to be banned or should be banned.
I’m just saying that maybe having a net negative effect on the format and it’s exactly what David said. I mean, we, we had this complaint about Teferi Time reveler for so many months, years, even about how it doesn’t care, what the opponent has. It just bounces. It was tie. Skyclave has that exact same property.
And it turns out that it just removes this tension from all these white decks, the white techs tend to be creature based, and then it’s always awkward to like fit in some random Path to Exiles that you don’t really want to play. Cause they don’t synergize with anything you’re doing, but you need something.
So you put some path to exiles in nowadays when you click on any white deck and monitor and like more likely than not, there are no path exiles in the deck at all. And there might be some of the sideboard. And that’s just shocking to
David Robertson: [00:19:25] me. Yeah. Mean, I think the existence of Esper specifically, because I don’t want to play path to exile.
Um, they’re, they’re splashing black for the removal, which is the most important thing to do. Uh, I think this length that you have up here is. Really references that to there’s just small creatures all over the place. If the best decks are green, white Heliod, Jund shadow blue, red prowess in some order. I mean, those are three of the five.
I’m not saying that that’s sort of that the author’s proposing. Then you have to have really cheap, efficient removal. And especially with the like Sunbaked Canyon cycle being all over the place, path extra land is a huge downside. Now. I mean, all the, these lands are just getting turned into other cars and those other cards are, you know, lightning bolt and, and everything else.
So, um, the Green White Heliod combo involves a lot of mana, um, to go off in one turn. So they, all these decks have uses for the amount that you give them.
Damon Alexander: [00:20:17] Yeah. But then of course, without path being played, storming entity rises to the top is one of the premier threats. It’s true.
David Robertson: [00:20:25] It’s true. Yeah. And the fact that it costs five means that it Dodges this random white card.
I mean, yeah. I just, I think Stormwing entity is like a really important card right now. You’ve seen Jund ducks play. A bunch of weird cards specifically to, um, hit that card, even if missing is playing like for Assassin’s trophy, obviously to fight big manner, but also to kill that card, uh, which Dodge has all the other typical removal.
If they have any smells at all your lighting, helixes and stuff, you know, they, they, aren’t going to kill it.
Damon Alexander: [00:20:53] Yeah. So maybe it’s clinically, if I permission needs the fatal push revolt
Daniel Schriever: [00:20:56] treatment, I don’t follow. What does
David Robertson: [00:20:58] that mean? You need revolt to get up to four. Otherwise it just re exiles a permanent the cost to them.
Daniel Schriever: [00:21:04] Oh,
Damon Alexander: [00:21:07] we’re not living in that world. So it does seem a little bit problematic to have Greenway. He let us the best deck. I mean, first off the MPO experience with a deck on either side of the table is terrible. Um, probably unsolvable terrible. And then even in paper, you know, a lot of decks just get completely cold to infinite life and like, it’s fine, but you don’t want to give up.
Exactly. And so internalize is just, it’s not a good look for the game, in
my
David Robertson: [00:21:35] opinion. Yeah, the MDG thing is obviously exacerbated by the fact that we aren’t playing in person right now. And so you have all these people, you know, trying to make, uh, especially if they’re doing it, you know, in a way that they’re streaming or whatever, they’re trying to make the games watchable.
So they’re not forcing their opponent to gain infinite life. Right. They’re just saying, I’ll treat it like you haven’t been alive for, I won’t attack. Uh, we even discussed some of those issues previously a couple of months ago where someone said they wouldn’t attack, but then they did and killed them. Um, Time is a huge factor, you know, when, when you have to click through all these cycles.
So yeah, it, it is unfortunate that Green White Heliod has climbed to the top at a time when people are only playing magic
Daniel Schriever: [00:22:17] online. But before we leave this modern discussion, I want to give a quick shout out to the trophy leader from this past season PieGonti, um, who’s Andrea Piemont, I believe. Put together a exhaustive deck guide on five color Niv-Mizzet, of all decks.
Um, our babies finally got, Oh yeah, trophy leader, endorsed or guide Mulligan guide. Um, talking about, uh, why he likes to build that. He likes going through the card choices. I mean, basically the, the Niv-Mizzet has not changed since, you know, day six of our podcast, but the, the gist of it is as good as lighting helix and Kaya’s Guile all are.
That’s how good as it is in the current metagame end, probably gone too. He does a nice job of explaining how the manna base works now and the importance of the card, abundant growth, especially in conjunction with yorion, how to play that’s playing around field of ruin playing around blood moon, using it to maximize your fetch land opportunities with Omnath.
Uh, it’s a nice little writeup. It’s all in Italian. However, there is an accompanying English translation provided by our friend, Zach Ryl, AKA Manacybal, who I learned does not actually speak Italian, but he just worked very hard on that with the aid of Google translate and consulting with some fellow Italians and magic enthusiasts and streamers to get a, quite a nice translation.
Damon Alexander: [00:23:41] Yeah. When we said that, you know, uh, our comes actually couldn’t be replaced by abundant growth. I guess we were just kind of wrong. I’m finding growth, obviously it’s not as good, but it’s also not that much worse. I
Daniel Schriever: [00:23:51] mean, I think it’s worse. I think it’s like a lot worse, but, uh, I mean, you know, I’m glad that it still works.
I’ll just put it that way.
David Robertson: [00:24:00] You know, the printing of Omnath since that time, I mean, I’m not just a super powerful card. So replacing all the random chaff that we were trying out, uh, you look at some of the lower powered five drops we were trying to play. Those are all gone now and I’m just here to take their place.
Daniel Schriever: [00:24:17] So we’ll put a link to this article in the show notes. Um, it’s also on our Twitter feed @faithlessMTG. Uh, it’s a great article posted on an Italian magic site. So maybe not one that you frequent, but definitely worth a read. So that being said, should we talk about some Strixhaven? Okay. So you’ve heard us talk at length over the past three, four episodes.
