Understated take: I love that you guys started adding all of the other cards that you all mention when talking about your ratings. Mtg is only getting more complicated so being able to see the cards is amazing
I still feel like Tomer over-exaggerates Hedron Archive's weaknesses out of spite, and Seth tries a little too hard to sell it. Hedron Archive isn't bad, but it isn't amazing either. It strikes me as the kind of card that you put in a precon to upgrade it, and then you later upgrade the deck further by switching it out. I think Hedron Archive has a decent home in some artifact-sacrifice-recursion type decks, but in a random Commander deck it is just fine. It's better than bad and worse than good. I wouldn't make fun of someone for playing it, but I would expect that there are often better options.
Imo, I like hedron archive alot more now that ornithopter of paradise was printed. I play sultai, so I have 4 signets, 3 talismans, mind stone and OoP to ramp me into a 4 drop on turn 3 AND have a chance of playing ANOTHER 2 drop on turn 3. I untap with 8 mana on turn 4. Thats insane enough to commander with protection or just drop a haymaker.
I think it's like a C. I'm never *looking* to put it in a deck, but it will be a good filler if I'm looking for a filler. The problem is that we have such good cards now that we don't have room to just fill
@@bodaciouschad I feel like since you are using green you don't need that many mana rocks I mean you have farseek natures lore harrow utopia sprawl wild growth sure you can put what 3 talismans 3 signets 3 diamonds everflowing chalice prismatic lens mind stone felwar stone arcane Signet and sol ring where do you find room for hedron archive
Hedron archive is good in “over-ramp” decks: basically decks where you are running way more ramp spells than the average deck to quickly get to high cmc game winners (expropriate etc.) Those decks will often get into situations where they’ve built up enough mana but haven’t drawn the bomb, and in those situations it does exactly what you hope it to do.
Yeah 100%. Decks where you're desperate to get to 6+ mana is its home and where it plays well. Thran dynamo puts it to shame a little, but it's a decent second option at 4MV. I think in general almost all 4MV+ mana rocks are for big mana decks. I'm surprised it didn't come up in their discussion properly.
I'm surprised no one mentioned The Immortal Sun. It's an unconditional spell discount, an anthem, and it draws you an extra card. Plus it keeps pesky planeswalkers off your back.
Saame, I run galazeth with 34 and regularly miss land drops. It just doesn't "really" matter in the deck because i have a ton of rocks making mana. No way any 31 land deck doesn't miss landdrops
@@SamuelKacerik That's just the honor system, and if you have no honor you'll be kicked out of playgroups pretty quick. As to whether the average person commenting on MtG videos on youtube is honorable... I won't comment on that either way.
The whole discussion around Sceptre of Eternal Glory is exactly why I don't mind running a bunch of cards that punish nonbasic lands. Mana bases these days are so greedy it makes cards like Blood Moon,Price of Progress, Archon of Emeria, Burning Earth, Primal Order, etc. so much more effective than they have any right to be.
Exactly, I felt like I was going insane hearing people say they wouldn't run a 4 mana rock that refunds you 3 mana in monoblue or monowhite, like of course you would.
I used to believe Tomer for the longest time, but then heard Seth make some good points about Hedron Archive and gave it a shot. That was probably three years ago at this point, and it has never let me down
Tomer comes on here and says if you don't have cards you should have built your deck better, but then sits in games with no cards in hand. I tend not to listen to his opinion when he brings that out- I also think thats the attitude that leads to a lot of boring "Draw/Ramp" commanders instead of fun synergy commanders.
The difference between Mind Stone and Hedron Archive is that if Mind Stone didn't exist you would play a 2 mv mana rock that taps for just 1 colorless. The cantripping is just gravy. Meanwhile no one plays Sisay's Ring.
I think there's an argument that you can take a lot of unplayable cards, like Sisays Ring, and if you staple Sac 2: Draw 2 cards, then they don't remain unplayable. That's the difference here.
I have so many 2MV rocks that I find it difficult justifying anything 3MV or higher if it doesn't have some significant side benefits because I've had some amazing gameplay results even from using some of the "enters tapped" 2MV rocks that either are creatures or can become creatures. To be clear I usually run around 8-10 rocks rarely including 3+MV rocks.
