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Magic: the Gathering - Battle for Zendikar |OT| Lands matter (but nothing else does)

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I'm drafting BW

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Daedardus

Member
Well, shit. I didn't think it had been that long, but it is about 13 years since I last played with actual cards.

I had to read up the rules on regeneration after playing Magic Duels Origins and being like, "Why did my guy go to the graveyard? Why didn't it let me regenerate him?" Damn kids with their fancy new rules.

Damage isn't going on the stack anymore, so that may be where the confusion lies.

Can't you regenerate right at the end of declare blockers?
 

Yeef

Member
Before 6th edition, there was actually a step between damage assignment and damage being dealt where you could play regeneration and prevention effects (but nothing else).

I originally quit the game just after Exodus and came back after M10, so damage on the stack always seemed weird to me.
 

Angry Grimace

Two cannibals are eating a clown. One turns to the other and says "does something taste funny to you?"
[QUOTE="God's Beard!";178916981]Well, we're about at the halfway point for spoilers. Now show me some Eldrazi support cards, Wizards![/QUOTE]

The full set is revealed on Friday, but they aren't going to show you shit in terms of commons until then.
 
If you end that Knight of the Reliquary combo with a Sejiri Steppe or a Soaring Seacliff, you could insta-win. The question is whether or not the Retreat is a good enough card by itself to warrant an inclusion. Untapping your mana dorks is no joke either; I have to imagine that testing some sort of Bant midrange deck would be worth it.

It's too bad Bring to Light doesn't get enchantments.
 
If you end that Knight of the Reliquary combo with a Sejiri Steppe or a Soaring Seacliff, you could insta-win. The question is whether or not the Retreat is a good enough card by itself to warrant an inclusion. Untapping your mana dorks is no joke either; I have to imagine that testing some sort of Bant midrange deck would be worth it.

It's too bad Bring to Light doesn't get enchantments.

You also get two untaps with Retreat and Knight if you keep tutoring up fetches so any creature with a 0 or 1-mana tap activation like Kiki Jiki is another route to combo off. You could also just make enough mana to get Sovereigns and end the game with trample damage off Eldrazi Conscription.

I don't know what the best options would be. Worth a gatherer search though.

Thraben Doomsayer, maybe? It's pretty easy to trigger Fateful Hour when you're pulling every fetch and shock out of your deck.

So the combo is basically play Retreat, pass, play a land, end step Collected Company into Knight of the Reliquary and Thraben Doomsayer, make a crap ton of 3/3s, tutor up a Steppe and attack with Knight. If that's not good enough the tokens close it out?
 

Angry Grimace

Two cannibals are eating a clown. One turns to the other and says "does something taste funny to you?"
[QUOTE="God's Beard!";178918580]You also get two untaps with Retreat and Knight if you keep tutoring up fetches so any creature with a 0 or 1-mana tap activation like Kiki Jiki is another route to combo off. You could also just make enough mana to get Sovereigns and end the game with trample damage off Eldrazi Conscription.

I don't know what the best options would be. Worth a gatherer search though.[/QUOTE]

Swing with your Steppe Lynx for 20. Or cast Emrakul off of Lotus Cobra.
 

Angry Grimace

Two cannibals are eating a clown. One turns to the other and says "does something taste funny to you?"
[QUOTE="God's Beard!";178919525]Or just get Rogue's Passage with your last land and use the remaining mana to just kill them with the knight.[/QUOTE]

Sejiri Steppe to avoid blocks and you can avoid removal by playing the Sejiri Steppe in the removal color, see if they respond to the Steppe trigger, and use the ability again to get a different Sejiri Steppe if they do?
 
[QUOTE="God's Beard!";178919525]Or just get Rogue's Passage with your last land and use the remaining mana to just kill them with the knight.[/QUOTE]

Rogue's Passage makes a lot of sense as the finisher, or the classic Kessig Wolf Run (although I imagine you play three colors, not all the colors, unless you're getting cute and playing with something like Zur). Sejiri Steppe still seems like a useful way to tutor up protection for the Knight.

You definitely want to keep it simple and keep the deck's core midrange plan. One of the problems of putting it in a CoCo shell is that you're either trimming removal/disruption or you're just making your CoCos less consistent. So what spells do you play alongside CoCo and Retreat? Path (almost certainly)? Stubborn Denial (maybe)?

