Oh. Oh.
or quantity?
Right.
So we decided that into quantity is a school of low mana value,
the college of low mana value, where it's not so much
the quality of the spells I really care about, it's the quantity of them
and the two effects that I think are most important when we discuss this.
And maybe a distant or not distant but close third would be,
you know, card draw mana coming from those instances and sorceries
like ritual effects and then cheap removal, cheap pinpoint effective removal.
Yeah.
When you move to the other side, you want quality.
So you're drawing one card is not quality.
When you're using something at the altitude of five mana or four mana,
you want a little bit more than that.
So cards like Prophetic Bolt that allow you
to deal for damage to something and get the best of the next.
However many cards out of your libraries is when you start seeing stuff like that
where you're getting multiple things from one resolution
of a spell instead of just counter spell.
You want something more like I don't know.
Spell swindle.
Like I'm going to counter the spell and get that.
Yeah.
Because you're, you can't afford a man a drain or something.
I don't know. Right.
Like that's the shift is moving from frequency of spells to caliber of spells.
Yeah. Right.
Then we moved on and we talked about really just kind of
something that I think is unique to Spell Slinger
is that you can play in different stances or different,
you know, somebody suggests in the discord fields of study, right.
Like one's the Bachelor in Arts, in one's the Bachelor in Science.
There we go.
Really like not to break the theme up too much and really be more direct
about what we're talking about is so the first version, like,
let's just take it very slow.
I guess you want to resolve a lot of spells during your turn.
What is the point of waiting?
Yeah, you're rewarded if you just draw through your library on your turn,
keep producing mana back into your and your Manipal, and you've got V.V.
just hammering people's life totals and picking up his counters.
So you can use that to do more of them. Right.
You know, so that is in
you know, we and Kyle say is playing on the front foot.
You're you're being proactive not reactive.
You're setting the tempo for the game.
You're executing on your turn.
That is most games of commander every deck really.
They all are doing this
I think pre-concert you purchase, they're not really set up to not do this.
They're just like play on curve.
You'll hear people say just for, for for for questing beast
on for and cultivate on three and ponder on one like right?
You're not waiting
to see how much information will come out of your opponent's hands
because you're not.
You don't have any reason to wait. You can just do your thing.
Yeah, that was that episode.
Yeah.
This episode will be, I think, the opposite of that,
which is trying to find a space where you can exist in the game,
where you're not doing a lot of this stuff on your turn, like just said, simply
and squeezing yourself into a space that really this,
this style of deck, I think likes to do right.
The word instant is that you have the freedom to cast nearly whenever.
Yeah, where creatures have to have this keyword on them to do it,
or some enchantments have to have that same keyword,
or you need to get another permanent that opens that up.
It's so strong that if anyone listening to this remembers, there was a time period
where the Delkin orrery was put into almost every deck back
then, it might have just been JFK kind of setting the culture for everybody back
then, but sure, sure, it was a popular, expensive card.
It's strong.
It's strong,
especially in multiplayer, because a lot of information is unseen to you,
and you could introduce your permanence and problems into my solutions.
So if I have a board wipe and Kyle empties his hand of creatures,
now I have the most amount of information
about Kyle and it's time to use the board way.
But if the reverse is true and he has no board, and right
before his turn begins after Tiff, he empties his hand of creatures.
My board wipe is stuck in my hand and he gets a whole turn with them.
Yeah. It's true.
So that kind of shows you what that is.
Yeah, I'd like to hold on that a little bit.
The idea of, like the the exposure of information,
there's a lot of value in that in this game,
especially when you're playing with really entrenched, experienced players.
Yeah, yeah.
On stack interaction is what said I think cares about the most.
And that's because of this type of stuff, is that, you know, they have a narrow
set of combos and things like that that they want to do.
Some of them are fringy,
but a lot of
them are using some combination of blue and black cards to win out of nowhere.
And so the best place to do that with is little interference
as possible is at instant speed on the stack.
So anything that has flash or instant is already valued
higher the further up the power scale you create.
I think power shifts, though.
I think
you start kind of transferring yourself to a different island of what is powerful.
Sure, out there, maybe speed is more
is more, characteristic of what's going on.
Yeah.
In terms of when it happens in the course of the game and where it happens
in the course of the game instance speed and earlier turns.
Because I can't tell you that,
like what happens in some bracket two games isn't powerful.
It's a lot of damage.
It's big, explosive, crazy plays. Sure.
It's just that the game
probably would have resolved itself earlier in a in a in a higher bucket.
Yeah.
You know, so it's valued higher up there.
So like one of the things that we would do when we were combo back a few years ago
when when two card infinites and things like that were rampant in our meta
would be
you don't really just play astronauts alter on three,
you have like the components you need, and then you introduce astronauts
alter to it and really sort of
like someone countering that spell, which swan song won't you would get it in.
And then because it's a man ability, it doesn't infer anything onto the stack.
Like there's no way to stop it.
Not even a crossing grip can stop you from adding the mana to the Manipal.
Yeah, so it was a really strong card in our meta
because it did a lot of the things that are hard to interact with zone
changing mana abilities that don't interact with the stack.
And it's it's a fairly low mana component.
It's only three mana, but you wouldn't just put it out on three and pass.
Yeah.
So there would be these games where with my to shard deck where you'd be like
that.
He's got like a junk diver and then.
And then there's an egg. Yeah.
And what else if he.
If he gets if he gets the fucking astronauts altar, does he have it.
Does he have it or. No.
Like and just trying to piece together because you know,
I'm not gonna play the astronauts author. Exactly until it's time to go. Yeah.
And if you ever did it just get bricked like, well,
I don't know where you're going,
but I know that one that ain't helping me, so it just simplifies it for me.
This is.
I guess I'm just trying to speak
to the strength of this whole idea of playing at instant speed.
And I wish I could just say, well, just put more instance in your deck.
I wish I could do that, but some good cards are just
they're good for your strategy, dear listener.
And an instant.
So instead, what my focus will be here on this episode is just to get the listener
thinking about playing on that, on that level of of of the game.
Right?
Playing right before their turn begins instead of anywhere else.
Right.
And let's just think of this as practice and explanation.
And then maybe if they get used to that style of play,
then they can feed it into their other decks.
So this isn't going to be
a list of the best instances or instance in the game or whatever.
It's it's we are going to deliberately pursue a place where we will have to
honestly, with restraint, put ourselves there and see how it goes.
And after a while, my hope is that what I've demonstrated here will be okay.
Well, I value this.
I might keep this deck that Andy has talked about.
I'm going to take some of my learnings from and weave it into these
other decks to, to see how it goes.
Yeah.
I want to tell a story, though,
really quick because I think it's a cool one
and I think it's a little like relevant to this.
And then I'll get into it. Okay.
It's a bit of a, it's a bit of a deviation
or a tangent is what people call it.
So in 1968 there was a competition to sail the world.
Okay.
However, the rules were you couldn't park anywhere, couldn't
do a port call anywhere.
You had to be alone.
It was a one man boat,
and you had to do it in a specific time period between October 31st.
And I think you needed to return by 1970 before the end of spring.
So it was a bit of a race, and you had to leave by a certain day
and you had to return by a certain day
because otherwise, like, it just doesn't count, I guess.
I don't know, I'm not a sail salesman.
But to put things into perspective, in 1968,
not 1970 1969, we weren't even on the moon yet.
There was no GPS.
There was radio communication, like ham radio style stuff.
But basically when you leave the port and when you start going into
like the deeper parts of the ocean, you're you're on your own,
essentially get out your fucking compass and you start out.
A lot of these guys back then they did that.
They did star charts.
They would use the stars to like, read where they were headed.
It's really terrifying when you wind things back
and think about oceanic travel, when you tear out where
when you basically get to this stage of it where no one knows where I am right now,
even if you
have a good sense of where you are,
nobody knows where no one can find you.
This is why you see in a lot of early empires, even when they had a fleet, they'd
they'd stayed close to the coastline.
Yeah.
You know, like they're just bumping along like in the Mediterranean.
And then they'd come back and they'd dock at night time, right?
Like they'd pull into shore because it's so
terrifying to be at sea.
And it still was in 1968 to do this, especially if you're on your own
on a little boat by yourself. Right.
So you got to be comfortable being alone.
You got to be comfortable with everything that the ocean is going to throw at you.
So the place they would leave would be England.
The the track they were supposed to do was go down the Atlantic and then do
the worst place in the world to sail, which is the Southern Ocean,
because that's the only way you can circumvent it. Well, yeah.
Then come back
both around South Africa and South America is really treacherous, right?
Like, dear listener, they call it the Roaring 40s is what they call it,
because it's the 40th degree. Yeah.
And it's in it's just madness down there like it is, you know,
like you can read this book called The Mutiny on the bounty,
where these are like some of the most experienced sales
sail like sailors in the world trying to overcome it.
And they had to give up and go the other way to go the long way. So
the competition kicks off the prize,
I think if you adjust it for inflation, would be somewhere around $100,000 today.
So it's not nothing, but it's it's quite a bit.
Yeah.
The first guy that leaves, he leaves the earliest is some Indian dude named.
I had to write it down because I had to remember these names.
It mattered. His name was Knox. Knox. Johnston. Okay.
He had sailed a crazy trip before he had sailed from India to England.
Already on his own in his, like, weird little boat.
Oh, it was made of wood.
It was actually made of, like, Indian teak.
He knew this thing like hit.
It was from his.
Like he had sailed with this thing all over the place. Sure.
But you know, from the outside, this boat looks pretty wild and pretty rickety.
He takes off and everything's going fine until he starts approaching the Southern
Ocean, and all of a sudden he notices there's, like, a split on his whole.
Right?
Like there's this place where the whole is split and water is coming into his boat
like mad.
No, he puts some dark clothing on, I guess, which I it's to avoid sharks.
I guess if you're bright, they'll see you.
Oh, and starts working on the side of this boat.
Like pasting it over with this crazy.
I'm not a salesman person, but it's like a type of sap
that a lot of these guys use to repair boats when they're made of wood.
At one point he capsizes.
The whole thing fucking flips over.
Yeah, it's somewhere off the like as he got past Africa.
But the story about this guy is that every time
something came up, he had the tools to deal with it.
He had a ton of spare screws, tons of scrap
scraps of of, like masts, like tons of.
Yeah, like whatever this, whatever this resin stuff.
He had, like gallons of this stuff, right.
Like on his boat.
So he would spend his days just repairing his boat, fixing things
as they came up over and over and over again.
That's his thing. So he's off.
Next guy leaves and the dude leaves almost too late.
Like, way, way too late.
The next dude in our story, they're not chronological.
I'm just listing off their methodologies of how they handle this, this
sailing trip.
The dude is really into high technology radio stuff.
That's like his thing. He can triangulate where he's at.
He's got all of these very highly specialized specific radios
in his in his boat.
And his boat was a I think it's a called a trimaran, I think is what it is.
Again, I'm not a sailor person, but essentially it's a hull.
And then those two arms that like kind of stick out on the sides.
Right.
So it can cut through fast like it's a fast fucking boat
with minimal sized sales.
However, it has a fatal problem.
If it ever flips over, it ain't coming back up.
Most of these other boats,
they're kind of designed to like handle a roller to weirdly.
Yeah, I think it's even to this day, like they are built to roll.
Yeah.
This is not so he devises this system where there's like a airbag
that'll blow up on the sail if it gets flipped over,
and then another system that'll pull water into another bladder on the bottom
to like, right side.
It okay, gets installed incorrectly and doesn't work.
Spoiler. No.
So he makes it down to the bottom of the of the Atlantic Ocean.
Remember, they're leaving from England and he's already running into trouble.
Apparently there's a device and I should have looked this up,
but it's a device that helps you stay on course
without you having to be at the helm all the time.
It's like a rigging of ropes, and it's a very actual simple machine
that's been around for forever.
But it is like essential for sailing,
essentially, if you're going to do long distance stuff.
Otherwise all of your time will have to be steering the fucking thing.
You have to be able to step away and take a shit or two or go to bed.
Right?
Especially for something that's going to be months long.
Well, it was rigged wrong on his boat, and therefore it was like
creating some kind of insane vibration and it was shaking itself to bits.
So he starts cannibalizing screws from all over his boat
and realizes very quickly that he can't do this forever.
He's he'll eventually have to
start pulling stuff apart that shouldn't be pulled apart.
So he starts to just go around in circles in the Atlantic and make call outs
because they're supposed to call out where they're at.
He uses his radio equipment to
to make it look like he's moving along in the race where he's not.
So he'll come up on the radio and be,
like, super cheerful and and act like he's on course.
Right?
When he's totally not like he's he's basically just doing circles.
He's loitering.
At one point, he actually lands in Argentina, sneaks ashore to get supplies,
probably some fucking screws and some other stuff, and gets him on his boat
following me with this one. Yeah.
The third guy that leaves, or the third guy in our story was a dude from France.
He's like, his name's like Matsya.
He has a steel boat.
He made his boat from from metal.
He left pretty late because he spent
an enormous amount of time doing like a paint job on this thing,
like over and over and over again, all these different zinc oxide
water resistant stuff because the ocean's going to corrode it.
Right? But he was like, I want a metal hull.
I don't want to jump in the ocean.
I don't want to get whatever right.
He even tears out all of the electronics from his boat.
No electronics.
Oh, it's only like gas lantern gas like gas.
Everything right?
If he's going to read at night, it's going to be like, I'm not repairing shit.
He built steps on his mass
so he could easily climb up to the mast and fix it if he needed to.
He'd not have to scramble.
And he made it super easy to get everywhere on his fucking boat.
Yeah, race goes on.
The first dude that we mentioned actually makes it back.
First, the little little Indian kid who was like 27 or something
makes it back.
He survived because he was prepared for anything that came at it,
and he dealt with it as it as it showed, as it showed itself.
Sure.
If something broke, he went after it every single day.
He went at it.
The second guy never makes it back.
He, in fact kills himself in the middle of the ocean
when they find his body nine days later in his boat.
Right? Or not? His boat. They find his boat.
He just walked off and just dove into the ocean.
They find his logs.
And to this day, apparently psychologists use this as an example
of someone losing their mind.
He had cheated his way into this competition.
He knew that people were going to check his logs.
He was faking like his his navigation logs.
And apparently you just can't fake them, right?
