Synergy & The End of the Goodstuff Era | EDHRECast 251 

45:30 I feel that. The other day, I was winning with a board full of 1 and 2 drops in my monowhite deck and someone played a "take control of target creature" spell and looked at my board with indecision. He said something along the lines of, "Nothing I take will solve anything." This is why I like synergy-based decks instead of "good stuff," they hose "steal" strategies that rely on taking their opponents' cards.

I’m so glad things have been moving away from Good Stuff a little. Playing with Synergy lends itself to playing for Second Place by looking more “innocuous” as Dana said. This is a great podcast topic!

Due to synergies of current availability, I've been able to build a bunch of decks, where as before I just didn't have the goods. Baldur's Gate really helped with some problem areas, bringing me my favorite deck I made in paper back in 2022, Alora (Merry Thief)//Tavern Brawler adventure spells. She can also work with exploit creatures as well, paired with a black background.

How come I never see Dana or Matt on these commander shows? Joey is always appearing on them and that is fantastic. Joey is fantastic. Would love to see the other great guys as well. Or all three!

I think the prevalence of card draw in the command zone tends to lean in the direction of good stuff as that is the payout you are trying to achieve by drawing tons of cards with your commander. Other commanders that are either the engine or the payout certainly rely more on synergistic deck components.

Commander is such a beautiful format that if you really take the time and care to build around your commander with passion, you can achieve a much higher power level with synergistic cards than with any "goodstuff" or "staple"

The dark bargain is real. Joey can pun, but he cannot segue.

I've recently found one of the benefits to building so much around synergy is that it allows you to have a list that can often function to do the synergy, even if you're commander is not on the field

As someone who hadn't casted Bribery for quite some time, I was surprised to find how mediocre it was due to how synergistic decks are nowadays. Great point to make!

I think another reason to go with the synergistic cards is that variety is fun. I do play cards like Smothering Tithe, Cyclonic Rift, and Rhystic Study, but if I'm building a new deck, I want a different play experience. I don't want a ton of slots taken up by cards I'm playing in my other decks.

goodstuff only works if you have a strong engine that churns out a non-infinite payout. Problem is, it's way too easy to go infinite nowadays, so there are fewer and fewer decks that manage to go really strong without easily spilling over into instant win

Have you guys tried a set budget format for EDH? My friends and I (about 10 of us) are currently playing $20 budget EDH. It's super fun and allows you to be a little more creative since you have to be very picky about what you run and find synergy with so little. Also it allows you to play cards you normally wouldn't see in EDH.

I started playing EDH in RtR block, and my memory was of a lot of good stuff, tribal, and combo decks (not even Cedh, just tutoring finishes). The precons and EDH targeted sets have made the format much more theme centric.

Well into Febuary and Joey is yet to get to do a segue. Keep it up, Matt and Dana

An interesting topic I’d like to hear (even though it kind of goes against all the optimizing we do) is dealing with playing the card you want rather than the “perfect card” or maybe dealing with perfectionism in deckbuilding! Sometimes multiple cards can be good for a deck and there isn’t a perfect answer! Maybe talk about finding peace in a deck being imperfect but you love all the cards?

I think it’s more fun to tinker with my decks to try and squeeze as much synergy out of it as I can

I think the largest push away from goodstuff and towards synergy is just cost of entry. Commander is in a popularity boom and just "good" cards are expensive Craterhoof, Boseiju, Doubling Season, Cons. Spinx, Parallel Lives, Cavern of Souls, Sylvan Library, Rhystic Study, Demonic Tutor, etc.. All are over $15 most of em are over 20. The more niche a card is the cheaper it is because there's low demand.

That episode was a Brie of fresh air

Great shoutout for Psychic Possession!

The Grindclock miss means that you don't have any Spikes in there balancing out the Johnnies and Timmies. This is something that does bother me about some channels, they're more focused on two ends of the stool but not on the last one; the one the Spikes represent.

I just helped 2 people in my pod drastically upgrade their decks because they were running a bunch of random good cards and a little bit of a central idea. When I was done helping them completely rebuild the deck from the bottom up, their theme was much more concentrated and they felt it as soon as they tried out the decks. One of them had 10 8/8 birds with more on the way while the other had drawn nearly their whole deck and had 30 lands on board with some terrifying creatures, all on turn 7. They were worried that this was just a one off but I had to explain to them that it wasn't even the best their decks could do now. The difference between "Aesi gets more lands so they can play big stuff" and "Aesi gets more lands and every time a land is played 12 things happen" is astronomical. Synergy is very doable nowadays for nearly any theme and you can make it a little stronger by putting in a Rhystic Study or something of the sort, but it often won't be the strongest piece on board contextually when you play it.

