Why Aren't These Cards More Popular??? | EDHRECast 265

[Music] thank you hello and welcome to the EDH wreckcast where we're all about commander data and dad jokes I'm Joey Schultz and I'm joined as always by my fantastic co-hosts up first I think he might be the reason for all those Planeswalkers losing their Sparks it's Matt Morgan you know Joey here on edhrek there's tons of data and we don't always agree with it so this week we're going to challenge some stats and wow maybe yes I I went there yes you're welcome wow already stealing all of my Segways this far in advance can't let me have nice things can you Matt never have and I never will wow goodness gracious all right up next he likes the idea of the set after math just so much as he likes the idea of an after history and after social studies and after science it's Dana roach and remember EDH record deck before you wreck your dad everyone have a good week everyone oh wow did y'all coordinate on that that was brilliant I didn't did you Dana no we just uh we're just that clever that's gifted we're yeah we're gifted Joey that's what it is yeah y'all are on a wavelength oh goodness okay well if we can actually have an episode Matt what are we talking about on this week's show well this week we're going to talk about cards that we thought were going to be more popular than they are at this point maybe when we saw them we got super excited to see them but they just never really panned out and we kind of want to talk about that and maybe why they never got as popular as we thought they were going to be yeah why didn't these cards take off it'll be pretty interesting but before we get there we've got some shout outs to do first want to thank Chase also known as the cardboard Bandit for their help editing the show you can find them on Twitter at Mana curves and if you want to support the show you can do so by liking and subscribing this video on YouTube subscribing on your local podcast app or by going to patreon.com edhretcast where page tiers of all sorts of levels and it's just a great way to get yourself a nice little bonus while supporting the show directly and one of those perks you can get for yourself is the weakling Patron shout out so this week we want to give a very big special shout out to Scott kasme so Scott thank you for I I was trying to go for a Scott Pilgrim joke but I've never actually seen the movie so you haven't that movie is great Matt I've never seen it well I would say Scott uh casme if you can ah speaking of movies yeah yeah did we get there did we get there come on Matt that was good sure it was Dana let's talk about cards thank you Scott thank you thank you but yes thank you Scott and I'm sorry that I haven't seen Scott Pilgrim Vs the World oh man all right well right you are Matt let's get into our topic Dana we're talking about cards that we thought would be more popular um so I I guess we'll we'll just get into it Dana what's a card that you thought would be more popular in the commander format um yeah Port of carfell is is one that I thought would really have taken off um it's a land from back in caldheim comes into play Taft and and that's I guess a downside but it does tap for blue Mana which is nice attached For Colored Mana that's always an upside um it's cheap because it was an uncommon so like anyone can go get one so the price isn't holding it back um and what it does for for three in a blue and two black you can sacrifice it you Mill four cards and you return a creature card from your graveyard of the battlefield tapped but that it also isn't restricted to sorcery speed you can do that at any point in time as well it just felt like one of those cards for me that I'm like oh if you're playing a black creature or a demure creature deck that's probably worth a slot in like almost every demure deck that's running any kind of useful creature yeah that's a lot of Mana I guess you're spending six and you're losing a land to bring a thing back but there's really no downside beyond the tempo hit and I run it into Demir decks and it's a fantastic card so like it's performed as well as I had thought it would when I looked at it and I was just sure this was going to be the kind of card where like if people were building a demure list they just throw it in the mirrorless not even thinking about it and that's not been the case it's only in like just over one percent of all the possible dimer Decks that could go into so that's one that really has surprised me um in terms of like how much adoption it's gotten well Dana I don't think I don't think anybody loves utility lands near as much as you do so maybe that that might well be true immediately that's my first kind of thought as to why it's not as popular as you thought it would be but I also had an inkling that yes effectively seven Mana plus sacrificing a land that is a lot just to get one creature back so it has to be a very big creature instant speed is nice uninterruptible very uncounterable I should say that there's a lot to like about this but the cost is so high just when it comes to Mana that to me is probably why most folks haven't gotten on board with it but also coming into Battlefield tapped and only producing one color of Mana that's kind of the two big big strikes it gets that you pointed out that I I would say is what's keeping Port of carfall from really taking off it is an uncommon which I think does help you know it's in at the moment about like the two percent ish of decks that can play it like you said just over one percent the fact that it's two colors is I think also a thing that like it is a card that can't go into just any deck you do have to be playing Demir or Demir plus right and a card that also jumps to me here as a comparison is actually going to be tomb Fortress which shows up in even fewer decks just uh 8 500 here and that was one of the cards that came in the pre-cons for Warhammer and this is a mono colored uh it's a black land enters tapped and you have to pay five tap and Exile tomb Fortress but it actually Mills you four cards and then returns a creature card from your Giver to the battlefield it will be untapped but that is only as a sorcery but there's a decent comparison there tomb Fortress though is a rare and it's pretty difficult to get because it only comes in the pre-cons so I think that that at least the availability of Port of carfell did at least help a little bit because it was easier to open in packs being an uncommon compared to where tomb Fortress came from but yeah both of those abilities are way way cool so like I'm totally with you it just does seem that like you know the the room for the utility lands we have in our decks it's a pretty high demand these days yeah and that's what I came down to too I was like there's there's just so much stuff in your decks demanding slots that it makes it tough not only to run it but to even like want to try it in the first place because when you look at what you're gonna you have to cut something what are you gonna cut you know there's so many good utility lands I I would guess the problem is less that it didn't perform for folks and I didn't try it in the first place just because it's just so tough to find room nowadays uh as long as we're talking about Mana I'll go to one of my picks