And you know, he was in debt.
He, like, put himself into debt to do this with all these stupid radio
things that he had on his, on his boat, which, by the way, all of them failed.
Water got in and fried them all, and he kills himself
like you can see him just descending into madness over these logs.
Whoa!
Because of his utter lack of preparation and respect for what he was about to do.
Yeah, the third guy never comes back either, because he doesn't want to.
They check his logs.
He ends up in Tahiti
like a year and a half later because he's just out of stuff to do.
He got bored at sea.
He said he didn't want to return to the snake pit.
That was Europe.
He was.
He's like, I'm going to stay at sea to save myself and to save my soul.
Because he had put a simple plan together that the boat would just
basically be immortal.
It was simple.
It had he had what he needed.
At one point, he was throwing food overboard
earlier in the race because he was like, I'm gonna get there before,
oh, these other guys. Because he was moving really fast.
He's like, I'll just get rid of this because I don't need to be out here.
And then he got all the way to the Atlantic Ocean and decided,
no, I'm just going to keep going.
So you see him and he goes around and around and around a bunch of times,
and then just ends up into Haiti and writes a book.
And to this day, I guess it's one of like the, like, really well
respected sailor books is this dude's interest story because of his preparation.
Why this matters for Drago, right?
Every time you engage in something like this
where you don't actively take advantage of what is available to you,
you time walk yourself, I guess
is the is the biggest threat of doing something like this.
I have caught myself doing it more times than I can count.
I am a extremely nervous, controlling player,
and one of the things
that will happen to me is I anticipate some disaster that either doesn't happen
or I don't have the tool to deal with it, right?
So for whatever reason, the dude in the second boat
thought that radios were going to save him. Yeah, right.
The first guy just packed everything
he could into the boat, and then the last guy was like,
I'm just going to make this one thing work and that's that.
Yeah, right.
I wish we could be that dude, the third guy in our in our journey today.
But really, we should look at this first guy and be like, what could happen?
And how can we be ready for it as we pass our turn?
Because what we're doing here is we're leaving into the ocean of turns.
That ain't Rs like your turn.
Kyle is going to be a storm for me.
Brad's turn is going to be a storm for me, and so is TIFF's.
And if I'm just not doing anything on my turn.
Turn over, turn over, turn.
I'm falling behind fast.
And this is what you mean by time.
Walk like you have mana up because you don't have things.
Have the deck built to be playing on primarily on your turn.
Your you're leaving mana up, but you might not necessarily use it
because you know so so like an example that I think of for myself.
Right.
Like when I built my Miss Bumble flower deck to be something, I'm
mostly playing Draco. Right?
And I wanted to have even my ramp spells for the most as much as I could be.
Things I could play on other people's turns if I draw it later in game.
So like Haro was the really good example, right?
Where I might need to use a fog spell if Andy attacks me, but if he doesn't,
I can just cast this harrow and still do my thing right?
Like it's perfect.
It's like a perfect example, right?
Like, that's an amazing, amazing thing that we should lean on. But.
But if I didn't have that harrow in my deck, I.
I'm holding up mana expecting Andy to attack me.
And I don't use that fog.
And so I just kept that mana up for nothing happened.
Like that's that's kind of the time walk thing that you're talking about.
Happens to instant speed players often.
Exactly.
So is this strong gameplay over time it does become strong
because what's happening is you're holding all the information in your hand,
and what they've been putting to the board is more
and more vulnerable to your solutions if they're the right ones.
So like one of the more infamous spells I think as of late is Ink Shield.
Yeah, right.
It's five mana, you block a combat, and for how much damage you would take,
you make that many two one fliers so you would more than double
the the capacity for damage right back at them.
You have a bunch of tokens that if the deck is set up to see tokens,
we'll see this.
You have a bunch of Clamp compliant targets that you can get into draw.
And this is after you slam them right back and possibly lethal them,
but it's the right card at the right time kind of thing.
There are times where it's like on your turn,
you spend all your mana and you only have four,
or you only have two or something like this.
So what is disastrous is you think a combat is coming your way.
You have plenty of cards in your hand
that you could put to field even something as simple as like a draw spell
or a ramp card or something, or even recast your command or from zone.
But instead you make the bet.
You make a bet and you leave port with with with all this mana open.
And it just doesn't happen.
Like you, they don't. It's not useful this turn.
So you pack up your boat
full of radio equipment and I never come at you and that's that.
It's not going to. You've just done nothing.
And so we go to the next turn and you're like,
okay, well, now the threat probably has grown.
You didn't board white me. You didn't undo anything.
The threat is probably grown if nobody's dealt with whatever is going on.
So how long before it's too late?
See what I mean? Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.
Or I'm developing stuff that as it doesn't have anything to do with attacking
you like it's some ambient damage aristocrats thing, God forbid.
Sure.
So that's, I think, the danger that exists when you're engaging in this
footing of play.
Yeah, that's to just be thought of at all times.
So I think there's a way to go about it where you have simplified things
as much as you can, like the steel boat guy, you're ready for anything
as much as you can, like like the Indian kid.
He was like, I don't like when I was reading his story.
I'm like, does this guy have a plan? Or was that the plan?
It was just like, well, that's busted. I'm gonna fix it.
Okay, good thing I got this goo,
or I'm just gonna jump in the ocean like it wasn't peaceful at all.
The dude made it back.
By the way, I should say this part of the story,
that dude got the prize money, and he gave it to the wife of kids of the.
Of the crazy guy who killed himself. Whoa.
That's just kind of tells you the caliber of that of these guys.
Man one guys like, I don't need the money. I'm not coming back.
And the other guys, like, I don't need the money.
I'll just give it to this cheaters family.
Not wild.
That is pretty wild.
He got knighted, though.
So let's talk about gray facts.
Inquisitor gray facts is like our starting or as our starting deck.
I wouldn't think this is a spell slinger deck, but
maybe this will snap into focus for people
because I can relate it back to our last episode.
One white, blue and a black for A33.
It's a legendary creature, human inquisitor with vigilance,
unquestionable wisdom.
Other creatures you control have get plus one plus.
Oh and have vigilance.
And then it has hunt for heresy.
One tap tap target creature and opponent controls investigate.
So I'm going to stay on this for this entire episode.
I don't think that this is necessary to do,
you know, instant speed, draw, go back foot style play.
But I'm going to use it as a, as a way for anybody listening to this
who hasn't engaged in it as an easy, easier route to play it.
What I value about this, commander is that last line.
You can pay one mana, tap something, and create a token,
specifically a clue as it also has, which also has an activation
which is draw a card. Yeah.
So this will just call a pressure valve or an escape route.
So you can't I can't really walk myself.
Too bad.
I can't really fuck myself.
Too bad if I can step away from the disaster of
nothing is relevant right now with an activated ability.
So almost every commander that we I think all of the commanders
I'm talking about today have an activated ability strapped
to them of something that we can do, if nothing, if you do not draw
your constellation of cards that matter, you have something in the zone.
This is why I think thoracic is so good for this type of thing.
Also, like it's a one hell of an activation, it's for mana.
You reveal a land, you ramp, or you draw it like you can't lose.
But if you're all the way on the back foot, this is perfect for you.
Well, I didn't need to do my
eighth rise or my ink shield, or I didn't need to beast within anything.
I didn't need to do anything.
So you're really, like, overheating things for too long.
And that's what these are.
They're like heatsinks to just like, okay,
I'm gonna let some pressure off and do something. Yeah.
And the longer
the game goes, especially with ratios, because it's not a tap ability,
the more potent it gets.
When you have eight mana, you're like, well, I'm just going to sink it all
and roll again.
So we have some of this here.
Over time, she kind of starts to look like Thorazine.
If you're not putting the tokens to work, sure.
Or somewhere in the middle, you're doing both.
You're like, all right, I'll use three to tap
Kyle's creature, and then I'll just use the other two
to sack the token and put the card in my hand.
Yeah, right.
I'm starting with this one because we're just going to relate it
directly to another deck that we talked about on the last episode,
which was Token Slinger because of her top line.
Right?
She's like, hey, I'm going to give everything
you've got plus one and vigilance, which is extreme.
So if we look through the list,
a lot of those cards are there, but none of the sorceries are.
So every one of these happens at instant speed.
Okay. I can walk through them like if you'd like.
There's 19 of them.
19 spells that in some way, shape or form, make a token at instant speed
and they are like a sorcery or or sorry, they're an instant.
So you're confronted by robbers for a four and a white, you can stall for time
and tap three target creatures, or create three white soldier creature tokens.
Not a great rate, but it's at instant. So.
So if if nothing happens, if Kyle has nothing to say to me
during my turn, I can make the choice of activating her ability,
which, by the way,
like you can kind of figure out if they're going to attack
you with a big, big and just tap it before it happens.
Oh, totally.
Or eventually do both.
If I've got five mana, I can do the tap throw these guys out.
And now there are two ones with vigilance, right?
Or do the tap the tap phase right.
Rally the monastery.
We talked about that one in the last episode.
You make the two monks or you up to two target creatures get plus two plus two,
or you can destroy target creature of power for for greater access.
Denied is a counter spell that just makes you a bunch of softer.
So this is like a ink shield equivalent for a spell in her regard.
Like she makes 2121 flying
vigilant versions of these call the copper coats is fucking wild.
Secure the wastes,
whites and Xenos is here because you could get another crack at it.
Potentially.
It's more of a late game, one we see benevolent offering again, none.
Instant or sorcery stuff.
I've got the Shore Kai Genesis engine here.
It's it's another one.
You could probably do a deck like this around
if you wanted to, sans black, but it's an activated ability
that lets you draw two to scarred one, and it gives you a pilot which
with with graphics around, it's A21, right?
Yeah. Another body for our for our attacks.
Right. To stay on the front foot.
We have unstoppable plan untapped all of our non land permanents
at the at the beginning of our end step.
So you can exhaust what you want out of your artifacts.
Even probably use graphics if you want and then let it go and then pop back.
It's pretty good for this.
Like if you don't have the game changer that is.
Yeah.
Seabourn Muse.
Sure.
Which we'll just say that right now.
Seabourn muse is fucking insane with these types of decks because it marries two.
It marries the footing together.
Now you can just be flippant with whatever you're going to do. True.
You can Thracian every turn. You could gray fax every turn.
If you had the colors to fit them all together.
It gets really wild.
It goes from draw go to just I draw.
I'm just God like you just go off.
It's incredible.
The protection is designed around this same thing, right?
Ink shield is here, but also is rewind and unwind.
I don't usually use these spells, but this is the right place for them
because they let you to counter a spell and untap your lands.
Because what is your hand full of more instance and sorcery, right?
And minimally, you have a creature to activate in your command zone,
so you want the options available to you in other decks.
I don't I don't find them to too great because you're likely trying
to do stuff on your own turn.
So when do you do it with another one or a rewind?
Like you might do an unwind, but going up to four men of a rewind
feels like a big ass is exactly where you want to be.
The removal makes tokens as well as best as I could fit it.
So stuff like, valiant endeavor, right?
It's a sorcery, but you roll a D2, you choose one result, destroy each
creature with power greater than that result, and make that many tutu
knights Elsbeth sons champions
here released to memories and instant exile.
Target opponent's graveyard for each creature card in that
that was exiled this way create A11 colorless spirit creature.
Token God.
Can you imagine if I had that last game with how full you made
everyone's yards track drop your yard?
You'd probably exile his yard in response to stop me from getting
that's will is back again for this right?
Perplexing test is a really good one sided board wipe at instant speed to say hey,
return all non tokens to everyone's hands right before your turn starts.
So you can choose token or non token. Correct?
You say I'm going to say non.
Yeah sorry I'd say non token.
And you're like bouncing a card for you. Sure.
And for everybody else it's likely to be a lot more.
Yeah.
Espers to magic site for mana exile each opponent's graveyard.
Then when you do choose up to one target creature card exiled this way
create a token. That's a copy of that card.
Except it's an artifact and loses all other card types.
It's fucking incredible. It's awesome.
All graveyards are cooked and you get a copy of the best one.
That is also vigilance and plus one
because they're just statically there with your commander.
So you're kind of seeing how simple the deck is.
It's like I'm going to make tokens using removal.
I'm going to make tokens right before my turn begins.
So my board state isn't really very readable,
and no one really kind of has a good clock on how much damage I can output.
And just over time I'm going to build my way up there
and then yeah, like pick your pick your win. Con.
You do want to drain everyone out with an aristocrat effect.
You could do that.
Or you can accrue as will to everybody you see or drop.
Creatures you control have double strike and life link like that's probably enough
to really push yourself up.
But the thing you're doing is just trying to keep up with the tempo of the game
by not doing anything on your turn.
And if it helps you just say, this is how I, my creatures, have haste.
I guess in Esper, rather than going out of your way
and doing a crashing drawbridge like you, just get it before your turn
and it's out of reach of people's traditional removal.
I mean, they can always counter a spell, sure, but
you can see the difference.
This is different than the mado one.
The Mado ones, like I want to attack and expose more cards to the hand.
I want to attack and force people to block and then therefore they lose life.
It's the crash out aristocrats thing.
Yeah, like that's what that is. Where this is similar.
It's using black white identity,
but instead it's like, well, I'm going to have a different commander
who likes tokens.
Yeah, but also has an escape route.
If I'm holding a man, I really don't need to do it all. Yeah.
And I'll say like, you know, I mean, you pointed out,
I think with one of your first examples
of you're confronted by robbers where you're like, yeah,
there's cards that have better rates, but I think this is something
that's worth thinking about when you're playing on this back foot.
Is the design of the game
appropriately adds cost to being able to do things at instant speed?
Yes. And so, you know, you don't quite get as much
oftentimes from those things, but because it's better at instant speed.
Exactly.
Just is it is. So you really are get you are paying.
You are getting what you pay for. Yeah.
So it's like okay that that lack of exposure or the fact,
like the example you just brought up, instead of having to program into my deck
a bunch of ways to give my creatures haste.
I'm just doing this,
having this pseudo haste by putting them in right before my turn.
And now that's a whole package of cards I don't have to have in my deck.
Okay, I'm willing to pay an extra mana per spell to get the same rate of tokens
in order to have that that flexibility in that capacity.
Yeah.
I think it's a good way to simply start here.