@@Ixidora While there's clear benefits to this, it depends on your commander. More expensive commanders want bigger rocks to get out faster. While MV2 is a sweet spot, there is no one size fits all.
@@apjapki That is fair, I don't generally play commanders over 5MV and don't know how the ramp looks for those decks. The most expensive commander I run is Tivit, Seller of secrets at 6MV but it is my "Welcome to the U.S.S.R." deck and has all my fast mana and proxies as it is my "8/9 power level " deck so mana is less of an issue as Tivit is also a combo piece and is only cast once. Forgive me for my haste, have a great day! :)
I've never had any other mana rock take me from an empty board, ready to die, and take me straight to the win. I'm sold on the citadel. (though to be fair, I've never untapped with Great Henge. It always gets blown up.)
Sarevok's tome is amazing. You're undervaluing the initiative. It's easy enough to hold onto and the benefit it gives you each turn on top of the mana rock makes the card phenominal.
Csst the card turn3-4 as normal. Go through the dungeon in 2-5 turns. The soonest you could use it would be turn 6, because it needs 3 mana. That's being generous and if you drew into it the first 4 turns or had it opening hand. The initiative is being rated fairly, the card just isn't fast enough and something like bolas citadel can be played faster and be used multiple times a turn, maybe until you run out of cards if your deck is built right
Coveted jewel is one of my favorites, particularly for thantis the warweaver or goad based decks! Effects like these actively speed up the game (like monarchy, the curse cycle)
Do you have a Coveted Jewel in a Thantis deck? I'd been considering doing so, but I was already running monarchy and initiative cards. Hard to fit it in. Also run a decent amount of artifact hate like Bane of Progress and Titania's Song.
I actually played against a guy who played a Coveted Jewel the other day, and I was like “oh, this will be interesting” but then he sacrificed it almost immediately to a sac outlet :(
Yeah, kinda sucks that any fun effect like that, the gut instinct of most players is to try and cheat the system instead of have fun. I personally don't understand that "this is a game, I'm not here to have fun I'm here to win" mindset. Just don't play cards like that if you don't want to engage their premise in good faith. Play with the spirit of the game, not just the letter of the rules text.
I think if we're not taking points from cards with color restrictions like pyromancer's goggles or bolas's(sic) citadel or any multicolor cards, it's fair to say that cards clearly built for mono color decks like scepter can still be As because mono color isn't just an archetype but an important chunk of the format.
I think it's hard to say Citadel is a mana rock when you can't play anything in your hand, and more crucially, your commander with it. Part of the reason to run mana rocks in commander is to help pay for your commander, either to ramp them out early, or to replay them again. I guess that's less relevant for 4+ mana rocks, but Citadel being a mana rock is a streeeeeeetch. Also, I believe that one crucial thing for commander seperating dynamo vs hedron archive is that dynamo goes infinite with iscochron reversal on it's own, which is HUUUGE and a reason to run thran dynamo by itself.
Hedron Archive is good in battle cruiser metas where the games are grinding and the two cards can help you dig. Nowadays it feels like most decks are able to curve out without issue, meaning the ability to dig sac the rock to dig just isn’t as useful as it used to be.
I love Phil but can you also put a static text card on the end with any comments from Richard? He had some very hot takes on card draw and I miss his no nonsense attitude.
I like the idea but I'm assuming if Richard doesnt have time to be on this episode then he definitely doesnt have time to sit down and write out his thoughts on all of these cards.
Stuff like that has made me legitimately enjoy green less and less over the years. What fun is a card that does everything you'd ever want? Just bad design overall.
@@BW-CZ The stuff that makes me worry is simplifying old challenges. Casting stuff from opponents decks almost always let's you spend mana as if it were any colour now. Clones almost always let you ignore the legend rule. It's sad because it simplifies the complexity of the game.
@@totalcoward if Citadel is a rock, so is Omniscience, as is Jolene and Prosper. Oh, also the new cycle that let's you pay 2 life for 1 individual color pip. As is K'rrik and fuck it so is Treasonous Ogre. Also, Dockside is a mana rock.