here and Matt I think that this is a pick that I actually share with you uh planar Atlas really caught both of our eyes and like oh yeah why isn't this card more popular it's currently only showing up in 3156 decks planar Atlas is a two Mana artifact it enters the battlefield tab to Taps for a colorless and it says when it enters the battlefield you may look at the top four cards of your library if you do reveal up to one land card from among them put that card on top of your library and the rest on the bottom of your library in a random order this is so good like oh it doesn't color fix oh whatever it comes into play tapped on turn two I don't care about that like if I see this in my opening hand snap keep right like I feel so safe and secure in like my ability to play that hand I'm so excited for this card but it's only showing up in like 3 000 decks like that's effectively zero percent of the Decks that are eligible to play in Matt why isn't this card more popular what's going on I love this thing I I think the real answer is just a bunch of players are very very bad at card evaluation and that that is a major exaggeration but there is a little bit of Truth to that because I remember I tweeted about this when I first saw it and this card's very exciting it's it's gonna smooth out draws it's gonna make sure if you you know you miss your first land drop or two then you're gonna find it you cast this you're gonna find your next one if you don't have enough lands in your deck this is going to help make sure that you're at least finding what you do have in there I there's just so much to like about this deck or about this card I should say excuse me but yeah it's man I I love this and we got so many people kind of pushing back like well it comes in play tapped so does so many other cards that have been Staples in the format for so long it's two Mana so even if you're just setting up your next draw I mean Dana you know that you've drawn cards off of Sylvan Library just to get them out of the way and sometimes sure you don't get a fetch land you just need to get stuff off the top of your library well this is another good way you know you have two cards on the top of your library you put them back you're not really excited to draw them you play planar Alice you get rid of them there's there's a lot of value to if you know what's kind of coming up and you don't want it being able to shuffle it away and get get it down there's a lot of value to that and so I think just it does a lot of good things in small little way days that aren't just they're not glamorous I think that's why a lot of players kind of ignore it too yeah exactly like if ebony fly can show up in 12 000 decks and that is also a Mana rock that enters Battlefield tap to produce his colorless and you have to pay a lot of Mana to maybe turn it into a like flying creature thing it's like it's okay like ebony fly I respect it it's fine but like planar Atlas should at least be at that threshold too because it is great for smoothing out your early game and this is the real thing I feel like a lot of the times when I've seen people dis on this card it's because of a misreading because they assume that that is a must trigger that you must set a land on the top of your deck when you play this it's a May trigger and you can choose up to one land so you can choose zero if you don't want that so I mean most Mana rocks are going to be dead draws in the late game anyway so I'm not too worried about that I really like this if I encounter it in one of the early turns of the game I think this is a really solid Mana Rock and 3000 decks only just makes me sad well and it's less of a dead draw late game than most men are rock because it at least does something you know ramping you from 12 to 13 man isn't a big deal but like ramp you from 12 to 13 and 11 you pick your next draw it can be pretty useful at that point in the game especially it can help you find your Port of carfell Dana exactly exactly um now I will say like one of the things that I struggled with this card was I'm like okay I liked it a lot what deck am I going to put it in I'm like well you know Arcane signatures it comes to play untapped and makes whatever color I need and I'm like yeah well the the signal in the Talisman give me the land I want and liquid metal torque has got so much utility and mind Stone lets me you know draw a card when I need to and that's very useful and sometimes overflowing chalice can drop at the right point of the game and I can you know bring it in with with three or four counters I didn't perforate them up or whatever so like there was I found myself really arguing against myself for like reasons I like man it's it's not that it's a not a good card but like the things that it's fighting for a slot with also we're really really close to being you know better or or at least things I didn't want to cut and I think the the the card that I wound up taking out in a couple codex Arena was felwarstone interesting sure sure but then I found myself like I'm like okay well the next time one of these cards drops and I saw them like I don't know what's going to lose because like I don't know what I don't know what to pull now next time so but yeah it that it's it's fighting against a lot of really good Mana rocks as well but I think it's good enough to make the cut in more decks and it's currently making the cut in that's that's interesting for me I look at planner Atlas and I'm like for me this would be a colorless mono color or two colored Mana Rock Only I wouldn't play it in three color plus sure whereas fell warstone definitely wins out for me if I'm playing three colors or more yeah and throw Funk it gets better the more colors in your deck more or less exactly yeah admittedly I would not play planar Atlas in anything three colors or higher but like the the times that I've played it I've been like oh I feel so much safer with my hand this is this is gonna reliably make me hit a land drop and I'm like sure awesome I'll be able to play my six drop next turn or something like that I've really enjoyed it when I've seen this one so that's just me Matt I know that we kind of shared that one but let's move on to one of your picks now too well I'll just talk about an artifact that also is kind of a Mana Rock because we've talked about a lot of Mana producing card so far so machine God's Effigy is a card that I sought and I was just wondering how long it took for people just to to glom onto this and just play it in every dang Blue Deck but it really hasn't uh so machine God's Effigy is formatted for an artifact that says you may have machine Gods Effigy enter the battlefield as a copy of any creature on the battlefield except it's an artifact and has tap to add one blue mana and it is not a creature and then also machine God's Effigy if you don't want it to come in as a copy of something you can just have it come in as a four Mana tap for blue Mana Rock So Cursed Mirror is in 40 000 decks this is only in seven and some key differences curse mirror gives creature haste when it comes in then it does be it stops becoming a creature which is there's a lot of strategy to that but there are entire strategies around copying creatures on the battlefield the sakashima that's the whole brand of