I’d say that with how many cards they’re printing there’s more room for self expression and unique builds than there ever has been. Just requires thinking outside the deck box lol

Taking good stuff out of the deck has been something I've noticed for some time. I have a bunch of high dollar cards sitting in my collection without a home because at some point I pulled them out of a deck and haven't found a new home for them. My decks seem to constantly improve thanks to being supported by new commons and uncommons. For instance, my Jared Carthalion, True Heir deck has improved immensely thanks to all the new "fight" and burn board wipe spells that have been printed in the past couple of years. I built it to be a very casual deck to play against new players, but I now find that it is overpowering tables using removal spells that we so bad that they didn't see play in standard, but are significantly better thanks to synergy with the commander.

over the years more and more cards got better synergies and hypersynergies. Most cards arent anymore "goodstuff only". Even a dockside wants to be flickered, cloned, resurected and so on or smothering tithe wants you to wheel and/or play with treasures/artifacts/tokendoublers.

I know it's an old video but selfless squire fits less in +1+1 decks and more in decks that want big bodies like brion stoutarm. Fog, fling, win.

Teshar is my best example of a deck where synergy can turn something into more than its individual pieces.

Fantastic episode gentlemen

I like that jahera idea with Ivy gleeful spellthief, I just started running a few poison/proliferate cards in mine as a second wincon, I am hoping to get a funny win with my venerated rotpriest. the thing about synergy in my opinion is youre adding interaction and complexity to add value to your deck and the cherry on top is that sometimes you can confuse your opponents and throw off their threat asessment or stop them from interacting with your less linear strategies.

i see the planeswalker conversation as the card slots have purpose, an before all of the synergy the purpose of the slots taken by those old planeswalker were to be another threat to draw out answers. but if you put old planeswalkers in more important slots they become clunky, and are even worse when alone or when played behind tempo. so the reason you saw willy nilly planeswalker usage came down to the lack of quality walker choices for the job allocated to the card slot it takes up. but the decent walkers were still good enough to be forcing answers from your opponent.

I'm an Ivy player, you can easily have tokens all the time unless you're really cantrip focused or everyone is beating ivy down repeatedly and hard and there are so many 1 mana auras, protection and things that generate other tokens like fists of ironwood or luxurious liberation around that you usually have something

the soft off cam chuckle at the dolly joke lolol.

For me, I love having consistency but given the choice between two similarish cards I'd more often go with the one that gives the potential for more because Iike that explosive aspect. Staples have their place and I still do play them in all of my decks but finding that card that can do so much more that fraction of the time is way I play commander. I love those moments

For the second half of your discussion about when to put a high variance synergistic piece in a deck vs a low variance generic card, it definitely depends on the deck. I start building a deck by putting in the best generic cards for each slot of card draw, ramp, interaction, etc. Then remove the worst in each slot for a synergistic piece if I can find it and at least 1/3 of my deck supports that strategy. Sometimes I will just do it for flavor, but I do that knowing it will decrease the power of the deck. Like my spirit deck has traded a lot of generically good staples for their less efficient arcane versions because every time I cast an arcane spell, my kamigawa spirits trigger and the trade is worth the flavor for me.

Yes, thank you matt, i’ve been so high on the monuments in 1 and 2 color creature decks, get itttt

I have that person at the LGS that plays the most synergistic decks. And they are all commons/uncommons. Mans blows me away when he wins

Great episode as always! Will Matt's Imotekh list be on Moxfield? Currently building a mono-black deck myself and very interested in seeing the ramp tactics :D

32:00 The nice thing about Jaheira is that you don't need to play it on turn 3. Jaheira doesn't need to wait until your next turn to start generating mana, so you can just keep it in hand until you're ready to drop it down and start popping off with all of your extra mana.

This was such a timely episode as I was debating earlier today whether to replace the Rootborn Defenses in my Ghired deck with something more powerful like Clever Concealment or Flawless Maneuver.