I mean it maybe a good card if your budget is funded entirely from raiding your little brothers piggy bank but honestly even at casual power level hedron archive is a pretty crappy card.
The first deck I put together runs 33 creatures, 33 lands, & 33 non-creature non-lands in the 99. It's a 3 color Marath deck with lots of mana rocks. My greatest land count is for my colorless Ulamog with 40 lands & and incredible amount of mana rocks. Ultimately, I believe if the mana rock costs less than your commander, then it's okay to run it in your deck. *Clash On* !
That's what I subscribe to as well. Generally speaking I want to choose ramp that ramps me into something (usually the commander). In Ulamog I'm totally fine running 4+MV rocks like Hedron Archive because they're ramping me towards the main game plan of getting the commander on to the battlefield.
I'm with Tomer on the Sceptre being good for some decks. I think I might put this in a Feather deck, where getting mana rocks to make lots of coloured mana can sometimes be challenging.
Shoutout to Tomer for editing in real time the cards as they're being mentioned! Thank you very much for taking up the community's suggestion, it makes the podcast so much easier to follow :)
Also counterpoint: I think even outside of a dedicated dungeon deck Sarevok's Tome is at least a B both because it's not that complicated and also I think there are multiple initiative cards that are worth playing.
While watching this, I was a bit conflicted on the idea of Bolas' Citadel being a "mana rock" but after thinking about it more, I've determined that anything which is not a land and adds extra mana to your Mana Reserve can be considered a "mana rock" for all intents and purposes, so I think we should decide as a community if this is a take that we can adapt to all of Magic (MTG). If you'd like clarification of what I mean when I say "mana reserve", click 'Read more' "Mana Reserve" refers to the total amount of mana you could generate (of any color, including colorless) from w/e your current board position is. If you have a lone Mountain (untapped), your Mana Reserve is 1 (meaning that there is the potential to add 1 mana to your mana pool). If you have a Mountain and tap it for a Sol Ring, your Mana Reserve is 2 until your Mountain untaps, at which point your Mana Reserve will increase to 3. If you are "tapped out", this should mean your Mana Reserve is 0 or empty.
I can totally feel Seth about the land thing. I think their are decks, that don't need as many lands, but those are like super low to the ground. I've had it to often aswell to be stuck on lands when borrowing a deck. I usually start with 37 lands.
I picked up coveted jewel a few months back because you guys mentioned it. It's an absolute blast to play with! Super strong too, as soon as there's any synergy going on. Where I have it is in a pillow fort-style deck with high mana haymakers and evasive creatures so I can always take it back and give it away politically. The way it plays, it helps me spiral out of control as it gives both significantly extra mana and a lot of extra cards. It's definitely not for every deck, but since there's so much it works with I'd argue for A tier, with S tier fun!
Hedron archive embodies the fun and creativity of modern commander: if it's not the most efficient thing possible, it's complete trash. The versatility it offers doesn't matter, because your game plan has to be to pull off a two-card combo on turn four or five, or you're just playing the game wrong. It's a perfectly fine card with good utility, best suited to non-green decks with a decent chunk of mv-5+ cards. In the majority of groups, it's a perfectly good card that will perform exactly the same as its alternatives in 90% of games - sometimes even better with that draw utility. But in the sorts of groups where anything above 3 mana is essentially unplayable, no duh, it's unplayable.
Timeless Lotus is great for me because it's Legendary, and one of my favorite decks is Sisay Legendary tribal; so being able to fetch it up with Sisay is a huge plus. Prismatic Geoscope is so much more playable after New Capenna, now that the full cycle of triomes is complete. Fetches + triomes = two lands to get full value from Geoscope.
I’m curious on what the gangs opinion on Stonespeaker crystal is, it’s like Hedron archive, but you’re trading the two cards for one card and exiling graveyards when you sac it instead
Its a fine card, i dont see myself playing it in anything other than a slightly upgraded precon, i actually belive crim is right 😁 Id say you put it in a precon to first upgrade it a bit and then take it out again one you keep on upgrading later, or if your on a strict budget or if it has synergy like the planeswalker daretti but its not an a for sure Tomer and seth both are a bit over the top in both directions
The issue with primal amulet and spellslinger in my opinion is that spellslinger likes to play a lot of cantrips and the mana reduction doesn't work on 1 mana spells or for spells like expressive iteration
First time listener to this group and listening to them I don't even feel like we're playing the same game, the thought process behind some of the things they say sound completely crazy.