Our takes on all of the most interesting cars, the most promising cars to brew around in moderate and pioneer as well as many that we, maybe you think you shouldn’t be around. But what we’d like to do is at the end of all that, um, having completed our review, we put the question to our listeners and just get a quick survey to take the temperature of the room and see what people are excited about.
Uh, when we did this for call time, there were a few clear winners. Um, Birgi Magda, Pyre of heroes. That seemed like a lot of people were excited about. Strixhaven not so much. Um, this time I put the pole live in our Patrion, discolored, their responses were all over the place. Um, it kinda just felt like people were just naming cards in the set.
Like there was no clear sense of yes, like these five or 10, or even like these three cards are the ones that were all like really hyped for and feel confident about. Um, it was more like, yeah, I think it goes, well, two concepts or how long this or that card that I might like to hear more from. So that was interesting.
Cause I think that kind of mirrored our intuition, I guess, as we were sort of going through a card by card over the last two weeks, I like, yeah, none, none of these are like jumping out as obvious brew arounds perhaps with the exception of the removal spells.
Damon Alexander: [00:26:01] Yeah, man, a lot of the cards I would say actually are brew arounds, but they’re too complex or fiddly for modern or pioneer.
Daniel Schriever: [00:26:07] Yeah. True. That being said, the card that got mentioned the most often was one that we actually declined to talk about at all in our previews. So I want to spend a minute on it here. Do you have any guesses of what this card was the most beloved most hyped card coming out of Strixhaven
David Robertson: [00:26:22] you could have given me a lot of guesses, like 20 of them when I would not have gotten to this
Damon Alexander: [00:26:27] basic plans to help cats or Skyclave apparition.
Daniel Schriever: [00:26:31] Yeah. Um, so it is Codie, the Vociferous codex. This is, I guess, the mascot of the Strixhaven school. It’s sort of a goofy little flying tome, um, somewhere between the sorting hat from Harry Potter and like the little paperclip guy from Microsoft we’re in
David Robertson: [00:26:50] tutorial. I was going to say it reminds me a lot of Towelie themselves park.
Daniel Schriever: [00:26:55] Exactly. You want to get
David Robertson: [00:26:57] hi, Towelie, You’re the worst
Damon Alexander: [00:27:01] Codie clearly has legs, Dan.
Daniel Schriever: [00:27:03] Yeah, he can, he can wander off somewhere. So what does Codie
Damon Alexander: [00:27:07] do? Yeah, Codie vociferous Codex is three mana for a legendary artifact creature construct. That is a one-four you can’t cast permanent spells is the first line of text.
So kind of a bad start, but that it picks up four tap, add WUBRG, white, blue, red, black, green. And then when you cast your next spell this term, it basically gains cascade. But for instance, or sorceries where you exile cards from your library until you hit an instant was frustrated with lesser romantic value.
Uh, you can play it until end of turn. So a little bit, uh, different timing than cascade. And then you put the cards you revealed that were not, uh, they didn’t qualify on the bottom and a random order. And
Daniel Schriever: [00:27:47] how would you rate this card?
Damon Alexander: [00:27:49] Uh, you give it a goofy out of 10. This card didn’t really seem that good to me.
Um, not being able to cast permanent spells puts a weird constraint on your deck. And then when you get as a, I mean, you kind of go up a mana with activity ability because you spend four on tapping it, you get five back of the Uber colors, so your subject has anything. Um, but of course, if you bring to light for the best hits that we’ve seen in general cards like NIV or Valki, you can’t cast those because they’re permanent spells.
And so you have to have like a different spell, that’s going to win the game. Um, of course what happens is you get the cascade trigger. So I guess we get a double spell and it’s the question is how do you abuse that? And maybe, maybe a more excited brewer around this card would have, you know, a ton of ideas bubbling off the top page of their codex.
Um,
David Robertson: [00:28:47] yeah, I mean, when this car was spoiled, I even asked in our live chat, are there two incidents or sources if you cast them back to back that when the game. And we couldn’t really think of any that did that. The only thing I could think of with this card, which seems kind of counterintuitive is you actually pack your deck with creatures.
This would let you cast like a serum visions and it would always hit, um, living end. So the turn you activate it, let’s say you could cycle four creatures into your graveyard and then serum visions would always hit living in or whatever. Any, any blue in-center sorcery you could even play, you know, force, indication Dan’s favorite card, all these other things, because serum visions because of the cascade effect is only going to see zeros.
And your only zero’s, uh, incident or sorceries would be, uh, living end and those creatures in living in you typically don’t want to cast anyway, why you’re playing a three-minute one for to do this? Uh, I can’t answer that question, but
Damon Alexander: [00:29:42] so the, the two spells you pick that are super good together are serum visions and living end.
Exactly why the strategy. Yeah, it seems interesting. You also just do like a brazen borrower or whatever, to get a higher density of spells that you can cast, um, both as permanence and not as permanence.
Daniel Schriever: [00:29:57] Yeah. I like that adventure concepts. That could be a clever way around it. So, David you’re essentially saying that the randomness of the activity ability on Codie is a problem, right?
David Robertson: [00:30:08] Like it’s, it’s not random. You can build your deck to do the thing, but the, because of how fiddly that thing is going to have to be like, okay, you’re casting bring light. That’s going to cast a spell X first. It’s going to hit us. Well, the cost for Through zero, you can make your deck always hit a specific spell.
We’ve seen all kinds of voice to do that. Is that format of spell plus the five man Isbell going to win the game. I can’t find the cards that do that. And so if you can find a way to do that, that’s great. But then you’re also putting a three men, a one four in your deck that, um, is very vulnerable to removal of all kinds.
So it’s actually asking a ton of you, and it’s not obvious that there is, if you, on top of that, you can win the game.
