3MV Mana Rock Tier List | Commander Clash Podcast #19

hey everyone and welcome back to the commander clash podcast where the commander clash crew richard seth krim and i hello we discuss commander related topics and today we are going to be talking about manor rocks in commander specifically three mana value or three converted mana cost however you want to say it mana rocks so the the common knowledge these days uh for the meta in terms of commander is that you usually want your mana rocks your ramp to be in the range of zero to two mana i think that's kind of like the norm uh that people are going for these days and if you have more if you have a mana rock that costs more than that it has to do something extra for it's to be worthwhile uh have have a a slot here and i think that's kind of like what wizards of the coast has also been acknowledging and pushing for more recently we've been getting three mana rocks that do something extra so now we're going to go through all the best three mana wrongs and we're going to decide together uh whether or not it's worth running in our decks so we selected uh the most popular three mana rocks um currently played in commander and we're gonna put it in a tier list so we have rankings uh for each of them that we're all going to go through together uh at d d means we don't play it it's just straight up not good it's also i guess an f uh c is average where you're happy with your you're not happy casting it but like you know sometimes you just need to fill a slot with a over mana rock and there it is it does the job you know b is it's very good in certain decks but not most decks it's very like niche and uh you'd run it in some decks but not not necessarily in a bunch of decks then we got a where a is the the manorak is really good overall you're going to be running it in most decks and it's going to be exceptional in some decks uh so these are like some of the very best uh manor rocks you can choose from at the three mana and then finally we got the coveted s rank s is basically this mana rock is so good that you're gonna be pretty much running it in every single deck or at least non-green decks um that you could possibly put it in and it's going to be one of the best cards in very particular decks um so this is like the creme de la creme and uh we won't hand out a lot of s's it's probably going to be like one or two s's from each person and that's basically our ranking scale so i think we just get started uh we're gonna start with the first mana rock on our list and this is a spicy one this is midnight clock so midnight clock is i have to pull up the list there we go editing i'm interested in that's a manner it's a mana rock three series it's a three three so three mana value three mana value three cmc which one's gonna get us cancelled i don't know which one i should say uh it's it's two in a blue uh it's a mana rock it taps to add uh blue and you could pay three mana to put an hour counter on midnight clock at the beginning of each upkeep put an hour counter on midnight clock and then when the 12 hour counter is put on midnight clock shuffle your hand and graveyard into your library then draw seven cards exiled midnight clock so this is very much like the what's it called like cinderella type clock where you know every single every single hour you put every single turn each person's turn you put a a an hour counter on it then when the 12th hour happens boom you exile it and you get a fresh hand or you you know you shuffle away your graveyard library put up and draw draw seven um so it's it it's big it's flashy uh what do we all think about it starting with richard uh i went with a it's close to an s to me it's card draw so this thing goes really fast right you put a counter on everyone's upkeep so it spins around really fast the only downside is sometimes your hand is full when it goes off hence it does nothing right so it doesn't go into every single deck like if you're planning on drawing a lot of cards or you're planning on like holding cards uh like you know you have a lot of counter spells you're not gonna unload your counter spells and hope midnight clock pops off right you're gonna have to hold your counter spells and then hence it's not gonna do exactly but it is extremely good uh it is one of the few three cmc mana rocks i would actually play uh but you know you need to think about it and i think there are other rocks in this list that deserve s over you can't give s to everyone so i i think it's a close to s okay fair enough fair enough uh seth what do you think about this one i also have is it a oh probably also a high a although my concern with it is a little different than richard's it is true uh that sometimes you don't want to shuffle your hand back in i actually just played midnight clock in our last commander clash i had like five cards in hand and it was a little awkward it worked out in the end but it was a little awkward i know i know i did end up winning and it did end up drawing me the cards i wanted but it was still like risky to shuffle in a full hand my concern is i don't like it as much in like five and four color decks because it only makes blue mana so i think for me the reason it's not a s tier play in every single deck is it only makes blue mana and if i'm playing a five color deck then i really value mana rocks that offer more fixing but in a mono color deck a two color deck a three color deck i'm probably gonna play midnight clock every single time yeah okay i i i grew up all those those points uh krim what do you think about this card i think it's an s now okay so actually he i also last second changed this to an s because as i thought about it i do play this in pretty much every blue deck i have and whether or not like i i think the fact that i get to just draw seven new cards while adding mana and it on its own is always good it's always good and usually it's like this awkward spot where people are like well do i answer this or not because it feels bad having like you know to blow up this midnight clock that's going to blow itself up anyways so i i am a huge fan of this just because of the wheel claws the the wheel claws is great unless you know you get like like notion thief or something but other than that i i think this is good enough to play in every blue deck and and maybe that's that's the only thing uh because like seth had mentioned this one is either like a low s or a high a leading towards an s and i think i just went with a low s because i do play it quite often in every blue deck so this is obviously like relative to me um i only like mostly play blue decks and i i think that's just good enough yeah and and then on top of that i think people will often just concede to a blue deck drawing a whole new hand so like there's the uh psychological damage that this also does too so and and i love that so i'm all for it if so if i go from three cards to seven cards and leave up two mana people are gonna have to play a whole new game of mental gymnastics so one would say it is a win con right this is the win condition people say you have to include in your decks right because it is a clock so [Laughter] and you get to make that joke every time every time free that's free for everybody watching and listening you don't have to pay for that that's just free value for you i'm a little bit surprised though cream because when seth was talking about like if your control deck you know you don't necessarily want to discard maybe put away you're not discarding you're not this card you're not this card you're you're just shuffling it away and getting a new seven i always figured that like for your decks when you go control you don't generally spend you don't usually go like you just like dump your hand of answers you usually try to be very conservative with it do you like do you like change that mentality when you have midnight clock you're just like just blowing all your answers as quickly as possible i mean you're like the table is naturally going to do that anyways if you're the control deck right they're going to naturally force you to use all your answers and so with that i assume by the time the clock hits 12 i will automatically get to draw like refill my hand and if not that means i've already slowed the whole table down by like a few turns making them play around it so like if they're like oh we'll wait until he cycles through his deck and then start casting your spells and it's like cool i probably had nothing anyways and i just sat there with a grin and a bunch of lands so or not enough lands so uh like like that's why i i think i'm okay with that and like with deck building there's redundancy in the way i build my decks so there's not just like one counter spell in my deck there's usually like 32 so the the thing here is i i will usually draw a new hand and get the same uh the same type of spell that's fair um well i i kind of agree with the rest of the table on this one where like i this card i've i've put midnight clock in almost all my blue decks and i've almost never been disappointed when it wheels like it just gets so much value so generally speaking i'm going to run it into every blue deck maybe like seth said like five color deck or four colored x it doesn't mana fix which is a big issue if you have a three mana rock um and i'm probably not going to run in a four or five color deck but basically everything else i'm going to run at an even control deck like like crims said like for me uh i will probably be a little bit more reckless with my removal once i once i feel pretty confident that the manner that the the clock is going to pop off and i think i think like uh if if somebody is like actually thinking about destroying your three-man rock if it's that big of a threat that kind of speaks to how strong this card is really like if people are willing to spend removal on your mana rock uh i think that's that that says a lot about it the only big drawback i would say about this card um other other than four and five color is it does shuffle your graveyard into your library and sometimes this is actually a good thing like if you have like powerful removal spells that you want to redraw that's great but if you're a graveyard deck you don't necessarily want your graveyard to be shuffled uh without your without you like uh wanting that effect to happen right like i had in a roomy deck and i had midnight clock in it a roomy is like this encore commander really wants to have your your deck full of stuffed creatures in your graveyard i had midnight clock there because i just you know it's a two-color blue deck obviously so i'm gonna put midnight clock there and then uh the clock struck 12 and i lost my beautiful graveyard and i realized two's too late uh what i have done um so in graveyard eggs it's not that it it does kind of hurt a little bit it it resets your setup um but otherwise i think this is one of the best mana rocks honestly i will say it got better with the hull breacher banding but i still think it's incredibly risky to telegraph your draw 7 in a world of where you know we have notion thieves people can nars at you and it's not just like they stuff this right you discard your hand like you notice that wield yourself if you don't have an answer to that in our set before this goes off because it's not a may it's a must so you know it's a dicey proposition playing this with krim at the table right so if he's on the mirror then i will think twice about casting it honestly wait why would you think why would you think twice about casting think twice well obviously notion thief would take both of the the cards right okay fair fair now unless you've played the new thing twice of 2021 siphon inside that card that card i would go on a tangent there i've i've gotten so i've gotten got by that