the character in Magic lore is copying and imitating things machine Gods effigy does that and also just is a Mana rock at the same time and I it's kind of wild to me that this card hasn't caught on considering I mean Dan if you want to spend effectively seven mandatory animated creature I'll spend four to copy it and that's cool with me to copy it and it will the artifact version will just stay as a Mana rock this Mana Rock won't be a creature so it avoids board wipes right and that's really cool that's really really cool like I'll compare this to the card imposter Mech the vehicle that can enter the battlefield as a copy of a creature and opponent controls except it's a vehicle with crew 3 so that one's showing up in 20 000 decks and machine God's Effigy is only showing up in seven and I'm like what what yeah there's there's a lot to like here just copying people's there are so many Powerhouse static abilities out there these days that you just want to have them around or if they're just a good ETB trigger you can just get that copy it and then you're good to go there uh then you also still have a Mana Rock that's ready to go at the same time so I just there's so many things to like about this and I'm just I'm very surprised this card hasn't been more popular ever since it was released I'm gonna copy someone's Kodama of the East tree and be really happy about it yeah yeah well and I wonder if this isn't also a victim of people not quite understanding the card sure thinking like oh it's either it's either a Mana rock or it's a clone and I would rather just have like I don't know if I want a clone that you know is going to make things an artifact like I don't I don't know why that would dissuade you from playing it because if the text is a little bit tricky it does read like it's going to come into play as a copy of a thing and it's also going to be the creature so people might not know what Lloyd Dodge's board wipes and stuff and I guess that makes it a little bit more narrow because basically you're focusing on things that have like a passive ability or something or an ETB or or whatever um but yeah it's if there's just it's again it's one of those cards that like there's almost no downside to it well and we talked recently about how myram is one of those I'm gonna find the three best dragons and we make a million copies of them so having a non-creature version of Terror of the Peaks seems all upside to me I just don't know how that that wouldn't be silly yeah for sure guys all right I uh think we've talked about a lot of Mana producing cards so far um so let's move on to an example of a card that I think I'm like surprised this one isn't more popular but it's not a thing that makes Mana um Matt if you'll let me have at least one segue in this episode I will segue us into the next card here um I want to talk about coronation of chaos coronation of chaos is a common red spell it is a three-minute sorcery from the Baldur's Gate set it says up to three Target creatures can't block this turn goad them so until your next turn those creatures attack each combat of fable and attack a player other than you if able this is a little mini disrupt decorum and also it prevents your opponents from blocking you I know that in comparison to a card like disrupt decorum this probably reads as pretty minor but I have played this card and been really really pleased by its effects like I'll go to your commander your commander and your commander also you guys can't block me this turn and bang I'm gonna move into the Red Zone I think that this deserves to see more play than just 3100 decks this little comment is feisty this is one that that I have no I don't love this card but I guess I can't say I've seen it in play so maybe I'm wrong I can tell you why I have not ran it reading the card and when I've read the card in the past look it I felt like it doesn't do anything powerful enough to justify a slot over what else I could run in red and how much more impactful that thing would be I'm not saying it's not a good card but I feel like but I'm always going to find something that I feel is better for my deck than this one so like at least for me that's what I've never read it so I I again it seems that we always between the three of us one person falls in the middle and this is where I'm doing that sure I can see why you would want to play it because if you're playing red you're you're probably wanting to attack quite a bit you're you're on the offensive this is getting the three biggest blockers the three best blockers I should say getting those out of the way but also you're putting them on the offensive the next turn so you're effectively taking them out of your next combat step so I understand why you would want to run this but also for one more Mana you can just disrupt to Quorum and so I I see why it Dana like you said it falls short of just some other effects you could be doing especially for maybe just a Mana or two more but also it's it's simple it's effective it's probably 10 cents and so there's I there's a lot of value I think to some card being 10 cents you find it in your bulk box you give it a go and and if it performs in great like if you're going wide you only need to get rid of a couple blockers this is a perfect way to do it right this repticorum is showing up in 39 000 decks to me this is a if you want one you probably want the other at least some amount of the time these cards definitely work really well in tandem with each other also coronation of chaos feels a lot better to draw when you're down to a one-on-one game whereas disrupt decorum becomes pretty useless when you're down to just being against one final opponent this actually has a little bit of late game punch to allow you to attack through an enemy board in a way that disrupted Quorum doesn't so that's why I like it but for me it just feels like if nearly 40 000 decks are playing disruptive Quorum like a lot of those decks should also want coronation of chaos sure and that that's just especially if you're playing like a very heavily goad themed deck which we have a lot of commanders that do that nowadays just 3100 seems too low comparing those numbers to me yeah so I like the card but I it's kind of like Dana's Port of carpool it's it's not sexy I guess like it feels weird calling cardboard sexy but like sure it's it's not one of the Glamorous types of cards to do the the job and I think that's people see the the common Rarity Mark and I think people snub their noses a little bit and that's probably also at play with with a lot of the cards we're gonna talk about today in general honestly the fact that this is also a Baldur's Gate card I gotta admit that probably has something to do with people's attitudes towards it because like I don't know we've experienced plenty of commentary about the fact that we loved the Baldur's Gate set and that that set is full of really really great stuff which I think people are only just now starting to discover how many cool cards were actually in that set which thank goodness people are finally coming around on on that because that set was awesome but I feel like that also maybe has not only it being a comment but also like the set had a certain reputation yeah um so I can see why this one drops to the bottom