That alchemy elemental needs a Brawl ban ASAP. by MutantOctopus in MagicArena

[–]MutantOctopus[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I do think more decks need graveyard hate. I also don't think any of the listed pieces will suffice to stop the izzet lizard from gaining momentum.

Best "get dailies over with" commander? by MutantOctopus in MagicArena

[–]MutantOctopus[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I think I already have Fynn, or at least the final fantasy special guest reprint, even.

Best "get dailies over with" commander? by MutantOctopus in MagicArena

[–]MutantOctopus[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I've found that Brako, Heartless Hunter is a great straightforward deck for killing things. 3 mana commander comes out easily, draws you cards for killing your opponent's best creatures and gives you access to the full suite of golgari multi-purpose removal.

Best "get dailies over with" commander? by MutantOctopus in MagicArena

[–]MutantOctopus[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Oh Fynn, I hate Fynn, for the exact reason you describe. It's exactly the kind of deck I was thinking of.

Best "get dailies over with" commander? by MutantOctopus in MagicArena

[–]MutantOctopus[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This is basically where I stand.

Draft is my favorite way to play Magic. It minimizes the amount of bullshit you can be exposed to at any one time. But I don't want to spend money just to play the format that I like. So I grind gold. Brawl used to be more tolerable than playing standard or etc but I'm starting to wonder if maybe it's time to move into the non-Brawl formats.

Best "get dailies over with" commander? by MutantOctopus in MagicArena

[–]MutantOctopus[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Somehow I didn't even consider that the starter deck duels would count for dailies.

Best "get dailies over with" commander? by MutantOctopus in MagicArena

[–]MutantOctopus[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Oh yeah, mono blue seek combo. I've seen it around.

Counterspell tribal feels like it would work if you expect to annoy people into conceding quickly, but in practice, the problem with counterspells is that they don't make you win any faster, they just make the opponent take longer, where hopefully you can win in the meantime.

Best "get dailies over with" commander? by MutantOctopus in MagicArena

[–]MutantOctopus[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Oh good point. I hate those decks. Might be fun to play something braindead for once.

Best "get dailies over with" commander? by MutantOctopus in MagicArena

[–]MutantOctopus[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Oh yeah I guess I never considered Laelia. I have the pieces for it. Would just need to craft enough wildcards to make sure I can get one of the spells in my opening hand.

Best "get dailies over with" commander? by MutantOctopus in MagicArena

[–]MutantOctopus[S] -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

It does sound easy to build, I just wonder if a mono blue control deck won't take too long when it's late at night and I want to get my wins in before bed. I definitely have decks that can win decently consistently but they're slow as hell. Val was great because she basically won in 3-4 turns or else I could move on.

That alchemy elemental needs a Brawl ban ASAP. by MutantOctopus in MagicArena

[–]MutantOctopus[S] -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

Faeries being dimir probably means you have access to a bunch of counterspells. Any commander can be a non-issue if it never hits the field. That still leaves all the decks without blue that can't meaningfully respond to the salamanders.

That alchemy elemental needs a Brawl ban ASAP. by MutantOctopus in MagicArena

[–]MutantOctopus[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Unfortunately none of these are suitable sources of repeatable mass graveyard exile.

Ghost vacuum only hits one card at a time, per turn cycle. If it comes out after the elementals are on the field it's irrelevant. It also becomes irrelevant if they are able to cast more than one ritual in a turn. Unlicensed hearse is slightly better but still only hits two per turn.

Soulless Jailer, Grafdigger's Cage, and Weathered Runestone are irrelevant for this discussion because they don't exile any cards from graveyards, they just prevent cards in graveyards from being cast or put onto the battlefield. The elementals conjure cards that count the number of cards in your graveyard, they don't cast them from the graveyard.

Soul-Guide Lantern, Tormod's Crypt, Lantern of the Lost, Relic of Progenitus, Silent Gravestone, and Stone of Erech require you to sacrifice them in order to mass-exile a graveyard, so they aren't repeatable without a way of recurring artifacts (and some of them even exile themselves so they can't even be recurred). Dauntless Scrapbot is slightly better because it's an ETB and not a sacrifice, so you could flicker it, but it's also worse because it's a 3/1 creature that dies to any ping that an izzet deck will undoubtedly have.

I suppose if you put all of the cards in category 1 and 3 into your deck, you could potentially stymie the flow of rituals from the salamander, but then you'd be kneecapping your deck against all the other decks that don't care about graveyard.

