Which card and presenter would you invest your Fishcoin with? Vote here! Round 1: ru-vid.comUgkxljSFRS2enIKqCHWNCI8Q5sVKZGcxXbRg Round 2: ru-vid.comUgkxfHLeXJQHBlQ4YTK8OltAkQdlaBKmC3U_
Classic Richard: I don't play targeted removal but I'll play a card to give my opponents their targeted removal back and ask them to use against someone else.
I always enjoy listening to Phil in these “card recommendation” type episodes. He’s very aware of the shortcomings of his recommendations and doesn’t try to hide them through excessive hyperbole. Also huge props to Seth for always putting in tons of effort into his speeches!
@@delathenleso5793 you sound like a scumbag. He’s a guy making a video with his friends for people to enjoy free and is using hyperbole for entertainment’s sake.
Your comment is implying that sometimes losing the game is a downside. If you’re playing a casual game with your pals, aren’t cards that allow two people to do something cool superior to cards that only allow one person to do the same thing?
richard potentially wising the rest of the guys up to his schemes to give a psa about how good skullwinder is was a noble sacrifice on par w/ gideon saving liliana
You asked for it, you get it. My pitch for the shark tank is Standstill Standstill is a really fun and strong card. Imagine a secret rendevouz, but with value. Some people may say it is some type of stax, but no. It doesn't cause the game to stop. Players still get to draw their first card and they can play a land. So everything is fine, especially if the Standstill player is a slower player, just like Phil. Each player has one decision to make for each turn. Is my turn/are my spells good enough, to give my opponents 9 cards in total. If not, fine. Just pass your turn. No time consuming actions. If the player does decide to "not care anymore", all the other players draw 3 cards. It's like a minigame, and it is soooooo fun, and worth it. Everytime, when someone cast a spell and triggered Standstill, regretted it afterwards. It's just so good.
A bit late to this but really it's "Eternal Witness can by bounced by Kogla, often winning you the game on the spot" I've gone Kogla + E-Wit + Time Warp more than a few times.
The things Richard and Tomer said that I thought were insane a year ago are more than sensible now. I suspect the things they say now that I think are insane will be proven truth in a year. And Skullwinder really *is* a better EWit in most games below fast combo meta.
Skullwinder is an honestly incredible card, and it is SO underutilised. It has the whole E-Wit effect, except it's easier to cast, effectively regrows 2 cards (like Richard points out), and has one extremely impactful part that I've seen so many people overlook: The Solemn Simulacrum Effect (SSE). What is the SSE? Why, it's how everyone goes "oh I don't want to attack into that person, they have a solemn! They'll just draw!" It's like that, except even better, because now the trade is a regrowth for any attacking creature. You really want to swing your commander into a deathtoucher? It is an on board fog that lasts for SUCH a long time, it's incredible. Genuinely an incredible card. (The Advocate Cycle is also really strong for similar reasons!!)
Giving your opponents a free card of their choice only works if you play with the kind of idiots who would take a deal like that. If your opponents are just smart and all agree to not take a deal with you, then you'll have to pick one of them to get back the best card in their graveyard.
The problem with the Spirited Companion argument is it’s cannabalistic as a strategy. If everyone at the table is doing it then it ceased to work. Even more so, it also only works if the bulk of your opponents decks are gumming up the board. Voltron, spellslinger, big mana, and more would love you to spend your early turns on cantrip weenies as they win the arms race through ramp. I think Richards play style is most effective on battlecruiser style formats. Which fair play, I guess if that’s your jam.
Yeah man Machine God's Effigy has really impressed me as well. The first time that I played it I copied my brother's Urza and created a construct every endstep :p
The problem with cards like Spirited Companion is that a lot of decks need critical mass of certain effects. Most decks need enough card advantage, ramp, removal, and lands. Also, the cantrip and durdle till boardwipe strategy that goes with it assumes (usually correctly) that players will develop on board without furthering some combination of their hand, land count and ways to protect/recur/redeploy their board that is more meaningfull than cantrips without card selection. That being said, some amount of early board presence is essential and if your main theme/plan doesn't involve low cmc creatures that you're willing to block with then Spirited Companion and Wall of Omens are great.
Obligatory despite everyone at first glance thinking otherwise, Eternal Witness is a Human, not an Elf. Sadly I’ve wanted a non-Human version forever, and forgot Skullwinder existed so that’s a plus.
the Spirited companion discussion totally resonate with me, having random bloquers is the reason I prefer to ramp with creatures, like wood elves, they chumpblock
I like Skullwinder, but Richard's pitch consolidated my views on Ondu Inversion: this card is overrated, spending your entire turn to reset the game and be the last to rebuild is not a good strategy (outside of decks that exclusively ramp with lands).