of that Barrel well so so Jay I'm gonna steal it back so you talked about a red card I'll talk about a red card but it is going to deal with Mana and it's gonna deal with land so I'm sorry for circling back on that that point you tried to take us away from but velocate exploration so I expected this to be basically the red phyrexian Arena just it's in every red deck just in general everybody wants it and it's it's not that it's not popular there's a similar effect there's Outpost Siege but I thought this would be in so much more than three percent of red decks a lot of these cards are showing up in like one three percent whatever and valkin exploration I just I thought every deck would want I thought it'd be a significant amount of red decks and like the 10 range um so Val kit exploration is two in a red for an enchantment that says landfall whenever a land enters the battlefield under your control Exile the top card of your library you may play that card for as long as it remains exiled at the beginning of your end step if there are cards exiled with Val cut exploration put them into their owner's graveyard then valkut exploration deals that much damage to each opponent so right off the bat you play a land you get to do a little impulse draw get get access to another card that turn kind of like what output postage does but also there's always the downside of you know you Exile a card and it's just gone because you didn't have a chance to play it well valikut exploration gets around that by putting it in your graveyard while dealing damage to each opponent and there's just there's so much to like lands are just such a basic fundamental resource to Magic the Gathering and so giving you benefits for doing that especially not in Scenic colors to me that just checks all the boxes well in in what's really stands out to me about the the amount of decks that aren't playing this card is so many landfall decks are running red um you know there's the occasional cynic one but like Far and Away it tends to be something that you see in in gruel colors and if you're playing landfall I don't know why you wouldn't run this it makes it so easy to like Exile a playland the Exile land and then use your you know second or third or fourth land drop ability to play land off this and Exile cartridge thinner land or or something you can play like it's so easy to just generate all of the lands you need for your multiple landfall triggers with this one card alone it's uh it's like this engine that powers itself almost in a landfall deck so like forget all the other decks where it's just useful it's ridiculous in a landfall deck and that alone should have the numbers higher than it is I would compare this card a lot to Outpost Siege and that one's showing up in 44 000 decks so Val cut exploration being at forty one thousand does actually make a degree of sense to me like those feel roughly equal if you're going for the impulse draw ability so I I guess I would say like the underplayed or why isn't that showing up more is contingent upon the fact that I know there are a lot more red landfall Decks that could be using this and I'm surprised that they're not sort of just like what you were saying Dana right in terms of comparing it to outpostage I'm kind of like uh you know the numbers are pretty similar there that doesn't surprise me too much yeah only 33 percent of omnath Lucas of Rage decks are using this one what's going on there that's what I would want to investigate yeah what are the landfall things are making it past this one because this one's pretty darn good if you're doing a lot of landfall things it's just so good in those kind of texts that I I'm I'm surprised that alone doesn't have the number of struggle up higher than they than they are currently there's a lot to Mom death look because of Rage decks out there too there's a lot of just any color any combination of two color or more omnif decks all of them would benefit from this because they're all about playing multiple lands per turn and this just rewards you more and more for doing that so you you play or reshape the Earth you get 10 triggers well also that reshape the Earth suddenly deals 10 damage to each opponent because you don't have to play lands uh there are play cards I should say that are exiled with valve cut exploration that's just there's so much going on there just you get to deal however many damage each turn that's just crazy well you know what's crazy the fact that we haven't gone to challenge the stats yet Dana it is it is kind of crazy that we haven't done that yet but yeah it's unbelievable I mean I I guess it is about that time right yeah that makes sense let's do it Joey how far in the episode are we I don't know I don't care apparently love you guys all right yeah let's let's talk about that data we don't always agree with we'll be right back after a quick break so one of my favorite ways to find cards to challenge the stats is like when I actually see someone use them against me so the challenge I have this week is for grim hireling and this is a card I saw pop up and it's a it's a good card and I'm I'm I've always liked it but I didn't really see it used to its full potential until magiccon Minneapolis where I played against a rogue deck and Grim hireling three and a black for a uh a tiefling rogue it's a three two whenever one or more creatures you control deal combat damage to a player create two treasure tokens and you can also sacrifice X treasure and Target creature gets minus x minus X till end of turn that's a sorcery only ability um it wasn't an N1 the um ruin Thief deck which is the most popular um Rogue commander in on EDH wreck by a large margin um Grim hurling is only in about 35 percent of Annawan decks and here's why it should be in more if you look at the creatures in an Anon list 14 of the top 20 have some form of evasion whether it's unblockable or flying or Menace and I didn't count death touch and two of them have death touch as well which makes for an unattractive blocker that means if you swing one creature at three different players when you have Grim higherling out you're making six treasures and that's what the person was doing in Minneapolis for three straight turns because nobody happened to have any removal they made six Treasures for three consecutive turns and that was just the end of the game and the fact that Grim higherling being a rogue is only in you know 30-ish percent of of of a rogue Commander decks I felt like it should be more because the card was amazing in that particular list so that's my challenge Grim higherling run it in more N1 lists that card is so good I I yeah even if you're getting one person making two Treasures is still really really good that card's especially messed up if you ever pair it with a professional face breaker which also has an ability of making Treasures when you're up when your creatures hit your opponents and then you can turn the treasures into card draw just like it's very Punchy card and yeah if you've got evasion naturally the perfect fit so yeah I'm way into that and uh Dana that actually works out decently well for me because I'm also going to be talking about a blue black commander in my challenge for this week I'm going to be talking about Inquisitor eisenhorn