card so many times i don't want to talk about it i don't want to talk about it that's all the topic favorite topic this is this is where i miss paper commander god i want to see somebody's face when i say i love it when they get my my premier removal spell to two for one me and then my renin seven that feels great anyway we're not talking about that though we're talking about manor rocks so we're gonna move on to the next one uh and what do we got uh next richard uh we got sky clave a relic uh three mana value kicker three indestructible when it enters the battlefield if it was kicked create two tap tokens that are copies tap add one mana of any color what do you think about this phone this is the best mana rock right this is like the only mana rock i will play at like three mana value so the reason i don't like to be mana value is by turn five or six expect all your artifacts to get destroyed right like by then someone's got a cleansing nova a steer command like something's gonna happen so most of these mana rocks they have to have a really good purpose besides adding mana but this one is indestructible it adds man of any color and it scales late game late game you have nothing you kick this you just add more mana and then hopefully you untap and draw something more legit right that costs like you know nine man or something you win the game right so i actually have this as s-tier uh it goes in literally every like non-green deck and you would even consider putting this in green decks right like because the indestructible clause is that strong um but yeah i think krim first mentioned this card and then i was sold on it right like this this just goes in every deck where you need to kind of fill out your curve and add some color fixing or something like that yeah this this card's great i have this is as tier 2. i mean it's essentially dark steel ingot and almost gilded lotus split card if you really think of it that way you have this three mana mana rock that can also be a more expensive mana rock that adds multiple mana adds three mana it fixes your colors it's indestructible i'm actually shocked that this card doesn't seem more play if you look at edhrec and just like scroll through the list of mana rocks you see like lockets in some really well i would consider i thought this was way higher than that yeah so and dark stealing gets ahead of it and like a lot of mana rocks that seem way way worse than this see more play than this so yeah i totally agree this is my one of my favorite three mana mana rocks well okay so if if it's that low on the list then it's not only an amazing man of rock it is an underrated mana rock and should be like yeah i've been playing this in like about every deck i can play like richard the for the main reason that richard had just mentioned right you know like in about around turn four or five everything's getting blown up all your other stuff and the fact that this scales into the late game where i like sure anytime you top deck a man or rock it's always gonna feel bad when you need something right but but the thing outside of that clause this is great at all phases of the game um so like if i draw this early whatever it's my multi-colored mana rock if i draw it late it's going to be three or two whatever multicolored mana rocks and yeah i've been in love with this since it came out in zender car rising um i i just cause like i are like they would have to exile and i feel like for them to exile that's like a merciless eviction and i don't know how many people are trying to go hard exile on your stuff so i i love this card this thing is an amazing man of rock s tier all the way through and and this one i i feel like is a high s not like a low s this is like legit the best mana rock solid s at three yeah i i'm actually trying to think about the last time i came across a mass exile spell like there was a time when i started playing uh commander the merciless eviction was pretty common rule well i mean yeah if you get world filed you got world fire you know maybe they should ban it too strong i think you have bigger issues this is why world fire should have been staying banned it gets rid of skyclay relic but no uh so so i actually i think i don't run it in green decks um so four four colors well five color decks i don't run it in and uh green decks i don't run it in but when you when you guys were talking about it like i had it at a initially but when i'm thinking about it yeah the all the mana rocks are going to get destroyed at some point right all of them will get this red that's why green land ramp is so good is because people don't really want to mess with lanes there's a stigma against it i know crime you know a little bit about that right um but but the point the fact of the matter is if your average play group people are not going to be messing with flames like there's a there's a taboo against it uh but manor rocks get blown up all the time like vandal bias is basically in every single red deck uh oh any white deck is going to get like an oscar commander an undue inversion or like an hour of revelation or something to wipe all your mana rocks at some point skyclay relic's indestructibility is actually super legit and like dark seal ingot i don't really run that much because you know it has a scaling issue but sky cave relic yeah turn three you put put down a relic that feels really that feels pretty solid like you know that when there is going to be artifact removal that one's going to be sticking around and then if you get a late game yeah you got you got three dark seal relics and like sure if they can exile one of it fine but you still have two others and they're tokens so if you like synergizes of like token decks and anointed procession um it just is really good yeah it's definitely an s it's definitely not that's one of the most interesting uh main rocks they've made and one of my favorites for sure it's it's such a high s it's not a normal s it's the s that everybody drew on their desk as a fifth grader well i won't put it in a green deck though still because until until you know you know everyone listening until people like blow up lanes regularly i'm not going to run in this over like a nature's lore or something because it's just like you get the same benefit it doesn't get opposition agent dude that's true if i'm in like some sort of hell where every single game has to be against crim and you always like no you know control and that's the only match-up i'm up against every single time and i'm the last person before krim goes you know you know like you're in that spot at the table and he's on grace of control for every single game forward i'm going to i'm going to run sky clever like i will i will concede that shuffling is indeed bad [Laughter] that sounds toxic like a quest for the [ __ ] lord how i mean in a good way crim [Laughter] all right moving on uh seth what's next on our list uh next on our list we have commander's sphere a three-man manor rock the tabs to add a mana of any color and you can sacrifice it to draw a card it's a kind of like a three mana mine stone sort of and i have this as an a tier uh i put a lot of value in mana rocks that can turn into cards i know like out of our play group i'm probably highest on stuff like hadron archive that's like a card that i think is really good when some other people don't like as much and they're wrong but that's that's neither here nor there but i put a lot of value in that because the downside of mana rocks is in the late game once you have a lot of mana they don't do much like they're bad they're actively bad when you have 10 man on the battlefield you need that extra mana it's a dead card off the top just like drawing an extra land when you really need action worst case the cycles for three mana so it has a lot more late game value than other three mana mana rocks so it's one of my favorites it's definitely not s tier i don't play in every deck but it is one that i turn too often if i'm looking for a three mana rock that's fair richard you're not so high on this no i haven't like so here here's my experience right so yeah you can cycle it right and you can cycle it at basically instant speed right like the problem with mind stone is like if you tap it for mana and then they wrath the the board you're like out of luck but this one you can cycle so that that has that going for it but i feel you never sack your mana rocks like ever really right like only truly desperate times like most of the time even you're sitting on eight mana you don't sack that hedrian archive or you don't sack that commander sphere because you need that mana to play your commander right so i i find that it's overrated especially for like just like three mana mana rock like what's the point like you might as well have drawn action and did something so while it's okay like you can play it you don't have anything better to do like sure like i i would be actively looking to cut this card from my deck trying to put something better because like just play your commander if you have nothing to do rather than like sack the sphere to draw action just play your commander right but what if you don't believe in playing your commander richard how much oh man i i agree with richard i to be honest with you i feel like this i have this at c and i would probably rate it maybe even lower than that closer to like a d plus i think almost anything is better here than playing commander sphere if you're if the only reason you're playing it is because of budget and availability that that's fine that makes sense uh but otherwise i wouldn't even play the mana rock i would just play another land i would i would play uh a room a removal spell how about that and or like hagra mauling mdfc mdsc it's a spell endland yeah you get a two for wow it does it all it increases your credit score it does it all really yeah mdfc's are great i i i turn you cast it yeah you don't need that whatever like yeah like i i think this this is just better off served as another card unless this is just something that you play because it's what you have available availability an availability thing all right well i guess i guess some of my rating is actually a little bit influenced by the price this is one of my favorite budget mainerocks so i think like if i was ignoring the price i would say it's a b i really like this because we just talked about in with sky clay relic the uh the power of being um uh not vulnerable to boardwalks we talked about how like how often in our in our play groups at least i don't know about for people who are listening right now uh how often mass artifact hate happens in your playgroup it could be a lot less than ours but i know like when i'm casting mana rocks in commander clash or on stream i know eventually they're going to get destroyed in a couple turns that's just how it's going to be so the the thing i really like about commander sphere is that you can cash it in to draw a card when that that wipe happens and very important you don't have to tap it to sacrifice and draw a card you can just do it at any given time and that's a big thing that i've had issue with like let's say lockets or or stuff like that where you need to tap it and activate its ability i'm pretty sure that's how it works with them um this one does not have that issue you never need mana up to cash it in um and that's huge so you can be fully tapped out somebody vandal blasts and you still get to draw a card you still get some of that value back uh before you lose it um so in the fact that it's like 25 cents uh is really good so it's one of my go-to uh budget inclusions for for a budget mana base if i'm not in green this is going into most of them so i would say it's a b if you're not if price is not a concern but because i love it so much in