Yeah. We already talked about a deck.
I token slinger is powerful.
You could start working in like copying abilities and stuff like that.
But this kind of leads
us to our next problem, which is what I like to call the window.
So eventually, you know, your opponents are going to get wise.
They're going to figure out that,
like you holding up your mana doesn't actually mean you're impotent.
It's kind of a joke at our meta is like people go, what does Andy have
for mana up?
And I go, what do you think I'm impotent or something?
I can get hard right now is what I is, what I'm trying to say.
I can get hard right now.
You just got to say some stuff to get me.
Want me to get hard?
I can get hard.
I'll show you hard. Yeah. So it's not.
It won't take Sherlock Holmes
to figure out what is going on with this deck.
Sure. As the game progresses.
So it becomes difficult to in my experience, it becomes difficult to
squeeze proactive strategies into a deck.
Like the more instance you have, the more escape routes
you have, the more spare screws you have, the more patches for your sail you have.
But if you're dialed in on one thing and that happened, that can happen.
All because of like one card.
So like something like swarm intelligence would be incredible in this deck.
The problem is, is you would have to blow your turn to do it.
And now you're off your, your back foot and the wave is going to hit you.
It wouldn't take.
And Kyle would go, he's tapped out.
Let's fucking go for it. He's clearly open.
So really, another defense that you have that you might not know is the
is the implicit defense of your lancer open like you're untapped.
People might not do fucking anything.
You might actually start time walking them a little bit because they
they're nervous about what you'll do.
Or they'll try to do suboptimal plays or sequence things to try to bait
something from you.
It gets really heady, really fast.
It does.
But if you knock your mana down and you don't have a fierce guardianship,
it's like, why do you think the card is $70?
It's because you can play aggressively and have a passive way to stop it.
That's why it's an expensive card.
I know it's because it's your Amana, but I'm instead of just saying it's a zero
mana counter spell,
what I'm doing now is characterizing why that is, even why that even matters.
Yeah, because.
Because I can play proactively and reactively at the same time,
which is just powerful.
Yeah. I mean, it's just powerful.
Most decks I well, I it's really hard to be
in a position to be both until the late game.
Yeah. Is because you're mana.
Because you don't. Yeah, exactly.
Because your mana allows you to be right.
So like you can put in, you know.
So for example, like in your deck, you have company commander here, right.
Which is one of those like non instant speed things you have.
It's a really good card. So I understand why it's here. Yeah.
Because it you know it says when it enters you create a number of one
one white soldier creature tokens equal the number of opponents you have.
And then it has bring it down, which is whenever company commander
attacks creatures you control, have death touch until it turn right.
Really, really good.
But death touch vigilance is a very annoying company.
So awesome.
I totally get why it's here.
But if Andy wants to be like, if you want to be,
you know,
front foot, back foot with that card, well,
you probably need to be at the point of the game where you've got 7 or 8 mana.
Exactly. You're exactly right.
So you can't do too much of this.
Like that one.
I totally get the exception being made here
because it's a fucking really good card.
But yeah, it really belies this notion of
if you're going to be on the front foot like most of it, or on the back foot,
most, that needs to be geared towards that.
Yeah, and that's just my preference showing right there.
It probably could just be like, what is it, the Stone Shaker cavalry
or whatever where you control into a combo finish, which your combo is.
Sure.
You just have a bunch of large larges that are there and they go like,
you could go there too. But you're right.
Like you need to find the window to resolve the stuff that gives you
the initiative play, right?
So stuff like this, I need to get in.
I'm not doing any life. Total damage.
I'm just sitting here for too long. I'm going to fall behind. Yeah.
So you got to bring it to people eventually.
This is my first example.
Do you think it's simple?
I do, because tokens at instant speed with a character that cares about tokens
and has an activated ability, and I think the activated ability is a good way
for people to think about like, it's not like you said, it's not the only way
to allow yourself to be on the back foot, but it is a good way.
Yeah, I think it could be fine.
The more instant
speed token spells they make, like sorceries
that just let us make or instance it make us, let us just shoot out tokens.
They. If you like the deck, they just go right here.
Yeah.
Let's let's turn up the complication a little bit.
Okay? Let's talk about Abuelo.
Abuelo, this is pretty weird.
Probably people didn't think these were just going to be spell singer commanders,
but here we are. Absolu ancestral echo.
So you'll notice he has something similar to our last commander.
One a white and a blue for a two.
Two. It's a legendary spirit with flying in Ward two for no fucking reason.
You can pay one a white and a blue exile, another target creature or artifact
you control.
Return it to the battlefield under its own control
at the beginning of the next end step.
It probably wouldn't be too much for our listeners
to figure out where I'm going with this.
So we're not interested in making tokens here.
Obviously, what we're interested in is having this exit route that I think
is very potent of flickering a creature
before your turn starts.
That's pretty strong.
It is one of those, like, delayed ones where they're gone until end of turn.
So they would dodge board wipes, I suppose, if they're very needing to go.
An artifact also counts, by the way.
So you could do something insane like the fire portal to fire if you were nuts.
But again, that's nine goddamn mana.
And if you're trying to put yourself on the front foot like, or back foot,
I don't know.
That's a hard back foot.
It's still one hell of a spell.
So what the fuck do I know
if we sort by types just to kind of prove my proof of purchase?
With this?
There's 23 creatures,
which is a lot for a spell singer, but you need something to target, right?
But there's 32 instance. Yeah.
So what is demonstrated, I think, more keenly in this deck is the instance
are more flexible, where, you know, what's gray.
Facts were like, okay, we care about making tokens.
That's our thing.
So either
it needs to remove and make tokens or it needs to make tokens on its own.
Yeah. And then just stuff that we just kind of need.
We're over here.
Yeah.
We want flicker spells because the types of creatures
we've chosen have impactful entered the battlefield triggers.
But also we have spells that are just more flexible when they're cast.
So like I'll give you one that's a great example.
Confounding riddle two in a blue.
It's actually from the same set, funnily enough. Two in a blue.
Look at the top four cards of your library.
Put one of them in your hand and the rest on the bottom,
or the rest into your graveyard or counter target spell unless its controller
pays for.
Is this the best draw spell in the world?
Hell no. Is this the best counter spell in the world?
Hell no.
But it's both of those things kind of together.
Yeah.
Remember that?
Like, we're on a boat and we need all the screws that we can get spare.
Otherwise.
And all of the weird tree sap goo for our boat.
That's that's what this this deck is looking like.
So the first deck is, like, simple plan, simple flavors.
Microwave the bacon.
We're going to never come back and go to Tahiti.
All of my fucking like analogies are collapsing in on that. So.
Or this one is it's a little jank here.
I need abuelo, I think.
And I just want a creature that's good to to flicker.
And then if I don't find the need to do that, I have things
that kind of answer what I'm trying to do a little bit or let me escape.
Because if you already have a counter spell in hand and confounding
riddle confounding really just converts itself into a draw spell.
Unless you're super tinfoil hat and you want to do both or, you know,
it starts looking like,
oh, okay, well I have eight there, channeler out enough to activate abuelo
or confounding riddle or counter a spell.
I'm well equipped to deal with whatever comes my way.
Pretty close to it.
You see how this is, like shaping up? Yeah.
So you've got some in Yojimbo to flicker and nuke something,
even though it's still end of turn, scampering surveyor and solemn simulacrum
to just go pick up more lands, to deepen your footing, where you can activate him
more times and have more flexibility to move
between the spells that in your in your hand mold drifter just to draw
two like you flicker the mole drifter and just draw two.
If you wanted, you could go grab its cousin, the white blue version of.
I think you could draw two and gain two, but she's like five.
Mana claim jumper if you're behind on lands Glen Alondra
a guardian which it itself has flash and can flash in.
And then you can remove a counter from it to counter
or counter target non creature spell.
Its controller draws a card and then just flicker it and reset it.
Like really fucking annoying stuff.
Reflector mage which is like toxic in a deck like this.
When Reflector Mage enters the battlefield,
return target creature to an opponent, controls to its owners hand
that creatures owner can't cast spells with the same name as long or Sorry
with that same name, that creature has until your next turn.
They're like locked out.
This is like perfect for just waiting until you need to do something
to bounce something out of the way, and they can't even resolve it.
Yeah, because it gives you a longer period of time that they're stuck.
Yeah. Right, right. Amphion mutineer enters.
It gets exiles, a creature, and they get a shitty salamander.
Same with sky clave, apparition or shitty dog.
That's salamander and shit. That's true.
It's sheer than whatever.
I asked if I got pushed to use the salamander guy on it.
Yeah, I love that fucking guy.
A riptide gear hole. Right? You get something from everybody on that.
You put their non land permanent on top of their hand.
So you get something or on top of their library,
you get something like this down.
You have to figure out this window thing.
That's I think the big problem here is when when to figure that out.
But then eventually it becomes obvious that like you're kind of tempo things.
And if you don't need to like say, let's say all we have is a low
a creature that could draw, a creature that could ramp and a creature
that could remove something.
That's it. And your hand is empty.
You can do the thing.
Grab a creature.
Yeah. You'll be grab a card or grab a land.
And the longer this goes, it starts to look pretty.
Pretty wild, right?
It does. Yeah.
And then, of course, there's, like, parting gust, momentary blink, flicker
of fate, all of Kyle's, like, favorite cards, air benders, reversals in here.
But the thing I really like about this list is, like,
the wide variety of escape route cards.
Like Cryptic command is incredible.
Spell gyre is incredible.
Mystic confluence.
These, like,
they give you so many modal ways to backflip out of the most goofy situations.
And then we've throughout we've throughout our Andes favorite spells,
which is Arco Mansur, the mnemonic wall ship, brick dozer, and Salvage of Secrets.
That's really annoying with your commander.
All of these creatures that return a spell to hand from
graveyard are really good with any kind of blink flicker.
Annoying? Yeah.
Really annoying.
Especially in this case, I might add.
I know this isn't the point of this episode, but
even if you have the ones that don't target two
like Ghostly Flicker, you have a way with a Boileau.
Yeah, that you can recapture those blink
spells with your Arco Mansur type bodies
without having to get those doubles right fucking.
It's pretty sick, but.
But you see where the strength I think of this guy sits is not where Braga is.
Not where he's like, okay, well, this is a activated ability.
And I think when people read this guy,
they're like, he seems like a fair version of those things.
But when you characterize them like this, where?
Well, if I specifically push myself onto the back foot and I'm going to wait
to see what people do, and that's how I'm going to play this game,
it starts to look fucking annoying, actually.
Like just probably just as bad as Braga.
There's only one sorcery in the entire deck,
and it's Lori and revealed to go grab an island.
Yeah, it's all on the instant speed stuff.
If those creatures could.
If there was creatures
that have flash and a good instant, I was like really into them.
But there just wasn't that many.
At least in these colors.
There's like the weird bird that like, pushes something back to their hand.
Even interrupter interceptor, they're not as good
because they have abilities that matter like that.
But remember, he doesn't return them until the end of the turn of turn,
so they're not as great.
But you have to think about you can think about it in terms of like,
yeah, there's trade offs, right?
I mean, like you said,
you played against my Braga versus my Urian.
I don't know which one you guys disliked more, but yeah,
neither of them were great.
Yeah. Flicker is incredible.
Dear listener, you can remove creatures from combat.
You can save your creatures from spot removal.
You can, in a case like shove them out of the way of board wipes.
He does let you do artifacts.
So there's an artifact in here where it leaves,
and when it enters, it draws a card. So it's a divination.
Whenever you feel like you have nothing better to do.
But the thing I'm kind of pointing to is you're wound back
and you're able
to respond to things as they come, and you're playing more of a tempo game
as far as like
bringing it in bracket to cyle thing, which is where all of my stuff
is fitted right now. It's hard.
Yeah, I don't know.
With decks like this, I lean on things like Hand of Vecna because your hand
is just naturally needing to stay pretty swollen like you.
You need you want to maintain your options.
So when you move to combat with a low, you have a ward flying
dude who could
probably put somebody on the clock that's looking more like a duelist style
commander damage deck if you're listening to this podcast, but
I don't know, figure, figure yourself out with that.
Probably what I should have done with your yarn
to make that a little more enjoyable.
I was really good
at playing back foot with that deck and not letting you guys get me.
Yeah, Imperial plate, I think there's an enchantment that does Imperial Plate.
What is it? Nerd?
Nerd rage will make him like a base 1010.
So something like that.
Where, like, they clearly have an, like, an existential threat
in the form of whatever your hand and flicker stuff could do.
Yeah.
And a actual threat, which is like this fucking guy.
It just keeps coming at me.
Yeah. So somewhere you need to pivot.
It's it's pretty obvious with the gray build that I did where you need to go.
This one's less so. Yeah.
Maybe dial the creatures back a little bit.
I just didn't want to have you, like,
draw hands and you're like, I got nothing to flicker.
Why is he my commander?
That was like, the last thing I wanted to do with my list for somebody to like.
Okay, but I don't really see it.
Instead it's okay. Well, I'll put this down, okay?
I'm not supposed to use mana.
I'll pass all I pass, and then it's hard to go
fish decks like this because you just never know.
It'll probably have to change a lot for your meta.
I don't know what's relevant to listeners.
Meta I just no. True.
It's pretty good to have a counter spell
in a drawer, spell in the same place, and if you got to use one or the other
when you finally draw an actual like dove veto or something like that.
Well, I don't know, take the bet, do the card thing
like draw the other card or hold both and flicker the fucking mole drifter.
Like, yeah, it's just cool. It actually feels great.
This guy, you could add some stuff to him because you have an early flier.
So I've got things like, sort of the animist,
because the more mana you have in every game, the more potent this becomes.
But you get to a space with him where three becomes six mana, and now you
can flicker two creatures or one creature twice in a cycle and still have options.
But you could take it further with like dowsing.
Dagger is a good one for him,
where you just give give yourself a gilded lotus style sized land.
It's kind of hard because it only produces one color, that one,
and that activation is specifically it's it's double colored.
So it's kind of weird. Sure.
Hidden strings is another incredible card
with a flying commander, but it only has two permanents.
I don't know, I do think if people are looking at this one because
Abuelo hits creatures and artifacts,
you know, maybe some of the
equipment the auto equips when it enters might be okay.
Okay. Yeah. So, like, they're not the best thing.