There's a lot of value in being able to play a Knight on turn three and just win on turn 4, and you don't need much else to go right to make that work. If your turn 4 land is a fetchland, you can fetch at any time to untap the Knight to go get a Sejiri Steppe to protect himself (even during combat).
 

Angry Grimace

Two cannibals are eating a clown. One turns to the other and says "does something taste funny to you?"
If you end that Knight of the Reliquary combo with a Sejiri Steppe or a Soaring Seacliff, you could insta-win. The question is whether or not the Retreat is a good enough card by itself to warrant an inclusion. Untapping your mana dorks is no joke either; I have to imagine that testing some sort of Bant midrange deck would be worth it.

It's too bad Bring to Light doesn't get enchantments.

Bring to Light for Idyllic Tutor for Retreat to Coralhelm =V Or Kruphix's Insight.
 
Bring to Light for Idyllic Tutor for Retreat to Coralhelm =V Or Kruphix's Insight.

My memory of the card was bad. At first I thought it would get any type of card, so you could use it to fetch and play either half of this combo and I got a tad bit excited. Then I got bummed out when I realized that it couldn't hit the Retreat. :(
 

Socat

Member
Rogue's Passage makes a lot of sense as the finisher, or the classic Kessig Wolf Run (although I imagine you play three colors, not all the colors, unless you're getting cute and playing with something like Zur). Sejiri Steppe still seems like a useful way to tutor up protection for the Knight.

You definitely want to keep it simple and keep the deck's core midrange plan. One of the problems of putting it in a CoCo shell is that you're either trimming removal/disruption or you're just making your CoCos less consistent. So what spells do you play alongside CoCo and Retreat? Path (almost certainly)? Stubborn Denial (maybe)?

There's a lot of value in being able to play a Knight on turn three and just win on turn 4, and you don't need much else to go right to make that work. If your turn 4 land is a fetchland, you can fetch at any time to untap the Knight to go get a Sejiri Steppe to protect himself (even during combat).

wonder if this kind of deck could make room for lotus cobra? probably not to keep removal options in , but a man can dream.
 
wonder if this kind of deck could make room for lotus cobra? probably not to keep removal options in , but a man can dream.

Possibly.

Knight + Retreat doesn't actually need much help to win, aside from the lands in your deck. Its biggest weakness is the fact that you only get one shot at it (well, technically future Knights will be gigantic, so it's probably OK). So having a Lotus Cobra on the field during the combo turn doesn't actually increase your chances of winning all that much.

So instead, you have to ask if Lotus Cobra helps during the games that you don't combo off, and I actually think the answer is no. I don't think you're making a big mana deck. Even though Lotus Cobra and Knight both love fetchlands, I don't think you need the additional mana. I think you will play mana-producing creatures, but you'll lean towards mana dorks like Noble Hierarch and Birds of Paradise to help you in the games where you have Retreat but don't have Knight.
 

Socat

Member
Possibly.

Knight + Retreat doesn't actually need much help to win, aside from the lands in your deck. Its biggest weakness is the fact that you only get one shot at it (well, technically future Knights will be gigantic, so it's probably OK). So having a Lotus Cobra on the field during the combo turn doesn't actually increase your chances of winning all that much.

So instead, you have to ask if Lotus Cobra helps during the games that you don't combo off, and I actually think the answer is no. I don't think you're making a big mana deck. Even though Lotus Cobra and Knight both love fetchlands, I don't think you need the additional mana. I think you will play mana-producing creatures, but you'll lean towards mana dorks like Noble Hierarch and Birds of Paradise to help you in the games where you have Retreat but don't have Knight.

Yea and the deck is already generating tons of mana anyways during the knight activations, so you can funnel that into Genesis Wave, Kessig Wolf Run or similar effects.

Wonder if this will take the toolbox approach to lands like Sejiri Steppe, Kessig Wolf Run, Rogue's Passage, etc
 
Sejiri Steppe to avoid blocks and you can avoid removal by playing the Sejiri Steppe in the removal color, see if they respond to the Steppe trigger, and use the ability again to get a different Sejiri Steppe if they do?

The problem with Steppe is that you're always leaving yourself open if you're not actually doing it in response to removal. If you stack it so untap happens first they can just kill knight in response to the untap. If you stack it so protection happens first they can just kill knight in response to the steppe trigger. When I was playing my modern brew of Mythic Conscription last year I almost never attacked with Knight when I had sovereigns out for that reason. Using the knight to protect the sovereigns or a second knight was always way better. I'd even attack with a Birds before the knight even if it was short of lethal. That's why I played 4 Geist in that deck, 17 evasive damage is a clean number for Modern lol

They kind of went from "lands matter" to "lands are the only thing that matter" with this set, eh?

