Burnished Hart

Artifact Creature — Elk

{3}, Sacrifice this: Search your library for up to two basic land cards, put them onto the battlefield tapped, then shuffle.

Combos

• Alesha, Who Smiles at Death + Burnished Hart

Legality

Format	Legality
1v1 Commander	Legal
Alchemy	Legal
Archenemy	Legal
Arena	Legal
Block Constructed	Legal
Canadian Highlander	Legal
Casual	Legal
Commander / EDH	Legal
Commander: Rule 0	Legal
Custom	Legal
Duel Commander	Legal
Freeform	Legal
Gladiator	Legal
Highlander	Legal
Historic	Legal
Historic Brawl	Legal
Legacy	Legal
Leviathan	Legal
Limited	Legal
Modern	Legal
Modern Beyond Horizons	Legal
Oathbreaker	Legal
Pioneer	Legal
Planar Constructed	Legal
Planechase	Legal
Pre-release	Legal
Quest Magic	Legal
Standard	Legal
Standard Brawl	Legal
Tiny Leaders	Legal
Vanguard	Legal
Vintage	Legal

Discussion (50)

DatShepTho on Aristocratic Storm

3 months ago

You don't need Solemn Simulacrum or Burnished Hart, they're too slow. Replace them with a Night's Whisper and Sign in Blood

Quicksilver on You know, I'm something of an MTG player myself

5 months ago

I'm still a bit on the fence how soon I'll transform Norman. Getting him out super fast is good practice, the idea of transforming him by turn 3-4, not sure how that will play out, or if it's worth waiting. Burnished Hart has been an auto include in non green EDH decks since I first saw it in Theros. I predicted that card would at one point be worth something ($2 for a brief moment in history.) It's always been a good card to me. Thanks for pointing out the reason Training Grounds isn't worth it is for the one time cost; it's a card better suited to frequent activated ability use.

Coward_Token on You know, I'm something of an MTG player myself

5 months ago

Ignite the Future: Three spells for two mana seems pretty good. Flashbacking it later for six mana doesn't seem horrible either.

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While I like the card, I don't really get your justification for Training Grounds. You're not going to activate the transformation abilty more than once per Norman casting; between those times it'll mostly just sit uselessly unless you got Burnished Hart out (which by the way is IMO overrated, as is Solemn Simulacrum). Animation Module seems out of place too, Norman conniving and other +1/+1 counter-puttings doesn't seem like they'll happen too often.

DreadKhan on Meren Sacrifice Shenanigans

6 months ago

I see that you are taking a pretty different angle than I did here, but there might be a few cards that I can suggest from my own Meren and the Golgari Queens. Would Savra, Queen of the Golgari make sense in your list? It's a slightly different Grave Pact, but at 4 mana and easy to cast she can come out earlier, the life gain is a lot less important other than offsetting the payment for the effect.

I think they're about as fun as an untreatable toothache, but Grave Pact effects in my experience like you to run several of the Merciless Executioner type creatures that exist, Accursed Marauder is a great start, but I think Plaguecrafter and Demon's Disciple might fit. I don't know exactly how many you'd 'want', but I'd run 3-5 creatures that exist almost purely to make everyone sacrifice a creature. IMHO if you only run one or the other the Executioners are probably the better include since you can get them out sooner, they stand alone (Grave Pact does nothing if you don't have a creature), and you can recur them with your Commander, but both are INCREDIBLY nasty when combined. In the decks I have that use edicts you really want to reach 'critical mass', so that you both have access to an Edict when it's necessary, but also have enough to continuously pare back the opponent's board.

This is a personal preference more than anything, but when I play Meren my fondest hope is usually to have a creature that ramps me that also kills itself; Sakura Tribe Elder is the 'gold standard' of the effect, but I think you could benefit from Diligent Farmhand and Dawntreader Elk, and maybe Yavimaya Granger. I even run Fertilid and Burnished Hart, but I don't think I'd recommend them to anyone else at this point! Anyways, the idea is you juggle one of these to both gain XP for Meren while ramping yourself, and when you draw something better to reanimate just reanimate that. The ramp is usually very useful to cast either Protean Hulk or Razaketh.

Speaking of Razaketh, I found it VERY useful to have mass untap effect to go with Life/Death, once Life/Death makes all your lands into weenies you can untap them with something like Vitalize or Benefactor's Draught. I also threw in a Songs of the Damned and Dark Ritual to help generate mana when I'm short. Lotus Petal is also a very good Razaketh card if you don't want to spring for Lion's Eye DiamondGC.

Just a little tip I stumbled upon, most Meren decks have very high Black devotion, but they rely heavily on early Green ramp; I really wanted to shave lands for creatures in my list, but since I can find Swamps with Forests via ramp, I ended up running WAY less Black sources than Green. I used 7 Basic Swamps and 2 Swamp/Forest duals, and I find I have very few fixing issues, even with a very low land count, since I almost never need more than 2 lands early on, and I found the deck absolutely hated drawing into them (Meren is a deck where I feel like you're supposed to run all the creature ramp you can, because Meren cares so much about Creatures and so little about non-creature spells, lands are dead draws).