So if you're looking for.
But if you're looking for something to bring it with.
Yeah.
Those those might, might work.
But it's really it's, it's a good idea because he can protect that equipment to.
Yes. So yes.
Like celestial armor would be one that I would probably recommend
because it'll you can flash it in.
It gives him plus two and hex proof.
It won't really serve you from there on
but but it auto eclipse because now it comes at end of turn.
So if somebody tries to target them later on because they lose the hex proof.
But that's a great idea Kyle.
Like because he can actually get artifact stuff out of draw out of death range.
Like if somebody's trying to break something.
Yeah, there's some other hearth and helmet going.
There's some others that give your command or protection
for the turn that it comes in.
That's a little harder with this one because it's still into turn.
So I don't know.
I'm just trying to think like
because I love this style of play with blink where it's back footed.
Blink. Yeah.
But it can be hard to bring it.
I'm glad that you brought up,
like, The Hand of Vecna and some of the other options.
Like, I don't want to blame as aureus, but like,
this is a very hard as aureus old school as aureus coated deck.
Yeah.
So but I would say you have all of the things a that kind of hit
the like let's play on the back foot.
And B I think the stuff that is core to being successful
with this particular strategy, you know, like you've got solid removal,
solid draw, solid things to get spells back to hand.
This guy's sick.
You could probably do something like adds a counter to him
on your combat again, like you want to not overcommit your mana.
So I don't know.
Noble heritage like I'm gleaning on some of my old school commander.
Damage stuff's
like, noble
heritage is like he's going to pick up a two counters every cycle and swing,
and then you have the flicker whenever you need it,
like, it's going to look like you're vulnerable
because he's tapped, but you don't want to block with him ever.
Yeah.
So there's a bunch of those style of effects.
I would I would just caution you got to keep the mana really low on these things.
Like some of the equipment is dangerous because of how much it costs.
Yeah.
Because it would be it would be tempting to do a Cathars crusade, but.
And all.
And everyone's going to go.
Okay, so he's open.
Let's finally go in.
Yeah. That's the window.
Yeah. How would you think about that one?
I like this, and I like the characterization here.
I was actually like, When's Andy going to talk about more blink decks?
Yeah, because
I think blink decks do their best with the instance and sorceries.
And then when you loop something I love into them, which is the archaic
Mansour style effects, it gets grotesque really fast where it's obvious.
Cool.
So you're just able to like, keep doing that.
Yeah, great.
Like it's pretty sick with him because you have a way to force
the mana issue into it to where you're not kind of stuck.
Too bad.
And I think I think it highlights another piece like, you know,
I mean, with that first deck with gray facts, right?
Like you illustrated.
Okay, I can hold mana up if I need to do the counter spelled thrice, whatever.
But really what I want to do is in step tokens,
this one highlights that same thing of like, okay, you know,
what was the example that you brought up of the modal counter spell thing?
Yeah, there's a few.
There's like Supreme will.
Yeah.
Like what is it the confounding thing or whatever.
Yeah. Yeah. So so spell gyre is modal.
Yeah.
So like those types of things
where you're like, okay, I have a counter if I needed or something else that I.
Yeah.
The confounding riddle was the one you had brought up earlier.
You know, like, I've got that available where I can use this and
get exposure to cards, counter a spell, but if not, I'm going to flicker
my reflector mage and dink somebody for a minute.
Sucks. Like.
Yeah, like sucks.
That's that's which is what?
And I think that's the spirit of it.
Right.
Like, there's the thing I want to do, which is go
take a nap and then come back to the helm.
And, but if I've got to jump into the fucking ocean and patch up
this breach in the hole, then okay, I can.
Yeah, this one's pretty ragtag, I think.
But yeah, you're like, we don't have things like our Ark mage emeritus.
Emeritus. Yeah, yeah.
We don't have that really running because it just makes better sense
to put our mana to work with a creature that just can be really.
Bede. Yeah.
The biggest struggle here is to find the mana to resolve some of them.
The early setup is a bit tricky, but once you're finally dug in like a
tick, it gets, I think, easier and easier for you to hold on.
A mass balance.
I think probably should be here.
I just don't know how this looks with him
kind of getting caught in the middle of that. It could look pretty wild.
But yeah, it's a pretty sick, pretty sick deck.
Maybe Elish Norn
to like really choke tokens, but that's seven mana to get something out.
Like, I just don't know where you are in this game.
I will say, in my experience with decks like this,
I mean, you're using some of the things that I do like this,
like the solemn simulacrum and, the sort of the animist.
But I have found that those big mana rocks, like the Dynamo
and the Gilded Lotus, really help you jump over that edge
where you can be like, okay, I am going to resolve my which enchanter.
But I still have mana up for blinks.
Probably good advice because because they're gone to land of turn.
If somebody books a.
Vandal blast or something
like you can blink it out of the way or something like, Austere
Command, you can put it out of the way because it's gone to a turn.
So that's probably a good advice.
It's just because they give you mana, like you can weave them in a little bit
like Dynamo.
Yeah, of course it costs for man up front, but it just bought you three mana.
Like you're not completely flatlined.
Like your colors might be a little screwed.
Yeah, but that's not gilded Lotus is one of my favorite
with with blink decks because,
you know, I mean, yeah, you can abuse the shit out with this dude.
Yeah, yeah, that's a great, great point.
Gilded Lotus.
Maybe some of, like, the relics, like, relic of, like, use him.
So it's a double. It's really double. Yeah.
Because you're just not going to be blocking with him.
I just don't I don't think if you're like fuck I
if I had enough, man, I could just bounce this creature
or just flat exile it with my with my salamander.
Pilot pirate. Yeah. Well, there it is.
Like if you tap Relic of Legends and Abuelo
you which produce two mana out of that,
which I know that goes against what we just said of like,
you really want to limit the amount of like, front footing on your turn,
but but those at least there's some offset
that comes with them right there ready to use.
Yeah. You ready to look at the next one or.
Yeah. Let's think this one's they said yeah.
They just you know trying to push this thing across.
I don't know how you'd say this can.
No. So can can, can Kinesis.
Kinesis.
Just call it Kenneth.
It's the priest of Tosa.
So the other thing I'm kind of trying to stay on
also is not going way high with the mana cost with these guys,
because their activated abilities are really what's going to be taxing us.
The most great facts is like the borderline.
I'm like, dude, this is.
But it's only two mana for A13.
If you would scribe a number of cards, scry that many cards plus one instead.
Okay, so I'll admit this one's probably the more janky of the
of all of my ideas, but I really am trying to force the issue here.
Dude of like, this is really where you want to play.
You can pay three in a hybrid green or blue.
Look at the top card of your library.
If it's a Kraken, Leviathan octopus,
or serpent card or creature card, you may put it into the battlefield.
If you don't put the card into the battlefield,
you may put it on the bottom of your library. It's funny.
It's like he cares about scrying, but he doesn't scry to do the thing.
Essentially, what we have here is a way to, at instant speed,
bring something from your library straight into fucking play stuff
that has no business being able to do that specifically, I don't know, follow
through with the combat right away.
Yeah.
What what Simek is great at is, you know, combining draw with mana,
that's like the big danger here is okay, well, I'm drawing and I've got more mana
and I've got more options and I've got more mana,
and they can fill their deck, which is like very razor
thin specific answers and protect their big,
big fucking things when people are trying to move in on them.
That's like the, the the strength here.
Yeah, but what they don't have is the ability to like, okay.
And I'm now going to move to combat and push you out.
So instead you're just kind of watching the Simic player
just fucking beat off honestly with what they're doing.
So what I like about this guy is that like, yeah, if you know,
what's on the top of your library is a, I don't know, something as simple
as a Simic sky swallower, which is just A66 flying trample shroud.
It's going to come in ready to go
before your turn is because you're kind of setting yourself
up to activate this ability and shove things into play.
So this is a very draw go deck with a really clunky draw,
not kind of go activation.
I went around looking at this, and I feel like a lot of people
were kind of hung up on trying to look at the top of their library.
Sure.
And I'm like, let's just load the deck full of instant speed.
We scry because you get extra scry.
Yeah, you can get deeper scry than just a single.
Yeah, yeah.
So this deck felt okay, man. It felt okay.
I think the only thing that I think
this thing will struggle with is its ability to do anything
outside of scrying and shoving these dudes into play.
My hope is, like,
once they're down there, just enough of a problem that you can take the game.
So it's a little bit more in the mid foot compared to Abuelo, okay?
Because you're bringing big, big dudes in to shove it.
Yeah, but I did adopt some of the learnings from that last deck.
Right.
It's like okay well insidious Will Supreme will rewind
spell gyre whelming like like these are these are in our hands right.
Mystic confluence confounding riddle.
So if I really like they don't scry.
But there's something that I can escape from where if I have nothing to do or.
Holy shit, they're trying to mess with me.
I've got reasonable answers.
Like three steps ahead, for example, like, okay, you counter a spell,
or you make a token copy, or you draw draw cards,
something like airship crash where it's like,
I can destroy target creature or enchantment or create
or sorry, destroy creature with flying or an artifact or an enchantment.
But if I don't need to do any of those things,
I can just cycle this thing away and get rid of it.
Cycling is really strong.
Yeah, with with a deck where I need a I need a screw.
Here it is.
Yeah.
Cannibalize a screw, which is my draw spell
because I, I know what's on the top right now is not what I need.
So I'm gonna get rid of it or whatever. See what I mean?
Yeah. Yeah.
Shuffling your library is pretty good with this, where you're like.
I'm just not seeing what I need.
I'm going to just force a shuffle.
So I kept the fetch lands, and then more to the fact I introduced
the instant speed ramp spells that you talked about.
So he comes down on two, and then we pass through and we're like,
okay, roiling regrowth.
I'm not going to ramp on my fucking turn. Yeah.
Cycle of renewal I'm not on my turn, Harrow.
Not on my turn into restoration.
If you've already got a cracking down.
Gets you three fucking faces.
Go. Yeah. So it's all off the fucking turn.
Smuggler's surprise.
So if I, I just draw these kraken or serpents or what?
I'm just gonna call them Kraken into my hand.
I just surprise them into play.
This card is insane.
For $6 green spree, you can pay plus two to mill four cards.
You can put two and put up to two creature
and or land cards from among the milled cards into your hand.
Or you can add five to this.
You may put two creature cards from your hand into the battlefield.
Crazy like you won't even bother with his ability with this.
And then if you want.
Yeah, creatures you control the powerful or
greater green hex proof and indestructible talent of turn did the spree cards are.
That's some of my favorite design in the last several years.
They're great here.
That white spell.
What is it, like, a high noon or whatever it is?
Oh, it's also great.
You can do it off. Turn.
You can spray it to remove all their abilities
and destroy it and give your stuff indestructible and destroy everything.
Yeah. So this deck is really looking to do that.
Like, I can go through the different scry cards, but those are boring.
But, like, you know, heathland lots, joint exploration, that kind of stuff.
I've got Ovia, the auto tech artisan in here.
So it's four mana for a one, two.
Each creature that's attacking one of your opponents has trample.
A lot of these guys don't actually have trample.
Some of them are just six sixes and eight eights. Some of them do.
But I tried to get them ones with mostly evasion.
Yeah, yeah.
The line that we like here is that you can pay green.
You may put a creature
or vehicle card from your graveyard or from your hand into the battlefield.
If you put an artifact into the battlefield
this way, it comes with two counters. That won't matter here.
But really, if you draw a Kraken, draw a sea beast on accident,
you still have an instant speed way to shove it into play. Yes.
So is it the thorpe of the library, or is it you see?
Yeah. And then.
And then every everybody attacking, not you, gets trampled.
I fucking love that design.
The everybody attacking, not me.
Go somewhere else and you'll get rewarded.
I love it, I love it.
Yeah.
If you care about the the crack crack ins, the the sea beasts.
Some standouts are the star winder.
It's a leviathan.
That's a seven. Seven for seven.
Whenever a creature you control
deals combat damage to a player, you may draw that many cards.
That's why you want stuff like Ovia and the right.
Like you probably should put a pipe.
Maybe one more piper in this deck just to shove them.
Oh yeah. Just to push them at instant speed.
That's what matters.
It's not so much about the mana cost with a Cimic deck for too long,
because eventually we'll be able to cast these fuckers.
But that one's pretty interesting.
Selin Voda has the kicker.
It's got to be cast, but it's an eight eight.
Like, that's that's my whole thing with that scourge of the fleets.
I don't usually love putting this index that split a color, but as you move along,
like you're going to pick up enough islands where it's going to be effective,
like if you have five islands, that's a crazy bounce, by the way.
It returns each creature.
Your opponents control opponents
guys with toughness X or less, where X is the number of islands you control.
Well, in a green deck,
you can use your interest restoration to bring your island count up by three.
If you're good on green. Yeah.
And it's it's enough usually to unwind a bunch of people.
Trench. Gorgeous.
This one I think is insane.
For insane players.
But, like, if the deck is involved with scry
so much and you're set up where you think you need to, I.
I don't know where this needs to go, listener, but we'll read it off.
It's it's eight mana for A66.
So it's six blue blue.
And you're like, why the fuck is it that much?
It has trample.
When Trench Gorgeous enters the battlefield,
you may search your library for any number of land cards, exile them,
then you shuffle your library. If you do the trench.
Gorgeous power and toughness are each become equal to the number of cards
exiled this way.
So if you look it off of this early, it's A66 trample for six.
If you're like, okay, it's too early for me to do the other psychotic zone,
but if you're nuts, if you're nuts, you could go and just like,
oh, I'm going to get rid of like ten lands and just make it a 1010.
There's still lands left in my library, but the deck is getting thinner.
But now you don't have to scry as many lands out of the way to do your thing.
Exactly right.
So you're not having to shove lands around so much the later the game goes.
And these just work very proportionately well with stuff like cars
expertise, which is not in this deck, but it's instant speed.
Cousin is and it's just like getting bigger and bigger and it is trample.
So that one is pretty wild.
We've seen Brad use this one to great effect
a few times where it's like, oh shit, and that's nuts.
And then he follows up with something else summon Leviathan.
It's just six for a six, six one.
It's a saga thing. Thing, right?