Synergy calculator would be nice. (Input desk list = Synergy score)

Card synergy brings up a topic I rarely see channels which spotlight individual cards address: Commander's singleton 100-card format makes it very unlikely you'll randomly see any particular non-Commander card in your normal draw phase. So what if you invest in a $15 Consecrated Sphinx, by the time you ramp up six mana, you've had only 15% chance of drawing it. For a card like that to perform consistently, it takes more than card synergy, you need an aggressive deck access strategy, and a plan to make that work consistently as well. IME, that is what makes a deck highly competitive, more so than which power cards it contains.

I have an embarrassing amount of decks, and am always updating at least one of them. The first goodstuff deck I’m building is the new Atraxa, and by goodstuff I mean cards I like but can’t find synergy for in the other decks.

My local meta used to be full of theft-based decks like Tasha. I've been seeing much less of that sort of thing as synergy-based decks become much more common. I've had a few games where opponents have targeted me, only to whiff because my deck has hardly any creatures and it's all synergy pieces.

Bontu's monument is a good card all on its own. I have slapped it in non-black decks before and it still put in work.

Thanks for this episode, it nailed the exact struggle I have with my latest deck-building decisions. For example: Should I replace Harmonize with Voice of Many in the card draw slot in my elf ball deck ? Both have the same mana cost, and can draw me three cards in the ideal scenario, and with Voice of many I will also get the elf body on the board. But also, in many situations, Voice of Many could eventually draw me only 1 or 2 cards - or even none - if my opponents wipe the board or just have more creatures than me. But I still would have that 3/3 elf body that has synergies with the elf deck anyway... Is the elf synergy worth the risk of drawing less or no cards with it? I think the final decision depends on what decks my opponents have, if I expect them to have a lot of creatures, and create a lot of tokens, or wipe the board often, then I would rather draw three cards with Harmonize than play an elf that does nothing. What would you recommend?

On the Planeswalker thing specifically, I tend to ask myself these questions while considering one for the 99: 1. Would I play an artifact or enchantment with the same mana cost that either had the same static ability, or did the + or 0 ability every turn? (Examples of this would be something like this new Tyvar, or most Chandra cards which are basically extra copies of Outpost Siege) 2. Would I play a sorcery with just the - ability that the planeswalker can use the turn it's played? (An example of this are cards like Garruk, Primal Hunter, which is basically an extra copy of Return of the Wildspeaker with different upsides.) 3. Does the planeswalker uniquely synergize with the strategy I'm trying to play? (An example of this is Sorin, Imperious Bloodlord for a Vampire Tribal deck, and most of the cards in this category are Tribal-focused.) If it doesn't meet one of the three above criteria, it doesn't make the cut. In the content of the video, I feel like only point 3 was discussed, even if Tyvar better fits into point 1 afaic.

Planeswalker wise I only run the flip liliana in a creature heavy aristocrats deck (human tribal actually), and the new teferi who gains loyalty off of card draw (comamder is genisis engine, draw at least 3 cards a turn, often ult him in a turn)

One thing a bit worrying about EDHrec (and I love it so this is only a minor criticism): there are a lot of people putting cards in decks that *do not * synergise with their commander because they’re common on the deck lists people see them so assume they work

Jaheira with aura Ivy is absolutely hilarious

I'm curious to see what EDHRECast would consider the "top ten for stuffs" for each color and color pair.

My local playgroup tried to calculate deck power level by giving individual cards points on a scale from like 0-3. Very hard to calculate for synergy. Thats been the biggest problem with our calculator. Synergy is just the most powerful thing you can do. Our point system still helps get our deck in the ballpark though. Its not entirely useless.

48:55 I'd love to see a game with that Chisei deck. Sounds really interesting

Mirage Mirror and Sculpting Steel are nice with Mycosynth Gardens also

What about when the synergy involves good stuff cards, like my Yarok deck that is doubling value from Spellseeker and risen reef? My yarok deck has never felt synergistic aside from Thassa and Panharmonicon doubling down on the etb value. It typically wins by generating enough value in cards like rampaging baloths, scute swarm, as well as with infinitely big creatures/blink. Because of commanders like this, the deck variance is much higher, and the worst card in a good yarok deck could be Atrius, vs ultra synergistic decks like elves having still very good elves as their worst card

I love synergy in decks, much better than good-stuff deck. My very first decks were all good stuff decks; my recent deck have barely any general good stuff in them... I often found it boring (just personally) to play with good stuff and it's overall much more fun to puzzle things together. HOWEVER... one thing I feel you neglected to mention is: synergy is very prone to disturbance... One massive board wipe (like a Farewell) before you get your synergy pieces together and you're back to the stone age. Something else to keep in mind is: because synergy requires many pieces you need to ensure you're never (or barely ever) gonna be in a top deck mode. This is the worst position you can be in, if you're in a top deck mode when you need multiple pieces for your deck to work.