Standard Lands decks incoming.
 

Haly

One day I realized that sadness is just another word for not enough coffee.
Wow.

T1 Mana Dork
T2 Reliquery
T3 Coralhelm
Start chain untapping your shit to play all your lands cards and then boom, right in the kisser.

You'd run 4 temple gardens, some Breeding pools, some Hallowed Fountains, maybe a Stomping Grounds. You'd have to give it protection somehow...

Okay it's too vulnerable to disruption but really I'd play it just for funsies.
 

Socat

Member
Wow.

T1 Mana Dork
T2 Reliquery
T3 Coralhelm
Start chain untapping your shit to play all your lands cards and then boom, right in the kisser.

You'd run 4 temple gardens, some Breeding pools, some Hallowed Fountains, maybe a Stomping Grounds. You'd have to give it protection somehow...

Okay it's too vulnerable to disruption but really I'd play it just for funsies.

Thats where Sejiri Steppe/Rogue's Passage comes in
 
People keep saying it's vulnerable to disruption, but the difference between this and Splinter Twin (or something of that ilk) is that you only get one-for-one'd with removal, and the next Knight represents a lethal threat as well.

The real question is how does the deck function when it draws Retreat but doesn't draw Knight. How does it function when it draws multiple Retreats?
 

Socat

Member
People keep saying it's vulnerable to disruption, but the difference between this and Splinter Twin (or something of that ilk) is that you only get one-for-one'd with removal, and the next Knight represents a lethal threat as well.

The real question is how can the deck function when it draws Retreat but doesn't draw Knight.

Not to mention anything that you might do with the extra mana you generated along the way
 

Angry Grimace

Two cannibals are eating a clown. One turns to the other and says "does something taste funny to you?"
People keep saying it's vulnerable to disruption, but the difference between this and Splinter Twin (or something of that ilk) is that you only get one-for-one'd with removal, and the next Knight represents a lethal threat as well.

The real question is how does the deck function when it draws Retreat but doesn't draw Knight. How does it function when it draws multiple Retreats?

Knight of the Reliquary is a modern playable value card just generally speaking so you just play it the same way you play Twin where you threaten to combo off but mostly just win off beats with Knight and Tarmogoyf.
 
Don't you have to, like, preemptively regenerate now ?

Yes, nowadays regeneration is a "shield" that saves your creature the next time it would die. You have to do it in advance.

I think by the time of their fight the mending had already happened, it was only 1000 years ago and we're past that now for "how long its been since Time Spiral"

It's actually supposed to have only been around 100 years.

Plus the whole "old/new planeswalker" think is something Wizards doesn't really want to acknowledge

They talked about it in all the story material around the Bolas/Ugin fight.
 

Haly

One day I realized that sadness is just another word for not enough coffee.
You could add the Craterhoof/Chord kit as a backup.
 
Not to mention anything that you might do with the extra mana you generated along the way
Kessig Wolf Run was a good one that was already brought up. There's any number of mana sinks you can figure out in modern.
Keep a fetchland on the battlefield and/or start your combo with Sandstone Bridge to give the Knight vigilance so it can attack with protection ready in response. Also, don't go off if you can't win.
Or play dispel
 
Can't you regenerate right at the end of declare blockers?

Yes. I read up on this afterwards. I think you can actually activate regeneration any time that you can activate an ability (if that makes sense). It gives the creature a shield that lasts until it is triggered or the turn ends. It is when that shield gets triggered that the creature is tapped and the damage removed.

In ye olden days of the batch, when I learnt to play, timing of things like regeneration was very much, "Good sir, do not concern yourself with learning a vulgar set of straightforward and consistent rules. Please instead consult this almanac, in which our Keepers of the Rules have painstakingly set out the arcane rituals to which you must adhere."

So I think part of the problem was that my friends and I never really made sense of how it changed when things moved to the stack, plus on reflection damage going off the stack probably was also making this more confusing.

[QUOTE="God's Beard!";178903073]The problem with damage on the stack was that although it's a fun interaction, it's both unintuitive for new players and actually reduced the depth of the game.

When damage is on the stack and your creature trades with their creature but you have a sac/blink effect like Mogg Fanatic, the play was to sac or blink your creature 100% of the time to get extra value. Now that damage doesn't go on the stack, there are more tactical decisions to make. Kill your attacker or get the sac effect? It makes for better gameplay.[/QUOTE]

MTG not being janky means things really have changed, haha.
 
