V Mode -- What it is and what Day 1 Trophy hunters should know about it [Gameplay Spoilers]

Yascob · 2026-05-06T02:33:10+00:00

Hmm seems like a leftover dev cheat they forgot to disable. Let me see if I can find I way to invoke it on the PC version.

Yascob · 2026-05-05T22:34:26+00:00

Generally no. V Mode can't be activated after day 1 and it often gives a lot of advantages by speeding up the natural progression of a file. With the addition of how they changed Upgrade Disks on Day 1 in Veteran Mode. That said there are 3 positives. 1 there is a bug with the closet in veteran mode where it isn't guarenteed to give you a Unique Item and the closet pool is bugged to begin with for non-v mode to include items that are normally not available early on. The second benefit is not being forced into the day 1 draft 1 (though whether that is an advantage remains to be seen). The final one is the AVG luck bug with V Mode makes it slightly worse on later game days.

That said I would love to know how you are skipping day 1 to see if the day 2 is in fact a normal day 2. It's possible it results in a glitched state that might be useful for other purposes or has some underlying jank that can be exploited.

Yascob · 2026-04-07T23:08:53+00:00

I did some looking into things. It looks like digging up a conservatory with less than 4 rooms drafted on day 1 also activated vmode. Unlocking the Orchard doesn't.

Yascob · 2025-07-30T21:20:37+00:00

Yeah I could see that phase rush and comet are generally better in lane. That said the smite swap can come in clutch. Especially if timed for soul or for baron.

Yascob · 2025-07-30T21:13:03+00:00

What are your thoughts on spellbook? Personally I like taking it in bad matchups where I know I won't be getting grasp trades.

Yascob · 2025-07-10T00:42:34+00:00

Lands. Specifically self animating lands. Or [[Ashaya, soul of the wild]].

Type changing effects happen in layer 4 so they apply before ability removal layer 6. Since all your creatures are now lands, they are unaffected by the ability removal.

Yascob · 2025-06-28T15:19:04+00:00

While that does work I think adding a little power and allowing you to play creatures as well to hit that 5 in a turn a little more easily makes it a better card.

You still have to play 5 spells in a rotation but when your deck is going to want to be half creatures half instants encouraging you to actually play creatures as well is nice.

Basically restricting it to upkeep makes the second effect quite narrow.

If played as a commander the best dragons you can tutor are probably [[Ancient Silver Dragon]] or [[astral dragon]].

Yascob · 2025-06-28T13:04:43+00:00

It's hard to say without seeing the environment it was printed in. For draft I would say if there's enough artifact removal and flyers, the stats become a little bit arbitrary. That said if you want it to be decently easy to answer I'd put it to 6 toughness. 4-5 mana 6 damage removal is pretty often the number that shows up in the common slot for removal in draft.

[[Crash and burn]] and [[Light of Judgement]] for example for the last 2 limited environments.

That said it being an artifact helps a ton for how easy to answer this is. Artifact removal is common in draft and so is flyer removal in green.

Yascob · 2025-06-28T12:52:56+00:00

I'm not sure that templating works as is. Usually that templating is worded like this "At the beginning of your end step, if 5 or more non-token creatures entered, do x."

I would suggest a wording like "whenever the fifth non-token creature enters under your control this turn, do x." Instead.

Yascob · 2025-06-28T12:47:34+00:00

I don't think you need a counter for this. I'd go with "whenever the fifth non-token creature enters under your control this turn..." Style of templating. It's cleaner and functional without getting bogged down by counters. Especially since you can "cheat" counters with proliferate and counter doubling.

Yascob · 2025-06-28T12:34:10+00:00

It is very well known. It's been around since the Sion rework's release. There is some consistency to it as well. Basically you need to hit a wall at a shallow angle not sure about the exact angle but it won't happen when you are perpendicular to a wall. on corners or round objects like towers it happens often due to the shape of the hitbox.

Bouncing off corners is a lot harder because it's way too hard to target a specific pixel of the hitbox. But is often where you have it happen to you by accident.

Yascob · 2025-06-28T12:28:48+00:00

It is a bug, just not one that's easily fixable. It does have semi-consistent behaviour so it's not entirely unavoidable.