Synergy is more important in non cedh while cedh is just a beast of its own

People who say that EDH is just net decking while the best card in two of my decks was a common sorcery printed in Zendikar Rising and y'all have no idea what I'm talking about.

For me it’s all about the flavor and what kind of game do I want to have. Also, what is the ratio of active vs passive cards? The do a thing now vs a trigger.

As someone building a proliferate deck over a Phyrexia themed deck, this was a big thing plaguing my mind.

sometimes I feel like the last MBC player my most played deck is Phage the Untouchable which of course has synergies in it, like command beacon + crucible of worlds, OppoAgent Scheming symmetry etc. but at the end of the day it's a deck designed to kill all of my opponents stuff for as long as it takes to "voltron" kill my opponent by landing phage and suiting her up with spooky boots and whispersilk cloak or whtever way I devised to push her through that game.. Or I generate an obscene amount of mana and cast Torment of Hailfire or Exsanguinate. and I don't really see so much mono-black control anymore.

Great episode as always! BTW I think it's 'Host of Heh-rons' and not Host of Here-rons'. Like the bird!

Back in the day, we’d look at cards and say, “im not playing that, i have to jump through too many hoops to make it work.” Well, now we have those hoops set up just by playing to our strategy, or jumping through them benefit us.

47:10 Not sure I follow Matt’s logic here. With the rules update years ago, if you are able to play opponents lands they definitely can make mana outside of your commander’s color id.

Ooo, I was looking into Chisei and I wasn't able to make it work... can someone throw over that list?

The whole back half of this episode is “One man’s trash is another man’s treasure.”

Is there a public list fot yout baba lysaga deck? I want to build her and would like to see your list joey :)

I was waiting for Joey to challenge the stats this time. Oh well maybe next week.

I have a golgari counters deck and I could never play with 'Astarion's Thirst' but i do use 'Ruinous Intrusion'. I took *AT* out after finding it underwhelming. 4 mana removal for only *sometimes* getting an added benifit is too much. Cmc is higher than 90% of the creatures I play. If was 1 mana less or put counters on any creature, then i would probably play it. As is, i much prefer to play 'tear asunder'.

Pure Goodstuff that isn't restricted to supporting specific subsets of cards inherently moves decks towards homogenization. It's a very similar issue that happens across CCGs and TCG. However, as soon as you put restriction text on a card it immediately becomes a synergy card for its allowed targets. In that sense synergy is more like the final form of any expansive and long running collectible game, not an era that is going to end. I guess the safest way moving forward is that interaction should be generic in what it can target while ramping and buffing should be as synergistic/restricted as is feasible.

in 2019 when i got back in, i was doing a lot of etali and bribery esque shenanigans. Gonti was one of my main commanders too. None of those decks survived to the end of 2019 however because, as this whole video explains, it's just so bad to whiff with all these non-standalone synergy pieces people run. Im not sure exactly when goodstuff dot deck died, but it definitely was dead or on life support as early as War Of The Spark

RIP sphinx. It's crazy that I have multiple blue decks where it just doesn't make the cut anymore.

Joey is being so kind as to say “we’re not sayin that good stuff is bad”. I’ll b not so much & jus state that pure good stuff for no better reason, is just lame. I love my theme-matching & cards that handshake well with each other, instead of the singular ones that take over when slammed down

Is that intro music from lunar?

Traverse the outlands has NOTHING on Harvest season. Only difference is one is for a go tall other is go wide deck synergy.

I just built a grixis good stuff deck and it struggles so much to keep up with the commander meta now days...I feel like im playing yugioh with how fast this power creep continues to happen with mtg

jet medallion is $25??? alright then...that thing was everywhere.

50€ Light-Paws will crush like every deck i know haha.

Joey has lost some weight recently. If he starts stealing, will he be Joe lean the plunder queen?