It's from the Final Fantasy return each creature that isn't a crack in Leviathan,
merfolk, octopus or serpent to its owner's hand as on its first chapter,
then until end of turn, whenever a Kraken, Leviathan, merfolk,
octopus, or serpent attacks, draw a card so it gets that twice
pretty fucking wild that you can bounce everything out of every like.
By the way, Brossard merfolk just so everyone knows, coma and coma 2.0.
Both are here.
Glacier God is here.
It's it's it's supposed to be seven mana for A66 trample.
When this creature enters, create a lander token landfall.
Whenever a land you control enters, creatures you control get plus
one plus one and gain vigilance and haste until end of turn.
The haste doesn't matter so much for us because of how we're playing,
but the vigilance does during your turn.
Yeah, you play a land. And what do you want?
You want to be able to block.
Like people are going to try to bring this back to you
because you're throwing large larges at them and large, large
with, with vigilance are a large, large, large problem IMO.
Turns out. What do you think of this so far with this?
Yeah.
This is this is a pretty interesting merging of this idea of like,
let me let me find a way to get these problems into play.
And I like that you've thought about the kind of like Piper way of let's push them.
Yeah.
You know,
and I'm really trying to force this idea of when is the best time for these.
It ain't your turn. Do. Yeah.
If you can do this off your turn.
That's the absolute best time for this.
Because of what we've said,
if Kyle sitting on a board wipe, he doesn't know if I can do this or not.
He doesn't even know if I even have it in my fucking hand.
So he has to figure that out.
Is he going to shoot it and just roll it?
So okay, my guy that's two men at dies and gets rezoned.
Big, big deal.
Yeah.
See what I say?
Like, but if we go to right before my turn begins
and I'm like, okay, well it wasn't there wasn't any airstrike.
I'm going to bring these things out.
Or in our case, like a fucking Bikini Atoll nuke.
I don't know, I bring it out on right before my turn begins, and now I'm able
to capitalize on the power of this creature and attack with it.
31 instance are in this deck.
That's going hard.
It's really like I'm going to go things I'm really looking to go off turn.
And I think it's just like the activation is so risky.
I'm really not trying to set up the the user to just like,
I want to spend this thing until they get us cracking.
Yeah, like there are judicious things to do off turn in the deck.
Yeah.
And then there's only three sorceries, but two of which are lands.
And then there's the whelming wave
which bounces everything but these creature types. Sure.
What do you think of that one?
I think that one's actually really pretty cool.
This is a space I'm liking putting this to you.
Yeah, this guy's sick.
If you just give up on.
Okay, I need to know what's on the top of my library.
I'm gonna play cards.
I'm gonna play lands. Like you could introduce some of those things.
I would, I would just be cautious about.
They need to be.
Maybe the ones that let you play lands from the top of your library
to clear them out.
But I would not bring the ones that reveal it.
Like you don't want to be revealing it. What's the point?
Like? Yeah, what is the point?
Yeah. You want these things like lurking under the water, right?
Like if you need that thematic but like
if you just do the oh, I can play extra lands
and I play with the top card of my library revealed, like, that's not
maybe you want that.
I don't know,
I just, I kind of like the idea of I'm scrying and planning the top of my life.
There's some things I get off.
I feel like it would be really fun to play this one.
I feel like there's some things in this game that,
they're they're falls gold, right?
Yeah.
Like knowing too much about the top of your library.
Ain't that helpful? Yeah.
You know, like, scry should be enough, right?
It's it. It's most helpful when you're allowed to play lands.
That's when I think it's at its most hopeful.
That is when it is at its most.
I guess you could put the weird star whale thing that lets you like
crew it and hit somebody, and to get like that might make sense,
but playing lands from the top.
But I would not let people see what's up there.
I would avoid that.
Scroll rack would be an upgrade for this deck,
of course, because if you draw these things, they're now in your hand.
And yeah, depending on what you want to do.
But eventually, like the way I do this,
when I've constructed the deck,
the way I've done it is you'll likely just have enough man at a hard cast.
Some of these things, if you're falling into it, it's not protect my commander.
I can't do it.
It's just that
you could get them early at instant speed is, I think, the advantage.
And then you have a battery of instance and sorceries or sorry instance.
I keep saying instance and sorcery like it's just convulsive.
You have a battery of instance to protect these things.
Okay.
Well, you're going to try to kill my, my coma, which is already hard to do, right?
You shall not.
Well, this one's actually pretty dope.
I actually like I was having fun spinning this one around,
like, like delightful discovery.
It's five mana, but it costs one less to cast for each spell.
Your opponents have cast this turn, so I don't know.
Minimally. It's four mana scry two.
Then draw two cards. But for him, it's scry three.
Draw two.
That's pretty good for for
for mana is what it probably will cost if they cast two spells.
It's down to it's down to three mana.
It's starting to get better
and better than more greedy that that the more active that opponent is.
I guess they're doing the opposite
of what you do and they are really delighted in that art.
Are they? What's going on?
Looks like they found dinner.
What do you think, new class pet?
Yeah, one of them's thinking dinner for sure.
Yeah.
How are we feeling about this so far?
Yeah, these are really good illustrations of, like what I'm liking.
What you've set up here is there's different ways to be doing this.
I think it's really easy for someone who doesn't play a ton of spell slinger
to get into the idea of like, oh, there's only like one back
foot spell slinger, and that's fucking towel Rand mother, may I?
And that's not the point with any of these that you've kind of walked through like,
yeah, if I need to protect what I'm doing, I have the option here.
Right?
But let's let's talk about Talleyrand, mother, may I?
We've we've had it.
We've had both iterations of that.
Cody graced us with that one.
It doesn't help if all it is is full of counter magic.
I have tons of Congress, just tons of counter spells.
Eventually people are just going to ram spells across to get things through.
You're going to run out and you're only getting a couple drakes,
and what you're not doing is replenishing your supply.
You're you're cannibalizing screws all over your boats.
Like to keep yourself, to keep yourself going, but like,
you're never going to make it back to port.
Yeah. Like how many fucking we've seen?
How many fucking sci fi movies have we seen where
they're just keep bombarding you until your shields fall off.
Exactly like that is what will happen.
It's a it's a losing strategy because you can't replenish what you're doing.
And then really, you've kind of like, I don't know, trained the playgroup.
You've conditioned the playgroup
to really expect interference every time they try to do something.
Yeah.
If you look at these lists, a lot of them are like, okay, well,
I can step away through this drawer or I can choose between
these two modes or fog, a combat or something like that.
Eventually. Yeah, they're going to get the read of the deck.
It's it's very reactive.
It's waiting until the end of its turn to try to scry some stuff and push out
a crack in, or flicker this creature a bunch of times and then push it off
like that's what it's looking like it's doing.
Over time, any playgroup will figure this out.
It's it's every strategy has just an element of danger to it.
That's just how this game is formatted.
There isn't a bulletproof. Yeah.
And if it gets bad enough, like they'll start programing
in the conquerors flail into their deck and they're just be like, fine,
you can be it instance B, but you can't do it on my turn.
These are not great for us.
Things like Morrissey, things like, fucking Tafari.
If anyone's around, like, really?
Like, you should probably run to ferry and your thing, or it's like, I can do it
whenever I want. You guys can only go sorcery.
Yeah, yeah, but, yeah.
Conquerors flail like the reason
that some people go after those cards is because this is strong.
You can ruin someone's game because they're walking right into an ice.
Yeah. These people who.
That's the way they want to play.
They want to play going forward.
And that's their thing. And you're.
And I'm just I'm just educating.
The entire game doesn't need to exist on in the main phase.
Like, yeah, it's just doesn't.
Which I think you can effectively
do it down here without using two staple combo of things.
If you're a listener who plays at Higher Power than me and Kyle and you,
you probably already know a lot of this stuff and have ways like,
okay, and I can just combo off.
I don't even really didn't waste my time too much with Kraken.
I can do a couple really good ones.
And then there's so many like sensei's divining top combos that like, exist.
You'll be okay, you'll figure it out.
So if you want to go explore those avenues like boot up
your spellbook and do it and your bracket for deck.
But that's the message I'm trying to push here.
Is that like, if you load the deck full of instance
and then you have ways to step away from not using them, or
they're not needed, or they are flexible or they have a good variety of of.
Yeah, this seems to come up a lot.
Every game
you can move away from doing things actively on your turn
and exposing everything you're doing to somebody.
Board wipe to somebody, created Chupacabra, Andy's fucking flesh
bag marauder.
Like all of these things that you're, like, just dodging out of.
And when they shoot those spells right in front of you, it is a fucking gift, dude.
Like watching a board wipe go off when you're sitting on all of this stuff
because somebody else can't help themselves
and they have pulled so much goddamn threat.
They push themselves so fucking over the line that everyone's
just not quite dead, because one's not zero and they get burned
off, and you're sitting here with all these cards in your hand.
It's like manna from heaven.
Literally, dude.
Like, we've seen this happen so many times and you're like, oh shit, I'm
about to start taking over this game because everyone's exhausted.
And yeah, you're still like,
I don't know, you're pretty hurt, but you're you'll be like, I got enough.
I have, I have enough utility where I can back out of this.
Like I'm pretty sure I can.
So it's just a different thing to try to do.
Some people really don't want to engage in this, and that's fine.
But that's what the last episode was for.
Is that like, okay,
well, let's just like push it through and, and do the big thing with the spells.
But to kind of come back to that point, though, is like, I think, you know,
for a bunch of people who maybe don't sit in that spell slinger lane that often,
there are some caricatures of the back foot spell slinger
that we might have in our minds.
And I think these decks so far have really well illustrated that
you can do a ton of things by just saving yourself
that time of exposure a little bit, and these are well illustrated.
Yeah. It's rough, I'll give you that.
You can just the risk is like, I didn't do anything.
That's not good.
I try my best to like, eliminate that from these decks,
that I think the danger is the highest with this guy
because it's like, I don't know, I guess I could just random.
I mean, his ability can't.
Like, with, at least it puts it away.
Yeah, but God, dude, it's just like, not worth the mana. Yeah.
That's why they have that.
A high is only two mana. He's he's cool.
Dude, that's a I think that's the way to do him.
I really don't think you should just be like, okay, but heard about a spat.
This ability, like you really should be doing this.
If it said you're seeing this show up more and more.
Actually, Kyle, on cards where it says activate only once and only as a source.
Yeah, it's true.
It's like the designers kind of know the strength is is there with this.
They're like, dude,
we gotta like, not allow people to do this every second they want to.
And I'm here thinking, if it doesn't say that,
how can I take advantage of it often? Yeah.
You know. Exactly.
And I think they made the right choice by moving
the seed.
More news to the game changer list because of the type of decks
that want Seabourn Muse.
Yeah, it would be incredible here because you're not down anything for acting,
activating that ability. You're just like, okay, I'm just going to do it.
And you would introduce more and more to the deck.
Like, I'm just going to put Thracian in here.
I'm going to put I mean Helen these colors, they had the band one two or
you know what I mean. But like oh yeah, you're right.
The profit acoustics was crazy.
Flash was crazy.
Yeah.
If you brought profit accrue fix back here, Holy crap.
Like it wouldn't be.
And it's I think somebody who's listening to this can see why.
It's like, well, it's because I can't figure out
what this person's going to do, and it's too late for me
because my whole strategy was play cards, pray.
Yeah. You know. Yeah.
And I eat your prayers with stuff like that.
And so I was like, they really should move it out
because a deck can be set up to really abuse that, that creature.
Should we talk about the last one
or should we talk about other ideas and then talk about the last one?
Let me just drive past some stuff that I was thinking about.
I didn't put them in here because I didn't really want to overcomplicate things.
One that just comes right to mind that I thought was pretty cool was your luck?
Oh, yeah.
So your luck has this thing
where you pay one, you tap and he adds Jun to your Manipal,
everybody's Manipal actually it's a four for vigilant for four.
Vishnu Sharman is what he is.
If you go to the Iida track page, everybody's really trying to drive
the top line of this deck, which is or type line of this card,
which is everybody loses life if they don't use their bada,
like that's the big thing.
Yeah.
Essentially what you're trying to do is activate him.
I have either infinitely to have infinite mana shoved into everyone's manipal,
and then you move to the combat phase or something and they just die.
Yeah.
Or people are taking it to the extreme of adding the enchantments to allow
everyone to have double mana things like mana barbs to stuff like that.
I am not moved by that.
I think that's a little too generous.
Giving people cards is one thing.
Giving them mana is something I don't know if I'm into.
Bell Bay is like in that deck list.
So what I was thinking was when is the best time to put mana
in someone's manipal if you don't want them to use it?
Their combat phase like listener has to move to combat.
They can't skip it. They go to the combat.
Yeah, it does exist.
Or they're in step or someplace where they need only an instant spell to do it.
And you, if you make your deck flooded with instant speed
stuff in Jund, you'll be able to empty it from your manifold.
So really, what this guy looks like is this a colossal
gutter?
Snipe is really what he looks like.
If if people aren't able to push that mana out.
Chaos warps in everyone's deck. Be us.
Beast within is in everyone's deck, so those two colors will likely
have an escape route and be like, I'm gonna hold it up.
And once they kind of clock you, they can almost plan around things.
Well, I'm not going to use the removal on my turn.
I'm going to wait for Kyle to give me my judgment, and then I'll use it.
Which which I've done.
That danger is always there.
But in that same deck, you can have fucking bolt, bend
and return the favor and true and like be ready for it.
Right.
So like be two steps ahead of them and go, I know they're going to try to do it.
I'm going to Vaughn is hunger.
And then I know they're going to try to go okay.
Well in response I'm going to beast within okay. Now I'm going to bolt,
bend it and throw it somewhere else or deflecting Swat.
So I thought the deck was actually pretty cool.
It did lack the
again, which I think is the danger of
some of these decks is how to fucking bring it.
Sure.
Smasher kind of makes sense, like because you're throwing a spell on the stack
every cycle, so you random somebody for whatever that spill size.
But the spells can get wider as you go up, right?
Like so you can start using something
like wing Graces judgment to blow up more things at instant speed.
Yeah, like that kind of idea.
Have mana escapes also. Right.
So some of the stuff that's like, well, it's a cycling card or it's a
these instance, like a lot of those instance speed ramp cards are three mana.
They can just be thrown out. I'm going to use them.
Your luck mana to Haro for lands and that's that.
So people go oh well I have to take three.