  • Turn 3 Play Shaman of the Forgotten Ways
  • Turn 4 Play Retreat to Coral Helm, tap Shaman, play fetchland, tap shaman, crack fetchland, tap shaman, play Dragonlord Atarka.

TemurX decks are looking good.
 

Angry Grimace

Two cannibals are eating a clown. One turns to the other and says "does something taste funny to you?"
[QUOTE="God's Beard!";178925699]Kessig Wolf Run was a good one that was already brought up. There's any number of mana sinks you can figure out in modern.

Or play dispel[/QUOTE]

I think this deck just plays like a regular value Bant deck with Knight of the Reliquary (which is already good enough for modern to begin with) and a Twin-like instant combo.
 

Haly

One day I realized that sadness is just another word for not enough coffee.
I think this deck just plays like a regular value Bant deck with Knight of the Reliquary (which is already good enough for modern to begin with) and a Twin-like instant combo.

How dull!

I would rather build the deck around it, throw in 3CC transmutes...

Yes it'd be worse but INFINITE MANA
 
I think this deck just plays like a regular value Bant deck with Knight of the Reliquary (which is already good enough for modern to begin with) and a Twin-like instant combo.

Absolutely. That's why I keep asking what happens when you draw Retreat but not Knight. Can you still value them out with those kinds of draws?

Knight + Retreat: Instawin.
Knight w/o Retreat: Still good.
Retreat w/o Knight: ??

Is scenario 1 good enough to make up for scenario 3? Or is scenario 3 really not that bad? Can you structure the deck in such a way that you still get enough value off of Retreat to make it worth it?
 

Angry Grimace

Two cannibals are eating a clown. One turns to the other and says "does something taste funny to you?"
Absolutely. That's why I keep asking what happens when you draw Retreat but not Knight. Can you still value them out with those kinds of draws?

Knight + Retreat: Instawin.
Knight w/o Retreat: Still good.
Retreat w/o Knight: ??

Is scenario 1 good enough to make up for scenario 3? Or is scenario 3 really not that bad? Can you structure the deck in such a way that you still get enough value off of Retreat to make it worth it?
Retreat to Coralhelm is actually extremely good as a general proposition because you can Scry to dig for Knight of the Reliquary or tap down blockers to get in beats with Tarmogoyf, Knight of the Reliquary, etc.
 

Socat

Member
Absolutely. That's why I keep asking what happens when you draw Retreat but not Knight. Can you still value them out with those kinds of draws?

Knight + Retreat: Instawin.
Knight w/o Retreat: Still good.
Retreat w/o Knight: ??

Is scenario 1 good enough to make up for scenario 3? Or is scenario 3 really not that bad? Can you structure the deck in such a way that you still get enough value off of Retreat to make it worth it?

You could still be playing value creatures like goyf, voice of resurgence etc to keep the pressure on
 

Lucario

Member
More combo fodder for Retreat to Coralhelm. Most of these are not good, but at least they'll be fun EDH fodder. There's also a surprising amount of redundancy for a lot of these combo pieces, which is nice.

Combo 1


Image.ashx


Infinite landfall triggers. Need a third card to actually win the game with.

Combo 2

Any of these:

Image.ashx
Image.ashx
Image.ashx


+


Any of these:

Image.ashx
Image.ashx
Image.ashx


= Infinite landfall triggers. Also infinite 1/1 fliers if you used Meloku from the first column.



Combo 3


Image.ashx



+


Any of these:


Image.ashx
Image.ashx
Image.ashx
Image.ashx



= Infinite mana and attackers.

Combo 4

Same as Combo 2, but replace the land bouncer with the following:


Image.ashx


+

Image.ashx



Infinite mana.
 
Absolutely. That's why I keep asking what happens when you draw Retreat but not Knight. Can you still value them out with those kinds of draws?

Knight + Retreat: Instawin.
Knight w/o Retreat: Still good.
Retreat w/o Knight: ??

Is scenario 1 good enough to make up for scenario 3? Or is scenario 3 really not that bad? Can you structure the deck in such a way that you still get enough value off of Retreat to make it worth it?

with the amount of mana dorks Bant plays I'd figure you'd still get value out of it. Worse come to worst you can always clear the way to attack with Geist of Saint Traft.

Also


:( abrupt decay
 
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