[mtgnexus] Random Card of the Day - Blade of Selves

[SocorroTortoise]

Well, if you ignore that you have creatures in addition to the extra cards now. Think of it like enchantresses.

Plus, blinking.

This is what the initial post on this card was missing. It gives you back the card you spent on the first creature, then every subsequent creature is card advantage. Putting a creature on the board is a 1:1 exchange, not a 1:0 one. This turns them all into 2:1. Very solid card as long as you're running moderate creature density despite not having immediate impact on its own.

[onering]

Yeah, it's pretty good. If this was still the good stuff era it would be a hot staple. This is enchantress's presence for creatures. It's one of the better ways to draw from playing creatures, especially since it's an etb effect rather than cast, so blinking and bringing back from the yard and cheating out all trigger it. At its minimum, it cantrips your commander, so if it's an empty board and everyone is topdecking you at least always have a way to trigger it. Its just solid, honest value. It's also a great example of how a card benefiting from the rules of the format doesn't necessarily mean it's interacting poorly with the format. Nontoken creature that doesn't share a name with other creatures you control or in your yard is a real drawback in most formats, and almost totally irrelevant in edh (I mean, you could have stolen a creature, or blinked the original when a clone is out, or some other corner case, but usually everything you play will meet the requirement). But while this means the card is better in EDH by having it's restrictions be irrelevant, what it does,drawing a card for a creature etb, just isn't problematic, and it doesn't cause it to violate any aspect of the format. I'd imagine this card could have easily seen print with only the nontoken restriction and been just fine.

[RedCheese]

Very good card, works wonders in my Yarock deck as expected XD

[Hawk]

As noted, while this looks like a slow do-nothing it is important in green and we, correctly, see it in over 16000 commander decks. For closest comparisons...

- It outstrips Elemental Bond (12000), which I think is sensible - bond does trigger off of tokens and is one less, but has a fairly serious restriction. This is much more reliable.
- It outstrips Beast Whisperer (15502) which makes sense - outside of a deck where the tribe matters, Whisperer is more fragile and doesn't trigger off of blink/reanimation.
- I am surprised it only barely outstrips Lifecrafter's Bestiary (also in the 16000s) - the scry is nice as is the mana cost, but having to pay G for each card limits a lot of combo potential and it, too, doesn't trigger off reanimation and blink like Project does.
- I was surprised at how much it beats The Great Henge (6595) by - I imagine that's mostly budget although also, outside of dedicated God decks Henge is also usually going to be more mana than this on initial casting.

Overall this is the most popular of these effects according to EDHRECs, and it is a reputation well-deserved. I imagine this thing will just keep climbing, over time.

[Serenade]

Does mutate trigger this?

[DirkGently]

Pretty easy to figure out if you want this. Do you usually cast > or < 1 creature per turn? If it's >, probably run it. If it's <, run something else.

Does mutate trigger this?

Negatory. No creature entered the battlefield.

[3drinks]

Does mutate trigger this?

Nope. Good way to think of mutate is it's similar to bestow in it's execution, but without a creature when the buff target is removed.

[Rumpy5897]

I imagine this thing will just keep climbing, over time.

This is something you didn't factor into your divagations. The card's barely over a year old, and it already outranks a lot of stuff that had the full two years of EDHREC data, like Lifecrafter's Bestiary. That's honestly pretty impressive. By contrast, The Great Henge has been out in the wild for like half a year. It'll also get there.

[DirkGently]

Nope. Good way to think of mutate is it's similar to bestow in it's execution, but without a creature when the buff target is removed.

To clarify (this is maybe what you meant but might be confusing for someone) if the target is removed while the mutate spell is on the stack you get the mutate creature as a creature. Once the mutate has happened, it's just one permanent so you don't get a bestow-like body if the creature is removed. The mutate card follows the underlying creature wherever it goes.

[3drinks]

Wednesday, April 8th, 2020; Sanctifier of Souls

I kinda dig it honestly. This is some fair weather value stretching your resources just a bit more.

[3drinks]

Oh. Derp I read that as a +1/+1 counter effect a la Anafenza. Guess this falls under chaf but eh, I guess it can stick.

good goin 3drinks, RTFC. Haha.

