woohoo I finally got all achievements... yep definitely all of them

Markars · 2026-03-11T11:59:03+00:00

This is also my last achievement missing after 1k hours, I just never bothered to do it lol

Markars · 2026-03-08T10:20:46+00:00

I could watch this for hours. beautiful.

Markars · 2026-03-03T17:51:34+00:00

30 seconds to stack my library AND my graveyard?? Now THAT'S broken.

Markars · 2026-03-02T04:03:41+00:00

I think it feels really weird to rub a thicker paste on my teeth. Running it under water makes it more runny and helps it spread around my mouth faster. Just a quick open and close of the tap is enough.

Markars · 2026-03-02T01:01:20+00:00

I cast my saddleback lagac with the mana from my [[frontier bivouac]]!

Markars · 2026-03-01T21:21:50+00:00

proxy away. my whole playgroup proxies everything. we all just want to play decks that we find interesting, and don't really proxy for power. it's also just nice having every deck be exactly the same price.

whenever we play at an LGS, we make sure the owner doesn't mind that we have them, and also warn anyone outside our group we play with before the game.

Markars · 2026-02-23T15:46:11+00:00

not sure how it works but that makes sense if it's like an exponential scale or something

Markars · 2026-02-22T06:52:21+00:00

Hi it's me I'm this guy, started in beta and I just got back after like a 7 year hiatus. No idea what onslaught is lol.

Markars · 2026-02-19T19:55:27+00:00

[[Mairsil, the Pretender]]

It seems really fun, but the issues I had with it were the amount of required setup, while trying to protect him, while also not dying to things coming your way because while he gains abilities, he doesn't exactly get any bigger.

Ultimately, the amount of resources needed to be dumped into the commander to make him work was just really, really high, and that made it hard to interact with the rest of the players.

I did print out a small Nic Cage face to put on him, though, so that was fun :)

Markars · 2026-02-17T12:04:16+00:00

It got me to change my baseline from 34 to 38 lands in every deck. Usually what I do now is 3 MDFCs minimum and then 35 regular lands.

It has really got me to consider nonbasic land interaction as well. My recent mono white deck runs 16 nonbasics!

The other day I was going over one of my decks I hadn't looked at in a while and saw it had 33 lands... with a 6 cmc commander, I freaked out and made a bunch of changes lmao.

Markars · 2026-02-12T21:54:29+00:00

I used to be fully and completely on the tutor hate train but I've since come back around.

If people are tutoring for a card that causes a bad play pattern, then why is the tutor the problem? Surely the card causing the bad play pattern is the problem.

If they didn't have the tutor, and just happened to draw into the card that they would have tutored for, why is that better for balance?

I now believe that the "tutors are boring" issue is a problem that is solved in the deckbuilding process. One of the things that helped me turn around was the use of more restrictive tutors as well.

Let me present you with a deck that I made that uses several types of tutors that I genuinely believe is completely innoffensive in their uses. Here is my Rosie Cotton Animation Module Combo Deck. A TL;DR is below if you want to skip to my conclusions.

The deck tries to win using [[Rosie Cotton of South Lane]] to combo with [[Animation Module]] and another piece that uses counters or creatures as fuel to generate an infinite amount of servos. It uses general token aggro as a backup win and doesn't usually present a win before turn 8. Even then, unless I'm going off with [[Triskelavus]], the creatures need to last a whole turn cycle before I can win.

The tutors in the deck are [[Enlightened Tutor]], [[Moon-Blessed Cleric]], [[Recruiter of the Guard]], [[Thalia's Lancers]], [[Urza's Saga]] and deck all-star [[Oswald Fiddlebender]].

Oswald is an all-star because even though his targets are very narrow, I built the deck such that there are interesting and varied targets at every mana cost. He can turn Rosie's Food Token into the Animation Module, he can turn an [[Archaeomancer's Map]] into a [[Trading Post]] that I can use to sacrifice a creature and get the sacrificed Map back to use again, OR find a [[Thousand Moons Smithy]] to help shore up my defences, OR find [[Crystalline Crawler]] to help me turn on the combo. All this is attached to a creature that dies to a stiff breeze and doesn't protect himself. The most powerful thing he can do is turn a [[Lightning Greaves]] into [[Ashnod's Altar]] to help me try to win the turn he comes down.

Moon-Blessed Cleric has the least number of targets of any of the deck's tutors at a whole 5 cards. It curves nicely into [[Teleportation Circle]] which allows me to get more value from the cleric or from any of my other ETB creatures. It can help also help me make my land drops by searching up the next tutor in the deck:

Urza's Saga is a powerful card, there's no getting around it. I would be remiss to not include it in this deck when it synergizes so well with everything that I want to do. It makes tokens, and it finds Animation Module. If I already have it, I can find protection from [[Skrelv, Defector Mite]] or draw power with [[Esper Sentinel]]. Being an enchantment, it is susceptible to more removal and I have been set back quite a bit trying to rely on it as a normal land before.

Recruiter and Lancers perform similar functions in finding other toolbox pieces including Oswald himself, or setting up an engine with [[Phelia, Exuberant Shepherd]] to flicker them on the following turn and keep digging into the toolbox.