I guess that brings me to the last point, I feel like you should really try to get more creatures into this list; your Commander does absolutely nothing if you don't have creatures in the graveyard. I have 57 in the 99 atm, I feel like having less than 40 in a Meren deck is too few. The nice thing about creatures is that Golgari has a LOT of creature synergies, I love using Lurking Predators or Heartwood Storyteller.

If you want more specific help feel free to ask!

Goldberserkerdragon on a milli

11 months ago

I would recommend cutting some 5 drops. Konrad himself is 5 mana and he is your game plan, any other 5 drop better be a banger. 38 lands in a deck that wants to see more creatures and not lands, idk about that. Landfall decks dont even really require this much. I get where dude is coming from, but everyone seems to jump on this bandwagon that more lands is indeed more, no. Deck thinning is king. Sure, you might always have a land to play. But it's 2025 sunny, people are ramping. If you get Konrad out turn 5 or later, you might as well pack up. Games are ending turn 6-8 now. You want to cut for ramp, trust me. Ramp bc you get ahead of the curve (literally) and you are able to play cards that are called "ramp" at the very least, instead of waiting turn after turn to finally drop something. Things get removed, how will your 5-7 lands help you recast and recover? Konrad is mana hungry.

I hope I have helped to explain this. I didn't want to chime in as these views might start arguments... But please try it. Test 30/31 lands with 15/16 pcs of ramp respectively. If you hate it, run 38 lands i guess. Conversely, you never want the cards that are merely trying to help you cast cards and play the game to be overtly expensive in CMC either. So try to keep ramp within the 0-2 drop range (if you can afford the 0's). Things like Burnished Hart and Solemn Simulacrum are good in decks like these where they are creature-based. Of course you can run as many high costed cards as well, and land, or anything, but if you want to play efficiently, smoothly, and always have mana and cards, less is more (CMC/lands).

For cards like Corpse Churn and Another Chance, I would swap with Unseal the Necropolis or simply any other mill creature Eerie Soultender, Undercity Informer, etc.

Not to be long-winded here, i would pump the creatures up to as close or over 30 as possible. 100 card decks need a solid chunk (around 28-33) of a type of card like creatures and lands that is signature and superfluous to the decks main structure in order to see and play as much as possible before it's unnecessary.

Always keep in mind, these are only suggestions and Magic/Commander is always always always about expression and fun. So, don't get caught up in "the best" card or version of a thing. Sometimes the best thing to do is play what you love. A balance in playing what we want and need arises when you got a couple months + under the belt :)

• Cheers

hyalopterouslemur on How do you evaluate split …

1 year ago

Part of it also depends on the cards around it. I have seen Burnished Hart in some Sun Titan builds that didn't run green, and I used to see Tower of Fortunes in some Naya builds, though as mana curves have gone down, I see it less.

More relevant, I would say it splits between creature and noncreature: You should be running about ten instant-speed answers to creatures and one boardwipe for creatures in every deck, but people often forget answers to noncreature permanents.

Idoneity on How do you evaluate split …

1 year ago

When I was initially introduced into the game of Magic, I was taught to evaluate cards based on how much mana they demanded before they did their thing. Air Elemental costs five mana, Brimaz costs three, and Tower of Fortunes costs twelve.

Tower of Fortunes is an undoubtedly terrible card, but it isn't twelve mana; it's eight and then four. Burnished Hart is readily dismissed as "six mana ramp" despite its desired effect being split across its cast and activation.

I have been re-evaluating how I perceive cards with split costs, as the typical intuition of adding it all together hasn't exactly felt accurate. This intuition neglects the fact that cards often take their time over the course of the game. It has moreover led to many cards being naturally excluded from any consideration in the first place. As for a card I (and many others) have come around on, I initially dismissed Wayfarer's Bauble as three-mana ramp and never bothered to try it. I now consider it s staple in non-green commander lists.

Personally, I don't think the additive measure of cost is fluid enough for the game of Magic. There is too much going on for it to be quantified by a single number. I've been using cumulative mana across turns to consider costs in a way that feels more fluid. (Turn one provides one mana, turn two brings that to three mana, turn three brings it to six mana, etc...) This feels better but still imperfect.

How do you evaluate split costs? Do you think that the additive system is good enough as it or do we need something more fluid to more accurately measure a card's power? What do you think?

Flarhoon13 on Victor's Enchanting Resurrections

1 year ago

Now Victor, Valgavoth's Seneschal (was Daxos the Returned) lost again. Cody's Heliod, the Radiant Dawn  ^Flip deck went off and killed us all fairly quickly, like turn 7. I used Burnished Hart to ramp to 8, Cody countered my Ondu Inversion  ^Flip with a Force of Will. He untapped and won on Richard's turn. He drew so many cards and eventually cast an x-spell to make his opponents all draw 72 cards.