[DirkGently]

Lol I was gonna say, it doesn't really read EDHable to me. The body is too mediocre even with the pump to really matter, and the ability is pretty expensive. As with a lot of things, if it didn't cost mana, or didn't cost exiling, it would be good. With both....ehh. Not a fan.

[folding_music]

I like that whole Eldritch Moon style of creature that becomes a spirit but none of them are really efficient on their own. Cute with Desecrated Tomb and Field of Souls?

[Hawk]

This is one of those cards that was tuned with a fear of it being too strong in limited and fringe standard playable (we know now he never got there, mind, but it isn't unfeasible to think so) and as a result is just too inefficient here. I think he would have needed at least two of the following:

- Casting cost of WW or 1W
- Gains +1/+1 counters instead of just +1/+1 until EOT.
- Some in-built combat abilities that make that boost usesful, like Flying or Lifelink, so he's not just a vanilla beater when he works.
- Ability needed to cost just W to activate.
- Ability needed to target opposing graveyards as well as your own.
- Has something else, ideally a Scry, attached to his trigger or ability.

Honestly, even with ALL those things - I think you'd have a card that was merely strong without being a staple or auto-include. As it stands, I can't see justifying him even in some undertuned Teysa, Orzhov Scion cleric/token jank budget build. Maybe it'd be an all-star in a Geist of Saint Traft "only cards from Innistrad" tribal deck? 50 decks on EDHRECs makes sense.

[SocorroTortoise]

I'm sure I saw this card during its spoiler season but I certainly didn't remember it. Too big of a resource ask for too little upside for this format.

[Mookie]

Pretty meh, IMO. 3 mana + exiling a creature card is a pretty steep price for a token, and the +1/+1 pump isn't particularly relevant unless you're already going crazy. I'd go with Twilight Drover or Custodi Soulbinders instead, which both get bigger and are better at making tokens. It might be passable in Limited, but even then I would be surprised.

[hyalopterouslemur]

Needs evasion to be even remotely playable. The second ability is a nice hose for reanimator cards, though

[3drinks]

Thursday, April 9th, 2020; Settle the Wreckage

As someone whom is very fundamentally against path to exile and sees the rampant overplay of the card, you can imagine my reaction and disgust for this card. Giving people free lands is not okay guys, an early path will quite often fix their lands and get a turn up on you, while a settle gives them the mana to untap and virtually win. itsatrap.gif

Although, if you play with a bunch of the "basic lands are bad" scrubs, then by all means jam this card and teach 'em a lesson they hopefully won't forget.

[illakunsaa]

You can use it on yourself to ramp but I think you are undervaluing path style effects. Commander is a singleton format so removing key creatures means they most likely wont have back up copies of those cards. It is very common to see people to build up their board and then play couple anthem effects and swing. If you settle them it usually means game over for the attacker.

[Rumpy5897]

This should make for an interesting discussion, as there's a whole package of these style of effects. Settle the Wreckage is the mid-size edition, with the full deluxe asymmetric sweep coming courtesy of Winds of Abandon.

Path to Exile feels non-debatable. The ability to surgically remove someone's key creature will mess them up way harder than the solitary land they get in compensation. You get the highest rate of impact per unit. I'd be interested in hearing your arguments against this.

I teetered on the edge of including Whift in Daxos for a while, and read various posts and asked various people about it. Would the "spray and pray" lead to the value accrued by opponents off irrelevant creatures be the card's downfall? I found the most convincing testimony in pokken's Ephara thread - he plays in a group that's higher power than mine, and ripped the Whift in a mid-game scenario where people were kinda built up. His opponents ramped, but losing their key pieces was way more painful. That, coupled with the correlation that stronger decks tend to run fewer basics (and creatures) kinda talked me into it. I haven't really regretted it since.

There have been maybe two cases where Whifting blew up in my face. One of the guys in my group tends to go extremely wide and run crazy numbers of basics. I often ramp him for double digits of mana as a result, but even then usually the fact he permanently loses a board he spent effort and resources sculpting sets him back a ton. Once he immediately topdecked Skullclamp, in a Ghave deck, and you can fill in the rest. Yesterday I gave him a record-setting 24 swamps in Gisa in a panic wipe to avoid dying to his zombie horde, and he actually accomplished very little with that mana for the longest time. Turns out even with such crazy good Whift returns for having a token horde, having your build-up effort nullified takes the spring out of your step. He eventually got Increasing Ambition, which set up Phyrexian Devourer, Necromantic Selection and Vengeful Dead, but it took him forever. Unfortunately I didn't have a lot going on, and the other guy in the game (who got ramped by two) also didn't really accomplish too much. Gisa would have likely gone down if either of us got going.

