@magica3526 discarding down to hand size makes the game quicker because you're forced to go down to your best 7. I also play alot of graveyard/mill decks, so I might just be built differently ig
It's more fun when another player has smothering tithe and another player has a Rhystic study and another player plays fractured identity and copies it so everyone other than the rhystic study and tithe player will now be asked in sweet revenge by 3 people do you pay the and an 2? :P
One mono blue player? Any deck running blue should have a study in it. Not that expense and doesn't have hexproof/ward/phasing... just pop it if you don't like someone running it/gets out of hand. Usually, conversely, for that same reason, is why the study may only net you a couple cards (still amazing). Ik... ik...
Or a 4th thing: I want to get my grubby little hands on as many cards as possible, and hold them at all once so Jim audibly sighs every time I sift through my hand for a counterspell during our game of commander.
You gotta try playing Simic in commander. You draw 30+ cards in a turn AND you have the mana to cast them. You run the tower to make your end step take less time.
Commander format games tend to last a lot longer than YuGiOh from what I hear, especially in casual (the vast majority of the format). Being able to play something like Distant Melody, which draws a card for each creature of the same creature type, and not only draw cards in the double digits but potentially deck yourself out from card draw and instantly lose in a *99 card format* (not counting Commander) is not unheard of in token decks. Or I guess Persistent Petitioners decks if you're a weirdo. Card draw is still powerful, but a lot less so than YuGiOh due to playing cards generally either requiring a resource or, in the case of lands, having a one-per-turn restriction. For example, I have a Brudiclad Commander deck, who can turn all of my tokens into copies of a token I control. My favorite bullshit to pull is making my tokens copies of a card called Academy Manufactor, which says if I make a treasure, clue, or food token, I instead create one of each (3 tokens total). A copy of it will see each of those tokens being made by the previous Academy Manufactor and thus make 9 tokens, then the next will see that and make 27, then 81, etc. So with a mere four on the field, Brudiclad can then make those 81 new arbitrary tokens, plus the Myr token he makes, into more Academy Manufactors. This alone would draw you 86 cards off of Distant Melody. Another single treasure and another turn would let Distant Melody deck yourself if you made a deck out of every magic card ever printed, by a wide margin. However, by the time you make that many creatures, you've usually already won the game.
I read about a guy who was playing mono red and lost because his opponent skipped playing a land first turn, discarded Iona, Shield of Emeria and reanimated her next turn naming red. Free discard is an underrated mechanic.
One counter point, if I may: While I agree that most decks that don't have strong draw card themes tend to need this less, you also have to consider other players' effect on your hand size. Others may have group hug strategies that may force you to draw, or worse... the inevitable Cyclonic Rift on your Combat Step with all your mana tapped, leading into dropping a majority of your precious board into the graveyard. I am totally fine with downgrading a basic land's specific mana to a generic colorless just for Rift-insurance.
I still think it's overall not worth iincluding in 3+ color decks, you have very few slots for colorless lands and there are at least 2-3 other utility lands better than this in every color combination.
@@HomeCookinMTGthere are a dozen better colorless utility lands, and one or two that tap for colors too. Not many that tap for colors, since most color utility lands are trash commons that enter tapped.
I agree, but in this case it's very meta dependent. If no one you ever play with plays group hug or cyc rift, then snail's advice is more pertinent. If your meta has lots of those effects however, pop off with the reliquary tower.
As a Feather player, I very much like to keep my entire hand of the same five cantrips I cast every turn, the other five that protects my board and the rest of my cards that I've been drawing over the last four turns (not my turns of course, everybody else's turns).
@ComstarAgent I've done that, but I don't like doing that without an abundance of mana and it leaves me pretty vulnerable to removal, and lastly, a large chunk of the cantrips draw a card making it pointless for downsizing my hand.
