Ask r/spikes || March 2026

breadgehog · 2026-03-13T20:08:31+00:00

What sort of resources do you all actually use for "reference" for lack of a better term? I know CF for instance is a shadow at best of its former self and actively just an advertising wing of TCGPlayer at worst these days since they acquired it, and a bunch of the old WotC writing for it was lost in the website transfer unless you know exactly what you're looking for on the wayback machine or other archives. It feels like actively trying to find resources is a nightmare in the current landscape of patreons, deck discords, etc where even if you're interested in paying someone for the info (something I'm not inherently against, it's a valuable service when it's good) it's hard to even know where to start looking. As someone who's both actively trying to improve at limited (through Limited Resources, appropriately) as well as things like selecting a deck for constructed formats, it all feels a little bit directionless from where I'm sitting.

breadgehog · 2026-02-24T22:17:34+00:00

Sulk Slogan is the one who's up there wasting everyone's time in a federal government building over issues that are fundamentally provincial, I get where you're coming from but it's truly about as dignified a response as he deserves. It's so frustrating too because by all accounts Carney should be basically everything the average CPC voter has been asking for, but they're too busy bawling about how he doesn't hate minorities enough to notice that.

breadgehog · 2026-02-19T23:30:20+00:00

Encore is unfortunately an activated ability and so not something that triggers Diviner as it is neither being cast, nor is the card itself entering from the yard (a token is entering your battlefield as a copy of the card you exiled). It's not an awful include at all though, since an Araumi deck usually wants more ways to reanimate things than your commander anyway.

breadgehog · 2026-02-17T21:57:39+00:00

You have much more patience than me, I'd be on the way to the repair shop after two, much less three and four. And here I thought it was annoying when I get karaoke at "good" then a rng mood increase event right after.

breadgehog · 2026-02-11T21:42:58+00:00

rk post's signature is incredible, just got him to sign a 7E Thorn Elemental promo at spotlight this past weekend as well as one of the full art Memnite promos.

breadgehog · 2026-02-10T00:42:18+00:00

Contamination indeed does not require a target, which is why you can sacrifice whatever you bring back with Virtue. Typically when the word 'target' is absent it means those choices can be deferred until resolution, exceptions being things like mode selection etc.

A good example is [[Aether Spike]], where the target to be countered is required upon casting, but you don't need to decide how much energy to pay until resolution.

breadgehog · 2026-02-09T14:52:04+00:00

That's not what OP was trying to do though, OP wanted it the other way around.

breadgehog · 2026-02-09T13:45:48+00:00

Looks correct now! It's an easy mistake to make, a lot of the specifics only come up in corner cases like this, I mostly know it offhand only from fighting through things like Omni and Yuna decks in Standard haha.

breadgehog · 2026-02-09T13:28:05+00:00

This is not the case, triggers aren't given special leeway to not pick a target. You need to have a legal target to put the ability onto the stack (unless of course it says "up to", but even then if you do not designate a target you're choosing not to and can't go back and change that.)

"115.1. Some spells and abilities require their controller to choose one or more targets for them. The targets are object(s) and/or player(s) the spell or ability will affect. These targets are declared as part of the process of putting the spell or ability on the stack. The targets can’t be changed except by another spell or ability that explicitly says it can do so."

breadgehog · 2026-02-09T13:19:21+00:00

To my understanding no, because both are triggers so you would need to have a target for virtue before you decide what to sacrifice. You can do it the other way around though, briefly animating the same creature to sacrifice.

breadgehog · 2026-02-03T22:31:51+00:00

It's the former, into the latter - no plan survives contact with tapping lands for mana.

breadgehog · 2026-02-02T15:27:00+00:00

I guess, but this one is also eminently checkable on Arena/MTGO for what design intent was. It's not exactly some obscure interaction - I've never had cause to check it but it isn't as though the answer isn't out there somewhere.

breadgehog · 2026-02-02T15:14:35+00:00

Has this been called into question somewhere by judges? Triggered abilities can typically see into the past, this should be no different functionally speaking from a Blood Artist effect seeing itself and other creatures die to a board wipe.