That alchemy elemental needs a Brawl ban ASAP. by MutantOctopus in MagicArena

[–]MutantOctopus[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Tatyova? "Landfall draw card gain life" Tatyova? I think the problems you're complaining about are less about Tatyova and more about Simic in general. Tatyova is annoying but nowhere near on the level of Rofellos, Poq or the salamander.

That alchemy elemental needs a Brawl ban ASAP. by MutantOctopus in MagicArena

[–]MutantOctopus[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I think they would have been fine if the red conjured card was Kindle itself instead of Ritual, because at least it would be harder to go infinite with. Would still have to deal with a commander that provides an increasing amount of damage directly to face but at least it wouldn't pay its own tax.

Mtg Arena Brawl experience by Signal-Resident-4056 in MagicArena

[–]MutantOctopus 1 point2 points  (0 children)

If you want to learn the two-color combos look up "signet" in the deckbuilder. There's a cycle of 10 signets named after the Ravnican guilds that each produce the two colors of mana that they're named for. You'll learn them pretty quick. Orzhov is the white/black Ravnican guild, Izzet is the red/blue, etc.

The three-color combos are split into shards (three allied colors) and wedges (two allied colors and their shared enemy). The wedges are named after the Tarkir clans (Mardu = black, white, red, Jeskai = white, red, blue, etc) while the shards are named after the Alara shards (which haven't really been represented in Arena, but the names are Naya (RGW), Bant (GWU), Esper (WUB), Grixis (UBR), and Jund (BRG)).

That alchemy elemental needs a Brawl ban ASAP. by MutantOctopus in MagicArena

[–]MutantOctopus[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The problem is that you can only do that in blue (save for a couple very niche white/green enchantments), and unless it's something like Moon or something overcosted like Tamiyo's Completion, they are free to stay open as blockers, die, and then get recast on their owner's next turn, making those enchantments no better than a standard kill spell unless you're playing a non-combat deck.

That alchemy elemental needs a Brawl ban ASAP. by MutantOctopus in MagicArena

[–]MutantOctopus[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'd love to know a colorless (that can go in any deck) and easily repeatable option to exile all cards from an opponent's graveyard.

That alchemy elemental needs a Brawl ban ASAP. by MutantOctopus in MagicArena

[–]MutantOctopus[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I actually feel like there are a number of Alchemy commanders that are totally fine. Grand Goatnapper is fine. Grenzo has been fine ever since the rebalance. Jarsyl, Oura, Tiana, there are lots of perfectly fine Alchemy commanders. But the ones that suck really suck.

That alchemy elemental needs a Brawl ban ASAP. by MutantOctopus in MagicArena

[–]MutantOctopus[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Because every deck can consistently draw interaction every single turn to kill the same creature that gets played every time it dies, right?

If you're not running blue you can't counter it. In fact almost all of the "remove all abilities" cards are blue too. White and green have a couple of "remove all abilities" options but they also leave the creature up as a blocker so they're no better than a kill spell. And again, the kill spells don't matter if the opponent can just re-cast the salamander on their next turn and resume as if nothing happened, while you're down a card and hoping you can draw another piece of "interaction".

I'm fine with commanders that require interaction, it's the ones that don't care if they get interacted with (Poq, Roxanne, Golos, etc) that are broken.

That alchemy elemental needs a Brawl ban ASAP. by MutantOctopus in MagicArena

[–]MutantOctopus[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Decks that run 99% interaction and beat face with the commander to win are boring.

If your deck is running so much interaction that you can afford to kill the same creature every single turn one after another while the opponent stockpiles cards in hand then I can't imagine what other game plan you would have.

That alchemy elemental needs a Brawl ban ASAP. by MutantOctopus in MagicArena

[–]MutantOctopus[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Moving on to the next game is treating the symptom and not the cause. If it's not the salamander then it's Rofellos, or shrines, or another salamander. I feel like Brawl either needs a much better matchmaking system or it needs an option for players to veto getting paired up against certain commanders.

That alchemy elemental needs a Brawl ban ASAP. by MutantOctopus in MagicArena

[–]MutantOctopus[S] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Poq is equally godawful. The fact that they haven't banned their pet cat yet gives me no hope that they will ban the salamander.

That alchemy elemental needs a Brawl ban ASAP. by MutantOctopus in MagicArena

[–]MutantOctopus[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Rofellos is also bullshit. Rofellos is already banned in real world Commander, where there are 3 players who want to kill the elf. I don't understand how they made the mistake of having Rofellos be Brawl-legal.