budget brews i'm gonna put it as an a all right moving on we got uh seth didn't say anything yet wait no seth said anything creme de niro i started that one yeah it's chrome okay turn to shine let me go ahead and just say this is very close also uh to to an s it is chromatic lantern now i l let me explain why i love chromatic lantern but you put it as a what an a right it should be an a because that's what it is but oh sorry but yes i put out an a because oddly enough even though it's vulnerable it is still a way to color fix and as someone who loves to cast cruel ultimatums and triple black spells you need something to help with that and and the color fixing is very important also in case there's any uh bearded uh gentlemen that love playing blood moon uh you you gotta make sure you got that grix's mana base uh like you know what i mean like you got to be ready for that so um i i i think color fixing is very important in in commander and in a three color deck this is pretty much this is why it's at an a because this is really only good in a three color deck and above it's kind of meh in a two uh and you're just trolling if you play it in a mono color deck so the the thing here is i i love this card so for that and that reason alone other than that it that's why it sits at an a it's not an s quite uh but it is good for a deck that cares about color fixing like if you're going counter spell which is blue blue or and then you also want to cast let's just say i don't know uh uh whatever the the double black kill spell and there there's so many like like cards that require like blue blue black black red red um potentially triple black like nico bolas dragon god so from my play experience i still think this card holds up to this day if you're in a three color or more deck hmm or not are we going on twitter are we just speaking up i'm just gonna i'm just gonna agree with that i'm also i've also put it as an a you know why because i'm super lazy when it comes to tapping and i just don't want to think about it what may not i need to sequence properly you know what about for what about for the lazy people out here literally literally i have it i have it in my zedrie the great heart attack because i'm dumb and i don't want to think about i don't want to think about okay well i need i need i need uh red white blue to activate zedra at some given point i have this triple red spell i have this other multi-color spell i have blah blah blah i don't even know what i'm going to be casting next because i can't think that far far forward it's it's the oh it's the ultimate cheat sheet where it's like it doesn't matter what you tab for it's all great yeah yeah sure it also beats blood moon which is great too it also is really good with like utility lanes like if you have colorless lanes that uh aren't mana manifesting now they're suddenly a lot better they don't really have towers reliquary towers and also like if you're running stuff that like is like powerful utility lanes that don't have for mana by themselves like let's say you have a cabal coffers and you want to drop it on like turn four or something when it's not good yet you know now your cabal coffers you know some people some people at this table have had the pain of a cabal coffers you know just not doing anything the entire game and they groan and it sucks but you know what this can just let it tap for mana right off the bat right off the bat as soon as you as soon as you put it on the battlefield boom um that's true yep and it's like mises too is also really powerful but it doesn't tap for mana um and this will let you do that too but my thing is i like being lazy i don't like thinking about how to play magic i just want to play magic all right i agree with tomer let's call it a face roll card i like calling a face where i could just put my face roll it across the keyboard and i'll be fine because it doesn't matter it adds whatever color i need in league of legends this would be called spin to win all right this is the spin to win mana rock all right a solid ah it's so overweight it's overrated i think hermatic lantern is the most overrated man of rock on our entire list it just has mana it's a dark steel ingot 90 of the time it is incredibly rare it is incredibly rare in your three color deck if you build a halfway reasonable mana base that you're gonna get color screwed like it is it is not something that happens very often uh i played in five color decks but if i'm playing a three-man amana rock i want more value than just fixing my mana just fixing my mana is not good enough i think it's unnecessary at anything outside of five colors also it is miserable on magic online similar to playing with an urborg or something i wanted to put it at d tier just because just because of that i intentionally leave out of decks that i want to play it in sometimes because it's the opposite of what tomer was saying sure and paper maybe it makes your life super easy and lazy and you can just do whatever you want and magic online it makes your life incredibly hard because you got to have five colors for every land and chooses the right color there's no auto tap or anything like magic arena so yeah i'm not a fan i'll play it in five color decks but that's about it what about spin to win that's so weird because as someone uh i'm somewhat of a a professional at losing to the moto interface um i i would say i i feel like it's not that bad i think it's totally fine on top of that this i can tell somebody here had plays more green than grix's they don't understand the struggles of trying to cast a triple yeah like in grixis you have orborg right triple black is not a problem for you like triple red what a problem counter spell and like sometimes you want to cackle with power and and on top of that casper ultimately i agree with that this card is super overrated like no you can't pin the hopes of your jank man a base on a lantern that gets blown up on turn five right like if you needed this to cast your spells then your game is over when someone wraps the board right so you need to build a halfway reasonable mana base to begin with and we have the world tree if you really want to be brain dead right we have that we're only in five colors right we also have what that's three color brain deads yeah you have filter lands you have like two mana value mana rocks that add any color like you just don't need this card like it doesn't do anything and but what if you're you don't have the right mana to use the filter land or you don't want to you know like like that now you can like i feel the incremental advantage of this card is not enough right because like imagine all the other games where you didn't draw a comantic lantern your mana base needs to be somewhat reasonable still right so this is just adding like an additional one or something oh i think this is still a good card regard like obviously you want to build a solid mana base on its own right but but the thing here is it doesn't hurt to have training wheels you know it doesn't hurt that look it's cool it's cool dude the trading wheel costs a deck slot right you could you could make that training wheel with your lands well what would you play instead like like example i would still choose this over like a commander sphere a dark steel ingot and all that i think of dark sealing it no if you really were scared for your colors you would take a dark steel ingot right because it's indestructible and it fixes your colors okay i think of it this way though let's say you're on an electronic bicycle and you know it has the manual mode right it has the manual mode so most of the time you need to conserve the power on it because it has usually a small battery but sometimes you're you're going uphill you know you're going uphill and you need that you you can like that little boost you know yeah sometimes you're it's like the knocks that's like not for fast and furious and like obviously not existed before fast and furious but the thing here is you don't need it but it's really nice lantern is a 10 card it costs you a deck spot right the reason you don't use the nos is the nos cost you like a grand and you're like do i need that quarter second right you're like nah i'll just get there by prius blue and grix's all right i should have good mana fixing but sometimes you wanna you just wanna turn your brain off you know this is the most expensive rock on our list right like i would invest that into a fetch land or something right or a shock land or something to build out that mana base just you know it's not too much it's really not that much different than dark stealing it a lot of the time it really didn't get survived i think it survived it's just better those training wheels this is our civil war like this is it's the underrated versus overrated crowd yeah they are trading wheels but what if you saw an adult going down the street every day they commute past you yeah you're like get it dude six months this is like training wheels with rims on them though all right this is pretty nice dude tweet us tweet us what do you think about about this or leave a comment um because this is this is gonna be this is a thing i didn't know we were divided yeah this might be the most controversial one on the whole list actually yeah okay if it weren't for price i think i think you'd all love it right like no no no i don't i don't like about ten bucks i think it's still bad i would say well we've just ranked all these sky clay relic better than this commander's fear better than this dark steel oh commander sphere is not better than this oh scott is i agree sky clay relic is and how many three minute rocks can you play that's the other thing is you're talking about grixes and stuff like how many three-man manor rocks are you gonna put in your deck you already want your midnight clock you already want your sky claver i like are you really just playing three men in rock tribal we're gonna have to we have to find out by finishing the rest of the thing we'll come back we'll circle back to the chromatic ladder if we if we're a grix's deck how many of these will be run what's our order all right moving on moving on because we got a lot left uh this is this is this is my one of my favorite mana rocks that i feel is grossly underrated this is inspiring statuary now inspiring statue doesn't even look like a mana rock at first blush it's three mana for an artifact that doesn't even it doesn't have like a tap ability uh what it actually has is it says non-artifact spells you cast have improvised your artifacts can help cast those spells each artifact you tap after you've done activating mana abilities pays for one color list so if you're casting a non-artifact spell any non-artic artifact spell you can tap the inspiring statuary for one color list but you can also tap any of your artifacts as well for one colorless and get the value out of it now the reason why i like this and i've i put this as an a this is a straight up a in my book um it's not gonna be amazing in every single deck but i feel like most dexy's days this is actually going to be way better than you think it's going to be if you're not in an artifact deck these are this is for a non this is for a non artifact like essentially like if you put it in like breyer or something and 90 of your spells are artifacts this is going to do stone cold nothing right but outside of that this card is going to get so much value and the main reason why is because treasures are like the most ubiquitous thing in commander these days like imagine like freaking dockside smothering tires and all the other cards that are like pitiless punderer and all these other cards that make treasures are just making inspiring saturated 10 times better because instead of tapping instead of sacrificing your treasures