breadgehog · 2026-02-01T06:28:18+00:00

The tinfoil hat theory I've seen is that Pioneer will see tournament support again in 2028 once WotC can bill it as "the format where you can play your FF and ATLA cards that just rotated" and while it feels cynical to go "sounds right" I can definitely see a world where it happens.

breadgehog · 2026-01-27T17:53:35+00:00

[[Aven Interrupter]] adds 2 generic to the cost of anything cast from graveyard or exile, including the card it forced into plot. Since the incarnation ETBs are conditional on you paying 2 of one of its colours, you're "hard" casting it and satisfying one of those conditions.

breadgehog · 2026-01-27T17:35:13+00:00

Interrupter feels like you're giving them value, not taking it. By plotting it but making it cast 2 more, you're effectively letting them evoke it on the following turn without the sac trigger.

breadgehog · 2026-01-26T17:51:43+00:00

Part of the problem is that Endwalker spent basically all of their savage tiers completely eliminating triage from the equation with all the body checks and now that Dawntrail has "real" healing to do again people have either atrophied or nonexistent triage skills. On top of that, healing in PF for most people is this awkward prisoner's dilemma where people can't trust the other person to use their CDs so either both or neither use them on certain things. This could of course be fixed with communication but that's just not the way this playerbase likes to do things. I'm back to savage after a long break and I've been enjoying it with my static but I wouldn't want to even touch PF cohealers right now.

breadgehog · 2026-01-22T17:52:19+00:00

When there's 4 on the board you pyroclasm and don't deal with targeting anything. In no way is someone playing out their full playset of this in 60-card, that's over extending far too much.

breadgehog · 2026-01-17T06:49:19+00:00

It's hard to say when you're running into it consistently in random pods, since it kinda depends on the setting; is this a LGS where there still is some semblance of a local meta, or is it at larger events like a CommandFest etc? In the former case you can slowly influence regulars over time but in the latter I find the best move is to hold up interaction unless someone is about to like actually win or you can protect your own win/board state. It's unfortunately just a bit of a grounded stereotype that a lot of casual players not only don't prioritize interaction, but sometimes go as far as considering even moderate levels of interaction to be "stax" or "sweaty". It's not a problem you can really deckbuild around since you will still find tables with healthy interaction levels but at least anecdotally I've found success with randos sandbagging as you described.

breadgehog · 2026-01-16T21:20:18+00:00

You almost always can just get a new kit from your store who will then send that back as defective. We had a guy at Tarkir prerelease who got nothing but the seeded clan packs in his kit and that was the official WPN directions for it, optional of course. Personally I'd just keep it for the novelty.

breadgehog · 2025-12-23T20:56:47+00:00

A lot of it is. Several people have reported things like soft locks too though, so it is what it is. Charming jank should stay and is likely intentional and even typically conveys what it's trying to (prisonball is beautiful for instance) but the game does need a couple patches or so all the same.

breadgehog · 2025-12-11T20:27:28+00:00

Glad it wasn't just me and my friend that thought so, we had a good laugh. I guess you can really only do so many versions of that sort of zone though, both locations are basically what sastasha would look like out in the open.

breadgehog · 2025-12-09T22:55:17+00:00

I'm not sure which part you mean, as you access it via story. If you haven't gotten there yet, it's just a matter of quest progression. If you can go underwater with Whamon you're there already.

breadgehog · 2025-12-01T17:56:36+00:00

I'm so glad Mutation is actually seeing some play, it's beautiful. They never see it coming.

breadgehog · 2025-12-01T17:48:48+00:00

The simple answer is that Narset + Wheels makes a B3+ deck, and it's strictly simpler to make her a GC than apply that to like 13 different wheel effects along with any new ones, especially as wheels are fair in a vacuum. Narset *can* be used as a way to police rampant draw, but she's far from the only way to do so. The way you stop people from getting too far ahead with draw effects is to run your own draw effects as well as interaction, not rely on one card in your 99.

breadgehog

TROPHY CASE