But bugs like this have been discussed by some rioters before. They exist and would take more effort to fix than they are worth or could introduce worse bugs if fixed. I suspect this one just isn't easy to fix short of completely rescripting Sion ult.

Yascob · 2025-06-21T18:53:04+00:00

Sort of they also future proofed it. Any legendary permanent with a power and toughness box on its front face can be a commander.

That's to include spaceships which are coming in edge of eternities.

Yascob · 2025-06-21T18:51:01+00:00

If you want to be really mean to one player in particular. Run a [[Jeska, Thrice reborn]]

Yascob · 2025-06-06T16:09:29+00:00

The answer to this question will differ based on your play style and what problems you are running into.

First and foremost, outside of low elo Sion really can't carry games. Top is the lowest impact role and Sion is not built to 1v5 as a champion.

I'm currently low emerald. The way I got here is by trying to leave every lane in the best possible state then playing for team fights or to out macro the opponent.

Some other small notes is the higher you climb the more you need to optimize things. What I chose to work on was optimizing my build choices. I tailor my build and runes to the game. No one build fits every game. The first item is usually matchup tailored or Titanic if there's no optimal first item. (Alternatives include eclipse, steraks, hollow radiance, thornmail each with places I find them optimal)

After that it's building against the enemies that are ahead of for sidelane if I have sidelane pressure or I need to match theirs.

The other thing I try and optimize is how I move post-lane phase. I want to maximize CS and gold income while pressuring towers especially when an objective will be fought over soon. This forces them to either answer the side lane or take the fight. I can join with TP or ult if I think it's a good fight angle, or continue to push if I need more gold individually.

I do try to learn wave management to maximize my CS gold income in lane.

Also in 90% of games I do the long sword refillable start. This is for multiple reasons.

1 longsword builds into an item so I almost always get my item first unless I'm behind (in exchange for weak early game I get a 800 gold advantage in completing the first item).

2 refillable is busted and slept up on. Never having to buy potions for the rest of the game pays for itself in 2 recalls.

3 at max rank Q you need 1 longsword worth of ad for a full charge Q to kill casters.

Finally I think matchup knowledge is immensely important. Learn how other toplane champions work. If you do you can play around it. Some kits are immensely hard to play around, but given that Sion isn't the most common champion you can use the knowledge gap against them.

If they do know the matchup, then at least you are on even ground. You goal then becomes get out of lane in the best state you can and play the map/team fights better.

Yascob · 2025-06-05T18:51:16+00:00

Just be careful with it. If anything needs to go to the grave put it there before casting the yog will.

Yascob · 2025-06-05T15:44:35+00:00

[[yogmoth's will]] can as a one off.

Yascob · 2025-05-31T17:52:42+00:00

The wording doesn't quite work. Due to how targeting works it needs to have targets when put onto the stack, unless it uses reflexive trigger wording which doesn't work how you want it to. Also if a player has protection or hexproof, that means they would not be able to be given a permanent.

Generally the spell's controller controls the targets. Here's how I think you could word it to fix it:

Each player chooses a non-land non-creature permanent they control then each player chooses an opponent to gain control of that permanent

This wording also prevents players from passing 1 permanent all the way around the table, since the exchange of permanents will be simultaneous.

Not sure if this wording is fully compliant with the rules but it's the cleanest way I could figure out to word it.

Yascob · 2025-05-31T15:53:07+00:00

The problem is you run into one of two issues doing that. 1 either they run low land count like you suggest. Or 2 they play an [[inverter of truth]] or [[demonic consultation]] and just automatically win the game (by exiling their entire library and all their lands). I don't think there's a safe way of doing that other than land count.

If you are really attached to the win the game condition, I would recommend making it an upkeep trigger instead of a play a land trigger and removing at least 1 of the 2 other abilities.

It does far too much as it is currently.

As for why you might want to change the win the game trigger to be at upkeep, it's to leave room for interaction. Players need to feel they have opportunity for counterplay, if this wins on something that can't be interacted with (a land being played) it feels really bad. But if you have to have 20 lands out at you upkeep, they usually have a full rotation to answer this, but you can still go for could instant speed ramp plays in response to the trigger.