to cast your spells now you just have to tap them so they're basically now they all become mind stones your treasures your treasure tokens become mind stones this by itself is going to be tapping for one by itself so the the floor of this if you're casting artifact uh non-artifact belts is one one colorless which is not good for a three mana rock but it's its ceiling is like two three four five six bajillion mana every single turn which is absolutely insane obviously it's it's the the most bananas in like a clue deck um or a food deck or something like that where you know you don't have a lot of artifacts most of your spells are not artifacts but you're making a bajillion of artifact tokens in the form of clues and food and treasures and then it's gonna be insane but it's like treasure decks food decks clue decks all of those but also just like just regular decks regular decks would get so good these days like some treasure isn't just some art random artifacts on the battlefield it's so good you have equipment you have equipment you have your equipments for mana and you still get the value out of them oh my god i love this it's such a you know what it's an s i'm putting it i'm making a mess i've convinced myself this is one of the one of the best man of rocks of all time good day good discussion guys good discussion not up for negotiation i'm trying to so we the rest of us put it at b and i'm trying to process tomer's argument so obviously in like a dedicated right now just bumped it up to x like right now i could i was talking i put it as an a and then i convinced myself the hype and the cast like if you have clues and food obviously this card is insane which is why we all put it at b right like you know in that specific deck now if you don't have a deck let's say you're just playing a random deck it's totally correct if you're playing borrows you're playing dockside you're playing smothering ties probably some opulence and you're probably playing dousing dagger and other equipment right is this worth the three cmc rock see that in that deck i don't i don't think it is that's like so stacked for if it's not worth in that deck then it's not worth it any deck right i think it's definitely worth it in borrow sex oh like a boros like equipment deck or just like a regular boris a regular borough stack right because you have three clue makers and you have like some random art you probably have a sword or gta or skull clamp or something you have a couple of random artifacts right worst case attached how much colorless mana you can afford oh it's colorless right yeah so it's not good in five color decks but i think it's so good in so many decks that i put it as an ass look i'm not gonna put in five color decks obviously four colored decks probably not so actually if it's a four color like clue deck or treasure deck or food deck i would even i think someone's convinced me hey described almost the very definition of a b-tier card like situations where the card is really good and i feel like that's like literally the definition of v-tier so i don't think you convince me i do think it's underrated and people should play it more but i also don't buy into the like just play it in a random deck without even thinking about what synergies eyes have for it because i don't think it's anywhere near that good like because in a lot of decks the random artifacts you do have are gonna be mana rocks that already tap for presumably colors of mana which is better than an inspiring statuary so i do think you need to be clues you need to be treasures if you do have a reasonable number of those in your deck even if that's not the main theme of your deck okay i'll give it to you it's gonna be good but i don't think i would just throw this in a random deck and yolo it and trust that it's gonna be good because it doesn't seem like it will be i got carried away with boros i'm like it's so good at borrows but in mono green model black and this thing's useless okay most of these banana rocks are useless in mono green though like are you gonna put freaking midnight clock you can't you can't because it's blue richard all right so it's terrible in mono green mr mono green first seek all right well you know like black jack's like where are you gonna get treasures from right here's plunderer hello vinnie lewis plunder is great what if that card is not in your deck and is that card in every deck well what do i do name him on a black commander uh like like yogmoth okay your favorite plunder is in there it's in like we can look this up we have data on this i think it's like nine percent of dex or something so like what that means like a lot of staples synergize with this right which they do synergize with borrow staples but outside of borrows you don't have anything yeah what do blue decks do they have nothing yeah i i guess i could i could tap my mana rock that i played to admit but i was like downgraded because they already added okay okay okay so so some in some decks it's not that good i'll say i'll i'll say s minus how about that final law firm yeah the definition of a b a b card but it's so good in those specific decks yeah exactly that's gonna be the best card in specific texts if you finish that sentence it's a b i refuse i refuse to follow this logic yeah it's it's natural path we'll just move on to uh next one richard tell us about it all right heraldic banner three mana value when it enters the battlefield choose a color creatures of the chosen color get plus one plus zero or your creatures of the chosen color and then tap to add a mana of the chosen color so it only adds a single banner a single color pumps your creatures you would think i would like this because i played the giant chart so i don't actually like it that much just c like it all it does is get you like plus one plus zero just gets you like mildly killed like it's not enough to do anything gets people annoyed it's still a three mana value mana rock which doesn't do much and it doesn't fix your colors so i'd rather just not play it so it's it's just like you could put it in wait it doesn't fix your colors you only choose one color right like you can't add multiple colors out you know like well i mean you could choose the color yeah yeah it's just like okay like nothing special about it i think everything you just said is why i like it it's spicy enough to not get you killed just everybody is a little like a little bit upset at you but not enough to get you immediately killed and this goes in the perfect like in the right deck like let's say a mono blue deck or example my layla deck this is perfect right my fairies i get every every blue creature gets plus one plus zero uh and and in token decks this is fine usually uh so i i think there are many aggressive shells i mean this is that's why i have it at b it goes well in an aggressive shell uh and and look it the anthem effect is nice i i will always appreciate an anthem effect that also makes me mana that's also not gonna pull at full aggro i feel like like sorry i i i also have it as a c i think there are decks where it's good but when you kind of like walk through what it takes for this card to be good you basically got to be mono color very close to it you also have to be creature heavy and preferably some sort of like go wide weenie style deck that's where this is actually a good card but that's a pretty limited number of decks so i can see an argument for b because there are a very limited number of certain decks where i would be happy to cast it i think but the number is small enough that i that i have it down as a c tier just because i think that the number decks that actually can take advantage of it is not very high so i i agree with both of those but that's kind of why i put it at b because the last deck that i played and i think it's going to go on commander clash before this one this podcast goes up so i can go bing bing editor which is me in the future remember that um i played adeline and adeline is all about it's a mono white deck it's all about go wide it's very efficient at making one ones heraldic banner is like insane in those style decks where you take one ones and you make them two ones when they're attacking you're like drastically increasing the amount of power that you're putting on the battlefield and yet like compared to you know a two drop like an arcane signet you know that taps for one white uh if i'm am i willing to pay one more mana for an arcane signal that pumps all my creatures by plus one power and the answer in go wide decks is yeah like if if all my if if it's a mono colored deck and it goes wide then this is an excellent uh manor rock like it's one of the best ones in in that deck is it good outside of those no like you need to have you need to have all your creatures being pumped you need to be go wide um otherwise it's just not a good mana rock but if you if you do meet those two criteria this is like one of the best i think in in a thing like just dropping an arcane signet that costs one extra that pumps all my things by plus one plus oh yeah i play this in my shadrix deck i play it in my layla deck any token deck that can really uh like use the anthem effect uh is is gonna want it it does er it's versatile it gives you the colors or gives you a color that you want and then it gives you an anthem effect so that's two for one and it doesn't die to a board wipe so i mean a creature board wipe that is i i think hearing both of you talk about it i'll give it a b i'll go with b on it i think like you're correct there are certain decks where it is very good i think it's just that it's not the style of decks i play which is so for me personally like i'm not normally playing go ride creature style decks so for me it probably has less value than it does overall but you're right in the right deck it probably is the best three mana rock that you can play richard bird tribal yeah i would i would definitely run for tribal skeletons all right mr fledgling osprey makes the cubs like i would rather play a three man or one one on turn three then you are playing a three man on one one on turn three like because because you want to drop a coat of arms or a beastmaster ascension to end the game not deal an incremental five damage right so i'd rather ramp and hard draw into a finisher you know play a bunch of 1-1 ospreys that everyone disrespects then play a heraldic banner which everyone will kill because like oh my god his birds are two ones now we've gotta deal with that so i actually you know i don't like totally disagree with you guys i think your logic is fine but i think it's somewhere between a b and a c right but i don't play this in a lot of my tribal decks right sometimes i do and it's usually a mono white deck because i'm so desperate for ramp right and like some like card value right but you know like i agree right if you're playing fairies rogues you know like go wide white weenie it's good but i think those cases are a lot less so i would overall put it at a c all right we almost got you all right moving on another another card that is is pretty uh creature focused seth tell us about strict haven stadium ah so strict saving stadium three mana it taps to add a colorless mana and you put a point counter on it and then whenever a creature deals combat damage to you you got to remove a point counter and then whenever a creature you control deals combat damage to an opponent you put a point counter on it and then if it has 10 or more point counters remove them all and that player loses the game so this is the rare mana rock maybe the only three man of mana rock that can actually kill your opponent and when this card was first previewed i was thinking was gonna be a card that would go in every deck i was thinking okay i'm just always gonna play this maybe