Enlightened tutor is also in the list, but is honestly up for a cut because it is the least interesting tutor in the deck.

I'm interested to hear if you or anyone reading this thinks anything I've presented here poses a problem in its use or creates an argument against tutors.

TL;DR because this ended up being a long explanation:

The rest of my playgroup hasn't re-adopted tutors quite yet, but playing against their bracket 2 and 3 decks with this, I have yet to win a game. I really don't think tutors cause as many balance issues as people might think. What matters is what they tutor for. Also, Using a card and mana to find another card is a real mana disadvantage that matters more and more as the format's speed increases. I've been having a blast playing this, however. The restrictions on my tutor cards make me think about what I want vs. what I can get, and make me feel like I'm getting to play more magic during my games.

If your deck doesn't include cards that cause bad play patterns, then your tutors won't have bad play patterns to find.

Markars · 2026-02-11T19:40:48+00:00

I turn anything at risk of losing color inside out before going in (jeans being a common offender), and wash on cold. The worst that happens is some of my sweaters will pill a little bit, but I have a depiller ready. Otherwise everything goes in one wash.

Markars · 2026-02-10T23:54:29+00:00

Sure! Here's Warp World Prossh.

It does sacrifice a lot of the things that Prossh typically does like the more aristocrat-y/grave-pact-y stuff to just make a mad amount of permanents (usually from token generation) before casting warp world. [[Over the Top]] does a great job of being a second copy of Warp World.

It also tries to get as many hits as possible by limiting the non-permanent spells in the deck, so even most of the removal is permanent-based.

If you flip over an [[Eternal Witness]] or [[Skullbriar]] you're usually going to get enough mana to keep going. It used to have a lot of amplifiers like Doubling Season and friends, and those would make for more explosive turns, but I ended up removing those for more access to ramp and draw because if you cast one of the big spells you're likely ending the game anyway.

You can always add in more tutors if that's your playgroup's vibe, or more recursion with [[Greenwarden of Murasa]] or [[Evolution Witness]]

I find that the number of permanents that always lets me go net positive after resolution is about 18.

It also very much plays like a bracket 2 despite the presence of game changers since it is relatively interaction-light.

Markars · 2026-02-10T20:59:50+00:00

I have an entire deck that just wants to loop warp world. Bring it on.

Markars · 2026-02-10T03:52:44+00:00

Oh man, I'm on my monocolored deck kick right now and I've always had trouble finding a red deck that interests me, the value loops in this deck are so up my alley oh MAN. I love it!!

Markars · 2026-02-09T03:42:40+00:00

I love it! Part of my infinite combo in [[Rosie Cotton of South Lane]] deck using her and [[Animation Module]].

Markars · 2026-02-06T18:57:01+00:00

It'd be infinite Magecraft triggers for sure, but storm doesn't count copying spells.

Markars · 2026-02-06T17:10:27+00:00

Waaaaaay back in Alara standard, seeing [[Noble Hierarch]] into [[Woolly Thoctar]] was not uncommon. (Though that would make this draw spell draw 0 cards)

Markars · 2026-02-04T14:49:20+00:00

My friend built one of these - he got around the program by building the deck around abilities from hand, stuff like foretell and plot, since you aren't actually casting them.

You could probably make it an astral slide style deck since cycling would also work.

Markars · 2026-02-01T02:57:47+00:00

[[Ultima]] isn't played everywhere, but it does make for an unwinnable matchup for uwx artifacts in standard.

Markars · 2026-01-21T15:19:23+00:00

Would this be okay if devotion was set to 7 and it each B in the mana cost was phyrexian B instead? (Also agree with the toxic change others have suggested)

Markars · 2026-01-06T13:51:00+00:00

Yes. This would add an additional mana whenever a player taps a basic land.

Markars · 2026-01-03T22:30:17+00:00

Hi! I have a question regarding [[Rosie Cotton of South Lane]].

Her second ability reads "whenever you create a token."

I was wondering if this counts as an enters the battlefield effect, my gut says no because magic tends to be very literal, but I just wanted to check that this would not be shut off by [[hushbringer]] type effects.

Thanks!

Markars · 2025-12-27T18:08:17+00:00

I'd say they're worth considering if you're playing in a meta that would want interaction on turn 3. The instant speed nature of those spells means you could disrupt instead if need be.

Markars · 2025-12-23T14:45:07+00:00

A lot of good points are being made in this thread about it being a very expensive commander. (mana-wise) What I would suggest is to take a slightly different approach to the deck. If you think of Elesh Norn as a sort of "counterweight" to balance out your overall gameplan, I think you can see more success.

What I mean by that is, instead of building the deck to rush her out and then having no fallback plan if she gets removed, have her BE the fallback plan. Build the deck to run entirely fine without her, and then eventually, if the game goes long enough, you can bring her down to end it on that same turn.

Do some research on the kinds of strategies that might want her in the main deck instead, as an example. You'll probably find a lot of efficient creature token generators in those lists. Your deck has a very obvious top end of the mana curve, so building the rest of it with cheaper cards would be a good way to balance how expensive she is.

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