I think the reason Primal Amulet doesn't see a bunch of play in Spellslinger is that most spellslinger decks wanna cast cantrips and care more about quantity of spells rather than the quality. Bigger spellslinger lists might want to play it.
Most of you do not run enough basics. Y'all gotta have enough so that if you get blood mooned, back to basicsed, and have all your rocks and dorks blown up that you can still make enough colored mana to fulfill your colored pips.
Making my case Sarevok's Tome. The turn it comes down it taps for 2 and fetches a basic, if you have not played a land for turn it in effect creates 3 mana for 4 (which is a Thran). On the next turn, if you kept the initiative it fixes your draw with Scry 2. Allowing you to find another land or a cast-able spell. If you have lost initiative, it will still nets you two mana if you include the basic land. In the late game after you have completed a dungeon, this works as a repeatable card draw/cascade effect at instant speed. Notably, it exiles cards until you hit a nonland but does nothing with the exiled lands (they aren't shuffled back in) so at the point where you don't need more mana, Sarevok's Tome thins your deck of lands.
Timeless Lotus is amazing in my Sisay, Weatherlight Captain deck for two reasons 1. I don't have an expensive mana base to guarantee max domain 2. You tutor it with Sisay just before your turn, so it immediately replaces itself with instant tutor value
I agree with you Tomer in running many basic lands. My land count in most two color decks is 10 color fixing lands, 10-16 basics or 5-8 of each basic, 2 land destruction to hate out unfair lands, 1-2 graveyard hate lands, and the rest are usually utility lands be they for drawing cards, removal, synergy, or color fixing
My problem with most of these in general is that A. Ramp is best done early and cheap, a 4+ mana rock is too slow, I need to be playing big things by then. B. Artifacts get blown up too easily. I’m hesitant to even play Signets since SO many cards these days seem to have “blow up an artifact” tacked on to them in the pickup games I play at my LGS.
Tomer is right on Scepter of Eternal Glory being a B-Tier. You obviously don't want to play it in a three or more color deck but in a 1 or 2 color deck, you can get a lot of value out of it.
I don't think it was noted, unless I skimmed over it, but prismatic geoscope vs timeless lotus: geoscope lets you add mana "in any combination of colors", so it will let you cast spells with double the same pip, or triple the same, etc, whereas the lotus doesn't. You can also turn it on earlier with things like dryad of the illisian grove, or the world tree, or anything else that makes lands into all land types on one or more lands. And it's not legendary so you can make copies of it and they all work well, card's way better than timeless lotus.
Ok so for Headron Archive for the most part I agree with Seth The downside it has compared to commandersphere is that you have to pay manna and sacrifice it to draw the cards. If it was tap it sacrifice it draw two cards that'd be a little bit better. Because the nice thing about commander's fear is when somebody wraths all artifacts on the board you can sacrifice it and draw a card in response so you're at least not down a card but I do like the ability to just have extra card drive I need it.
@56:26 Teferi Chain Veil slapped the table with Chromatic Orrery just saying :P I fully recognize that was a cEDH tournament and does not provide a good amount precedent for the entirety of EDH. As for Amulet vs Goggles, I usually prefer the Goggles for my Izzet builds, which are Veyran/Vadrik/Magnus the Red (I use them interchangeably as they share a good portion of their core pieces). Goggles come in and is ready to use. Amulet sits there a bit. Besides, while Crim is partially right that blue mana is important in these decks, some of the newer red spells like Jeska's Will, Finale of Promise, Apex of Power, Brass's Bounty, Chandra's Ignition, Mizzix's Mastery(Overloaded), Big Score, Invoke Calamity, Past in Flames(Flaskback Cost), Magma Opus are game ending when copied.