Damon Alexander: [00:30:52] Yeah. I mean, either Codie enables a really critical combo in a brand new way, in which case, if it dies, your deck is out of luck or it doesn’t, in which case, why is Codie the best way to achieve this effect?
Now, of course, if you have Codie and Jodah out, they work really well together, then you can enter the infinites cascade into really anything at that point. Uh, you’re off to the races.
Daniel Schriever: [00:31:12] Of course you’ll have to have play first because Codie does not let you play other permanent spills.
Damon Alexander: [00:31:17] Yeah. It was clearly more of an EDH type of thing to go for.
Yeah.
Daniel Schriever: [00:31:21] So I put this on my trap cars list and I didn’t actually think that anyone was going to seriously attempt this in any one-on-one setting. And, and granted, you know, I didn’t ask people. What do you think are the most powerful cars? Either? Just like what cars excite you the most Codie I think is an exciting car, because as an extremely clear ask, you know, this is a brewer as card, like it’s so weird and so specific, like don’t play permanent spells, or maybe you do, you’re breaking the rule because Codie doesn’t want you to, it doesn’t allow you to play them anymore.
Then you got to set up for this casting non-permanent spells, so insects and sorceries and you don’t flipping until you get some more. And it’s just like, uh, like David said asking a lot. If you’re following the instructions, you’re going to end up with a deck that is almost all spells except Codie. And then Codie is like the only thing they’re stifling that provision is going to remove.
Um, and you’re basically out of luck. So I think
Damon Alexander: [00:32:14] the passcode Codie the first games they CyBorD out. All those guys have apparitions because you’re obviously spell only deck then boom, game two, you hit them with a Codie.
Daniel Schriever: [00:32:22] I mean, yeah. I
David Robertson: [00:32:23] mean, it’s, it’s the, the other issue that we’ve also kind of gestured at is whatever combo this is.
It also has to function without Codie Codie is a very unique card, right? No other card has this kind of text where it sets up this full cascade. So the games that I don’t draw a Codie or the games where I don’t get to untap with my three manna, one for that doesn’t have haste or anything. Um, how am I winning those games?
You have to be able to win those games too. So, um, it there’s, there’s just a ton of levers that are like pulling at you. And I still can’t see the, the way, even if I get to activate this, like how do I win? Okay. It’s turned four, I’ve played my fourth land. I’m activating Codie vociferous codex, and, uh, you know, whatever I’ve had the perfect hand.
Can I win from that position if I can’t? Um, I’m not sure that there’s anything that this card is doing, period.
Damon Alexander: [00:33:17] Yeah. One card to compare it. Codie to his Vivian monstrous advocate who was out of Korea and she gives a minus two. When you cast your next creature, spell this term, searched your library for creature, with lesser Manoj value, put on the battlefield and shuffle up.
As we were trying this with things like Kiki-Jiki, find restoration angel, and I was actually like, not bad and it’s a similar effect, but Vivien is so much more generous with it. You get to actually tutor, not just get one randomly, you can cast any type of spells, including permanents or spells do the, it doesn’t shut you off on anything.
Uh, she also is a Planeswalker in her own, right? With a passive letting you cast belt creatures from the top of your library and uptick that makes beasts. Um, and she, she never really went anywhere.
Daniel Schriever: [00:33:59] So I didn’t put this poll to you guys, but I’m curious, how would you have filled it out? So what will be your most hyped, most excited cards from Strixhaven to play with, or to brew around?
I
David Robertson: [00:34:10] mean, the cards I’m most excited to play with are expressive iteration. So let’s the blue red sort of draw to, uh, Galazeth . That is the blue, red elder dragon legend. Um, I really liked the discard package, so, um, I don’t know exactly which cards you’d play, but prismari command, Plargg, magma Opus. Um, and then I really like multiple choice, although I think the card is probably not that powerful, but it’s so sweet that I.
We’ll certainly be putting in a bunch of decks.
Damon Alexander: [00:34:42] Yeah. I’ve been looking forward to a test of talents. You always feel smart looking at your opponent’s deck, taking notes or a screenshot exiting their favorite cards as you laugh. Um, meanwhile, a lot of the deans cycle at least are interesting to me to try out, um, some of the multicolor Mythics like the, the magma Opus, um, are interesting.
Expressive iteration is an interesting card for tempo deck. Uh you guys got me hyped up for this card. I’m still not sure. I really see it, but I’m down to try it. Yeah.
Daniel Schriever: [00:35:15] Have you thought about that some more, because that was another card that came in just beneath Codie on the listener hype poll. Um, I kinda think that you just have to ex expect a three-four flyer that makes a treasurer and nothing else.
Like every other thing you try to do with it. It’s just pulling the deck in so many different directions, you know, having artifacts lower in the curve, then getting gallows up down and having it survive. And then somehow casting only specifically instance. And sorceries with the extra manna. It’s just too much for me, at least.
So I’m actually thinking it’s not going to do a lot besides be a reasonable body that, you know, as a treasurer for a leader.
Damon Alexander: [00:35:54] Yeah. And modern, I feel like you’ve just played Urza
Daniel Schriever: [00:35:57] what’s. Sure, sure. So I guess my, my list would start with maybe the lesson mechanic. I think that’s actually kind of interesting and there’s so many cards under that umbrella, 21 learn cars, 21 lesson cards.
Um, retriever Phoenix stood out to me among them. Although, as we talked about last week, it’s, it’s not as high a ceiling as you might like, uh, beyond that, I think conspiracy theorist is kind of unique and interesting. I’m, I’m kind of curious if Hollow One can maybe do something with that card, strict Proctor or maybe, uh, Yo David, and you pointed out that Lotus field interaction, uh, that has always been abducted has felt like, you know, we’re right on the verge of a great builds.