because one of our listeners going by New Life Dante in our patreon Discord submitted a challenge for Inquisitor eisenhorn specifically investigating the card God Eternal bontu in Inquisitor eisenhorn decks so real quick eisenhorn is a blue black Commander four Mana two three that creates a bunch of clues for you whenever it deals combat damage to a player you investigate that many times this is actually a commander that Dana you and I have both said you know we'd be kind of interested in making a whole deck around this guy because you could make a whole lot of artifact tokens with that and you pair it with like a nettle cyst and then he gets really big and you make even more artifacts like I think this is a really really underrated Commander we had a whole episode talking about underrated commanders and this was certainly one of them and New Life Dante has a really great pick for this because God Eternal Ubuntu in this deck would be a really efficient way to turn all of those clues that the commander is making into a bunch of card draw and it's a repeatable form of card draw because I've got Eternal bonto ever dies you can put it right back into your library notably New Life Dante points out that the card reprocess which has a similar ability to God Eternal bond to is showing up on eisenhorn's page but God Eternal Bantu is not showing up on eisenhorn's page and that's just a thing that seems like maybe that could you know even itself out a little bit more these are both really great effects to turn all of those Clues into a huge massive card draw out of nowhere and not only that Dante also wants to point out here are other commanders that also make a bunch of artifacts that could use Ubuntu as well like tivit makes a bunch of great artifact tokens so does Guillaume imhotek the stormlord I've got an old rutstein deck there are a lot of commanders out there making a lot of artifact tokens out there and bonto deserves a second look if you're playing any one of those Legends so thank you so much Dante for this excellent challenge well I'll wrap this up then with the challenge of stats and Dana you mentioned you don't really notice how good cards are until you see them in action gold warden's Gambit is a card for me that I took a flyer on it wanted to try it out in my Velda keep the flame deck figured why not let's try it so gold wardens Gambit is six red red for an assorted it says affinity for equipment so it costs one less to cast for each equipment you control and then it says you create 522 Rebel creature tokens they gain haste until end of turn and for each of those tokens you may attach at equipment you control to it this is so wild to me how is how much of a catch-up card this is the game stalls out you're never actually paying eight Mana for that I think a lot of folks see that it's six red red and they think oh my gosh I'm never gonna cast that well if you have five equipment out there it's three Mana you rebuild your army you put a bunch of equipment on them it's it's it's just a great powerful card so we're already seeing it adopted in some car or in some decks I should say like jorca Dean first gold Warden which rewards you for having a bunch of creatures that are all equipped but I'm honestly very surprised it hasn't caught up in just really any equipment heavy deck uh Waylon Soul of Steel that weightlift carries quite the Target on their back the whole deck kind of relies on way of having a lot on they're equipped to him but oftentimes that also means that people are going to Target it down and if you look at the top cards in the equipment theme on edhrek most of them revolve around cheating Mana costs when it comes to equipping they're paying the equipment costs I should say so having this come in and pay five equip costs for free it's just it's all upside it's super powerful it's a great way either there's a board wipe you pay however many Mana you know four Mana for five bodies and put an equipment on them that's well worth the Mana if you ask me so if you're playing any of these boros or just got equipment decks who need a way to kind of rebuild immediately this is a fantastic way to do it not really any decks other than a couple commanders have really latched on to it it's only seeing play in 1485 decks total right now and I think that's just silly low if you're playing an equipment deck you have red in there just play Gold wardens Gambit yeah 1500 is pretty low for this like I'm actually most surprised that it's not caught on more in akiri Fearless Voyager that's the boros equipment Commander that uh specifically cares about you having a lot of equipped creatures rather than just but putting all of your equipment onto one creature and less than four percent of akiridex are using this and it seems like a total cert in that deck or like only five percent of dalicose decks are are using this and like delicos also wants you to have multiple equipped creatures because it gives them extra abilities so yeah I mean there aren't like a huge number of equipment Decks that care specifically about having a great number of equipped creatures rather than just voltroning up your commander but there are a decent number of them and they should be using this yeah if you need an insurance policy that's what this is and I mean everybody plays a couple cards in pretty much every deck that well if everything goes wrong this card just kind of gets me back in there it's a it's a catch-up card and this does it very very well yeah I'm way into that okay let's get back into our topic talking about cards that why aren't they seeing more play uh Dana do you have another one for us yeah so this is a car that I was very excited for when it first came out masterful replication uh five of the blue for an instant it's in only five thousand decks right now which is you know basically zero percent of the ones that could run an Eda track um it's got two modes you choose one the first one is create two three three colorless Golem artifact creature tokens I don't know if I've ever actually used that mode but at instant speed making two three three blockers is not terrible if you need them but it's the second mode that that really caught my eye that has been an absolute Powerhouse for me and and I thought would catch more people's eyes Beyond just myself and the other 4 999 people that are running it um and that's choose Target artifact you control on each other artifact you control becomes a copy of that artifact uh until end of turn um especially given the amount of treasures we have out there um the amount of time I've turned you know is Seven Treasure tokens and in four Mana rocks and a couple of artifact lands into a worm coil engine um and you know killed one person and then gained enough life that no one else was gonna kill me for four or five turns there's a short of a combo I've done that multiple times or or you know had Mana up because I was going to use it for something else and then someone cast a board wipe and at least one time I've turned every one of my artifacts into a flexian trainiform um in response to a board wipe it's like oh well okay you're gonna blow up my you know seven creatures and I'm gonna make 36 copies of the brexia triniform token um there's just so many things you can do with it like it's