Favorite "mana rock" MV 4+: Golden Guardian from Rivals of Ixalan, which transforms into Gold-Forge Garrison. Ghalta decks especially love a 4/4 every turn without spending more cards in hand.
I ran primal amulet x4 in standard in a 4 color nuclear anti-meta deck that won against all the archetypes... EXCEPT TEMPO BLUE. But at that time it saw so much love and play with that deck that literally only had 4 creatures, 4 artifacts, and 4 enchantmentd. 16 out of 72 cards were permanents and that made it fun. In commander I play it in spell duplication decks, storm decks where you can use repeated reverberation, a thousand year storm and other synergies to create storm counts inside of storm counts. Magecraft triggers get nutty with it. Storm-Kiln artist and primal amulet on the field basically means you start playing solitaire. Same goes for baral plus primal amulet because in those decks you X blue blue card draw spell costs X and that is it. Pay 5 to draw 5 cards. Not bad at all.
Great discussion! To me the discussion about 4+ mana rocks is a little more interesting than the 3mana ones since they are a bit more niche. Just a little suggestion but you could include the price when you display the cards for RU-vid. I swear you used to do it so if it's too much work then no worries. I realize you folks probably bank episodes so the price might change in that time.
There are decks that need the card draw of Archive, but also need the ramp from it too. I play it in Sheoldred for both modes. Early game, it ramps me and let's me push explosive plays. Late game, it turns into a decent card draw spell. It's not necessarily great at either of them, but it's better than the do nothing that Tomer thinks it is.
Tomer is correct about Sceptre of Eternal Glory. That thing is great in mono-color, and the "worry" about not having basic lands is...not a worry at all in mono-color and I'm confused as to why it is.
Saervok's tome seems great in an etb/blink deck to reset the rock and get another venture trigger. Even without being initiative focused this seems pretty cool!
Came to see what they say about The Throne of Eldraine. Edit: didn't notice it was done 11 months ago Sarevok's Tome is an easier to manipulate Temporal Aperture. And you don't have to randomly shuffle your deck each time you use it. I use Scepter of Eternal Glory in my mono-white Angel deck. lots of white pips so the 3 white is better than 3 colorless
The reason Seth feels like he needs so many lands is pretty apparent from the card draw episode, he favors high cmc high impact card draw spells over the cheaper card draw spells. 30 lands is more than enough if your deck is packed with 1 and 2 mana card filtering and card advantage spells.
It often seems strange to me that they'll evaluate cards like hedron archive low in the context of a random deck that doesn't make good use of it. I guess I don't like to build decks with the same staple package rather than customizing for powerful synergy. I love hedron archive but I run it in decks that can recur, copy it, or double the effect. For example, recently using mirrorworks to copy the artifact, lithoform engine to copy the draw, and alhammarets archive to double the draw to draw 8. Awesome. That might seem like magical Christmas land but if you set your deck up right then you can and I do often get that. But I'm not running any of that in my enchantress deck which is completely different than my Karametra, Ezuri claw of progress, planeswalker, landfall, kalamax, spellslinger, zubera, equipment, Prosper, dragon tribal, 5 color political, etc. There are so many different ways to ramp that can enhance different strategies which I find a lot more fun. But maybe I'm biased because I used to work at an lgs and played probably 1 or 2k commander games so variety was more important to me.
Coveted Jewel is another card that also gets help from the Sheoldred and Quezas of the world. Where you drawing cards is a nice bonus, but you need to get your opponents drawing cards.
Primal amulet is cool but its alot more work then it seems in actual practice to get it copy things. There are other spells that you can just use out right to copy, sometimes multiple copies which generally end up becoming your spell slinger win condition. Copying one spell a turn for the rest of the game just puts you into archenemy status. The longer you have it the less time you are going to spend alive at the table. I used it in my casual experience counter spell slinger deck (can't remember the commanders name been taken apart since then) and it often combo'd with price of progress or comet storm as a win con. *Shrugs its fun but it just a generic value engine which most spell slinger decks don't generally use. They'd rather have another fun spell to cast then to just double something their already doing.