And you know, maybe this is the car that, that can get there. Uh, beyond that Quintorius is the elephant that generates spirit tokens for cars, leaving the graveyard and awakened the blood avatar slash Extus Oriq overlord. These are the cars that stand out to me as the ones that I would most like to build around.
And yet as I go down that list, you know, decks are not like forming in my head. It’s like, Hmm, these are, these are interested in, you know what you’re trying to figure out. What is the car to asking you to do? What does it imagine this surrounded with? What is the game state that it’s shining in? And you realize that, that, you know, the things they’re asking you for don’t match up with my experience of modern or even pioneer.
In many cases, it’s like you kind of have to like really craft those games States. And it’s a lot, it’s going to be a lot of work to get these cards that deliver on their promise, but they are very cool.
Damon Alexander: [00:37:26] Yeah. One thing that I think is also interesting is they clearly release a set with the party mechanic in mind.
And so I wonder if, uh, you know, our, our prior attempts to making party work, uh, it will be emboldened by the new cards on the roster, especially in the cleric type. I feel like we, that was a weak point that now we have a lot more of with Paulo’s, uh, elite Spellbinder being perhaps the premier one
Daniel Schriever: [00:37:49] wizard was the weak link on that.
I mean, clerics have the best party palace. They have the Archpriest of Iona and Luminarch aspirant it too. Whereas wizards are not really combat ready until this set. Now we have some combat ready wizards, which I think is interesting
Damon Alexander: [00:38:05] template. More of the party deck denied it. So listen to him.
Daniel Schriever: [00:38:08] I mean, you’re not wrong.
Like the party mechanic is waiting in the wings and we know that the summer set is dungeon the dragons theme. So I expect some kind of party callback or maybe just the mechanic itself will come back. So keep an eye on it. Okay. So it sounds like our, our takeaway is that we are expecting that the removal of car has to be good and everything else to be a bit of a long shot.
David Robertson: [00:38:32] Yeah. That’s okay. I mean, the object of each new set should not be, to be hyper disruptive, to non rotating sets. Um, the fact that it wizards was getting it wrong for so many sets in a row, I think created a weird new normal, and I think people should get used to hopefully a better new normal, which is that there are, it’s just adding some parts and pieces and every once in a while, new strategies pop up, that’s much more healthy, I think for modern, for pioneer, for people who are trying to get into those formats where people are trying to stay playing those formats.
Um, and apparently what does, is this going to choose to make historic, to set that they randomly disrupt with random printings, um, that they obviously do not test at all,
Daniel Schriever: [00:39:11] nor should they really that’s like a whole different question, but like, yeah. Yeah. Just like fire
David Robertson: [00:39:16] at the wall. It’s only on line and no one’s paying any money for these cars.
Damon Alexander: [00:39:21] Oh, yeah. Fire at the wall. F I R E.
David Robertson: [00:39:24] Yeah. It’s like, it’s brainstorm. Good. I don’t know. Do we have 50 years of the evidence that shows that it is might as well run that experiment again?
Damon Alexander: [00:39:32] Yeah, it definitely seems possible that Strixhaven, uh, is a, another low powered set, like Kaldheim after we had the whole tip ball thing figured out, or like rotted or fixed or whatever you want to view that, um, some of these, a lot of these perhaps slightly better removal spells may not wind up being slightly better.
Some of them are like, they’re all a little finicky in their own way, compared to our fatal pushes or mana leaks of the world. And it will be interesting to see how they shape up. And if they do wind up finding
Daniel Schriever: [00:39:59] homes, yeah. Maybe elite Spellbinder is a card. We’re going to remember the set four, because I think that does seem like a staple to me.
Damon Alexander: [00:40:06] Some of these cards, you try them out and they just don’t work. Like, you know, with that card, you could see the, you know, the punch just has the man. A lot of the time you’re playing as Tron. You guys, all their carne, they paid to when they play Karn.
Daniel Schriever: [00:40:17] Um, well, that would just be sad,
Damon Alexander: [00:40:22] but yeah, the only way to find out is to try these things out on the QS.
Daniel Schriever: [00:40:26] Yeah. Maybe that means it’s a good time to take a look at some deck lists and we have a couple really spicy ones sent into us by listeners. Uh, we will take a look at those lists. After these messages.
Damon Alexander: [00:40:39] When I was younger, I used to spend hours devouring, every new set. I knew every card name, read every article and stayed up late tweaking and tuning.
My decks were always the talk of the LGS, but times changed. And I just can’t seem to
Daniel Schriever: [00:40:52] keep up. Does this sound familiar? If it does, we’ve got something that can help serum
Damon Alexander: [00:40:58] visions. Hi, I’m Dr. Combo and my team of DJs. And I had a simple goal in mind,
David Robertson: [00:41:04] crushed Jund once we did that, we had some more time and
Damon Alexander: [00:41:08] energy.
So we decided to create serum visions
David Robertson: [00:41:11] a twice monthly oral supplement for your magic, the gathering Gruul
Damon Alexander: [00:41:14] health
Daniel Schriever: [00:41:15] taken every two weeks directly
Damon Alexander: [00:41:16] through the years, Sierra visions has been proven to
Daniel Schriever: [00:41:19] increase the playing of non-metal IDEXX, phenoms, and spicy cards. By up to 80%,
Damon Alexander: [00:41:25] unlike other podcasts, we’re not solely focused on being competitive, maybe even not focused on it at all, because at the end of the day, that’s probably not your focus.
What we’re interested in is ideas that excite
Daniel Schriever: [00:41:38] us and we hope they’ll excite you. If you feel a strong desire to register, burn, call your doctor immediately, jank brewing is not for everybody and can mix poorly with other hobbies, drugs or alcohol, do not listen to serum visions. If you’re listening to podcasts that deal with standard in a serious way, the makers of Sierra envisions are not responsible for any loss tickets, revenue, or Digna Nita, any persons inspired fully or in part
Damon Alexander: [00:41:54] by the contained information.