there's not high chance or high odds that i'm actually gonna kill someone with it but why wouldn't i play this because i have this upside that maybe i will kill them with it maybe the game goes long and i tap it a bunch of times and get counters on it however after playing with it i realize that i underestimated how much hate this card draws and it really does create this sub game where people are going to try to attack you and people are very very scared even with a counter on it two counters on it the conversation at the table very quickly turns into how are we going to manage the strict savings stadium who can kill the strict savings stadium and the fact that it draws so much hate has made me drop it down to a b tier where it only goes in certain decks which is mostly go by dextex i have an actual realistic shot of getting 10 counters on it relatively quickly because i think the downside of being arch enemy for playing a three-man mana rock is not worth the upside that maybe you kill some with it kill someone with it in a lot of decks you got to be a deck that can really you know get those counters on it pretty quickly for it to be worth it wait doesn't everybody just play his archenemy at their table or is that just me [Laughter] you know the weird thing is like i have the exact opposite approach to this card as seth when i when this card was previewed i figured this would be a trap card because everybody would attack you to make sure you wouldn't get the the points but at least my experience on commander clash and on the stream the person who has it always gets away with it like people disregard the stadium at least in my experiences they disregard the stadium and then somebody dies like this is a mana rock for three that kills people and i've seen it like i think i've seen it eight times between commander clash and stream and i wanna say like seven out of those eight times somebody died because of strict savings stadium which is absolutely but no no no no triggers and it kills somebody like remember i i'm pretty sure uh crim played in like the squirrel deck and killed somebody with it i'm not sure uh if how many other times we've had it on commander clash but on stream like i remember there's like so many plays for exciting stadium i'm like oh okay it's a stadium you know it's whatever and like they won't even be like a go wide deck they'll just like have they'll just be a creature deck and then they just like freaking you know two two combat steps uh somebody dies and it's just like so it's so bonkers and they keep getting away with it so maybe i think it depends on the play group but it depends on the deck and the play group but like the fact that this is able to kill somebody well often times you could politic that and that's how i use this i think this card has a lot of politics to it like hey there's a problematic player here and and if we if they've got like you know if they lack a board presence you're gonna you're gonna be able to kill them quickly and so like this could be good against the control decks that like you know that you like my decks that have like two creatures like snapcaster won't get there right so i i think this is exactly the tool you want in a specific deck i wouldn't play i have this at a b because of that specific reason i think this is strong very strong in a token deck a go wide deck some kind of like low to the ground birds you know whatever birds i think any kind of deck that goes low to the ground or is planning on being somewhat aggressive this gives you a realistic way to be aggressive even against infinite life so there's there's a lot here and i i love it in those decks i don't think it's playable in any other deck because it's still colorless so you're not even using it for the mana part realistically this i don't even know if i would call this a three mana mana rock because when i have this i don't play it on three it's a win condition yeah i i dropped this until i have a board presence and then i play it so but this that if so in terms of a mana rock this might actually be bad and should be like an f in terms of a win condition that could make mana in the meantime okay then maybe that's why i'll put it at b so all around it averages out to me yes between an f and a b it averages out to b that's the i think in the terms of averages i'm doing it wrong but whatever like this is why we need from this is why we're the chromatic languages yeah yeah once again like averages for blockers yeah yeah yeah we worry about that later yeah well i play this card a lot because i you know i put it in bird decks i put in other decks and this has never worked the way i want it to work and i agree with seth it needs to be downgraded because it just gets you killed and i would almost downgrade it to a c like i feel like you have to really build around it and it's just a combo piece like if you build an edric deck and then you slap a propaganda down like maybe you can get some work done but other than that like people like oh three points better kill them right you know like oh nine points are you sure you're gonna kill the threat or you're gonna kill me i don't know better kill it right so it really doesn't accomplish what you want you need to build very specifically around it so i would say somewhere between a b and a c like it looks good but it's it's it's like a planeswalker that doesn't protect itself right it's scary yet it can't protect itself so it gets you killed so you might as well just not play it or like krim said hold it until you have 10 creatures drop and like kill someone in one shot right like you can't play incrementally you can't just drop half a combo piece on the battlefield and expect it to go well so in that regards it sucks as a man rock because your man rocks a combo piece everyone will kill you so i don't really like it although it has potential in the right deck right it actually has potential to be the best card in the deck but that's very narrow it's it's never in between it's just the it's the best or worst card ever yeah but it gets you killed too many times like it's it's the anti-richard card right like you have nothing everyone thinks you're the threat you can't coast like you just get immediately murdered it's very loud as a card i think it's still a solid b because the right type of death can yeah like can really take advantage of it and actually protect you yeah so i i think that's the definition of a b card right like it's really good in the decks that can make use of it yeah yeah i see it as a win condition that also happens to have for me now like crimson like you don't always necessarily have to play it out but like you know sometimes you can i don't know i guess it's very meta-dependent because like in my experience like i'd never see it getting the hate that i feel like deserves and it's with the game it's a three-minute kid that's crazy and he doesn't win the game it kills one person he kills somebody but that's a win to me like say seth remember that time i'm like all right you can kill me now um all right moving on uh crim tell us about this little little doodad all right so cursed mirror it's a two in a red and it adds a red as it enters the battlefield you may have it become a copy of any creature on the battlefield until end of turn and it gains haste i think this card sucks i have this at a d and apparently everybody else here really likes it but but i i don't even know where i would want this like am i using this to combo off like like it looks like that's the only way to use it and even then is this not just another strix haven uh stadium except worse because like it's only a one-time use uh for for it to copy whatever right and i i just don't view that as valuable enough i i think this just is a three mana adder red i don't even care about the second part that wall of text behind it almost seems like it's going to be irrelevant most the time it's a hot take so i will say i haven't really got to play with this card because it's one of the commander precon cards that's not on magic online so i don't have a firsthand experience playing with it but i have it as a b uh i think that it's a card that i would play in almost all mono red decks that's what how i kind of look at this kind of on the red midnight clock almost where if you're mono colored you don't have that many good mana rock options this does have a reasonable amount of upside like getting a copy of a creature maybe there's some combo that i'm not familiar with that you could do with it but i'm just thinking of it of as a mana rock that can come down as a hasty creature and smash someone for a turn and in a mono color deck there's not that many options for mana rocks i think it would make the cut there once you get into like three colors or whatever then it loses a lot of its appeal to me so so i got it as a bee but like i said i haven't really gotten too brew with it or play with it a lot yet even in a mono color deck if i were to play this it's not like midnight clock because it doesn't do enough right like midnight clock potentially refuels you this just gives you maybe a body for a turn i'd rather play something that is colorless in this spot i kind of feel like utility just like three mana make a red mana is like sometimes making the bar in a mono red deck just because there's not like that many mana rock options but what about the fact that like if somebody has an eternal witness on the battlefield you copy it right you get that so you're playing it in your girl deck do you no field oh like something but it's a company's creature but yeah it's only until end of turn so i don't know like but you get the etb yeah you get the etb but i feel like at the cost you get the etvs yeah i'm trying to and actually because battlefield you may have it become a copy of any creature on the battlefield until on the turn but it's already entered the bat yeah as it enters the battlefield [Music] enters the battlefield you may have it become a i think it should work right isn't that what a clone says yeah image enter as a copy of any okay so it enters it's not as it enters it's a slightly different text file you don't even know how the card works how can we write that's good i could be playing it wrong this entire time because like i have it in my peripheral stack which is all about big creatures so like uh i i'll cheat in a big creature and then i'll play it it does work yeah according to gather it actually does copy etvs so you get out of it so like so even with that though that's just i don't know that feels kind of medium like so medium at best at best it's an until end of i would play uh what is it uh mirror image whatever the three mana mirror is that copies anything that you want sure does that it doesn't add mana but i'd rather just play that instead because it can copy anything copy a better mana rock it can copy you know what i mean like sure it costs to mana to activate that ability but this can copy at any point right this or that can copy at any point this card just does only that one time and i just don't like that at three mana i feel like there's always going to be a creature to copy i'm not sure well that's what i'm saying but i even even then i like the if if i went with a colorless utility mana rock that'd be better so i initially went with b but as we were talking about other cars like i'm looking ahead on the list i'm like is cursed mirror really a b what was i thinking and i think krimnes convinced me because let's say you play it on curve it's a three-man and mana rock and those are bad right because to me that's disadvantage you're just gonna get wiped in two turns if you're just holding it for like turn 11 it's just literally like steal someone's etv you can just play one of those cards that are better right like you're not