So how many 1 mana spells you use on your deck? Feather is mana pip intensive. For example you have 4 mana open. With reliquary tower you can t play all your 1 mana pip spells. Think about it
I've played many, many, MANY people on Arena who play Reliquary Tower and then NEVER draw any cards. You should only play that card if you have cards that care about you have lots of cards in your hand.
Or cards that can get you large amount of cards in one go. This is especially true if Green is your card draw color, or if your card draw is less consistent and passive (Phyrexian Arena, Colossal Majesty) and more big and swingy (Coastal Piracy, Pull From Tomorrow, Distant Melody, Rishkar's Expertise). A well-timed Return of the Wildspeaker can take you from literal nothing to having to pitch 10+ cards at end step. Reliquary Tower lets you keep everything for future turns. For some color combos, especially non-blue ones, keeping cards you otherwise wouldn't be able to basically _is_ card draw, and sometimes you have to take what you can get.
I have a Locust God deck and ive been legit considering taking out all the default no-max-hand-size additions like RT, Decanter of Endless water etc. There are times when i wind up drawing like 18 cards in one go and I legit hate it. It just gets in the way, makes decision making harder, and sometimes it can actually hinder you (ex. having Anger or Brawn - cards you would actually prefer to discard). There are tons of spells that have "draw two, then shuffle your graveyard into your library" or whatever, just throw a couple things like that to give yourself the option to prevent decking yourself and you're good. People were looking at me crazy when i said i wanted to do this. This is validating.
Yeah, you have 1 turn to use those cards, then you get to keep the best 7. Yeah, it can be tough to lose those cards, but at least you don't have to read all 20 cards in your hand multiple times per turn. And you really dont need all 5 of those lands, you'll draw more or win before you do.
Reliquary Tower slides into a position between Mikokoro and Library of Alexandria, where it seems more useful than it actually is. You mostly won't need this, take a Demolition Field instead.
Reliquary Tower is considerably worse than Library. Library is very powerful on early turns, and can often be useful later in the game (especially if wheels are in play) while Reliquary Tower is rarely relevant. There's a reason it's banned/restricted everywhere it would've been legal
Tap a land to draw a card is immensely powerful, even with the restriction that you can only do it if you don't vomit your hand onto the table. Meanwhile, having no maximum hand size does nothing bit prevent you from having to grow up, unless your deck is designed to vomit your hand onto the table, but you're not quite ready to do so yet. You're only discarding the cards you're least likely to play anyway. Making eveyone draw a card for 2 and tapping a land is a much worse effect, and can actively ruin you. Reliquary is "harmless" by comparison, so i guess it fits right between "actively harmful (outside of grouphug)" and "wildly powerful" cleanly.
I have Reliquary tower in like two decks. One of which has a tendency to draw half the deck if it manages to storm off the right way. I don’t think I’ve ever had more than 10 cards in hand in a non blue deck unless it was from a windfall trigger
As someone who got into commander after playing in a more competitive environment, amongst other things many commander players should pay more attention their mana base.
So many players play lands that etb tapped, it's kinda nuts. If you're in a two color deck, literally just take basics and learn to Mulligan/ shuffle properly.
I refuse. The spirit of commander dictates that I run 15 lands and my curve starts at 7 cmc. And what the hell is “fixing”? Sounds like cheating to me!
@@Interrobang212there are playable tapped lands, I'm not against them entirely. The age of guildgates and Rugged Highlands is over though. Even the scrylands are becoming harder to justify playing.
I run it in my nine finger Keene deck because I don’t run much draw, but the draw spells and draw effect on my commander are all designed to draw a ton of cards. Plus the deck has the full utility land package and ways to tutor them out so my mana is still fixed, even without the colored mana from reliquary tower
Unless you're already running more utility lands than you should or just a lot of 1cmc and color pip intensive costs Reliquary tower is just nice to have, it's insurance against many bounce or hand reducing effects while allowing you to accumulate resources for future turns if you overdraw, there are 3 other players in the table and sometimes 20 cards after tapping most of your mana to draw them isn't enough to get through their answers but is enough to survive until the next turn and win once all your lands untap. TLDR: It isn't amazing in most decks but it's a cheap and safe to include utility land, it just makes sense to have it in 2/3 color decks
I play Ulamog in my turbo-fog commander deck, simply to discard him and reshuffle my graveyard. He almost never hits the battlefield, and I almost always have to discard once the deck starts humming. Ulamog is best boy.