Thanks to serum visions. I’m inspired,
Daniel Schriever: [00:41:58] confident, and ready for my next weekly magic. The gathering tournament, ask your doctor if serum visions is right for you, or just download it wherever high quality podcasts are provided the serum visions podcast, iterative jank for the modern world.
David Robertson: [00:42:17] Right? So what you just heard was a another in a series of delightful ads that a Manacymbal symbol has made, he’s made a couple of really glorious ones for this podcast.
He made one for his own podcast. So Serum Visions podcast, a very similar, and I think a sort of heartened desire to what we are doing here. Uh, a podcast for people who are into brewing. Very humble in the podcast about their success. But I think both I’m a Manacymbal and Arun, uh, really great, uh, ideas, always pursuing, um, you know, interesting angles.
I mean, I just, uh, it kind of tickles me to hear all the voices and stuff.
Daniel Schriever: [00:42:55] Yeah. We’ve had all three of the co-hosts with your envisions as guests on our podcast at various times, um, Brian Madden joined us, uh, episode. I think you weren’t there for that, David, but I was in, I had a unfortunately good chat looking through some spice he wants, I think Brian’s like the heart and soul of Sierra visions to me.
You hear him is he’s the every man brewer, like he’s willing to try anything, he’ll try anything. But sometimes, you know, you need a little performance boost for him and Dr. Combo and his team of DJ friends, uh, from are insane. So I, yeah, I definitely recommend serum Virgin’s podcast. We’ve talked about it before, but you know, you can never have too much magic Bruin content in your life and this one’s worth subscribing to.
Yeah,
Damon Alexander: [00:43:35] every brewer has kind of their own patterns and angles and cards and colors that they like and their podcasts. I think they tend to go a little differently than the way we go. Um, even though we have a lot of the same spirit for how we think about
brewing
Daniel Schriever: [00:43:47] also, I will just add that the concept for this ad, you know, it’s modeled after those prime time television, drug ads complete with the side effects and a warning labels and that kind of thing.
So Zach is a Canadian man. Assembles did not understand this genre at all, because apparently in Canada they do not have this predatory for-profit medical system and they don’t have ads like this on all the airwaves. So that was his own little journey. Yeah. Some
Damon Alexander: [00:44:13] countries don’t let pharmaceutical companies advertise.
But the U S does
Daniel Schriever: [00:44:18] still winning after all these years. Okay. Uh, enough about that, let’s take a look at some lists. So we call this segment, the brew review. And if you been a long time, listener of the cast you’ll know that we like to do these segments. I don’t know, every few months, maybe once a set or so, and we’ll often dedicate the entire episode to just reviewing spicy lists and ideas sent in by our listeners.
This is one of the perks and benefits that you can get. If you want to join our Patreon. Once again, that is patreon.com/faithlessbrewing. Um, this time we wanted to mix it up a little bit. So I think Strixhaven is going to be a very short season with modern horizons too, just about six weeks away by my calculations.
So we thought maybe, uh, you know, we’ll just try to mix in some listener decks as we go as time permits. And it might be nice to just sort of kick off the brewing season of Strixhaven with a couple sent in by our patrons. Uh, the very first one here had a lot of affinity is to a list that David was trying out.
Um, last week with Neo form. This one also features koma cosmos serpent, but it’s getting there in a slightly different way. So do you wanna tell us about this Temur koma list sent in by
David Robertson: [00:45:27] Odince? Sure. So this is fundamentally a transmogrify decks that are for transmogrify this sort of hidden creature that they’re really trying to take advantage of is this cool new card emergent sequence.
So emergent sequence, we talked about it last week on the pod one and a green for a rampant growth effect. So you search your library, you put a basic land of your choice into play taps. It becomes a creature that gets a plus one plus one counter for each land that came into play that turn. So it gets at least one the car that you got from emergent sequence, but let’s say you play this on turn two.
You’re actually playing a tap to two, two cars. And so, because it’s not actual creature on your following turn, you’ve also accelerated transmogrify. So it turned to emergency sequence. Let’s say you put your mountain into play taps, turn three, you play your land. It’s now your fourth land. You transmogrify target emergent sequence land.
You flipped through your deck. You only have one creature in your entire deck, which has coma cosmos serpent. Kamikaze will start put on turn three is going to win a huge percentage. Although not all, uh, games, uh, just a quick reminder. Koma cosmos serpent is a six, six that makes a three-three serpent on every upkeep.
So both your opponents and your own. You may sacrifice a serpent to give Koma cosmos serpent indestructable, or you may sacrifice a serpent to tap a permanent, and it may not use its activated abilities until the end of turn. So a very powerful card, uh, as Dan was mentioning, I was Neoforming that into play on turn three.
And that was basically winning every game that that was happening. This has a lot of other similar, hidden creatures to this sort of existing four-color, um, transmogrify pile. So it has a Esika’s chariot, it has shark typhoon, um, and then it just has a cards sorta help you find the so ops, um, Valakut awakening and Dig Through Time to kind of round out the, uh, the card selection there.
Daniel Schriever: [00:47:19] Yeah. When I saw this list from Odince, I had like this light bulb went off in my head because I’ve been basically dunking on emergence sequence in our preview show, like talking about how it’s so much worse than ramping growth and, you know, Dryad Arbor and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, like who wants.
LA on the diet’s removal and it just didn’t even occur to me that this card has other properties, right. Being a token creature effectively, right. It is like fetching a land out of your deck while not actually being a creature itself means all of a sudden you have like a, a token that is not a birth of Meletis or Raven’s warning, glacially slow, make a one-on-one type thing.