Eternal Witness has significantly lesser risk if you blink/reanimate it multiple times compared to Skullwinder. If you're looking for a creature regrowth that you don't plan on looping then, outside tribal synergies, Skullwinder will usually be better. But let's not forget Regrowth. Without creature tutors, loops or creature synergies Regrowth is a strong contender. That being said, for most decks I can recall, Skullwinder is a easy upgrade to Eternal Witness.
I would imagine that one of the reasons Hunted Horror isn't played more is because it WAS more expensive. It got a reprint in the Baldur's Gate precons, but had never had a reprint since it released in original Ravnica. A year ago market price was about $18, according to tcgplayer It's good. I don't know about $18 good. But it's about 30 cents now, so I say go for it haha
Skullwinder is such a great card, I've been running in over EWit nowadays, it's pretty much only bad if you're on 1v1 or if you are the guy who is way ahead.
As a person who is fully on the support of the Spirited Companion crew, the main turn off is simple: The card is boring. This isn’t a flashy draw 10, or a big massive threat. This isn’t your game ending card. I think the main issue is that the card doesn’t do ENOUGH to further the game plan, to most people. I personally am a huge fan to subtle benefits that slip under the radar like this, provided I don’t have a greater game plan going on or a way to make it better than a cycling 1/1. Sun Titan synergies in Ao Reanimator? Heck yeah. Brago blink? Yeah. Lurrus? In. All of these decks support subtle effects that can slowly be reused for value, or provide just enough push before a board wipe. It’s the fact that it’s JUST enough, that pushes some people away.
I just started pulling up random commanders on edhrec and looking at their top utility artifacts. Crim is right about mycosynth gardens, it belongs in a lot of non artifact centric decks
An entire episode needs to be devoted to utility lands. As Phil mentioned, it's important to be cautious with them even though they're so tempting. But Crim isn't wrong in the sense of how many decks have a fairly high density of random good artifacts lying around worth cloning.
@@MaxMckayful I’ve steadily found myself becoming a primarily mono colour player and 90% of it is because I want to take advantage of all the great utility lands in the format without becoming colour screwed or whatever. I keep track of my win rates and they’ve definitely gone up in part because I have options now even when I’m down to like basically no hand, be it pumping my mana into Lair of the Hydra or straight up drawing 2 off sacrificing Roadside Reliquary. It’s great.
I was playing a slicer deck the other day. Killed 2 players by turn 5. Tried to chaos warp brash taunter and the opponent had protection. This card wrecked me hahaha.
I think Richard is just right about Skullwinder. Maybe in theoretical optimal play but against human beings not playing optimally, it'll definitely work more often than not.
My secret tech is the aura unquenchable fury. it goes insane in my Isshin two heavens as one deck, but I’ve tried it elsewhere and genuinely think it can be slotted in to almost every aggressive deck. There are times where it’s not a blowout, but the chances of it being one are relatively high in my experience. A) If there is anything that commander players love to do it is draw cards, and I like to remind them that they are still mortal :) B) it has a degree of self-preservation since when it hits the graveyard from the battlefield it goes back to the hand like rancor (also underplayed). C) it slows other players down as a deterrent too since my opponents drawing cards is actively advancing my way of killing them. D) dude’s holding a flaming katana
Machine God's Effigy works awesomely with Miirym, Sentinel Wyrm or Urza, Chief Artificer if you have Mirror Box. I thought you didn't need it, but it'll have the same name of the commander and, thus, be a legendary copy of the copied legendary model without Mirror Box.
With Sliver Hivelord as your commander you should absolutely play Spreading Plague. Your slivers survive every trigger of Spreading Plague being indestructible and thematically it's perfect with slivers.
There is a blue uncommon from New Capenna that i would love to see more people use. The aura named Public Enemy. This beast is a blue card that replaces itself, can cause huge amounts of damage to the opponent who's creature it has enchanted AND often leads to the creature that is enchanted dying. For 3 mana. It essentially goads everyone's creatures to the player with the aura. In blue. And it replaces itself. For 3 mana. Slap it on an indestructible creature after turn 5 and that player will probably die before your next turn. It won't replace itself in that instance, but 3 mana to remove a player is a pretty good rate. Any takers?
I will never stop shilling for Crop Rotation. Everyone's been talking about how good Mana bases are these days, all the crazy effects you can get. What if you could get one of those effects, at will, instant speed, for a single Green mana? Instant speed Bojuka bog, Buried Ruin, Plaza of Heroes, Glacial Chasm, Thespian Stage, Mycosynth Gardens, Lotus Field (to sac a land being exiled), a bounceland to recur played MDFCs, Khalni Garden chump duty, Kessig Wolf Run, Field of the Dead, Sunscorched Desert for that person who is alive at 1, a Mayhem Devil trigger, put that Dakmor Salvage into the graveyard, Mystic Sanctuary, Witch's Cottage... You can do it all. Crop Rotation is cracked and stacked. Yeah, you do need to sac a land. Who's gonna counter a Crop Rotation, unless you're very explicitly playing a Dark Depths deck? People who have played Crop Rotation in their own Dark Depths decks, that's who will counter your ass because they know how stupid Crop Rotation is - and not enough people run it in generic decks.