I gain life for each card in my hand. My opponents lose life when I gain life. I have a lot of sorceries and creatures that care about how many cards I'm holding.
Wow, it's almost like he mentions mass amounts of card draw as an actual reason play the card in the short. This video isn't for the guy who built a nekusar deck and draws 40+ cards every game, this video is for the guy with the 3 color tribal deck who routinely empties their hand but still plays this land for whatever reason.
@@slavisatosanovic2672 or you got hard fucked and your deck bricked, source: i play cedh decks that run pita One in every 200 or so games i get gods worst shuffle and not even pita could save me
I run reliquary tower in a single deck and that is kura the boundless sky because when i make marit lage and momentous fall her i want to keep basically all 20 of the cards i draw most of the time. It’s also a good tutor target for kura
Unless you are running a 3+ color mana base you can definitely afford some utility lands. The only time reliquary tower has a downside is when you don't have enough of a color symbol and there is no other land available to play. That is unlikely particularly in a deck with enough drawpower for the effect to be relevant. More over extra cards, even ones that are useless at the moment, are a resource. They are free fodder for looting effects, protection from forced discard, make your opponent think you have more options/firepower, and sometimes the game changes enough a few turns later for it to be relevant again.
Agree, however I think you are underselling the cost and overstating the benefit. Colorless lands make many opening hands less keepable, no matter how many cards you intend to draw, and I think there's a ton of higher priority utility lands for basically every strategy than a land that let's you win 5% harder when you're already winning
Even with a 3 color deck its fine in commander. As long as you dont have a bunch of double mana specific spells you should be fine if the rest of your mana base is good
@@dansterstuffif your entire mana base is good, there are *much* more useful utility lands to run rather than Reliquary Tower. From Field of the Dead to Access Tunnel to Arch of Orazca to Ghost Quarter, and many many more. Reliquary Tower provides so little utility unless your deck is specifically built to need it that a Glimmerpost is more likely to matter, let alone an Inventor's Fair, Urza's Saga, or any land with color identity.
With reactive and toolbox'y decks especially, having all those extra cards is a massive upside, especially if you don't run much recursion. But it's equally true that a bunch of people run 3 or 4 infinite hand size cards, more or less needlessly. It's also a level up moment when you've figured the game out enough that you can intuit what's worth keeping or not, in different situations.
It a reactive toolboxy deck with no proactive side, no tutors, and no recursion, sure it can be useful to not be forced to play things for "no value". But, if you've had nothing to react to yet, you're either playing too cautiously, or you're winning hard enough that you don't need an even bigger hand. Or you'd get a better outcome from a tutoring or recuring utility land instead. Or a proactive land, like one that animates into a creature or something.
I think you've got a point but it's too simplistic. 1) humans aren't perfect decision makers all the time and we can't see the future. Even when we don't need all the cards, it's often impossible to know which ones will be better to keep. 2) a control deck doesn't have perfect answers to every situation. The more options the have the better, plus you always want to be making land drops. These types of decks would really prefer to have a handsize of 9-10 instead of 7. 3) bounce spells exist. And probably plenty more reasons, those are just the most obvious ones I came up with just now.
It is a really nice land in *some* decks. I run it in a few of my decks, but those decks care about having a lot of cards in hand, or drawing a fuck ton of cards at once and slamming them all down on the next turn. Most of the time, you don't need Reliquary Tower.
People gotta prioritize their current tactics and discard cards which arnt currently in-line with their current and future plays. And guess what? Discarding and drawing is normally Blue/Black and both have easy ways to get cards back.