It’s actually speeding you up. Um, making a one, one, or maybe a two, two, I guess, um, that can set up the transmogrify immediately. Now it still dies removal. They will still die to anything, your opponent points at it. So this is not like guaranteed to work, but, uh, as another routes to unlock that power, or transmogrify maybe faster than people are expecting, I just thought this was so sweet.
David Robertson: [00:48:24] Yeah, I think the idea is great. Um, the emergent sequence right now, I’m not sure what makes a transmogrify deck. Good. I mean, I disliked the existing deck, so, um, I’m not like an expert on it. Is the CR is adding speed to it, what it needs to do, or is it the fact that it has this sort of fires engine that allows, you know, to grind all this advantage?
Once it resolves the first transmogrify, this is a perfect way to try that out because the other transmogrify lists, um, basically never transmogrifies on turn four. It’s incredibly rare. This list can transmogrify on three, a reasonable amount of time and on turn for a huge amount of the time. It’s not your Island list, you know, it’s actually trying to do the thing, uh, it’s trying to do.
Um, so yeah, I, I think one way or the other, you’re gonna find out very quickly, um, does this deck do the, uh, do what you’re hoping that it’s going to do, or is the weakness of emergent sequence combined with the weakness of transmogrify. That Dan’s kind of outlined, um, is that kind of two for one going to end up punishing you?
Because if you go for this line on turn three, you’ve done your acceleration and your poem just stomps your card. Um, that’s a pretty clean two for one, and a huge man advantage. So you basically are going to lose almost every game that that happens.
Damon Alexander: [00:49:42] Yeah, Birth of Meletis does, if your token dies, you’re not quite as sad as the kiss of emergent sequence with birth and meletis.
You still got a card out of it in the form of the Plains was you was everything here. But to me, the way I would perceive this deck is that the four-color transmogrified deck is more of like a transmogrify control deck, looking at agent of treachery, casting, Supreme verdicts. And the thing is that this is more of like a transmogrified tempo deck.
And the thing is that the earlier you get your haymaker out, The more effective. It can be in the sense that when it comes down later, you have to devote a lot of your resources, perhaps inefficiently, just trying to stabilize. Um, whereas if it comes down earlier, your opponent’s the one having to use the resources, uh, you know, inefficiently trying to catch up.
And so we can kind of really flip the game a lot. Just that little burst of speed. Of course, if your emergent sequence, uh, you know, it gets fatal, pushed a lot, you don’t gain the speed you want to really kind of probably going down in speed a little bit, even without the fires to help catch up in those situations.
But it’s a very interesting idea.
Daniel Schriever: [00:50:40] I think if I were going to play this deck, I might steer it a little bit more towards the traditional four-color transmogrify and just try to re-imagine that deck without white cards. Cause the white cards are really not that good at birth of meletis, Raven’s warning.
Deafening Clarion Nahiri some Chained to the rocks. I mean, these cars are okay, but like they’re like Damon said they’re controlled cards. They’re a bit slow and they’re planning to just, you know, Yorion eventually, you know, steal something with Agent of Treachery events. Eventually that being said, I still like the blue cards.
I still like Narset Parter of Veils quite a lot. And I think that that will be, you know, the perfect card here to play on three. I think what Odin’s did is he realized that, you know, if I’m not playing Fires, you know, I can play instance again, I can play Sinister sabotage and fire prophecy and Valakut awakening.
But to me, like those cars don’t feel that good to me. Like I actually think that even a standalone cards, they’re, they’re just like, not that powerful. I’d almost rather just like get on the board faster, um, with Narset sir. Anything else Dig for the transmogrifies that way? And you know, with two, for ones like that, you can survive a fatal push now, and then
Damon Alexander: [00:51:50] Dan, you poo-pooed the Raven’s warning, but keep in mind this transplant microphone deck totally existed before call time and the Raven’s warning one, it slots in this deck.
Um, it is still a little mysterious to me. Exactly why it’s so good. Obviously like, you know, I know what it does, but it’s there for a reason and the transmogrify ducks. On the other hand. Yeah. I agreed that sinister sabotage isn’t a card that you get super excited about playing. I mean, I’m like, Oh, in my pioneer blue, red, see the truth deck.
I could play sinister sabotage Nick and stop any smell in the whole history of magic. This has to be a good catchall. And it isn’t, it’s a little bit too slow, a little bit too. Finicky things go wrong. Obviously the card does counter spells in the way advertised. I wonder if a deck like this could play some like Growth spirals, uh, because you’re playing more instant speed cards.
Obviously the dream is to have turned to emergent sequence, turn three Transmogrify a koma, but things don’t always work out that way. And so I wonder if, uh, you know, if you go turn to Growth spirals to turn three Esika’s Chariot at your setup for trespass aerify in a later turn with the chair to self ready, provide pressure.
Yeah.
David Robertson: [00:52:49] I mean, the problem is there’s 22 lands in this deck. So gross spiral is very unlikely to actually ramp you. Um, there are hidden lands and valid awakening, but valid could awakening does not help you cast grow spiral. So.
Daniel Schriever: [00:53:02] Yeah, but again, I think that’s a card that I think is actually not as strong as I’d be happy to cut that to, to make growth spiral work.
And by a similar token, I’m happy to cut sensors as well. Cut the opts. If that’s what it takes, to get something closer to the Narset bring to light cell that you’ve developed David, where that’s, you know, 24 lands it, it can, it can support some growth spirals. I think that’s fine. Yeah. I mean, if you’re not playing white, you have to find alternative token makers.
Esika’s chariot is. Pretty good. Shark typhoon is pretty good emergent sequence. I’m not sure. And there’s other options too. I mean, you could consider like a Planeswalker that spits out tokens. It doesn’t have to be Narset. It could be the small Nissa. It could be, um, little Chandra Tundra, three, maybe even Kasmina uh, I mean there’s a lot of different cards you might look to.