Gnomes has checked into the chat

Yooo!!! I got a shout out and you guys pronounced my last name right!!! 😃

The best cards in my Golgari elfball aren’t necessarily elves. Erebos the Bleak Hearted and Beledros Witherbloom let me machine gun problem threats at instant speed.

Can anyone recommend me a good/fun demon tribal commander deck I'm trying to use one in mtg arena.

Bontu's Monument goes great in ANY creature heavy deck. Pinging everyone for 1 whenever you cast a creature can add up really fast and gaining 1 every time you cast a creature can add a surprising amount of buffering to your life total in colors that don't typically gain life.

I don't think its a fair expectation to include how synergistic your 99 is in the power level conversation. Simply put all decks have some level of synergy but you aren't guaranteed to be drawing your synergy. Power level is really dictated by accelleration whether thats fast mana, tutors, card draw, etc. and to a cetain extent the finisher being a compact combo or a 3-5 card combo or an accidental combo or just boardstate. It's very easy to build a deck to a power level by removing the accellerants or playing less compact wincons but it's very difficult for any competent deck builder to physically build anti-synergy. I think expecting someone to not turn 3 tutor thoracle combo every game is fair but expecting someone to build an actively worse deck by cutting synergy is probably hubris.

The rule zero conversation has gotten a bit out of control. There's only so much info you can provide. So many people get pissed just because they lost. The easy out is to blame deck power. "You didn't tell me it would do that!" Like, there's 30,000 cards. I can't predict how the deck can react to every board state. Just do your best to be fair in play. If I'm playing and clearly have a more powerful deck, I just hold back a little. If I'm getting pubstomped, I just enjoy the broken stuff that can happen.

If good stuff era is over then so is my EDH career. I don’t build heavy synergy, I build fun cards!

I’ve noticed myself taking turns off of my strategy to play good stuff cards.

This was a great video guys. Best EDH content on RU-vid.

If you never want to pay the 8 life to draw 3 cards, don't play sylvan library, because you are doing it wrong, you are better of with something else. just looking and rearranging cards every turn is a waste of Sylvan library, I use to make this mistake all the time, even when 3 lands were at the top. that said, don't pay 8 all the time, but if the top 3. are lands when you need gas or big mana spells when you need lands, absolutely pay the 8 life to get rid of the cards

Joey, I like your hair. It looks nice. I personally think goodstuff is still good, and you can win a lot of games by just playing a Simic deck with a generic card draw commander, and then ramping a bunch and drawing cards and playing generic big spells. But I also think synergy decks can be *easier* to build because in many ways, the deck builds itself?

Love selfless squire in my kit Kanto goad deck.

I'd just like to remind everyone how ridiculous Cyclonic Rift is. It is cool, but a total mood killer and I think I'll avoid it.

Goodstuff era WAS commander. Meren & Atraxa were mistakes.

imo not all the effects on a planeswalker have to be effective. There are several answers to why. Firstly, the planeswalker you play just needs an ability that is important to your strategy. take karn, the great creator, he is most often used for his null rod passive. his +1 occasionally is used to animate and kill mana crypts, and his 2 is a dud in commander. or look at ugin the spirit dragon, its synonomous with an 8 mana exile most of the board. the +2 mainly builds up to boardwipe again, while the -10 is almost never used. in the case of Teyvar that Joey mentioned, i would pick him over a thousand year elixir as im probably playing a creature heavy deck which can protect teyvar better than i could protect elixir. saying that you need to use the entire buffalo is like saying why use hammer of purphoros when i already have fervor. the main answers is redundancy. you dont just run card and say that you will always draw it, you run multiple effects which do similar things so that you have a higher chance of drawing one of them.

I'm really confused by this episode because to me, it feels like the wider community is doing exactly the opposite of what you're talking about. Every deck is slowly becoming just a pile of staples as wotc prints more and more of them, synergy be damned. The idea that the lack of pws is a sign of this is especially wierd to me since pws have always had the same liability of their vulnerability and have only ever been played with 1 ability in mind. That sorin you mentioned was played as a 30 damage nuke, the rest of the text largely a bonus, and that's how I treat most planeswalkers still. For example, ugin is played almost exclusively for the board wipe effect (or ult in Doubling season decks) and any +2s you get off later are a bonus.

I come from CEDH but the scene I play in are transphobic so I am going toward playing with friends but all are less synergistic and competitive. So I been building $200 decks that are synergistic and still too competitive. It causes alot of triggers and interactions to keep track of but yeah over the years the more synergy there the more competitive it'll be. Idk my rant was weird

Is no one gonna tell Dana that he's pronouncing Heron wrong?