gonna turn 11 make it a mana rock that flexibility doesn't matter anymore so i would rather play like an mdfc or something like well i'll just play a threaten or something right like just like take your you know play the bad threaten or the bad fling right that's an mdfc and i can take your creature it's like so situational that i don't think it's worth doing however i will say that there are combo commas you do with this like the magna cdh deck has a combo with this card which i couldn't put on tomoto so i can see if you have like a combo deck that needs this where you're copying etbs and doing things like it has a purpose but as a general mana rock i would just not play like just just play something that copies etbs like a clone or something like maybe there's no effect like that in red this is the only way you can get it i i don't know i so we we haven't had a chance to play this online and so like most of my games are online games but i have played a decent amount in my peripherals deck for mono red i think this is one of the best bunny red manor rocks um just because i it always felt like i had a good target for it like i i think it's not like the greatest early game um but i've had many situations where like uh i will uh see somebody uh i'll i'll be it's turn three somebody doesn't turn three wood owls before me or not what else sorry uh like uh like a far he have a far haven elf or something before me or like a spring bloom druid or something and you just like copy that you get your far haven elf you get a mountain on the battlefield and this is essentially like a warm power stone or something at that point um and i find that pretty good and then late game there's always like something to copy that seems pretty good and it's better than just like a random uh top deck mana rock like an arcane signal off the top because like if somebody just has like a six six flyer or something on the battlefield and you copy it and you immediately swing and hit somebody for six with your mana rock uh that can like completely swing games in your favor um so i don't know i just wanted to go off of the tangent is is like fork a good card like can you rely on someone doing something good for you to like make it more like but if they cultivate and you fork it this is great right yeah but what if they don't have cycling on it like cycle one would would it be a good card i think so this one is like worst case it's a over costed two mana rock that you have to pay three for yeah they pay an extra mana but best case very hilarious way to describe that okay two men of manorack that you have to pay one more man no it's an overcasted rock it's not it's not the best three rock if you're not copying anything with it but sometimes there will be creatures on the battlefield that will be really high value to copy i don't know like if somebody has a mul drifter or something it's like draws you off that and then you have a mana rocket i just feel like like richard pointed out earlier like if you're curving out you play this on three it's not it's your whatever you're copying is not gonna be great right at best and but then you have the equivalent of a chromatic lantern no dramatic lantern is the best that's training wheels beautiful beautiful card but i mean the floor is a three-man amana rock which isn't the end of the world so the floor is relatively high and then the ceiling is copying a ball drifter and drawing two cards or having an eternal witness maybe it doesn't happen that much but i don't know i feel like the floor is high enough that in monorail in specific i feel like i would just always play it in monorail i think outside of monorail then it loses some appeal but in mono red i would probably play something else there like it like legitimately i think that's the way i think that's where richard and i are lying on this like one because it just feels like i if you need something that adds red i honestly would almost like it this just edges out a basic land like about diamonds and stuff like the problem is how many three seasons how many three mana value rocks are in your deck right and how many have we rated s or a already that could go in mono red so like where is this going exactly right like to me you play like one or two three mana value rocks tops right and you will probably play one that is very specific to that archetype like maybe heraldic banner or something right that you can synergize with so like where is cursed mirror going in as like general utility i think her old that's like heraldic has more utility this is going in maybe that one deck that mogged the deck other than that well and you think heraldic banner is more utility i mean what about like english like falcon no no like indigo lie deck you would put that in right then yeah more scary right if you're in a control deck you put midnight clock or something you don't put mirror in right like where does it actually fit people what about what about like okay so perforate i still would say perfuros is an excellent example you have like you know six six dragons or whatever you play cursed mirror you get a copy of that and you smash face but it was like feldenko the third path is another popular one and i know seth played that i think that one's a no-brainer as well it's even an artifact so it has artifact synergies like you can yeah since it is a mana rock it's an artifact synergy you can like you know deredi it or goblin welder it after using its ability and then you can get it back from the graveyard too so you can etb copy it again which is also just like super fun so like i feel like mike's really ish but other than that like there are more go wide decks that that can go in so i feel like this the window of usage on this card is like it tops out at like maybe three decks i think it's stompy mono red stompy is where it's really good i feel like every time i build a mono color deck and i start trying to add my like 10 or 12 ramp spells after i get past like the first six i'm really like scraping some pretty bad ramp options in a color like mono rad so it's i don't know do you just not play as many mana rocks and just like don't play ramp in your modern red deck i just feel like i don't know i feel like it makes a cut by default because there's just not a lot of competition once you get to like mana rock number eight for a minute more mbs things yeah more enemies fury i do i play all those too [Laughter] so once you've already played every mdfc and then you're also looking for how many deck spots are you now using probably seth can only put in like six ndfcs in monoraid and he's like what did i do now because i know yeah kind of fill those slots with something like realistically your your ramp is already filled up now we're getting away off topic right but you have like soul ring right and then you have arcane signet and then you have actual signets then you have diamonds foul wearstone that reduces everything by one uh each each color has one the yeah the medallion yeah like realistically you don't have room and like if you're gonna put three cmc like would you just play hadron archives like would you like scale your the rest of your ramp way higher like gilded lotus or something right like how many three mana value rocks are you playing because i find i cut most of them so the ones that make the cut need to be exceptionally good right as opposed to like okay it res it cycles itself it's a card right like i might as well just have done something else right i don't know like if somebody has like you you draw this later on and somebody has like a rex sage on the battlefield and you literally like copy rexage you blow up an important artifact or enchantment there's there are many situations that we could draw up right that you can copy that but i feel like on average it's just gonna get some mediocre like you know effect that probably won't do anything unless this is something that's going to win you the game or as a part of a combo or on a deck that can reoccur it like doretti you know what i mean like or you could sack it and then just keep putting it back with like goblin welder or something like that otherwise even even though like what's the most played red creature in the format dockside you also have imperial recruiters you're probably gonna have good targets and that's not even counting your opponent's deck like i'm not saying it's a s or anything but d seems i don't know d seems low to me i think it sucks it copies that's these are all cars that get played right but yeah obnoxiously mostly this is leaning on the fact that yes it's still three mana when i have all these two mana rocks already and then i have the like a few slots for threes i just think this sucks in is is better served as another card an mdfc even uh like yeah so like mbfc or just another spell how about this just another threat well i hope wizard puts it online so we can actually play it and settle this argument i don't know what it's like on on like you know if it gets on moto and then i get to see it more often so all right for the sake of of covering more stuff we're gonna move on to probably a less spicy take i guess um i think it's on me yeah coalition relic this was like as a commander staple uh when i started playing back in 2011 like a decade ago uh this is a three mana rock um that taps to add one mana of any color or you can tap to put a charge counter on coalish relic and then at the beginning of your pre-combat main phase you remove all charge counters from coalition relic and you add one mana of any color for each charge counter removed this way um so basically what you could be doing is if you if you don't tap it for mana like this is the the basic use of it is if you don't tap it for banner you don't need it for mana on one turn you can tap it to put a charge counter after your pre-combat main phase and then the next your next turn cycle the next time it's your pre-combat main phase you can remove that charge counter and you can tap it for mana on the same turn so if you essentially skip a turn of using it you can make two men off it instead of the usual one uh if you skip a turn of using it that's like the most basic usage of it but there's you know synergy potential i didn't like this card back in the day uh i thought chromatically like as soon as chromatic lantern was printed i was like oh my god i'm just i'm just removing this relic in stuff from all my decks i'm putting in this sweet sweet lantern which cannot be beat um and i've never changed my opinion on this card before i i have i i remember it was just like an overpriced like it was super expensive back in the day was like ten dollars because we didn't have uh the the holy lantern uh yet uh but uh nowadays i still think it's poop and i don't remember the last time i put it in any of my ducks even five color decks um that's pretty it that's it for me i i put it on a as a as a as a c yeah wait did i where are you yeah i think that's terrible except seth holding i think it's i think it's a yeah i think it's just like a script that's charitable just like real quick so i gotta ask seth how is this better than chromatic lantern oh it's way easier yeah what is going on here when does your chromatic lantern add two mana it never adds two you have to take a turn off of using it well okay so so that most often on the turn you play your mana rock let's say unturned three unless you have one mana play you're not going to use that mana anyway so you're playing your mana rock and you're kind of letting that mana go to waste you're if you play a coalition relic you can get that mana during your next turn essentially so you play this on turn three you tap it at the charge counter you untap your next turn you have two mana you make your land drop your boost six mana on turn four it's like a worn