This is used to play tower in every single deck and realized it's not doing enough. Not to mention the abundance of good other utility lands nowadays id rather have a utility land that is guaranteed to be good when i draw it not i need 7+ cards in hand for this to do something. Only deck id run it in is the howling mine nekussar style decks.
I run Reliquary Tower in exactly one deck, which is my Wyleth Soul of Steel deck. That deck draws an upsurd amount of cards and runs things like Empyrial Plate and Hand of Vecna. But I agree, unless hand size explicitly matters in your deck, it's a waste of a slot.
THANK YOU! I have been telling my playgroups for years that Reliquary Tower is a trap and that they’re putting it in decks that don’t need it. I’ve watched friends say it’s a mandatory include and then lose games because it doesn’t make the color of mana that they need, to the point where I don’t really deem it worthy even in decks that could seemingly want it most. I’ve made the point to them over these years that learning to make selections over what cards to discard to hand size is a test of skill that they would benefit in testing themselves on more often ☺️
If Reliquary Tower ruins the consistency of their decks due to pips, there are more problems than just the tower. There’s probably some other land hurting or they just didn’t include enough of a color/fixing. If 1/4 of the deck is black but they need 2-3 black pips for important cards, they should have closer to 1/3 of the land producing black in some way.
@@jolteon345sure, there are probably other terrible utility lands in any deck that's running Reliquary Tower too, because jank are often in the same deck together. That's not an excuse to run such a mid card, that's even more reason to take a close look at the mana base. If you need more colored pips, run a basic. If you just want untapped total land, run a more useful utility land, like a Radient Fountain (or something actually productive). Reliquary Tower is a symptom of a poorly designed mana base.
as a dirty izzet player, my happiness is directly correlated to the number of cards im drawing, even if ill get rid of any card for instant gratification. Ive embraced my red blue background and have maniacally getting rid of my deck as fast as possible, i dont care if they gi fo my hand or graveyard or if i play them, as long as i act entirely on impulse
I use it in two decks, but that's because they have things that get better with big hand size. Most of my brews want to discard, and love filling the bin, so it's actively against my goals to not discard when possible. Magar doesn't want to cast a big dumb 10 mana sorcery, he wants to make it a creature. Dimir reanimation doesn't want to play fair in similar fashion.
The problem with saying that 7 good cards is better then more cards is that in this case the only change in cards between this deck and the deck your proposing is the tower, so it's not 7 good cards vs 10 cards, its 7 good cards vs 8 good cards and 2 mid ones, for the cost of having access to the mana type that is the majority cost in most spells
I've had to explain this to my friends who ask why I'm not running Reliquary Tower effects in certain decks. For example for Curie and Beluna decks both have multiple of these effects. Tower, Though Vessel, Decanter of Endless Water, and Library of Leng (Curie)/Tishana(Beluna). Both are blue decks with a Commander that generates card advantage, want to draw into and hold up counterspells/removal, and overall the power of the induvidual cards in the decks are pretty weak unless gathered into a critical mass. (Curie wants to play lots of artifacts to make powerful Master of Etherium type creatures, and Beluna wants to survive until it can play Virtue of Strength and "Storm off" with something like Iraxxa or Flaming Tyrannosaurus.) On the other hand, my two other main decks are Kagha Self Mill, and Bladewing Dragon Reanimator. Not being able to discard to hand size actively locks me out of situations where I can use card draw as a discard outlet. Sculpting my hand, discarding creatures, and keeping reanimation and interaction in hand.
Or, hear me out, I run Folio of Fancies to give everyone no max hand size because I'm running Turbofog Hug, and I don't want to risk letting anyone discard an Eldrazi Titan to shuffle their graveyard back into their library.
Bro saying "making your mana base worse" over a single non-tapped land is like saying "You're making your diet worse" when someone has a single cookie once a week.