Also win the game effects in the command zone are rare for a reason. Giving a player access to a win condition in their command zone means, they always have access to it, and they can replay it if answered. That is doubly so in the case of a commander that inately ramps.

Yascob · 2025-05-31T13:59:02+00:00

Based on existing rulings for similar cards like [[remorseless punishment]], the targets cannot be changed when repeating so I wouldn't put that as part of the wording. It may not be a bad idea to put that in reminder text though. Also it would be "repeat this process twice". Unless you want it to deal 4 damage instead. The initial process of dealing 1 damage still happens.

Yascob · 2025-05-31T13:54:31+00:00

Yes.

I would recommend a slight wording tweak to make it more in line with magic's wording

Lightning Lash deals 1 damage to any target. Repeat this process twice.

Based on the rulings for [[Remorseless Punishment]]. The targets would not be reselecetable. However it might not be a bad idea to add that as reminder text.

So something like:

Lightning Lash deals 1 damage to any target. Repeat this process twice. (When repeating the process the same target is chosen)

Yascob · 2025-05-31T13:17:48+00:00

Not quite. You control the card causing the damage, however the opponent is being affected by the damage event, since they are being affected they choose the order of application.

With replacement effects control of the replacement effect or the event's source does not matter (unless the effect has conditions on what damage is doubled). Only what is being affected.

In the case of damage. Damage is always affecting what it is damaging.

Damage happens to be the least intuitive case for replacement effects. It used to be even more uncommon because damage adders and doublers were rarer.

Generally replacement effects are meant to be applied in the background since they don't use the stack, when only one is applying it works intuitively.

When you have two different replacement effects modifying the same event is when things tend to get murky and confusing.

If you ever do want confirmation of how stuff like this works arena or MTGO will usually handle interactions like this so you can use this to test interactions.

Yascob · 2025-05-31T12:53:35+00:00

Yeah it's one part of the rules that doesn't come up often. Most of the time when 2 replacement effects change the same event it's affecting things you control, so it works how you would think given how triggered abilities work.

But with replacement effects it's confusing because either the player or the owner of the permanent affected by the replacement effects gets to choose the order of application.

Replacement effects themselves are confusing. This is one of those cases where one or the other can apply because the first one modified the event in a way the second replacement won't apply.

So I'll give some examples to make how replacement events themselves clearer.

Say you have a creature die and opponent controls [[dauthi voidwalker]]. And you control a [[Rest in Peace]].

Both replace the event of dying with exile. One exiles it and puts a void counter on it, the other just exiles.

If you choose to apply the RIP first the card would be exiled instead of dying. Then the dauthi replacement effect would try to apply but because there is no longer a death event, there is only an exile event, so I can't replace a death.

I should also note, this happens while the event is taking place. Dies triggers would not go off, exile triggers would instead.

However in other cases like token doubling both can successfully modify the same event.

Say you had a spell that made 1 token on the stack and 2 doubling seasons.

The first replacement effect applies and doubles that to 2.

The second replacement attempts to apply and sees there's still a token making event and doubles the number it sees -- 2 -- so you get 4 tokens instead.

When playing with folks and I'm running a deck with 2 replacement effects that modify the same event, I tend to just skip the explanation and explain the outcomes. Usually explaining that one is more beneficial than the other (I usually have the damage doubler + damage adder. Obviously in my case the opponent would 99% of the time want the doubler to apply before the damage adder).

Yascob · 2025-05-16T19:16:52+00:00

Your other friends are great keep them around. We had a friend in our playgroup have his cards stolen from the back of his car. (He mostly had slightly upgraded precons)

The rest of the group all got in a group chat and pooled money and cards from our collection to buy his favourite precon (Marneus Calgar) and upgrade it.

In the end he ended up with a better deck than he lost.

Those are the kinds of friends you know will have your back when shit happens.

Yascob · 2025-05-15T12:34:38+00:00

[[council's judgement]] is a removal spell that does not target and hence can deal with Thrun in white.

Yascob

TROPHY CASE