power stone essentially in that scenario like yeah it doesn't tap for two mana every turn but in that one turn that mana burst is actually very powerful uh you also get like charge counter shenanigans and so forth which isn't enough to like move it up a tier in my ranking but i actually think that this is as far as just mana fixing mana rocks i think that coalition relic i think it's actually better than chromatic lander and i would have it is without having any additional upside just as far as making mana i think this is one of the best mana rocks that exist at three mana the upside of being able to make two mana when you need it i think is really huge uh so yeah i i really thought i'd like it so you have to use it right like if you have charge counters on it you have to use it on that yeah the charge counter is going to go away yeah yeah on your upkeep either way so you okay so you get an initial burst when you first cast it with c this is like so situ like okay so maybe you can un so you untap you have six mana on turn four if you're lucky that's i mean that's pretty good i like that i agree with seth on that so i'd give it maybe a c plus i still will never run it but then what so what if you then it'll just produces one for the rest of the game is that good enough pretty much yeah i like seeing no one ever play i think i've seen it once on commander clash like in like five seasons and it really is a like why does seth never run it i maybe maybe put it in the tracks up maybe because what you could do is you could like tap it to put a charge counter on it and then you proliferate it and then boom you're adding three the next turn instead of just two i think so that's like one deck the reason that you don't see me play it is i don't think you've seen me playing many of these cards honestly like and i forget about playing sky clave sometimes because i just really don't play many three mana rocks anymore yeah then they should all just be down a tier right like yeah okay like if they all suck we're not going to pick the best one and call it an s we'll just call it a d but i i feel like it's not a case where it's only good in certain decks i think it's generically good in any deck but three man of mana rocks maybe just aren't what they used to be a few years ago man that's not with that in mind that's exactly why i think i graded the way i did though right like three mana mana rocks need to do something right they need to have something other than add mana and or stick around forever and and skyclave pretty much does that right so that's why it's at an s strix haven stadium ranked higher because it can actually kill somebody uh you get an anthem effect at a heraldic banner and chromatic lantern higher because it though it doesn't add two mana it fixes the colors and i think that's better than maybe ramping plus one uh every other turn well so i i don't i just don't see many situations where i want this card like at three mana i definitely don't want this card at two mana okay this would be very good but at three mana this is just like kind of unplayable it's like this is like a low c to a high d for me i but the fact that it just doesn't do enough at three man like the cards that i ranked you'll i do play them you will see me play them and the and the only reason why is because they do something outside of ad mana i like and aren't curse mirror because that card is kaka poopoo look at this planet expectations it fixes my colors that to me i think obviously this is all anecdotal and whatnot and like very relative but i value the fixing but i you know whatever you can call me a cool ultimatum or is you never have more than like two lands on the battlefield anyway so how much big thing are you getting out of the commanding but these three lands that i do have at any color i need those sets and that's where i value the versatility i guess that's true if you're only gonna have three lands they better be good i need them to be like three like mana confluences like necropolis arc mages charm cruel tomatoes what are these caller requirements that you have in here right no yes the the view cryptic you know like i just can't cast any of these spells greedy as hell and that makes sense you right you're right it's actually a five-color seth is greedy in his own ways but i'm greedy in the colors that i need to cast my spells like i want to be in christmas land when it comes to my mana base and chromatic lantern does that this like like coalition relic doesn't do enough for me just doesn't do enough you've you've convinced me to drop it to be all these arguments i think a is probably too high i don't play it that often i'll give it a i'll give it a b i'll give it a b but i'm not going to c because it's it's better than that peer pressure has succeeded all right we're moving on we're moving on to a new mana rock uh ready to tell us about this one all right the celestis three mana value it's legendary uh basically it becomes day when it enters a battlefield if that thing hasn't been set yet tap add one man of any color three tap if it's night it becomes day otherwise it becomes night do this only as a sorcery when day becomes night or night becomes day you gain one life you draw a card if you do discard so basically you make everyone play werewolves and when it changes day night you gain a life and loot i am baffled as to why you guys think this is good i've read it again i think this is good me and seth think it's good oh i have this as a d i'm like why would you ever play this which is like so called unplayable yeah that's like you can never play it right well why would you play this so i think we're gonna have like one yeah dang it even then very questionable you're playing a three man of mana rock i mean like i'm i'm more in the direction with you richard cause like we saw tomer play wolves you know we saw seth play wolves how hard was it to get it to nighttime right like it's pretty hard to get it to nighttime even with the control deck i was able to keep it from getting to night time right can i can i sell you on it krim yeah go ahead think about this at the table everybody is playing a fun game of magic and then suddenly you play this on the battlefield and then you're like guys it's time to track day night mechanic for the rest of the game and everybody nobody else has day or night cards so now suddenly they have to do this thing that's lame and they don't want to do but you forced it on the table and now for the rest of the game everybody has to double check whether it became day or night or if it shifted that's why that's because and that's what you did but the ultimate troll card to troll and annoy the table kicks it up from a d to a c for me okay all right so so like that is a factor in why i bumped it like like that when i graded it like i'm willing to play chaos moon so i'm definitely willing to play this and chaos moon in the same deck so but other than that it doesn't do anything it's only good in wolves not even good in wolves i would cut it all you do is lose you don't even do anything it turns it turns we just played we just played wolves on commander clash and even though toblar helps a lot it's still not that easy to flip back and forth like that's still a really big challenge having a mana rock that for three mana can just do that whenever you want to and flip to your the good side of your wolves is i think that makes it an ultra staple of wolves i could not imagine building tovalar another werewolf deck and not playing this yeah i may have been out of line remember when everybody was complaining the toefl is too powerful and then we actually see the wolves in action it's like actually this is exactly how powerful torpor needs to be actually yeah but it's literally good in one deck not even one archetype like literally one yeah i only play it i will run it in looting slash uh some graver next some you know what i never loot you might as well play a verbal looter it's so hard to get it to night time if it looks once then it's already pretty decent if it was a man or wrong that looted one time i'd be like all right that's that's pretty decent if it loops more than one time and it will it will it will loot like two times and then if you're really lucky then it will be even okay is that good enough at three mana tomer a three mana if if it's a mana rock that says at tap to add one colorless gain to life loot two times over the span of like three turns well over the span of like two turns i think that's what i'm gonna hope for i'm hoping for christmas then all right if okay if it's a mana rock that says tap for one mana three mana tap for one mana gain two life loot two times i think it's it's definitely playable yep and i don't think i don't think that's that unlikely because while it's really hard to have no one cast a spell for their turning commander a lot of the times the two spells and it turns pretty easy so if you can use this to flip once you should get an automatic free flip back so for every activation you should get those two loots and that i don't know if we play against krim you know we're going to it's going to flip tonight because he's going to miss his lane drops and he's going to skip the turn i i still do something right like maybe it doesn't affect the board but you'll actually skip through your combat field and then you'll feel like oh well fair there is that do anything i may lose the interface but like outside of that that's like the that's your best case scenario you have me at the table and i accidentally f6 or i button mash my mmo mouse too much right because i'm impatient but other than that i i just don't think that's enough i don't think that's enough at three mana even if you looted all three times and gained three life i don't think that's enough at a three man of mana rock because you're i usually assume that these aren't gonna last for more than two turn cycles any any any mana rock i have might not last for more than two to three turn cycles from everybody blowing it up and and if it has lasted i feel like there's also a higher impact play i could be making like any of the aforementioned like stuff that we had named is better right like heraldic banner uh could give me an anthem so like there's just maybe not chris mirror but like everything else just seems better than than this like if if i didn't like curse relic i definitely i don't even think i like this so i don't know at three mana it's two it's just doesn't do enough it just doesn't do enough for me i think all manner rocks at three man values start at a d and you need to show me enough good things to like i only have like two slots richer wolves and like literal one deck not even an archetype like literally one deck right that's not enough in my opinion so yes werewolves but every other deck you can imagine including looting decks i would argue do something else right like that's it all right all right well i i don't feel strongly enough to defend the celestis honestly i think it's really good in werewolves i'm going to try it out in graveyard decks honestly it's so new that i haven't really had that much experience with it so we'll just move on and crim tell us about this old school staple uh manorak that you so hates okay uh warren powers some for those that don't know it adds to colorless and it enters the battlefield tapped this was good at a point this was good but it has fallen so far for me at three mana adding two mana every turn but it's colorless man i look i don't like coalition relic and this is maybe this is like slightly better than coalition relic i guess uh but the end time for two entering tapped three mana adding two colorless nah i i'm not feeling this i'm not feeling this at all for three minutes it's just it's two vanilla by 2021 standards and how many cards