My friend built an etali deck, absolutely hilarious and super splashy. He but brash taunter in it, and it was an absolute house. I've died to it more times than I care to admit
That's becuase he knows in this pod he can be, as Tomer so beatifully put it, parasitic. He knows the other players most of the time have spot removal/interaction, so he does the greedy and parasitic thing in skimping on removal himself. Still not sure what I think about that.
Richard's defense of Skullwinder is weird. He talks about never playing basic lands, yet assumes everyone will just have a basic in their yard. Generally the worst card in a yard is a cheap creature or spot removal (something he tells you not to play). Crim can not judge salt level since he is a pillar of sodium. Hehehe.
Ok here's my pitch: Narset's reversal. First of all it's 2 mana ramp in blue if any of your opponents are in green. The floor is also quite reasonable with forking your own spell but it also interacts favorably with basically any stack deeper than 2 spells. Redirect a Counterspell up the stack, save your own countered spell for later and un-counter it at the same time. Reuse a flashed back or self exile card like teferi's protection and oooohhhh so much more. My favorite interaction is with Jin-gitaxias progress tyrant: opponent casts a spell I want to reversal. Cast reversal targeting it. Jin copy trigger, copy reversal targeting my original reversal. Copy resolves, returning the card to my hand and creating another copy which can target the original spell my opponent cast. Absolutely brutal, especially when it's a removal spell targeting Jin.
I fell in love with skullwinder when I played him in my fight deck, but now I play him everywhere. i don't remember the last time there was ever a downside to it. You winder the empty graveyard, he costs a green less for your three color decks, and that deathtouch very relevant.
Spreading Plague is a sweet card - I had it built out in my UB artifact deck way back in the day. All my Wurmcoils and Battlespheres were unaffected, but I could also drop Baleful Strix or my commander to wipe any other UB creatures if needed. I also ran with The Abyss for a similar effect, as that also doesn't kill off artifacts. I can see it being annoying, as it's a weird version of stax combined with game theory - the table has to work together if they want to not waste a ton of resources. I'd liken it closely to Void Winnower, where it arbitrarily makes a ton of your opponents hands unplayable until its removed.
49:00 Spirited Companion & Wall of Omens and their green versions of Elvish Visionary & Wall of Blossoms (there are also multicolred ones) are really good in decks that care about bodies, etbs or need sac food. Especially in budget decks you almost never feel bad to play them, they offer some early game play or a set-up and make the deck a bit more consistent. They are the spellslingers cantrip versions.
Spirited Companion's argument is really for like a 10 card strategy for the early game. It's a good strategy, but I think it requires you to decide that it is your early game plan to congest the board and prepare for the first board wipe. I think playing Spirited companion as the only card with this effect in a deck that's wrath light, or in a deck that has a competing game plan for the early turns, doesn't make sense.
Wait wait waitwaitwait- if any of the crew sees this I'd love if you could hear me out. You guys should actually make a new series called Fish Tank, where you take user submitted cards with a little blurb to 'sell' their card to you guys, then the crew will discuss the card and give a 'deal' or 'no deal' answer. You could even have everyone that gave a 'deal' to the card give a score out of 10 or whatever based on how much they were convinced by it, if you wanted to add the whole "investing" schtick of classic Shark Tank. You could have a Twitter hashtag for submissions (like MTGFishTank/MTGSharkTank/etc.) where users could add their whole blurb and card image. It would be really fun and engaging for everyone involved I think and it wouldn't be very difficult to do either. And if you did end up making the format this way, a year or so down the line you could reexamine your 'investments' and see if you made good business decisions, or something like that. Just a thought, but I think it could be really fun :)
In any deck where you have combos to flicker your Ewit, Skullwinder may end up eventually having to put that force of will or fierce guardianship back in their hand. I agree that Skullwinder can potentially be better in some decks, but it would never replace Ewit in my Selvala deck.
Spreading plague is a no go. It makes you arch enemy without much upside. It is obvious to work around and usually it is easy to do so as well. If it isn't, it isn't fun. No one wins here. I love playing control and even light stax, but make sure you don't become the villain and spoil everyone's fun.
59:51 not many creatures sac to bargain but this guy does. I know this is post episode but man sac’ing this dude to beseech the mirrror is a win. Koch knights conquest turns this doggo into a threat real quick lol.