If you can get Archive in the grave from your hand and then get to spend 4 mana for mana rocks that produce a combined 4 mana, then yeah it’s a good rate. But I think it’s very telling that you need 2 Hedron Archives for the price of 1 for it to be good. Not to mention it’s only really “incredible” if you’re able to double the tokens Osgir makes, making it a 4 for 1 bargain sale at that point.
There's also a "value over multiple turns" factor that you are not accounting for. If your Hedron Archive sits out for lets say 4 turns, you actually got 4 less mana than you would have gotten. And lets say your deck is built poorly or you get unlucky and somehow you run out of gas and have to crack the Archive. That effectively costs 4 mana to do so, since you have to give up 2 mana from tapping the archive in addition to pumping in 2 more mana, and now you're also down 2 mana for the rest of the game since you don't have your archive anymore. And it's especially bad if it gets blown up by a board wipe because then you got no benefit in exchange for having less mana. Commander's Sphere is a superior card to Archive in pretty much every way.
And if you don't agree that it costs 4 mana to crack an Archive, think of it this way. If you have an Archive and 4 lands in play, you have 8 mana to spend, right? But if you crack Archive, how much mana do you have left to spend? That's right, 4 mana left that turn.
@@Tvboy777 Sure, sure. But I doubt that you spend all of your mana on each turns in every game. And sure I too would play commander sphere over many rocks, but the entire video was about comparing 4+ mana rocks so I think that is kind of cheap, like "Did you know that sol ring is in fact better than most mana rocks?" . My point mostly is that I don't think thran dynamo or headron archive are overly good or overly bad. I just think that the 1 mana is such a small difference for the opportunity cost of being able to draw cards if you are in trouble. Basically I'd say Thran Dynamo is better, but I don't agree with Tomer's logic that Headron is unplayable.
Hedron Archive is a fine card. If you play in a group where you can get away with playing 4 mana rocks then I'd definitely play it. I'd say Dynamo is better, but not by a wide margin and they're very comparable. The flexibility is nice and the mana production is still on curve. 4 mana ramp (hell, 3 mana too) in general is just something the internet loves to dump on.
My opinion on Hedron Archive is that its a solid card that doesnt really have too many homes. Yes, it's 8 mana to get the cards, but you hopefully already produced that much or more mana by the time you crack it. I feel like the arguments against it misrepresent the order of actions you take before cracking the archive. you usually dont do that until much later in the game. Also, thran dynamo is better on turns 3 and 4 when you would optimally play it, but that ramp stops mattering the later into the game you get as you hit land drops and cast other spells, where having the archive to get 2 cards becomes much better, again you already got the mana back from it
I love Primal Amulet. I include it in my spellslinger decks, however I want to note part of the aversion to it may come from the fact it requires the 4 counters in order to flip. I can see some players feeling it may be too risky for a sweet effect.
Some advice for anyone listening. Run stuff like hedron archive and than dynamo only if you run 6+ of 2 cmc mana rocks like the diamonds, mind stone colorless rocks, and the talismans if they are in your color. It's easier to pump them out on turn 2(if you run 1 mana dorks) or turn 3 if your just playing rocks and lands.
Caged Sun is good for 5 color/one color decks. * Say a white deck that has whatever color creature that's also a white creature. Same goes double for a deck with whatever color creature and also a blue creature. Blue having almost no mana ramp in general, Caged Sun is a major bonus. *All creatures share a common color plus whatever other color they have.
I think the biggest problem with Scepter of the Eternal Gods is that in a mono color deck if you have 3 basics on the battlefield to turn it on you dont really NEED the color fixing anymore which makes it just strictly worse than Thran dynamo in like +90% cases. Still a cool card and maybe in a less competitive format that takes a long time for games to end. getting more BIG mana rocks to play huge spells could be worth it.
Not an artifact, but no less non-creaturey-dorky than artifacts. And can only be played in decks with a red(-plus) identity, but that's no different than a Boros/Izzet/Rakdos/Gruul Locket (and can actually be played in more decks than those can)...but my vote goes to...Mana Echoes. It's an absolute beast in tokens decks and tribal decks (and even better in tribal tokens decks!). The amount of mana that pours out from it just while you're doing what you're already doing is insane! Best card in my Kykar deck for sure (and that runs literally no creatures in the 99!).