If you’re not married to white. And I think that, um, you know, Odince has a right to explore this direction. And I think emergent sequences is like a really sweet way to get into that brewing space.
David Robertson: [00:54:02] I mean, for me, I just want to emergent sequence on two and go for transmogrify on turn three, as many times as possible and see how many times it gets there.
Um, everything else is all just in the margins. To me, like the, the interaction that Odince found is the most attractive thing to me, the colors and some of the specific car choices, they can come and go, but I want to emergence sequence on two and go for it. If you’re, if you’re not doing that, then you, you, the entire deck needs a fundamental rethink, but if that’s great, then you can manipulate all the other cards around it to make sure that you do that more often, or you can do it with, you know, more control or less control, all that, all that other stuff is just scribbling and bibbling as a multi-hour I would say, yeah,
Damon Alexander: [00:54:43] as a quick comment, by the way, the deck has four basics along with two Fabled passage for emergent sequence.
Is that right? Do you need more basics or less fable passages?
David Robertson: [00:54:51] Yeah, you probably do. There’s there’s a few, but again, all that, all that stuff is just in the margins. The interaction that. Um, Odince found is though the one of interest to me. Um, this is a
Damon Alexander: [00:55:02] broad review, David. It’s not for you. It’s for everybody.
Daniel Schriever: [00:55:05] I agree with David. I think that stuff can, I mean, how often do we present decks and we don’t even provide them a base, at least all those
David Robertson: [00:55:11] games wind
Damon Alexander: [00:55:14] up in a queue with a misshapen deck.
Daniel Schriever: [00:55:18] I thought I hired you to be our mana specialist. Damon,
Damon Alexander: [00:55:22] I guess so excited about taking the deck into the queue things slip through the cracks sometimes.
Daniel Schriever: [00:55:26] All right. All right. Um, let’s take a look at one more list here. So this second list is sent to us by a Davius minimus. Davius is, is a long-time brewer. He’s a streamer. Uh, he’s basically been in the spike Rogue kind of competitive brewing space forever. Uh, he was looking at new visit decks when we were first looking at them.
He was at the forefront of developing Enigmatic incarnation in modern, along with Mordekaiser. And more recently than that say the last three weeks to have yes, has been reviving Naya, Kiki cord, and somehow as found a great bill that, you know, he’s got like three, five O’s in the last three weeks and just, uh, astounding win percentage with Nike cord.
So creature toolbox is clearly, clearly on Davius’ mind. And he specifically wanted to know about the card ecological appreciation, which has another card that we actually skipped. So Damon wants you to tell us about this card and give us your assessment of it.
Damon Alexander: [00:56:22] Yeah. So ecological appreciation is X to green for a sorcery.
Search your library and graveyard for up to four creature cards, with different names that each have meant I value X or less and reveal them and opponent chooses to have those cards shuffle the chosen cards into your library and put the rest out into the battlefield exile ecological app appreciation.
So it’s kind of like a weird gifts on given card for creatures, but with a caveat that the cards go straight onto the battlefield. And so in that sense, um, devious compares it to collected company or not collected company to court of calling. I would also compare to collected company in the sense that they can both provide two for ones.
Uh, but with this card, you don’t have to worry about whipping and you could be a little bit more surgical with the caveat that your opponent gets to choose, which two you don’t get. And so how you present redundant packages, you know, gifts on given typically relied on Krieger as synergies, like on burial rights.
It doesn’t matter which pilot goes into it. It’s going to get cast, uh, in a way that is a little bit trickier with creatures and also the excess ones go into the, get shuffled back in.
Daniel Schriever: [00:57:25] And Davius was kind enough to provide us with a sample deck list. Um, obviously these are not tested yet, cause the set doesn’t drop until later this week, but just so that we could, you know, have something to sink our teeth into, as we consider how this might work.
Um, I’m not going to read all the cards because it’s just a ton of one-offs. But the most important thing is to know are that we’re in Naya colors and we are a Yorion deck for a reason, right? Because I think at a certain points you need all 80 cards. You might even need a hundred cards to make ecological appreciation work, because you need to have all these different packages at different spots on the curve.
So if you’re casting it for X equals two, let’s say you need to be able to grab four different two jobs with different names, same thing at three men on. Um, and then you can go up. You’re gonna try the same thing at four men on Dave. Yes. Does that as well. He’s got, you know, a format that you can get a Felidar guardian and Omnath the restoration angel.
Uh, and then the fourth Creaser would have to be a three drop, unfortunately, um, at two men now you’re, you’re most likely getting, you know, maybe a wall of blossoms Wall of Omens and Ice-Fang Coatl and then some miscellaneous creatures. There’s a Fblthp in here. So you’re most likely gonna end up with two creatures that can trip in that situation.
Um, at three men at you’re most likely to get some removal effects, uh, like Skyclave apparition night of autumn, deputy of Detention and eternal witness Reflector Mage. I can see a sort of like what the concept was here. You’re just trying to think of like, what are creatures that help that you can present the opponent with some problems, uh, for different values of X, but when I’m imagining like will happen when you do this, is that when you cast ecological appreciation, you’ll, you’ll basically get exactly what I said.
If you spend five minutes, you’ll get to a cantrip walls. If you spend six men out, you’ll get, you know, one. We can remove a spell and like whichever your point cares about less Magus of the Moon, Seasoned Pyromancer, and at four you’ll get, you know, maybe a three drop and the restoration angel or something like that.
It’s just like so much manna and you’re not even guaranteed to impact the board on any of those turns. Um, even at X equals one, it’s kind of tough to like find enough good one drops to have a complete package of one drops for ecological appreciation to find,
David Robertson: [00:59:46] yeah, this card functionally has like a Punisher mechanic.
So you present for up to four, um, and your parents is going to pick the two that mattered to them. The least I can pair this to Helen of Troy. I said, this was the car that was going to launch 10,000 Scryfall searches. And obviously, um, the has been burning up the Scryfall searches. I mean the, the number of individual cars, because you want to present four individual, uh, card names at the four and the three.