So a blue deck mono blue deck will have very little
to do with this, this mana, unless they're kind of fitted like this where?
Yeah, they're using higher sized spells, but I just, I don't know,
I like the idea of it because it could backfire,
as crazy as that sounds, where people can just, like, use that mana against you.
But I like the
I like the idea of going a step ahead where you're like,
okay, well, I'm going to use imps, mischief and change, change the vector
of that spell and I'll lose the life, but I'm pointing it right back at you.
And that would be fucking annoying, right where you're like,
fuck, I wasted this thing thinking he didn't have a way to do it.
And by the way, the guys just vigilant, you know? It's true.
So you can get it. Guys.
Just vigilant.
He actually responds,
I think pretty well to Conquerors flail because he just becomes fucking.
He gets a plus three plus three.
So if you do
want to do stuff on your turn, they couldn't do anything with that mana.
Good point.
So you there's a version of this word for that I can pivot and just do it
on my turn. Yeah. So
yeah.
Also, green has some
pretty cool flash creatures, which we'll get to, but so does black.
Weirdly, there's a lot of like, oh, well, a creature died.
I'm going to exile it from my graveyard or from your graveyard
and make that many treasures or oh, these two creatures block.
I'm going to flash them in and they both die because they took damage.
Oh, you're tutoring just.
Yeah. True.
I haven't thought about that.
Right.
You're you're worldly tutor and your vampiric tutor.
So that's one idea.
But I mean, like, the other one that's like.
Oh, it looks like you're tutoring.
I'm going to take control of that tutor for.
Oh, yes, the opposition agent, which.
Yeah, man.
Well, I'm going to use my hero with your mana.
Cool, so am I. Yeah.
In fact, instead, I am I. It shall be me.
Yeah, that's.
That'd be pretty sick.
If you really wanted to go all the way, and I just.
I started working on this,
and I'm like, I can't, I can't even finish this, this test.
So I was looking at Kyodai.
It was a, it's a five color dragon because as an activation of adding
gives it plus five plus five, but it's a flash dragon for four mana
that can flash in and make a permanent indestructible for as long as you control.
Kyoko is where I started.
And then, halfway through the brewing of the list,
I was like, oh wait, Kenneth has a bunch of fucking activated abilities.
Kenneth is pretty good at being back footed, right?
So Kenneth has a battery of abilities that if you're really, really pushed off,
your turn.
They all kind of make sense.
You can offer to give somebody trample and haste to not attack you.
You can draw a card, you can add counters
or fuck, you can just jack something out of a graveyard and then some.
Right. And pump a creature I think is the other ability.
So he has a bunch of escape routes, a bunch of pressure valves attached to him,
where you can decide whether you're going to use your deflecting palm
or activate his ability, or decide whether you need to do your big
exercised draw spell or steal a creature out of the graveyard.
He has a just too many ways to backflip out of a corner,
all strapped to one creature.
It's almost like the the cards in the deck could get more and more prescriptive
and more narrow in their nature,
and you can just rely more on those activated abilities.
True.
And if you're in five color playing, Kenneth,
you probably should just be using the Seed War muse and tell everyone that's
where you're at and get out of the lower bracket with him.
So yeah,
that was one thing I looked at.
I got like halfway through the list and I'm like, this is just
you're it's an embarrassment of riches.
I don't know what the best of the best are.
I'm sitting here looking at like, yeah, you know, like, it's the list is too long.
Like to me, the two with five colors.
You could take the favorite cards I've listed through so far
that you like and shove them into this deck, like, out of this entire list.
I think the other thing is that he's kind of sizable, so he can grow
fairly, fairly
confidently over the cycle of turns and be a threat himself, you know?
Yeah, that put target put a counter on target creature being at two mana.
Just boop boop. Yeah. You can empty that.
It doesn't say activate once.
Dude, a lot of these guys like the say another either I know dude.
So he would be like the ultimate expression of like an Ikea style.
Just back flipping out of whatever situation comes my way list.
Yeah, so I didn't go after that.
Estola, I think kind of tells you to do this.
She's like, hey,
if you cast a non creature spell for greater, everyone's going to lose two.
And if somebody loses four, I'm going to draw you a card.
She almost like screams like grabs you by the ears and screams draw.
Go like do it off. Your turn.
Do it as many times as you can
and wait for somebody to take two and then activate it.
Or do do my thing, you know. So
I see that being a good one to another Esper one.
Yeah. You see.
Yeah, I'm, I'm seeing some options to break the spoilers, but
there's a dragon they spoiled where it's like it basically does the thing off turn.
It really wants you to stay off. Turn.
Yeah.
Notice also that this isn't really one of those things where it's like
we're going to do something every on everybody's turn.
No, this is more of we're going to wait till the moments.
Right is how this episode is configured.
But like Allah could be something like that.
But I think my worry there is it likely is the more,
the more responsive or reactive the deck becomes.
You really like kind of bet on holding on.
Player twos turn right.
Say Kyle's player one. He's a guy right after me.
And then Brad's player two and then TIFF's Player three, right?
I'm kind of betting I probably won't do a lot during Kyle's turn.
Even though I want to get that fairy, I'm probably going to go.
Okay, well, I'm going to bet that TIFF's Turns is not going to be that crazy.
So I'm going to do a spell on Brad's turn, and then I'll do the rest of it
on TIFF's turn.
That's not really what I've been characterizing so far
through this episode.
It's more just like I'm going to maximum max.
I'm going to take a whole turns worth of actions if I can.
Just somewhere else. Yeah.
Not break it up over three turns. Yeah.
Because I.
But Damir wants you to cast off turn.
These days, there's plenty of rewards for doing it. True.
Like there's ones that say, hey, draw a card or whatever.
There's another one.
Her name is like, what is her name is, like, Gemma Lightfoot or something.
She basically just says, like, if you end your turn and you didn't
and you didn't draw or you didn't cast a spell, draw a card.
So she's like, just flat saying, like,
don't do anything on your turn, dummy, is her whole thing.
I think that's her name. Is it Gemma?
Jenna?
It's just it's just Jim.
Sorry. Jim Lightfoot, sky explorer.
She's four mana for A33
human scout with flying and vigilance at the beginning of your end step.
If you haven't cast a spell from your hand this turn, draw a card
so you could do like foretell.
And I bet if I went to her wreck pages.
All this back flipping, going on to like do stuff from not hand right.
Plot.
I guess
should be one of the things that I think this thing is directly speaking to.
You could do that.
You could do that, and it's probably be fine.
But the other speed is just like
she's just saying, don't do anything on your fucking turn.
Yeah, go somewhere else.
And if you do, like, just make sure it ain't from your hand.
I guess, if you want to do that level of elaboration.
But she kind of just says it to like, pass your turn.
Yeah.
And I'm a flying, vigilant chick, so I'll be okay.
Yeah.
That's that's actually she doesn't have an activated ability.
Your your luck kind of does.
It's a mana ability, but it's not really kind of what we're doing here.
Ken, Ruth has a bunch of activated abilities.
I think that's just. I think he's just cracked.
When you look at him through that lens of, like, okay, he's already crazy good.
But like, when you look at it through that lens of, okay, so at any minute I can,
as long as I tell myself to do this and do a wilderness reclamation
and activate his ability and empty my hand on my turn, but then off turn, I'm just.
Yeah.
Introducing seaborne means that we should.
Shigeki, let's do that one.
Okay, so this is one. This is like the Krak!
I think of this strategy, maybe, at least for us,
at least at our group, kind of ending on like a similar note from the last episode.
Yeah.
On the surface, I don't think Shigeki makes for a threatening commander at all.
I just think it's a lot of words and a lot of weirdness on a on a card.
I think in the right hands, though, and with the right deck construction
built around it, this thing is really it.
It borders from a really neat commander to holy fuck, commander.
Pretty fast. Absolutely.
So our experience with it was before we Ragnarok
and before we really down shifted our power.
I had built it for
kind of like a people call this like turbo fog, right?
Where you basically can just fog ad nauseam, with the list.
And it was trying to hold off forever until I could just kind of go
infinite and demonstrate what I like to call a moral victory,
which is,
I haven't really one like in your face, like people are zeroed out in life,
but it's it's fairly obvious that, like, I'm not going to let you move forward.
Right.
Well, unless you have a very specific thing to do.
Yeah. Let me just read them off.
So we just can kind of wrap our head around this.
So one and a green for A13 legendary enchantment creature.
Snake druid like I just wouldn't you would probably wouldn't
think you were going to talk about this with spell slinger.
But I really do think this guy is like the shit one in a green tap.
Return Shigeki to its owner's hand.
Reveal the top four cards of your library.
You may put a land card from among them into the battlefield.
Tapped. Put the rest into your graveyard.
Then here's the real thing about him he has an activated ability
kind of strapped onto him
when he's on the battlefield, but also he has one in your fucking hand,
which is the last goddamn place that anyone like.
There's there's really very little that can happen here.
Sort of like specifically go into your hand and discard him kind of thing.
Yeah, but it's a channel and it's, it's channel also.
So there's a very short list of things that can stop this.
Like it's not a spell.
It's because an advocate ability, some people run that stuff.
Some people love that stuff.
But generally out in the the greater
mainland, it ain't really happening.
This is like island pockets of all things that you could predict.
Do people have availability of counter target activated ability
or stifle or odds are they don't have that available at the moment?
Yeah.
But what matters here is channel XX.
Green. Green. Discard this card.
Return X target non legendary cards from your graveyard to your hand.
So the way this looks is a you know from the way the angle we came from was.
I accumulate enough mana and a spell that specifically untapped lands
to demonstrate that I can loop bullshit and the land on tapping spell.
Yeah.
You see so like the big one was, like Rude awakening I think was one of them.
Right.
Like, it just it has a, has a mode where you can untap all your lands
or early harvest.
Early harvest says target player untapped, all basic lands he or she controls.
It's an instant speed for three mana.
So if you have something that says, hey, an instant speed return target creature
from your graveyard, this in your hand and Shigeki in your hand and enough mana.
You basically demonstrate that you can produce infinite mana
as long as you're up by a positive result and go.
And with that, I'm going to.
And you can just name whatever spell because you can loop that into the loop.
So for me, you could just say,
oh, and I'm going to beast within every fucking thing,
all of your lands, all of your creatures, all of your permanents.
And then they go, okay, so I have like 48 beasts or I have whatever.
Like however many they they are the city's blessing with a beasts.
And then you pass the turn, because you did.
Let's say you did this all on your turn, and someone moves to attack
you with all of their beasts.
So you just
beast within all of their beasts because it's still in your fucking hand.
Yeah.
You'll never hit me with them.
You'll have them for others, not me. Right.
So you kind of see, the problem is like, it's a morale victory.
It's like I really haven't gone anywhere.
But if somebody can't stop that loop when it starts going
and low morale is kind or morale is kind because it is truly low morale.
Low morale.
Yeah, it's a morale victory for me.
So that's how the deck was configured.
It didn't work in our meta very well.
It worked really well like the first couple of weeks.
Like I was having a hell of a time of my life.
Yeah.
But slowly, because of what just happens with us, is people have a memory
of some kind of infinite outcome, and they're going to push me for it.
Absolutely. The deck was ready for this.
It was loaded with fogs, but they're going to push through even harder.
So I had to scrap the deck.
We moved away from staple play too, so gone were a lot of like
the green actually didn't have that many.
But like, you know, it just couldn't even crop rotate anymore.
So so I had I had to drop the deck.
It was fucking awesome for me because I just don't love mono green.
I just don't, I just don't I struggle with mono green.
Somebody could sit here and be like, well, play.
Yeah.
And I'm like, yeah, it's just I don't know dude.
Also he did I did no I didn't that was good.
No that was Chris. But wait
ye San is what?
Which is far worse.
You sense so much worse.
If a for a second, didn't you?
I don't think I did, dude, Chris absolutely did.
I'm thinking years ago.
It's possible.
Maybe I tried after Yee San because it was so freaking.
I feel like you did because there were a couple times
where we were just like, oh, these are the worst things to attack into.
Oh, you're right, you're right.
That weird slime that turns it into a copy of the slime.
Yes, I remember, you're right. I did have that.
It was so short, was so short, so short lived.
I just don't identify with it.
Like, even though on so much so that you forgot you did.
Yeah.
I had you send for your for a little bit.
It's so crazy.
Like just the power journey that people.
So it was so bonkers.
Yeah. That.
Well, I was going to say that even when we actually would entertain
like a five and six player game.
Oh my God, you would still.
But in some cases, when you have Yee San and,
you know, a seed borne music, more players is actually better than fewer playing.
You will have seaborne music, you just work your way up to it.
It's so dumb.
I'll never do a deck like that ever again.
All right. Like, I just I know people get off on stuff like that.
Maybe some of what I've said tonight, people are,
like, rolling their eyes out, but, like, I don't know.
Dude, like, it could be far worse.
Like, it could be far, far worse.
That guy was so cracked. So cracked.
Anyways, I'm.
I'm embarrassed that I even made it mono green is can be wild
and can be frustrating.
So I got back on this thing a couple weeks ago.
I was messaging somebody from our discord, Micah, who I think
kept theirs in like in there. Fine with it.
I think it is a kind of a Go Infinites type of thing.
So it's for their hey, we're playing at a higher bracket.
I'm going to do this.
I'm going to do this mono green thing.
We just don't do that here.
We shifted everything down to our version of bracket two, which is like,
okay, you can't search your library for anything but a basic land.
Yeah, you can't start with a soul ring.
And we'll just follow bracket two rules from there.
We don't do the bracket to vibe like, I'm I'm not going to have that here
where we're just we are trying to break it for sure.
We're just like, hey, we're following the rules of it, okay?
Like I'm not the spirit of it, so we'll just call it bracket L or something.
I don't know,
you know, like, I just I can't constrain I just don't want to mess with that.
I'm not going to have that talk.
It's not about power expectation with us.
It's more of the limitations of I just do not want to see staple play anymore.
We did it for years. Let's just move out of it.
Puts people in a similar space.
Another tangent here like I.
Because I was putting together an A deck this last weekend,
and I was picking apart a lot of pieces from my Hellion as Aureus Hellion Deck.
And I was like, Good god,
before brackets, this thing's cracked open.
It was.
I was fucking doing a lot of bracket four picks for this deck.