Know you’re not gonna read this , but thanks for the fun times and great videos. Me and my wife loved watching them and laughing at your commentary. So long partner, and may you finally rest.❤
Very much disagree with the last point. The ability to have every answer in the book, from counterspells to creature removal to enchantment removal to boardwipes, plus multiple different lines to win, plus lands so you don’t miss land drops, makes it a lot harder to be overcome if you are in a winning position
As a primarily green player, ive never really understood the obsession my buddy (blue player) has with no maximum hand size cards. Usually i have a lot of cantrips, or effects that turn other cards into cantrips, and since i run a lot of ramp, i dont really understand the struggle of being unable to play cards. I do play izzet secondary, and as said before, usually focus on cantrips for my draw
I like Reliquary Tower because I also like cards like Teferi's Puzzle Box, which allows me to pitch my 18 card hand back into the Library for a fresh 18 and really go off.
Counterpoint: spells like shamanic revelation are a lot cheaper than cards like the great henge. The great henge is better because it provides you as much, if not more, cards as shamanic revelation on a schedule that confroms to hand size limitations, but this also makes it and similar effects more pricey. If you want cheaper options usually that means you have to resort to spells that show you all your cards at once rather than value engines.
Cool, so you can cast or play most of the cards you drew, and really don't need to "go off" for a second turn. Even if you did, you've got your choice of the 7 best cards to keep, and presumably some of your board.
I cast peer into the abyss, on myself. I can now play every single card I drew from peer into the abyss, which is half my deck. Effectively meaning that I drew 50 cards and can play any of them whenever I want- at the expense of half of my life total.
Most people I see are not running enough tech lands, I think this is definitely cuttable for many other good options but is viable in 1-3 color decks usually without needing too much restriction.
I run the Tower in decks that can draw massive amounts of cards in one go. Especially in blue if I run a lot of Counterspells. I'm never sad when I see it, but I'm also always building towards a healthy mana base. But you are right, this card is not an auto include.
1 plus tutors. Beside that theres also commanders and strategies who draw cards for all players and it quickly overfills hands. A reliquary tower cant hurt
I run tower and thought vessel, in a brago flicker deck with lots of card draw and extra etbs. The card draw can get pretty insane, and having 20+ cards in hand gives me an answer to literally every possible threat while still maintaining my gameplan. Its not always about the best 7, but also what an unpredictable situation may call for. But in most cases yes, no max hand size is overrated
I only run Reliq in one deck. It's my Seventh Doctor deck because the secret commander is Kozilek The Great Distortion. I use to run Wizard Class in my simic deck because sometimes I'd just draw half my deck, destroy Wizard Class and let mystic redaction kill everyone. People always expect the simic draw engine but don't expect you to proceed to throw all the cards in the graveyard.
the only time discarding to hand size bums me out is if i'm being mana screwed and have several cards i WANT to use but can't, so i gotta choose which child to chuck into the grinder. thankfully this doesn't happen often, but when it does it's more of an annoyance than anything else
I've got 2 decks that run reliquary tower. One is my budget Pride of Hull Clade list that likes to draw 15-30 cards in a single shot and doesn't use its graveyard very well. The other is Braids, arisen Nightmare that loves to hold up large swathes of removal while building a board and drawing a bunch.
Definitely a Fairpoint I see a lot of decks playing tower that probably don’t need to run it but I think it’s a staple and any control back. once you’ve gotten to the point where you have 10 good cards in your hand, you can’t lose
Generally I would agree, but one of the last commander games I played with my shadrix deck I played necropotence with reliquary tower out and proceeded to have 30+ cards in my hand the rest of the game and won because I had all the answers sooo
Was a bit thrown out because this is a core card in a couple of my decks that glut draw and feature Multani and Empyreal Armor. Hadn't occurred to me people were just putting it in decks that occasionally go to 9 or 10.
I'm sorry but in one and two color decks containing blue, black, or green Im almost always running this because these colors have so much freaking card draw, unless I'm specifically playing reanimator.
I've come close to drawing my Varina, Lich Queen deck someone said "dude you should run reliquery tower" ...how do you think i got alo these zombies? by casting from my hand?