one of those cards that feels like every time you cast it you're doing something else and every one of those those things you do is just dumber than the last thing you did with it and it's I just thought it would at this point in time have caught on and it it just really hasn't I I don't know if the the sixth Mana is scary to people that's probably part of it I I think the fact that the first mode is so mid maybe it also makes folks feel like oh it's a modular card but the one mode is so mediocre that it really isn't a modular card maybe that's part of it too I don't know but I I just thought it would have seen a lot more play especially because the amount of artifact commanders we've seen lately dude Dana I'm fully with you like if rise and shine and cyberdrive awakener can show up on a whole bunch of decks turning all of your artifact tokens and treasures into complete lethal powerhouses like this card is also doing some pretty similar work I'd especially love to see it get more play in urza Chief artificer because that's the one that makes all of those constructs that get bigger for each artifact you control so you can just turn everything into one of your construct tokens and then instead of having like one 10 10 you've got ten ten tens and that just sounds really nice to me well and especially when you consider how easy it is to make treasure tokens these days yeah if you have five more treasure tokens turning all those into extra constructs that's an army right there that's that's very very powerful and instant speed I think that should be emphasized a little bit more than it has been so far that's such a good point because you can avoid board wipes you turn all of your artifact creatures into not artifact creatures and avoid board wives yeah oh good point now I guess one thing that would be worth noting is the set this was in contained so many like Powerhouse Commander cards that maybe the ones that weren't you know the the more splashy ones like this kind of fell by the wayside I guess I I'm trying to think of reasons that hadn't shown up and maybe that's one of them but yeah I'm I'm just constantly shocked at this card not being Lord X I totally feel you all right Matt you got another one I do so one card maybe it's a cycle of cards and I know I'm probably a little biased towards seeing them but one of my favorite things to do is if I'm not the problem myself is to not answer a problem but make sure it's just not my problem anymore and the impetus cycle is just one of the my favorite ways to do that politically cards like Marshall impetus psychic impetus just a it's a cycle of aura cards that came out I believe originally in one of the pre-con sets but then we saw them again in Baldur's Gate but so psychic impetus for example is two in a blue for an enchantment aura that says Enchanted creature gets plus two plus two and is goated then whatever Enchanted creature attacks you scry to so they all have something to do with they give the creature a buff it goads the creature and then one of the creature attacks you get some sort of bonus whether it's you get to scry to or martial impetus for example uh whenever the enchanted creature attacks each other creature that's attacking one of your opponents so basically if mini gahigi exalted one type of effect where each other creature attacking your opponents gets plus one plus one it's all in turn so it Buffs up all of the rest of their army if as long as they're not attacking you there's a lot to like about these and there's nothing more satisfying than seeing something big scary hit the battlefield and then thinking you know what that's a you problem not a me problem and putting one of these cars on there and they're not they're not glamorous they're like a lot of cards we've talked about but I love this cycle and all of them like none of them show up in more than like eight percent of decks so I like these all these cards um at the different variants of them um I think they're they're a fun design and whenever I've played a pre-con with them they've always been fun to play but these very much fall into the category of I just have better things to do with my card slots that include one of these impetus cards um and maybe I shouldn't maybe you know sometimes like run the fun things better than running the good thing and I guess I'll try to do some of that but but this is never one of the fun things I decided to go with over the good thing so that that's to me why they don't make the cut they just never feel like they they earn a slot among the 99 for me over something that is maybe fun and really really good well Dana you know what that sounds like to me what's that it sounds to me like you're the person that Matt is going to put all these impetus cards yeah maybe right right absolutely for sure but but that that's a valid point because anytime somebody if somebody has a Voltron deck well you don't have to worry about that Commander anymore it buys you time until oh well Dana knocked out Joey and knocked out Chris well now I found an answer because it took him four turns to do it so right it's just a great I love these effects because I don't think it's I don't think it's bad I don't think it's great I'm not saying these are like absolute must play cards no for sure but I love what they do to the game because hey they move the game forward they make sure that yeah nobody just gets to sit around anymore you know everything's goaded so it has to be attacking and I don't think there was any card that caused more interaction when we're at Magic Fest Minneapolis or excuse me magic con Minneapolis then the impetus cards in my counselor for deck it they just they made the battlefield you nobody got to just sit around and linger anymore you didn't get to okay well I I've got a few turns to make things happen no you don't that's true well there's a there's a 12 12 that suddenly is just gonna start attacking haphazardly I love what they do to the game so they're not the most powerful I agree with you Dana but I also don't think that they're near as bad as you may be in your head can and have them as a specific thing that I'll point out for martial impetus in comparison to the other ones as well is that martial impetus has that same coordination of chaos thing where if you draw this in the late game and you're down to the one-on-one instead of having multiple opponents that one actually still has use in ways that some of the other impetus cards don't necessarily have use like putting that psychic impetus onto an opponent's creature is kind of like putting it onto your own creature you do give it flying it's a buff but like having the the goad on your own creature does feel a little bit strange whereas martial impetus giving an Anthem to all of your creatures for three Mana I mean that's actually an Anthem for three Mana is kind of a going rate and if you do have enough creatures to make that worthwhile then attacking is the thing you already wanted to do anyway so like this one actually feels to me like it still has a decent chunk of a payoff if you draw it down in the latter parts of the game in comparison to some of the other versions of this effect yeah so that one also gives me extra points for the martial impetus in particular yeah and and actually Joey so