I feel like the fail cases for skullwinder are a lot more frequent than Richard makes it look or the group points out. It's not only horrible in 1v1 scenarios, it's also bad if you are the arch enemy or even in contention of being the most threatening player. What's worse; you just played an e-qit effect and supposedly got something great, which makes it even more likely for you to look threatening. Basically, skullwinder is great if you're not the most threatening player at the table AND there are a sufficient number of opponents left - which is something that will most likely occur towards the end of the game. This stands in contrast to e-wit, which only continues to get better as the game goes on (GY hate not withstanding ofc).
One of the many problems with Skullwinder is that your opponent can just lie and say they'll grab a land and then get something better. Similarly, your opponent can just grab something to deal with one of your cards on the battlefield.
I mean, the thing about Skullwinder is that if your opponent is doing reanimater shenanigans, then you can mess up their strategy. Also, you can choose the opponent, so search their graveyards. And the mana cost is better, too.
Another thing that makes Spirited Companion so underrated, especially for White, is its potential to move early game actions up one turn. Being able to take advantage of combat triggers like Mask of Memory as early as turn 3 can be significant in defining the quality of your turns in the mid to late game. Compare this to its other analogs, like Wall of Omens, where you aren't going to swing until turn 4 at the earliest (unless you have a 1-drop creature). Add to it the fact that it can be recycled and synergizes with all weenie effects, and Spirited Companion as a LOT more value to offer than many realize over the course of a game.
Niche situation, but I once copied my opponents "Vengeful Dead" with Machine God's Effigy (which triggers when *any* zombie dies) and that plus some other copy effects (clone theme deck) won me the game through killing my opponent's creatures. It was a beautiful and incredibly satisfying reverso card win. In my experience, Machine God's Effigy just has all sorts of weird use cases if you're willing to be creative with it.
Here's the Skullwinder politics counterplay - if Richard is targeting you for board cleanup duty, negotiate back about what he's getting out of his yard. No free reign to grab the clear win con. Make him get the worst opyion out of his own yard.
That doesn't make much sense as Richard is the one with the spell. (Added) I think this shows the difference between defensive, competitive "all for themselves" players, and casual, net-fun players that the format socially benefits from.
The Mycosynth Gardens should be in every coin flip deck, because those are only two colors, and copying Krark’s Thumb is extremely strong off a utility land. Edit: Nvm the artifact is legendary
Skullwinder does not control what card someone else gets from their yard. The only time Skullwinder is good is when you assume that there's a mook who will do your grunt work, while also assuming everyone else at the table is operating at the same level as you.
I agree with Richard on skullwinder! Except that it’s not always, “strictly better” in every scenario. But I’m also a player that likes the 2nd ability of Loran. I enjoy the politic playstyle of certain cards. Richard would also love healing technique, wishclaw talisman, and scheming symmetry!
My thoughts on these cards: 1. Skullwinder: 100% agree this should be played more, but it’s not better than eternal witness. I do want to add though that because I politic and make deals in my group often, I’ve found more and more that my group won’t tell me what their plan/target are. So skullwinder has become more and more of a liability. That being said card is gas. 8/10 2. Machine God’s Effigy: first off, I didn’t even know this card existed (and I would call myself an enfranchised player), so this is definitely my winner for round 1. The possibility of this card is endless, and being an artifact is an upside due to making it harder to remove than a clone. I am going to play this card more. 10/10 3. Mycosynth Gardens: I would play this in an artifact deck or a deck that has powerful artifacts, but the premise of just making a copy of a mana rock is super weak. That being said I will start paying attention to my decks and see if it’s worth it, for example I would probably play this now in tribal decks with powerful artifacts like banner or coat of arms. 5/10 4. Clones are powerful. I already play this in a generic mono-U. But outside of that or clone decks, I’m just not sold. 3/10 5. Wait… you aren’t playing spirited companion already anyway? If I want the etb or enchantment, it’s an auto include. Even when I’m looking for generic creatures this is always on my list of cards. It normally loses out to synergy cards, but it’s definitely on my radar. 9/10 6. This card is powerful, but a 5 mana 1/1 is always kept me away. I might try it more. 4/10. 7. I’ve been high on this card for years. It’s easily my sleeper hit and does heavy work whenever I play it. I can’t sing higher praises for a card. 10/10 8. Haunted Horror: a very good card and I play it in generic mono-B. I also play the green, red, and blue in generic mono color decks. In dual color and more decks though there are so many better cards unless the devotion is what you need. It’s just out classes with theme or synergy cards. 6/10
Phil kind of mention it but Imposter Mech has been my pet card in some of my most competitive decks, when on a polymorph plan it can't get hit and is much more cost effective then any other 'clone' effect and as mention the non creature clause is very useful. I don't know if I'm convinced about MGE but will try and find a home for it in something.