I think the 90:10 comment about "just value" and "synergetic theme" decks is not quite fair since "just valuetrain" is basically a huge theme. take any and all new 5c commanders (except for the myr lord) and you most likely just have a "goodstuff" commander as in: valuetrain. battlecruiser shit. that you can only. I don't get the whole thing with "oh wow so hard to compare powerlevels" no it is not. well, yes it is if you're an idiot thinking you can assign some sort of value to each card , add them all up and there you go. powerlevel discussion where you say "on a scale from 1-10" or anything like that "casual-cedh" and so on... are just not good. when I explain my deck before I play I answer the following questions truthfully: My commander is: My overall strategy is: this is about what I am going to do: this is how I win (and how fast): example1: Alesha aristocrats: My commander is Alesha and this is an aristocrats deck. I play a lot of low cost creatures and with alesha I might be fairly aggressive early especially if you take long to establish a meaningful boardstate. once we transition from the early game to mid to late game my focus shifts as my creatures are outmatched by yours and I will play the classic aristcrats style: sacrificing for value, draining you, drawing cards and such. Usually I win due to atrition or simply sacking my whole board to kill everyone off. Most times I do win during the mid-late game, the more uninteractive you are in the early game, the faster I reach a point that I can win from. example2: Kykar Storm Combo: My commander is Kykar and this is a storm deck. I aim to cast a lot of spells in one single turn and then winning by payoffs like aetherflux reservoir, guttersniper etc. I also play the dramatic scepter combo for infinite mana/casts. This deck is fairly quick though not cedh levels. I usually win before turn 10, if not, then someone or something stopped me. With this everyone else can compare their decks to what I just said and through some games we can find a really good balance. If everyone does this we can have a little discussion as to if we think something is balanced or not. after each game I honestly try to re-evaluate my deck and how it fits with the group I am playing. Also I usually make sure to point out if the last game was a statistical outlier. Example: Kykar can win by turn 2 ... is unlikely but sill. T1: Mountain+Sol Ring T2: Ancient Tomb+Guttersniper+Dramatic Scepter -> I can repeat activate scepter with my sol ring leading to infinite guttersnipe triggers. this is very unlikely to happen, also very early wins are rather unlikely. basically if I dont have to start digging for cards and just draw everything I need off the top: it's way faster. So I'll say "sorry guys, this was just one lucky draw, the deck isn't that fast usually, I can play another if you like to" - always offering to switch if someone feels overpowered. I can power up again if that turns out to be false but hey, that's what we're here for. The powerlevel conversation is not there to hit the perfect balance at the first game you ever play. but it helps to sculpt the table powerlevel to an equal playing field.

I do a sort of tribunal on cards I want to examine by fixing my starting hand to guarantee the use; steel manning the card’s existence. If I found the card provides poorly to the deck and/or strategy, then I’ll remove it. In the tribunals, I’m reminded how the working class cards (the commons and uncommons) are so much more busted than maybe the mythic or rare staple players snap include. Case in point, I have Rhystic Study and I don’t include it in my Emry deck mainly because the card isn’t drawing me cards like a Riddlesmith draws consistently and aggressively. Riddlesmith is a card people consider chaff and even the foil is considered chaff and Rhystic Study is a card no one trashes. The proletariat and working class cards are indeed just monsters compared to the higher priced cards in the right conditions. The extreme example is Pauper CEDH, a bunch of bulk that can wreck a stack of gold bricks. Sometimes you just need a sack of pennies to whack heads of rich people to win.

It's really interesting that ygo community looks at mtg and wants how mtg works. Yet, mtg is making more cards with synergy like ygo. Maybe the grass is really greener on the other side 😅

Bontu's Monument is not seeing play because that card sucks. The life gain bonus is only relevant if you have life gain triggers. It costs one more then Jet medallion. It requires you to be playing a very large number of creatures to be somewhat efficient. Even a 2 drop Mana Rock is almost always better. You are not playing 2 creatures every turn. You're not even playing one creature every turn. You should have noncreature spells in your deck or it is unbalanced. You will be lucky to average one creature per turn. If every card in your deck except for artifacts are black jet medallion will work on 90% of your spells rather than less than 50% and it comes down a turn earlier.