psychicampetus this is another one of those cards that the art betrays you does not get flying a second campus doesn't get flying does not okay yeah does not get flying I found out the hard way don't you worry oh yeah and I wasn't even looking if you know if I look at other versions of this card where there's just a cat with an eyeball going on instead of the bird with a glyph on it um it becomes a lot easier to tell uh I think it makes it makes a lot more sense yeah yeah I think I'll stick to using the old art so they don't act accidentally trick myself or anything like that that's funny all right well yeah then martial Olympics gets way more points since I could get POTUS in that case that's what I've learned either but both are still great cards in my opinion yeah okay I'll go on to one pick of mine here I gotta call out my ocean of bloomingdon like as long as you're talking about tokens that you would want to put an Anthem to my ocean of bloomingdon is only showing up in 4 800 decks right now and I think that's Bonkers because this makes so many tokens I know it's eight Mana I know that it only gets the indestructible counter on it if it was cast from your hand but the ability to remove that indestructible counter to create a one one colorless Spirit creature token for each permanent you control each permanent you control I've never seen this thing make fewer than 13 tokens and you know what you do with tokens yeah Pom-Pom right up you pump them up and they don't just hit for 13 damage they hit for 26 damage they hit for 39 damage they hit for lethal and there are a ton of cool tricks that you can do proliferating counters like these I just you know you can use this ability at instant speed as well like right before it's your turn to get surprise attackers that they couldn't wrath I imagine a bloomingdon is one of my favorite ways to make a butt ton of tokens and again 13 is like the minimum amount I have also seen this card make more than 30 tokens before because you know stuff like Treasures are a thing emotional bloomington's amazing this should show up in at least more than like 4 800 decks like this card's so good yeah I I think and this is one of those cards where I think people just look at it and immediately like first of all think of the previous myogen cycle that was maybe a little bit underpowered and so they don't so there's that Association medially with it for one and five Mana three three white Pips is also scary and it can make it easy to like oh that's a lot of Mana what does it do uh and then just not think all the way through about how effective it's actually going to be how it's going to earn the Mana you spend on it so like I I agree that's a really good card Joey but I also understand why folks get scared away from it and why the numbers are lower yeah Dana I I'm with you I think a lot of players will see an intimidating Mana cost like my agenda Bloomington or like my challenge with gold warden's Gambit they're gonna see eight Mana no I'm ever gonna spend that much money on this there's no way and they kind of write it off immediately without actually like you said playing it through okay let's start here yeah um but what does the card actually do and this card does so much and considering you know you can remove the indestructible counter from myogen instant speed you get a butt ton of blockers there's just so many ways that you can get more than eight mana's worth out of this I I like this but I again I understand why people are kind of like please I don't know I think especially the thing that gets me about it is like there are Spirit commanders out there like quintorius or Millicent they will buff up or care about you having a lot of spirits so I'm like here's the thing that makes more Spirits than you even know what to do with like playing an eight Mana thing you usually want it to do something that's going to gesture towards winning a game and in those decks I feel like this is doing exactly that like pair it with mirror entity and you're just like you're taking stuff over I this makes more bodies than most token creating spells out there and that's what matters a whole lot to me if you really want to go wide this is the card that's going to do it I think it deserves a second look in the 99 of a whole lot of decks that care about having a bunch of tokens in play or just the cards that care about spirits like come on Millicent you can play this in more decks and you know it well the last one I I have here that I want to talk about um and I think I challenge the stats in this card at some point but I I'm still just constantly perplexed it's in less than 5000 decks that's choose your weapon from Adventures in the Forgotten Realms um it's not one of those modal cards two-ended green for an instant the the weaker mode here is this spell deals five damage Target creature with flying although why do you use that on multiple occasions the reason I think I I thought it would see you a ton more play was the two weapon fighting mode double Target creatures power and toughness on the turn uh it's not berserk but like berserk's an insanely broken card it's also expensive this is a dirt cheap version of Berserk that's despite being you know two men and more and doing less is still crazy powerful it was one of those cards I'm like oh this is just going to be in a ton of of green decks I had a couple decks I wanted to add it to I bought multiple extra copies because I'm like I'm gonna grab them now when they're 35 cents that way when they're you know three dollars in a couple years because they haven't gotten a reprint I won't have to worry about it and it's just not shown up in decks i i i this is one of those ones that confuses me I just thought people it has all the things you would think they want it's kind of a bargain version of an existing card that sees a lot of play it does a really splashy powerful thing it's not like this is confusing it's doubling your you know ginormous creature making it even bigger I I just thought this card would would take off in a way and it just hasn't at all especially like a comparison I gotta make here is the car to unleash Fury one in a red instant double the power of Target creature until end of turn that's showing up in 26 000 decks and I know it's in a different color but like that's a decently similar ishability and the difference in numbers there is staggering especially because Choose Your Weapon doesn't just double power it also doubles toughness you can use this to escape from a toxic day loser stuff like that like I'm with you I don't I don't get it yeah the the double toughness effect that's what I was really dwelling on because there aren't a lot of car there's pump spells that give like giant growth whatever but for the most part it's everybody cares about power and doubling power doubling toughness is very relevant because all sudden you have a trampling creature coming through well I mean if you double the five toughness blocker like that's gonna soak up significantly more so it could be almost a fog effect to some extent too uh making sure that you know the combat damage trigger of some creature doesn't happen stuff like that so there's a lot to like here just again it's not one of those glamorous cards and I think Dana you you