My view of Settle the Wreckage is likely tainted by not playing it, similarly to expecting Whift to immediately lead to me losing if I didn't use it to set up a clean alpha strike. But what if they don't swing with the important thing? I guess it still ultimately wrecks their firepower, as everything going into the red zone is likely there for a reason.

[Mookie]

Disclaimer: I haven't run Settle the Wreckage in any decks. I have, however, run Aetherspouts and generally been disappointed by it, so my opinion is somewhat colored by that.

When I see people running Settle the Wreckage in an EDH deck, I generally assume that they're applying best-case-scenario mentality to it. 'Green player casts Craterhoof Behemoth will a full board, alpha strikes, gets blown out, fails to find anything because they're not running enough basics, and proceeds to die before they untap again.' But in my experience, this situation is.... extremely rare. People attacking with large boards of creatures does happen occasionally, but my experience is that a lot of decks aren't really built to win by attacking - they win through attrition, and don't start turning creatures sideways until it's time to start closing out a game. There certainly are exceptions - I specifically built my Brago and Thada decks to need to attack to win, for example - but I feel like aggro decks are a minority in the format.

The vast majority of the time, I feel like Settle the Wreckage will sit in hand while its controller waits for a good opportunity... and when it does come along, it will often only be exiling 2-3 creatures. Meanwhile, there will be a bunch of problematic creatures (Oracle of Mul Daya, Sheoldred, Whispering One, etc) that just sit out and don't attack (or at least not until they've already had an impact for a turn cycle). I value the ability for my removal spells to reach out and kill something pretty highly.

As for the downside of giving your opponents lands... it's certainly significant, but it's going to depend somewhat on how much action or card draw the opponent in question has. If they're out of action, a one-sided board wipe is going to be backbreaking. If their grip is full, then you're probably just setting them up for an even nastier following turn.

There are ways to make Settle better, of course. Forced attacks like Fumiko the Lowblood are great for cracking open board stalls and exposing people to it. Similarly, Aven Mindcensor will largely mitigate the downside of giving your opponent lands. If your meta has particularly aggressive decks, consider Aetherspouts and Fog as other inclusions.

[Serenade]

I wonder if this card will see more play as we get more goad and/or white's fewer-lands-than-an-opponent abilities (both featured in the C20 product).

[pokken]

I have started gravitating more toward these kinda one sided wipes in commander as it shortens games if you reset less. So settle, living death winds of abandon etc.

But settle is fairly low on my list because keeping 4 mana up regularly is not something I want to do in most decks - I'd rather keep 1 or 2 up and spot removal, and deal with the consequences.

I might play Settle in a deck that didn't have countermagic to deal with craterhoof behemoth effects. So a white, non-blue deck, which I don't happen to have right now except mono white golos.

In that deck, I prefer Selfless Squire since I can blink it (and of course resolute archangel and luminate primordial for doing kinda similar things). And the propaganda effects too I guess.

I generally think Squire is a better first-of of this effect since it stops a lot of damage based combos, and can sometimes crack back for lethal if you have a trample enabler.

[TheDeadGuy]

I run a copy in my Feather Deck, purely because you can fetch it with Sunforger, which has become an increasingly more and more important part to that deck's play style. Usually, it doesn't how many lands they ramp from it because they'll die on the backswing. I have had it stuck in my hand a few times, but Feather cantrips so much at instant speed that it's never been a huge problem.

Also, Path to Exile + Young Pyromancer = best boros ramp spell ever in Feather

[tstorm823]

Comeuppance is better in most cases. It misses indestructible things and creatures attacking a different player, but it also counters direct damage and doesn't give anything in return. If you treat either as a board wipe, you're not gonna be happy because there will be things that need to die but don't attack. If you treat them as a fog+, 4 mana with a permanent impact on the board is usually a solid formula.