Yeah. And like, you know, it's it's a huge tangent.
But what we were suffering from in this meadow was people
using weak commanders but supporting them with powerful staples.
And I've kind of learned the hard way that that's just not a way to be.
I think it's a little I don't want to say the word disingenuous, but
it's it's.
Yeah.
And in that case, it was like a mana demanding commander
that is then very powerful, then supported by then support.
Yeah.
I'll never like my I think my pinnacle moment with with
it was we tried to move against Brad's attempts.
This list me and Cameron and he dumped almost every free
blue mana spell out of his hand to stop it.
And he was sitting on a risk study
and was drawing cards as we're trying to convulse,
to kill this thing that's going to one shot somebody,
and this is the one that says somebody loses
if you've got different mana value cards. Exactly.
So he's happy to do it because he's he's replenishing his hand.
Yeah.
So it was just quite lame where on the surface
this is supposed to be air quote
something like janky, but and he was he's not the only person who did.
I did it.
We all we've all done it.
We've all done like a janky or commander.
And that was our way of reining in the power that,
like the most consistent part of our deck, was something that wasn't that strong.
Yeah, but it was loaded full of like the who's who of the who's who.
So when they published the bracket stuff, I was like, so we're already like
mostly they're like, we'd already gotten rid of tutors
even before this, like this, this, that, that interaction with Brad's attempts,
this thing before he like lethal the Cameron out of the game.
Yeah. Was a tutor game.
I think the game changer thing
just really helped us kind of get in line with each other a little bit better.
Yeah, I think we got off the tutor game as the
as the singleton nature of this game.
Sunset it like this is not a singleton situation I think too much.
So we're just like, well, let's just reduce this even further
and try to get some semblance of the thing that we wanted it to
when we came to this format.
Yeah, but it's kind of a shitty thing where you've got
like clearly a weaker commander, I mean, attempts this is a lot of setup.
A lot of conditions need to go right.
Like I'm not he's not crazy for, like, loading these cards into the deck.
True.
But it's just like this random,
you know, it's almost like it felt like you're walking around in Yellowstone
and you just fall into the fucking water, dude, and, like, burned to death.
Like it felt like that where you're like, wow, this is really pretty.
And like, he's got a lot of, like, cool fall morning sun.
My skin's melting.
Just, like, all of a sudden out of nowhere.
Yeah, man.
It's like I don't it just felt strange.
And so when when we moved to this, like, all of that kind of went away.
Yeah, it introduced its own illustration of problems
because we really are playing in the landfill.
That is right.
Like the, the ruined detritus of all of the other
fucking formats just slides down the hill into our into our format.
And also they keep designing stuff that's specifically
a pollutant for a format also, but whatever.
So it's the best we can do.
And and Shigeki was kind of like that, right.
Like on the surface like it doesn't seem like he's that cracked.
But when you just float in full of like, okay, well, he can just go infinite
and only a very specific battery of blue spells, maybe a couple
red spells can stop me.
It was hard and so I scrapped the deck.
I recently revisited it because I've been on this like kick
about trying to round out my roster with with monoculture decks,
getting a mono green deck.
I need them on a green deck and I could not get to one that I wanted
because I just don't like the mile green play.
So I rebuild this thing and I reach out to to Mike and I'm like,
hey, what if I just treat this like a Re-Animator? Deck?
Was was originally my intention.
So before I started this series, before I was working throughout this.
Yeah.
And we're kind of messaging back and forth,
and I'm getting really good ideas and things
that kind of makes sense for a reanimation and not.
And as I'm gold fishing this thing, I'm just like, it's just a lot of damn mana
to get something out of my graveyard, back into my hand and then recast.
It is really what I got.
I was like, I just don't it feels like a lot.
These things are a little stinky.
By that you mean like the channel effect from Shigeki is a lot to do it by itself.
And by the way, it can't hit legendaries, which matters more and more
the deeper we get into everything.
Must be a Commander Wild West that we're in.
True. So it was actually guys I had to take out.
I'm like, I can't actually recur this with him, you know?
So you can't Shigeki or Shigeki.
That just sounds so.
Yeah, we're in public.
You can't Shigeki or Geki or Shigeki.
Can you imagine just randomly saying that to somebody?
And until you hear somebody?
Well, yeah, because you can't channel it.
Not like a legendary back from your graveyard.
Essentially, you'll find somebody.
Dude, there's things that like, I just
I just want to say randomly to people, that's one of them.
But you know what?
Show has a lot of like, banger lines like, that is love on the spectrum.
Those.
There are so many good banger lines.
The show.
Yeah, it's people that are on the autism
spectrum that are dating and it's just it's so wholesome.
But they say the most incredible fucking things, really.
I just love the sayings that come out of that show.
So my nephew is like deeply autistic.
Like there's yeah, he's he's very I mean,
he's like, he's pretty functional, but he'll, he'll never have like a regular.
You've met him like he'll never have like a regular life.
Like there's no way he's going to be with my sister for forever.
He'll have a caretaker.
I remember asking her about that.
And she like, is this, like, weird to see or whatever, like this show.
And she, like, really didn't like it, man. Oh, really? Interesting. Yeah.
She just was. That makes sense. But she's not.
She doesn't come from the space of somebody who,
like, is an advocate or whatever.
I can understand.
She's just more like, she doesn't like that.
People don't understand it.
I think is her like, irritation? Yeah.
When it's been her whole life, it's it's completely
characterizes her whole since he was born in like 2000.
So he's like 26 now, you know, and like all of the worry that she has,
like for
what's going to happen when she's gone and yeah, you know, my whole family like,
is just.
Yeah.
Like, this is kind of a weird thing is pretty much like all of my assets
when I go because I don't I haven't produced offspring.
They're going to go to him like his trust.
And everyone in my family, I'm just like,
who would need it forever, if that makes sense.
Like, he's, what, 14 years younger than me or something like that.
So I would hope that like it goes to better use.
Like if I bite the bullet this is if. Okay, sorry.
That's if me and my wife both at the same time.
Obviously I'm taking care of my wife first if I go.
But if we both eat it, yeah, it goes it goes into this trust for him
that she has guardianship over that's supposed to transfer
to his younger sister because it's like, yeah, you know, anyway.
But, I remember her bringing up that show and she's like, it was a weird.
It was a weird angle for her to, like, approach it because I thought she'd
either just hate it or whatever, but she's like, yeah, it just doesn't.
I get it, not jiving with some people, but man, I fucking there's
there's some lines in it that I just like.
God, I wish I could talk like that. Dude.
He's awesome.
Yeah, like my nephew's a he's really into, like, video games.
And so it's like,
it's funny that me and my brother
can keep up with him a little bit, but he gets so into weird stuff
and I'm like, I never play that.
Like, I'm not tracking what you're saying about
and nobody understands him because he's going like a mile a minute.
And and Brad's like,
you know, Brad's played like every fucking thing under the sun, you know?
So it's pretty funny to watch us three interact because we just like,
I start talking faster
about Ocarina of Time or whatever thing that he's like, into.
Yeah. He's like, you're unlocking me. Here we go.
All right, all right, let's get it.
So where was I talking about this thing as a Re-Animator?
It just wasn't feeling right.
Like, I'm just like, I just don't get the
the mana to, you know, not to divert again.
But reanimation should be either happening frequently at a recursive cadence
where I'm not out
resources to recur this creature because I have some kind of engine online,
and the thing I'm recurring is either bringing me up above my opponents
in by way of adding resources to what I'm doing, or tearing theirs down, right?
Or happening at a rate and a in a time stamp that has no business happening at.
That's how I view Re-Animator.
Anything outside of that, I'm not so aligned with it.
So either you're getting something out very early that's super threatening and
game warping very early for a mana amount that you have no business doing it.
It's dangerous in this meta because you have three hands full of removal.
Kind of, or at least maybe one hand has a thing to deal with it.
Or you end the turn and Mirren just brings it back to play.
Like it's just that simple.
That's how I think Re-Animator should happen here.
Not okay.
Well I curses creature
and then he comes back and I go around the title,
and I kept pulling back to my hand on a middle four cards,
and now he's in my hand and like, it's just it's just way too much.
So as I was thinking about this series, I'm looking at this bottom ability of
I can cycle and recur everything out of my graveyard back into my hand.
Now, if those things are creatures, I don't know if I'm so interested in them.
Yeah, but if we fit this into this entire episode,
let's just say they're the battery of things that we care about.
If we're trying to stay on the back foot, you know, things like those harrows,
the Harrow style ramp cards.
You know, shit like that, right?
The far like the priest.
I mean, I even took I took all the way up with this one because the mana just gets
better and better and better the longer this game goes with his activated ability.
So, yeah, I've added, like, previous wandering and and, like,
even the ones that bring it to hand
if I can take it like evolution charm and you happen upon a glade.
So I'm like, well, I'll make my land drop on my, on my turn.
But these all serve by functional.
Where they can recur Shigeki and pull him out of my yard.
So this deck is extreme in its in its
need to try to stay off your turn.
Okay.
And ramp and defend yourself for as long as you can.
And eventually
you'll reach a mana altitude where you're able to resolve banger
creatures during your turn, and they just kind of stick around a little better.
If they get removed, then we kind of start the cycle over again,
so it's pretty fucking awesome.
I had a killer time playing it when the threat of a infinite
is not looking at you like just staring down.
You're not looking at one like, I just I can't go infinite, can't do it.
But something like, I don't know, turn for you,
resolve a questing beast pass, and then you go around the cycle
and you're just mangling somebody's life
total with a questing beast that's death touch and can't be blocked by power two.
So they can't jump the damn thing with creatures they don't care about.
None of their matador
they can give away like it's coming in and it's fucking vigilant.
So it fits so many roles where I'm like, this is the kind of green I need, where
I'm able to stay with this thing and just kind of play through a little bit.
Right? Yeah.
Or the Knight Pack ambush, which is four mana for four for
it has flash and it's almost screaming in your face to do the thing.
Right.
Other wolves and werewolves you control get plus one
plus one at the beginning of your end step.
If you didn't cast a spell this turn, create A22 green wolf creature token.
So it'll make three threes for you because it has the anthem effect.
Sure, as long as you just don't do anything on your turn.
You untap, you pass, you untap, you pass.
And you can block with these unless they solve a trample situation
or something or get flying like these are just going to be in the way forever.
True, they're going to have to go really wide,
and if they do, then then of course, like we have the the battery of fogs
that exist in this color. There's so many.
So the trick is, is to have enough mana to pull things
out of your graveyard, write a card like I don't know.
Yeah like that that you happen upon a glade is really
is a really good one because it's flexible.
But I don't like grapple. Grapple with the past.
Right. It's one in a green mill, three cards.
Then you may return a creature or land card from your graveyard to your hand.
Like this is really good with Shigeki, you Shigeki your cards back into your hand.
You make sure you have enough to keep either one of them out of the graveyard.
Either this or that one. Yeah, and then pull it back.
Peerless recycling is cracked in this deck.
It's one in a green.
You can gift a card, which is?
They draw a card, return target permanent card from your graveyard to your hand.
If you a gift was promised
instead, return two target permanent cards from your graveyard to your hand.
So he's going after the instance these cards are getting him back,
and as long as those two are seeing each other at some interval,
whatever is in your yard you have access to.
So the mana cost is like driven down on a lot of these cards.
And I like they're all at instant like most like the bulk of this.
Let me let me pull it up like the bulk of this is an instance. Yeah.
I mean there's
there's some like you mentioned like, okay, just so you can get them,
there's things like regrowth that are in here. Right.
But you're really aiming for instant speed.
And what I like about this design
is that with Shaggy's channel ability,
like not too many of these things get away from you
and you can do stuff
like the Questing Beast and it fits in a shaggy deck.
Yeah, yeah, there are creatures in here because it's forwarded to green.
But yeah, there's 26 instance in the deck.
A lot of them are like return thing from him.
But you've got things like wilt which is destroy
target artifact or enchantment cycle it.
Curious heard is been a pretty good card for me.
It's for mana. Choose an opponent.
You create X33 green beast creature tokens where x is the number of artifacts
they control.
If you target somebody with their treasures
and they have a lot of them,
they either need to sack them or they're going to give you
as many beasts that are ready to go on your turn.
Yeah, likely.
If they're smart, they'll just sack them and you get nothing.
But then you should get this thing back to your hand for somebody else.
Like it's actually a killer card. I love this thing.
Sudden, sudden reclamation is just a heavy handed
like mill for cards from your library and return a creature
or a land card from your graveyard to your hand at instant speed.
You happen upon the Tarrasch is a crazy fog,
but it also like if someone's attacking somebody else, you
you have like a weird board wipe that they don't know is coming their way.
Five mana you can run and hide, which is prevent all combat damage.
It would be dealt by dealt to you and to creatures.
You can control this turn.
By the way,
the Questing Brooks works really well with fog effects
because it's damage can't be stopped with your fogs.
It will always be able to block, so you can fog and block with questing
beasts, and it will still kill the thing that's coming away and everything
that's running sideways from it that you didn't block with.
They don't do anything,
so you pick the best thing to take down and they don't trade.
It just kills it.
But the last the other side of this card is gather your courage.
Target creature gets plus five plus five gains indestructible.
Until in of turn all creatures your opponents control block
this creature this term or that are able
to basically like if Kyle sending like I don't know A33.
Yeah it's a law right?
I go hey it's now indestructible and it's plus five.
And Tiff you have to block with everything.
Like, yeah, I mean, this is one of my Miss Bumble flower cards
because it's like if I, if I need to if I need to fog, I can.
But if, if I can get you to take down a bunch of creatures.
Yeah, it's it's not a good card.
I think a lot of the time if you're not thinking
like this, if you're playing stuff on your turn, it's five fucking mana.
That's probably what people are saying.
Like it's five mana, but like, I want you to.
This picture of the hand Shigeki is in hand.
A way to return something is to hand.
This thing is in hand, and I don't know a random ramp spell that works.
Instant speed is in hand.
It's only when this thing matters
you get that high of like, oh yeah baby, I'm fucking hard.
Yeah, let's do this.
And barrel TIFF's board state is fucking crushed.
And Kyle is going to be like, well,
I'm gonna deal with this much damage to this, this and pick her best then
and tear him out.