This is a person who’s got a ton of experience, you know, when you’re constructing, um, agnostic incarnation list, the same kind of thing you want to have these options. But like Dan saying, enigmatic incarnation is an engine because it gets to do it for free. You pay for manna, but you do it every turn for free for the rest of the game, unless your opponent actually destroys it.
Casting this for five manna and getting two walls is like a horrific collective company that happened at sorcery speed and it costs one more manna. Um, I just don’t see it. The fact that somebody who is, you know, obviously much more well-versed in all these like creature packages than I am, is encouraged by it is I’m hoping that they’re right and I’m wrong.
And it wouldn’t surprise me if that was the case, but yet just you describing these piles you present, like in modern, like instead of spending six mana for Primeval Titan, you’re spending six man. And like. Presenting me with reflector mage, eternal witness knight of autumn and deputy of Detention.
It’s like, wow, what a sweet, sweet turn events for me, the person being presented the option. Like that sounds good. Resolves. Um, yeah, you can’t ever really present a winning combination of cards unless you specifically have it for eight or then you came into it then. So yeah, I just, I don’t really understand what, uh, Davius is seeing, but obviously they’ve got a track record of being right about these kinds of things.
And I hope that they are, but man, I would bet heavily against it. And there’s a reason why we didn’t talk about it during our actual spoiler episode.
Damon Alexander: [01:01:46] Yeah. The fact that you can’t get an infinite combo, even at, uh, the full eight man to max out your curve is a little disappointing. Something in me really wants to, at some point in my life, casts, ecological appreciation and grab a True-Name nemesis along with other winning cars that they have to give you the true name.
And then you pick them obviously probably in a multiplayer situation.
David Robertson: [01:02:03] But Cassa for nine is present four different Titans.
Damon Alexander: [01:02:07] Yeah. Like Griselbrand prime. And then some I was going to be true. Name is me and my fourth card is going to be well, I can’t get my Griselbrand
true name shoes. You, I don’t know why that just makes me feel excited about that possibility. I’ll probably then lose the game. Cause I could have instead cast a spell that gets me Griselbrand,
Daniel Schriever: [01:02:25] but first you need to generate infinite Metta. Step two is cast this, get Emrakul. And Emrakul and Worldspine Wurm.
And I was like,
Damon Alexander: [01:02:35] exactly.
David Robertson: [01:02:37] It’s like, and then you lose that game. That’s the kind of thing where thinking of these crazy situations where you get to do all this stuff and it’s like, yep. Resolves done like this sometimes
Damon Alexander: [01:02:47] magic is about expression, but I don’t think that’s what that’s where it was. Dave uses deck are generally our podcasts.
So yeah, in that context, I agree with some skepticism around this ecological appreciation, not the general concept of
Daniel Schriever: [01:03:00] the card, maybe the takeaway is that the parallel? Yes. I was thinking of between Chord of calling and ecological appreciation and just sort of highlights how good Chord of calling is. I was like sneakily.
Good. Even though there’s a lot of numbers in his casting cost, we don’t actually have to spend that much. And there’s always a direct relation between how much you put in and how much impact you get.
David Robertson: [01:03:19] And Chord of calling specifically, you can play around Force of negation Dan’s favorite card you can go for in your upkeep.
You can go for it when they’re attacking you. This is a card you’re always casting on your turn. So fortunately Force always gets it, right? I mean, there’s, there’s just no getting around it. Um, unless you have one of your veils of summer, but you’re playing your on. So your sidebar is actually really bad. You don’t get to get the hate cards.
That core does. And in fact, you see that normally sideboards and easier Island piles are full of creatures. You can like tutor with your elders, revolutions and stuff. There aren’t very many in this one because ecological appreciation won’t get that Auriok champion or whatever, if it’s great against their shadow deck, they just won’t give it to you.
So you don’t even get to get surgical as they are referencing. You won’t, you won’t get the Knight of autumn to blow up their blood moon or whatever. They’re going to give you a different card.
Damon Alexander: [01:04:06] Yeah. We’ll have to wait for ecological favoritism at some point, but that said, uh, you know, I very much appreciate it.
You know, it’s always easy to be a hater and Davius is out here brewing with new cards and that’s a good spirits. Well, and then, you
David Robertson: [01:04:21] know, the first five, Oh, I hope he’s posting in the discord. Like, all right. Like so, so hard. It’s like posted over and over again. I will, I will happily admit that I’m rolling if that’s the case so that, you know, it’s a sweet card.
I mean, I want it to be good. I just, in my mind’s eye, I can’t see it. I don’t have enough creativity to, to imagine the scenario where, where it is. Good.
Daniel Schriever: [01:04:43] All right. I think that’s a good place to leave it for these first two decks to whet our appetite for a Strixhaven season. As I said, we’re going to try to work in some of these Bree review listener decks as we go in the future episodes in the coming weeks.
So if you would like to have us review your list, uh, you can of course sign up, uh, joining the Patreon. If you’re currently at, uh, patron right now, um, the way this cord find the links, that’s all there. Send us your lists. So I think we’ll wrap it up here. Uh, now it’s going to be our turn to brew some decks.
Uh, we’ll have that for you coming up in the Sunday episode with our very first Brew session of Strixhaven season. All right. So you gentlemen,
David Robertson: [01:05:23] then
Daniel Schriever: [01:05:24] that’s a wrap on this edition of the faith is brewing podcast tune in on Sunday for our first review session of Strixhaven season, starring Kasmina, Enigma Sage support for this podcast is provided by brewers like you, if you like what we do, be sure to join our community at patreon.com/faithlessbrewing for discord access bonus content, and much more that’s all for today.
Stay safe and we’ll see you next time.