that have come out since then this is just two vanilla doesn't do anything it it it doesn't it at least become a threat become like a key rune or something like that but even then key runes are bad so i don't think this does anything so two mana whatever i i think there's much better at three mana they're so much better at three mana you put this as a d yeah i think this is unplayable by 2020 unplayable i think it is unbelievable outside of budget and just like what you have available to you this is unplayable like if i had all the options in the world i'm not picking this i i'd rather just not play it and i this is my opposition agent slot it's three mana it does something it's it's a removal spell it could be a draw i would think i would just play think twice over this this is why crim is stuck on three man stuck on three men for multiple reasons and that is not why i think this is the literal definition of what a three drop should be for for a mana rock two mana for for two drop mana rock you wanted to tap for one mana and it comes into play untapped for three if you add an extra mana for three i want it to tap for two minutes that's insane that's an insane that is insane but i i think this is this is like this is legit like if i look at a three mana rock and i say what is the best one i'm going to say warren powerstone like it is 100 s for me because if you look at all the other manual rocks we talked about they all tap for one they all of them tap for one the only one that's an exception and they stick around they have a utility to make up for the fact that they don't tap for two mana they tap as much as a two drop mana rock would but they make up for it by adding utility this one straight up just task for two instead of one like that is absolutely bananas like that's absolutely the only downside i do agree with is it comes into play tapped but like i almost never have that as an issue for me like i'm gonna play this turn three i'm not gonna have them i wouldn't use the mana for anything anyway like if it came out if it came to play untapped and attacked for one like what am i going to cast do i have another one drop in my hand no um fine and then the ro for the rest of the game is having for two for two mana that's absolutely insane i mean i i like horn power stone the problem i have with it is it's basically just a bad heater and archive it's like a heater archive that comes in to play tapped and doesn't draw cards it's pretty it's okay but what i don't know if i can control you tomorrow like i would legitimately play hedren archive over this i'm actually confused how that one mana like it's one more mana for heater and archive and you get so many upsides i'm very confused how you can specifically warn power stone and a hate heater and archive like that one that one man is not trolling what if i took lightning is there a difference that's like that one man is huge right now it's card but it's also green cards you don't get both though it's not like it has like some etb utility or something that you have on the valve you have to spend an additional two mana and crack it to get your your two man and then it's gone i mean your huge archive's gone you spent six mana for your two cards i in 2021 this is the value you want i think i sidetracked us a little bit because we're only talking about three mana rocks and hidden archive as good as it is for those who don't know i'm gonna post the cursed video it was as it was like 2019 i think i posted it and it's more valid now than ever before i finally agree with tomer here okay i haven't agreed with tomorrow on many of these but i think this is s i think this challenges skyclave relic and probably is better than skyclay relic right like you don't need utility like you have a deck with a game plan all the actual cards do something and they probably do it really well hence it's the deck right all you're trying to do is just brute force out mana and this gives you two mana at three right there's some downsides you have like a five cmc deck or sorry five color deck this might be a little awkward but in general just like two raw mana like i don't care that heraldic banner adds one this two mana gets me to coat of arms that adds like plus 20 power to the battlefield right it does whatever my deck is supposed to do which is way better than any incremental advantage you get on these other banner rocks so for your bad nickel boxes you usually don't have the man at the cast right on its own this can't cast niko bolus by the way the guy what a place walker yeah he doesn't have planeswalker yeah but dragon god this does nothing right like why would you even play dragon guys like this romantic lantern does more and um i i'm sorry like all these other cards are good on their own um and and i think chromatic lantern is good on its own because the color fixing is worth it right like you can construct a mana base such that romantic lantern is not needed like you can get that resource from other means whereas with warren powerstone like you got ancient tomb and that's it like you can't really eke out the extra mana any other way whereas like theoretically if we had like the same deck i could have played a mana base such that i got the equivalent power of chromatic lantern whereas like more power still there's like three cards soul ring ancient tomb this right like there's very few ways to get repeatable extra mana this early also isn't the whole point with these mana rocks if we already like we already came to consensus before everyone started that like a two drop like a signet is better than like basically this entire list right like barring like some of our s's so and those don't have any added utility they're just pay two mana have a mana rock that taps for one this is pay three mana have a mana rock the task for three i feel like like if we're following the same logic this is this is an s like it's is one of the best ones because there's no other mana rock on this list that's pay three uh tap for two well the reason for that is because the low investment of two mana right like that that's why i don't expect them to do anything more than just add mana right like for those two like signets and things like that at three mana i have a i have a higher bar and i expect it to do a lot more is this because you play draw growth control yes well even even in my human's deck too right like my humans deck my aggro decks if i play if i if i'm in an aggregate i really need a reason to play a three-man amanda rock i mean crim has been pretty upfront about his uh crazy mana costs all game and if if you're trying to cast quad blue spells and you know triple black spells warren power zone does go down in value a lot it's like never going to cast a fraction obliterator not most of a cryptic command or something so maybe it's just a dexagrim plays like can't take advantage he never wants to tap out right like he always wants to have something ready no matter what i mean and i think that makes aggro decks don't tap out right because i i have like eerie interlude and stuff like that so like i don't know i mean i i just feel like oftentimes the two colorless just never comes into play except for casting my commander like this pays for one death on my commander well why do you play soul ring that's too colorless well but soul soaring is only one that can't cast counter spell no but it's low investment that's the thing it's only one mana this is and also it comes with the plate so you can immediately use that mana three mana this is coming in pretty hot here like it's consistent with crim like like the well swallowing not only is a one mana but like also the the sauron isn't into the battlefield tap so like crim could like pay one mana put the soaring up and then still have like a colorless horse or something ready and he can cast like a three mana spell that instant speed like it makes sense yeah i get that from from i think it's true there's no way it's a d i could see you like saturday i don't think yeah i'm not playing like look at all my you must keep adding it to your deck and realize the power of having like five available mana instead of like sitting there mad at screwed if it if it added two colored mana i'd probably no i wouldn't it would it would have to do more because it had to stick around sky clave can kind of do that if you pay six it duplicates itself but then it sticks around um you know like like strict haven stadium can kill somebody yeah the you know actually even if this added color it would go from d to about probably a c or b to be honestly i think this is i've heard this entire thing wow it makes sense though this is the biggest spread right i don't think we ever had an s and a d on any of our materialists right no i thought inspiring saturation would be the biggest gulf between hype and the height but here we are also this is so dated so it's still so good it's still so good at least it's like it's already just dated it is not it is super sore forever until it gets banned unfortunately but but yeah like this card is so dated this i like i see this in my pre-cons i hate it i i see this whenever like i i played this and i hated it every time i've had it like i'll tell you why it's not overrated because wizards hasn't made another one like this is their benchmark card right like they they've never made another three man two mana yeah you know they never decide like oh we need to add scry1 on twitter we need to add day night mechanic to it right now it will enter the back you have two or more opponents this is battlefield untapped yeah that's what's gonna happen i still wouldn't play that oh my goodness what if it added two colors enters tapped is obviously big sad but the fact that it just adds two colors and doesn't do anything else is why so it as i everything i play in all my decks has to have utility or else i'm just not playing it or if it's a troll card then then i'll play it but this isn't even troll people so like it's not even that good it doesn't troll people he has to use the podcast to troll people instead how could it be i don't know this is this is this is a wild one all right so we went over 12 mana rocks or sorry 11 mana rocks went over 11 man rocks in the span of an hour and 30 minutes and there were some hot takes there are some spicy tastes there's a lot of disagreements and we want to hear from you now uh if you're listening uh let us know in the comments section or send us an email or on twitter if you do hashtag clashmail that's probably the easiest way to reach out to us what's your opinion on these manor rocks uh do you side with crim that pat warren powerstone is stone cold unplayable uh do you agree with me that inspiring statuary is one of the best underrated mana rocks of all time um let us know in the comments section or reaching out to us what you feel about these cards and that's it for the podcast everybody if you want to support the show as i keep forgetting to say in the beginning but if you're here thank you for for reaching the end but also you can support us by heading over to the mtg goldfish merch store um and buying stuff like our richard's wall it's green right now well it's not green it's going to be whatever we chroma key in surprise the illusion yeah everything is a lie um and and but the thing that isn't a lie is our merchandise which is very good quality and not at all green screen um so you can go over there buy stuff and and that would be great and you support the show and we could do more of it and and whatnot um and that's it everybody hope you enjoyed and until next time friends see ya

Channel: MTGGoldfish Commander

Views: 98,205

Keywords: Magic the Gathering, MTG, EDH, Commander

Id: e6bwJlYaKp4

Length: 97min 51sec (5871 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 12 2021