Yeah, but if that doesn't happen and Kyle's swinging at me,
I'm like, okay, well, then I can fog out of this. No. Yeah.
So the game I played and it's not in this deck because
because this one is actually budget.
I actually wanted to keep the mana cost
down to really like try this for the listener.
It's 56 bucks this list without the basic lands.
Nice.
But the one I have in my list, I have this and I have berserk.
So I'm going to tell you about a scenario that happened.
So berserk is one mana instant target creature gains
plus x plus oh where X is its power and then it's destroyed.
At the end of turn,
Tiff was attacking Zack.
Zack had a fuck ton of highly just.
They were jacked up elves.
It was his.
It was his Galadriel list. Sure.
And she's like, I don't know.
I'm not going to be able to kill a lot of them, but we'll see.
Right? Like, some of them will die, some of them won't.
And she sends her bale fire dragon at him.
So it's A66 that's flying.
He blocks with his flier, but I'm like, it doesn't have trample.
Let's give it trample and double its size.
Yeah, so I doubled the size of the baleful dragon.
It becomes a 1212 trample crushes his thing out of the way
because I told her I'm like, we'll get through,
we'll do it, let's do it, let's do it.
And she's like, I don't know how, but okay.
And burned off his entire board and then, just for good measure, destroyed her.
Yeah.
Now her thing at the end of the turn has gone.
To which it's burnt effect isn't much for me, but it's still a fucking dragon.
So it's out.
And then right before my turn begins, I should get you that shit
right back to my hand.
You're like, so we can do that again if we need to.
Yes, dude, it was so good. That's.
That's kind of the thing I'm going for with this card is like.
It's similar thing.
It's a little heavier handed, but, you know, I can say, like, I wouldn't
normally run a card like this, but again.
But this time speed modal.
Yeah. It makes sense that it's five mana.
But you're right, it requires this setup for it to be to hit its value.
Right? Yeah.
Another card that just works so hard with this stuff is the Gale wind moose.
This fucking card in a deck like this, like, normally it's like, that's nice
or that's a surprise, but here it's like, this is utility and I love it.
It's six mana for A66 elemental elk.
It has flash, it has vigilance.
It has reach, it has trample.
This is like
a perfect escape route of oh, I guess I didn't need to do any of those things.
I'm just going to push this out.
It can attack whenever and it can block whenever and trample over stuff.
It is a credible thing of just like, okay, I'm releasing all of my green gas
and letting this thing out off of my turn, you see?
Yeah.
So any chance to weave stuff like this in, I mean, like the cloud thresher, right?
You can evoke it and it just deals to damage
to each creature with flying and each player.
But it's also just got it's A77 reach with flash and any other deck.
I just don't see
you like wanting to draw a card like this, but when you have it
up against the other options of well, I got a fog, I got a ramp,
I got a draw spell, I got a way to beast within or I'm just going to flash this,
the cloud Thrasher out.
And now I've got A77 reach. Yeah.
To add to my defense.
And then harangue all of the fliers out of the way
and it makes their drakes are God.
Which where's your swan song now Taron?
You just flash it in. That's what I'm saying.
There's something like that
where like, okay, somebody's got all their fucking drakes.
I'm just going to evoke this
in and then, oh, if I want it back later for another seven, seven, cool.
I can get it. Yeah. Ancient stone idol.
Kind of a similar idea.
It's ten mana for a 1212 with trample,
but it costs one list to cast for each attacking creature.
And then when it dies, you get a 612.
Like, you basically cut the power off and leave a 612 behind.
And guess what? It's in your yard.
And guess who can grab it?
So it's it's a pretty fun list.
I think it would train you to be like,
all right, I really want to be off turn with this,
because a lot of these creatures have flash and there's a ton of instance
and yeah,
so what you'll what you'll end up doing a lot of your earlier
turns is holding up mana, holding up mana, of course.
And then shooting a ram spell quickly recurring that Ram spell.
Looking for another card to reconnect Shigeki back to hand.
The graveyard is your most vulnerable spot with this deck.
If somebody nukes your yard, yeah, you're going to be in trouble.
There are instant speed green cards that like shuffle things back into play.
I don't bother with that card that, like, pulls things out of exile.
I just, I don't mess with that thing.
But like, you have ways to backflip out of a of a graveyard.
Hate in green. I don't have them here with this.
I just was like, I want them.
The list kind of cover most of the more common bases.
Another neat thing is just like introducing permanence
to this that are also in their own roots.
Like, let's say you're like, I just don't need to.
I don't need to ramp.
I need to have something more active, or I need something else
that's going to get me deeper into my library.
Something like mimic that is is pretty dope, right?
Something hits the yard and you're looking for
just stuff like, rather than, like going after a big, big.
You're looking for things like something which enchanter
or a creature that draws a card so you would have nothing to do.
You just bring this into play
or someone's attacking you, and you bring us into play.
Or Hilda's Crown of Winter, which can tap a creature
by paying one off your or off your turn, or none during your turn.
But the big thing is
that you can sacrifice it and draw a card for each tapped creature,
your opponent's control.
So if they swing out on you or anybody, if if Brad's sending three four guys
at Kyle, it's probably worth it to me to get into my deck and ditch this.
And it's now a permanent.
So most of the green cards like permanence out of your graveyard.
It's now a permanent in my graveyard or the oblivion Stone.
I don't love this card because of how slow it is, but really
what you're doing is you're committing three mana to board,
presenting something that's a problem for your opponent
that could blow up later if they blow it up, fine.
But that's one thing that I don't know if you really defend it or not, but
really, what's cool about it?
And I think it fits like
a glove in this deck because of the mana and just the activated nature of it.
So three mana you can activate and put a fate counter on.
Oh, sorry, three mana for an artifact you can pay for and put a fake counter
on target permanent or pay five and tap sacrifice
oblivion stone destroy each non land permanent without a counter on it.
Then remove all fake counters from all permanents.
So I think it works just in so many different vectors of it's only three mana.
So if I've got a lot of mana captured over the course of the game,
I can just put it out and hold it and not have to use it
until it's the last second and it's an instant speed board
wipe in mono green, which that's hard to come by in any color,
let alone mono green.
Yeah, if I do have a permanent, let's say that God damn this, I'm
pushed not to do anything before my turn, and I just give him the fake counter.
Sure, that's that right?
Or my wilderness reclamation, which is probably
one of the stronger cards in this deck, or.
Yeah, I never have to use it.
It's always out there because I always, I have my mana ready to go.
Yeah.
People don't swing at me. I think I'm okay.
I'm not really like, I'm just kind of bumping along and instead of
using it, I loop my yard a little bit, ramp a little higher,
draw a few cards
if I can, that kind of thing, and just leave it out and then get to
my turn on swing with my moose and then untap or untap,
swing with my moose and then pass the turn. Yeah, yeah.
And leave it for the turns to decide.
I can't imagine a game for every player who's listening to this.
I'm just trying to, like, walk you through.
Some things seem to happen.
I use attacking a lot because that's just something that,
I mean, that's going to happen, but it could be a lot of stuff where,
all right, I'm going to resolve a some crazy enchantment
and then they're ready to move on it and you're like,
let's just blow this thing right now.
And it's an activated ability. Yeah.
As soon as this thing's on the stack, they're like difficult to interact with.
Yeah. Sort of like a crossing grip.
Another green player that's really ready for you.
Don't know.
Do you think that fits here?
Like, I don't ever use oblivion Stone anymore.
It's way too slow.
Yeah, you used to, but but it's it's been a long time since I've seen it.
But but but it makes sense here.
And maybe it's a little heavier than some of the other stuff
talked about in this episode, but I think it makes sense that it fits
into the idea of it probably can go on a lot of these decks.
Yeah.
I mean, your your preference is to hold mana
so that you can have flexibility of choice.
And this provides you flexibility of choice.
It works good with this deck because they return permanence.
A lot of these green cards they say the word permanent.
This this is maybe a good intense.
This is maybe a good
card to hold as an
example because we've talked about how like playing it instant speed costume.
Ana, you know,
maybe there's some level of evaluation people need to have as they go,
because this one might push and challenge some people's mana a little bit.
But, you know, again, this is a good spot for it though.
Yeah.
When you think about the context I've laid out for you,
like if I hand you this deck and you got it down and you got it down
late like it's just a late game thing or even early,
you're like, man, I just have so many weird options
I can move out from underneath this activation if I have to do it, fine.
Yeah.
But let's say you're like all board wipe if they attack me and instead you swing,
I swing out at Brad or something and you're like, well, now let's do the
you gaze upon a Tarrasch or you look upon a Tarrasch instead.
Yeah. And the outcome is the same.
Both are five mana, one to blow the board, one to fucking ruin
Brad's day for sure, with this crazy creature coming his way.
And I can see that you were
thinking about this from the other side, because you have never a real disc,
and I'm sure anybody would be having that question of
why not just do Never Reals disk, but that's in your maybe board. And,
you know, like the nice thing
about something like this is that you can shape the explosive, right?
Like if the longer people wait to force this
to happen, the more shaped it becomes in your favor.
Yeah.
If you were going to move the budget up on this, which obviously
mine is not budget like, I've got that kind of stuff going on.
NES disc works really good with heroic intervention.
Yeah, because it destroys all and just survives that event.
That's really fucking strong with the commander who doesn't exist,
who's in your hand who will just pull the one card
you need out of the graveyard, which is intervention,
and you've demonstrated a morale victory again of I have enough mana.
If anybody tries to produce anything more into board, I'm just going to clip it.
Yeah. Every cycle.
So I left that out here because those cards are expensive.
Sure.
Or even the Tamil safekeeping style.
Things like that'll keep your disk intact.
Where you send me your Tammy Samuel.
Whatever safekeeping that thing,
it stays the disk or the apex Alta star.
That's a combo to. Yeah, absolutely.
Apex out to sa tbs.
You give it the indestructible and it just starts fighting forever.
Yeah. And then you've shown.
Okay, but I have this in my hand whenever I'll recur it back.
Yeah.
So he's he's one hell of a way
to step away from a time walk,
because you can reach everything that you wanted to shoot the force.
True.
That's that's the value I saw as we were working through it.
As I'm talking to Micah, I'm like,
I really just feel like I should be at instant speed for whenever I can.
So flash creatures if I can.
Yeah, even these dumb ramp spells we know that cultivates
just a better ramp spell than precious wandering or natural connection.
But they're not.
You can't hold them up, and you can only the last second decide
what needs to help, needs to help or harm your help you or harm your opponents.
Yeah. And exit through that.
And then no matter what, you've got this thing where it's like,
well, these were worth it before. I'm going to reclaim them back into my head.
The thing that does slow you down is, yeah,
trying to find those cards that bring him back.
You can be cavalier if you're if you're
playgroup just doesn't manage yards, well, then let it go to yard.
If a bog is as far as graveyard hate goes in your command,
in your in your command or play group, then you're probably okay.
Like, yeah, he's probably the only thing down there
and he can just rezone and it's not that big of a deal.
It's just kind of a long journey to get him from his own to back
to battlefield, back to hand. It's just I don't know. Yeah.
I think this is
well suited this this construction here and pushes some thinking as,
as another way that you can be thinking about playing on the back foot.
Yeah.
I think that's it.
We covered this, all right? It's.
I don't even know if I should just call this.
I don't know if we call this spell slinger or not, but I wanted to squeeze
this in to this whole series.
My Shigeki deck. Yeah, it has, like, you know.
Well, this is green.
It has big green creatures and, like, just big ass green creatures.
This is a good illustration of what we talked about when we first
started this series, that it's not always obvious
if you actually are playing spell slinger, because sometimes,
you know, there's something else going on in your deck
that might be the primary focus,
but you still end up with a lot of instance and sorceries.
You know, I think that's just part of doing spell slinger.
Sometimes it is just obvious that you're doing a classic spell slinger.
I'm a fucking wizard.
Yeah. It's cool.
And other times it's like, yeah, I'm.
I'm a druid.
Like, there's some creatures here, but I'm also still slinging spells,
but I'm slinging spells. Yeah.
And I think the timing is something that you can take advantage of.
The game isn't super fitted to do this.
I think we're just kind of close to banger sorceries and banger creature eaters,
but you can also see they're trying to pull it back
to activate this only once and activate it only as a sorcery.
Yeah, you can see they're just like, yeah, this is getting kind of annoying.
Like, we probably need to rein this in and take it off the timing.
What is next?
I think we have a review.
We are as we record.
I don't think we are fully spoiled, but close.
Yeah.
So watch for the sign up forms.
For those of you who are Patreon supporters.
As a reminder, we go down the tears in terms of offering
the opportunity to sign up to participate in the Legends Review.
So Tech Tutor first will.
The council will get it a day or two later, and then our AD destroyers
will be.
If you want to review Simic legends, you can do the cheap tier.
You'll get them.
That's true. There is.
For whatever reason, they just don't.
Hatred for Simic legends among our supporters.
So they tend to not get they leave them not reviewed and then they're just there.
Some people are like, fine, I'll do it.
I usually put the other 99 review form out to everybody and to into gen pop.
There's no tier system with that.
Usually I'll wait for another week.
I like it when people have had a chance
to maybe get to a prerelease and think about the cards a little more
with those other 99, so that'll be out there as well.
Do we?
Do you have more with this series?
I, with my hubris, didn't think you would go all the way up
against Secrets of Strix.
Even with the series, I do have more.
I think it's a good time for it. It is a good time.
People can, like, look at it, I do, I want to get listeners decks.
I was going to say I will pick up listeners decks, but I don't want to like,
rush you if you've got more to say.
Yeah, I say we kind of pass through the
the review season.
Okay. And then I do that on the other side of it. Okay.
So we'll collect our, you know, tech tutors.
We'll we'll look at your decks.
We'll talk about them, our Patreon patronage.
So I want to review some of them and critique them from the lens.
I see spell slinger as not that I'm right.
I just the framework I've kind of laid out here.
Yeah.
Seems to to make sense.
And I'm wondering, like what people can do.
Yeah. Yeah for sure.
I'll want like kind of a smattering like you did with the enchants
and stuff for sure.
And like, and we did that with Voltron as well.
Yeah. Right.
I think that's a good way to cap it off is like to see what the people are doing.
Okay. And compare it to this.
So look for that solicitation in the discord sometime.
Cool.