had said that masterful replication the first mode really isn't that good I think the second mode here is next to irrelevant because nobody plays those types of effects anymore they just play flat removal so you're basically playing this for the first mode and and the question comes down to is how much do you really need that effect often well and the things that you can do by manipulating the power and toughness of your creatures as well like if you have a greater good in play and you want to draw even more cards like I just think that that sounds nice if you want your galta Primal hunger Commander to suddenly be surprised it's lethal like I mean those are those are are very cool moments I think this card is also capable of really memorable tricks as well and and that's why it also is very eye-catching to me well there's been more than one occasion when I've cast your race cars expertise the honor choose your weapon and double the creature's power when there's just so many like little weird Corner case uses for this kind of card and yeah it's I I I it's not in a situation where I thought it was gonna be good and like was disappointed in it it's been as good as I thought it would be and it just has not caught on yeah nice stuff so on a final note I want to throw out one this isn't a specific card but it's more of like a category of cards I got yes and Matt I'm sure that you're going to be with me on this one too um uh we're we're talking about balder's gate again but like backgrounds in the 99 like the backgrounds are really good and I am a little bit surprised that a lot of the backgrounds haven't caught on in the 99 nearly as much especially if you have a partner deck if you've got two commanders and you're getting double benefits off of your backgrounds like I look at Candle keep Sage for instance and it gives your commander creatures the ability when this creature enters or leaves the battlefield you draw a card and it's showing up in less than 6 000 decks in the 99 I I just feel like these are really really good and getting double benefits off of backgrounds is really great if you've got Partners but even if you don't just these have some very very cool effects ones that give your stuff double strike ones that pump your tokens I once I make your stuff unblockable like there's these are really really cool things and I am surprised that they haven't caught on in the 99 a little bit more often than they have well if you want proof that people aren't listening to what we say just look at backgrounds we've been preaching about these cards for forever they're so good it's it's probably I would say now correct my phone Dana but I would say it's probably one of our favorite tweaks on just any given mechanic over the past couple years as just as far as like as a podcast absolutely and that's that's just looking at them in terms of like as another way to get kind of pseudo Partners they're just so good though in the 99 and and I feel like if you are playing a deck with Partners or you're building a deck with partners and we're going to get a bunch more partner-esque combinations the new Doctor Who said as well um oh that's right the first thing you should do is just like okay what backgrounds are available in in my colors because you're you're doubling up how effective they are a lot of them are very effective even with one Commander um they're crazy some of them if you have multiple commanders so yeah like that's the first thing you should look at I think if you're playing a partner deck out there is just well what are the real backgrounds and what can I do with them because you'll be shocked at how effective they really tend to be in those kind of decks well and not just the Doctor Who that reminds me we had the stranger things secret layer cards right that also had partner with a I mean so yeah any variation of partner just gets exponentially better whenever you put one of these backgrounds in your 99 so yeah man every time we revisit this I just realize more and more this card is great yeah I really really like these I'd love it if they got to see a little bit more play I'm telling you that set was full of gems we've been saying it for we've been saying it for so long that people gave us negative podcast reviews about it can you believe that like we promise these cards are good you guys I hope that people are catching on that's that was fire uh anyway not to gripe it's just I don't know why some of these cards aren't showing up more in the 99 but a lot of these cards we talked about I feel like they really deserve a second look because there's a lot of hidden gems out there yeah well I mean the the game is growing the format is huge so it's it's and you only have so many cards it's some people on the rules committee think you can only have 99 cards in your deck I don't know what I'm I'm mocking that argument please don't think I believe that at all I'm very glad for the deck limits but yes you only have so many card slots in your deck and it just it's a deck building challenge just to play all the cards you want to play not even counting or considering all the cards you're like oh I probably should be playing this too um yeah that's fair for every card that we say is underplayed technically you do have to make some cuts on those and it's not like we're in a position to cut bad cards out of our deck we do have to cut good cards to make room for great cards as well but hopefully listeners these are interesting cards that you'll give a second look to and really we would love to hear from you about any cards that you're surprised haven't shown up more in the data as well and why is that do you think that people are misreading them do you think that the set that they came in is one of the things that's causing them to become overshadowed what are some overshadowed cards out there that you wish would get a little bit more love we would love to hear from you and with that fellas I guess we're going to call this episode to a close that's right Dana now we're able to end a podcast not during your introduction trying to end the podcast so let's call it there if folks want to get in touch with us where is it that they can find us all Matt so you can find me on the twitters at mathmus 55 that's m-a-t-h-i-m-us55 and don't forget Wednesday evenings we're streaming over at twitch.tvhretcast where we have guests on every single week and it's always a fun time so make sure you tune in for that as well and Dana you can find me on Twitter at Dana roach I'm writing articles for ED its wreck and you can find all of us together at patreon.comcast and I'm Joey Schultz you can find me at Joseph M Schultz on the online and you can find the cast anywhere online at edhretcast plus if you've got a question for us you can contact us at edhretcast gmail.com or thanks go out once again to chase the cardboard Bandit for assisting me with the post-production of the show you can find them online at Mana curves this news will be back at you next week with more data and insights but until then remember EDH wreck your deck before you wreck your deck [Music] thank you

Channel: EDHRECast

Views: 47,310

Keywords: magic the gathering, commander, edh, edhrec, mtg

Id: d-pxMJ2oFXQ

Length: 52min 25sec (3145 seconds)

Published: Fri May 26 2023