Grand Arbiter Augustin IV
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Legality

Format Legality
1v1 Commander Legal
Archenemy Legal
Block Constructed Legal
Canadian Highlander Legal
Casual Legal
Commander / EDH Legal
Commander: Rule 0 Legal
Custom Legal
Duel Commander Legal
Highlander Legal
Legacy Legal
Leviathan Legal
Limited Legal
Modern Legal
Oathbreaker Legal
Planechase Legal
Quest Magic Legal
Vanguard Legal
Vintage Legal

Grand Arbiter Augustin IV

Legendary Creature — Human Advisor

White spells you cast cost less to cast.

Blue spells you cast cost less to cast.

Spells your opponents cast cost more to cast

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griffstick on infinite rats

9 months ago

Cards that make it hard or impossible to play the game. It makes for a frustrating game cards like Stasis Blood Moon and Static Orb are stax so is Contamination, all three of these cards (and there are many many more cards like these) all of these cards make the game hard or impossible to play... so if you add a card like Contamination and your opponents can't play because they are not playing in black. They will feel like they should do the same to you. And then they will also play cards like these. That is a "stax and tax war" amungst your friends.

Tax are cards that make it cost more to do things in the game. Cards Like Thalia, Guardian of Thraben and Trinisphere and Grand Arbiter Augustin IV are tax effects.

Kcin on Remand of the Second Sun

1 year ago

Maybe a copy or two of Grand Arbiter Augustin IV not only does he inversely ramp for you by decreasing your spell costs, he also simultaneously taxes all spells your opponent would play...

Epicurus on People's Thoughts on Mommy Norn?

1 year ago

"She's a great roadblock for decks that combo off to go infinite. You know the ones, where you chain together ETB effects to garner infinite tokens / draw / mana / burn. {...} we've all seen them either in person or online with YouTube."

I was looking through all of my decks, both decks that I own and prototypes, and found very few that Big Momma Norn actually shuts down. There are a few that she hinders, there are a couple interactions in each of them that she denies, but the only ones that I see her as a scoop-worthy opponent to are my Yarok decks and my GW Soul Sisters deck. Which brings me to why I quoted the paragraph above from a previous comment.

As other users have already stated on this thread, I also don't play infinite combos. I do have one such combo in one of my decks, but (a) it happened by accident, (b) it's a 3-card combo in a deck that doesn't run tutors, (c) it doesn't have anything to do with ETB triggers, and therefore isn't nerfed by Ma Norn, and (d) is absolutely not necessary for the deck to win. Is that deck effected by Norn being on the board? To some extent, absolutely. Can it win against a Norn deck? Again, absolutely.

(The deck I'm referring to is Mazirek's Nut Sac, in case anyone wants to look at it and argue otherwise).

I can see this card being a nuisance if all or most of your decks rely heavily on ETB triggers, or if you play infinite combos that require ETB triggers, but for no other reason. And honestly, I'm glad if the latter is the case.

Honestly, on a different note, I don't see her shutting down more decks than Kunoros, Hound of Athreos does. And did Kunoros flood the format? Absolutely not. Why not? Because there are too many decks that operate perfectly fine in it's presence. It only attacks one specific archetype, and only slightly hinders others. That's why you see Kuranos much more often as part of the 99 than as commander. If Ma Norn is different, it's only because there are way too many decks being played in the format that absolutely depend on ETB triggers. In that case, she'll really only serve to help diversify the format, which is exactly the opposite of what gets a card banned.

Cards get banned because they flood and homogenize the format. Rofellos, Llanowar Emissary was banned because, at the time, you couldn't keep up with that deck, so there was no reason to play anything else. Leovold, Emissary of Trest was banned because drawing is one of the most fundamental aspects of the format, and therefore wrecked every single deck archetype, and subsequently became a "play him or lose to him, your choice" kind of commander. I could go on, but basically the ban hammer comes down when a very large percentage of decks are built around that card, thereby rendering most other decks obsolete. It's really more of a business decision than anything, because flooding a format with one card means less sales of anything else. It's also just not any fun for people who want to build anything else to know that they're going to see that one deck over and over and can't beat it. Again, cards become banned when they enter the category of you have to play them, or you're going to lose to them.

On that subject, I personally wish that Thassa's Oracle would be banned. There are way too many of those decks out there, and they're not any fun to play against. I'd also like to recommend Cyclonic Rift for the hammer, because it is my number one hurt feels card (it's not just a board wipe, it's a one-sided middle finger for everyone). And no, neither of those can be in the command zone to start the game. However, both are infinitely less situational than Ma Norn. They're both devastating to every single deck archetype, not just the most popular ones.

And my final thought on the subject is that there are many other better and more versatile Stax commanders. Tegrid has been mentioned a lot on this thread, and for good reason. Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir could be added to that discussion. Grand Arbiter Augustin IV might not shut down any decks, but puts you at a +2 or +3 mana advantage, which is much less situational than the advantage Ma Norn gives you. Shit, even Archelos, Lagoon Mystic, a very underrated commander, whom a lot of people overlook, has much more of a capability of shutting down a much wider category of deck archetypes than does Ma Norn, and has a much better color identity if you want to play Stax. I'm not saying that Archelos is a better card, not by a long shot. I'm just trying to illustrate how dumb it would be to cry for the hammer to come down on Ma Norn before she ever even sees the command zone. She's not going to flood the format, won't wreck the game, and really just makes mono-white a viable option and nothing else.

Anyway, that's my rant.

Coward_Token on Brother's War Spoilers

1 year ago

The worst thing about Urza, Lord Protector as a commander is that it doesn't partner with The Mightstone and Weakstone, so if the latter gets exiled you're kinda stuck with a bad Grand Arbiter Augustin IV. I think it's still seems pretty fun though. Maybe go for a lot of 1-mana artifacts?

Madcookie on Knowledge pool, Void mirror and …

1 year ago

Does tax effects like Grand Arbiter Augustin IV fizzle the Knowledge Pool + Void Mirror lock by allowing the opponents to pay 1 extra mana (assuming they pick colored) to cast a spell from the pool?

I'm fairly sure it's a nonbo but want to be extra sure.

AggroWithAShield on The new brew

1 year ago

Hey guys,

I wanna make a new deck (got tired of slivers) and I'm looking for feedbacks on three commanders.

The first one is Elminster obsiously a scry theme and one of the win con was Approach of the Second Sun but other than that I don't see much.

Second one is Taigam, Ojutai Master Spellslinger (with extra turn spells) or cantrips.

and my last one is Volo, Itinerant Scholar with the Far Traveler Background to maximise on Volo's value.

Basically I'd like feedback on which one is the strongest of the three, at what power level do they cap and are any of them able to compete in a more cEDH environnement.

If you guys need some background as to why:

I tested with Brago, King Eternal and Grand Arbiter Augustin IV recently and I just loved the colors but I was told to avoid putting that much money (I'm gonna bling out my deck as much as I possibly can since I have like 2k I can put on it) in two of the most hated strategy/commanders since I probably wouldn't end up playing them much and it would be a waste so I picked the 3 others (apparently people hate blinks and stax so...).

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