Growing Ranks

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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
Pioneer Legal
Planechase Legal
Quest Magic Legal
Vanguard Legal
Vintage Legal

Growing Ranks

Enchantment

At the beginning of your upkeep, populate. (Create a token that's a copy of a creature token you control.)

Rhadamanthus on How do the cards Anikthea, …

6 months ago

You can use double square brackets around a card's name to create a reference link: Anikthea, Hand of Erebos, Battle for Bretagard, Growing Ranks. It's the best way to help people understand what's going on in your question.

The copies of the tokens created in this example will also be 3/3 creatures. Copy effects take into account what's written on the original plus the results of any other copy effects that the original is subject to. This means if a copy effect makes a copy with some specific different characteristics from the original, those differences will carry over to any copies of that copy.

Yes, a Battle for Bretagard that also happens to be a creature token can make a copy of itself. A saga gets sacrificed when its last chapter ability fully resolves and leaves the stack, so it will be on the battlefield long enough for its effect to work on itself.

DemonDragonJ on All Creatures Great and Small

9 months ago

I have replaced Growing Ranks with Nesting Dovehawk, since the latter card is a creature, and this deck has a great emphasis on creatures.

thefiresoflurve on Naya Populate True

1 year ago

Welcome to big board state club! (I used to run G/W populate back in the day).

Disclaimer: not sure what your budget is for recommendations, so I'm going to go by what I see here (Dockside, Smothering Tithe, Parallel Lives level of cost for individual recommendations).

I think Ghired, Conclave Exile would make a better commander here than Palladia-Mors, unless you're tied to the latter for sentimentality/flavor/etc.

Next, land base. The single best thing I did for my Esper deck was upgrading my land base. You don't have to go super hard here to see results, but I would put together a list like: 1x Cabaretti Courtyard 1x Command Tower 1x Jungle Shrine 1x Sungrass Prairie 1x Rockfall Vale 1x Branchloft Pathway  Flip 1x Needleverge Pathway  Flip 1x Rogue's Passage 1x Kessig Wolf Run 1x Gavony Township. If you like this route, there are even more cheaper dual lands you can add in like the Temple of Triumph and friends.

There are a few cuts or substitutions that I think the main deck could make really easily:

Ultramarines Honour Guard -> Caller of the Pack. If Ghired attacks with a creature that has Myriad, he can populate the token that Myriad creates, but the Populated token forgets about the exile clause. Thus, you can end up with a theoretically infinite horde of creatures. It's fantastic. :D

Going off that last bit... Wayfaring Temple -> Treasure. Basically a great card in commander anyway, here it's a free win if you manage to clone it.

Growing Ranks is an easy cut. It's way too slow for EDH (compare it to Parallel Lives...) Could replace it with a Talisman of Conviction or friends to help you ramp faster.

I would replace Momentous Fall with Teferi's Protection or Akroma's Will or Grand Crescendo - some extra source of board wipe dodging. I don't think your creatures are really big enough to warrant a momentous fall.

I would also replace Druid's Deliverance with one of the aforementioned board wipe dodges. There are also some cheaper options like Your Temple is Under Attack, Unbreakable Formation, Make a Stand. Reasoning being: you should have enough board state to block things that want to hurt you, as long as you keep your board alive.

As far as making tokens sooner: well, if you want to do that, you're going to have to run some cheaper creatures.... or ramp faster. I'd probably opt for ramping faster, TBH, since your creatures are really cool. If you add the entire Gruul Signet and friends, along with the Talismans I mentioned earlier, that should get you to the minimum ramp package in tricolor EDH to make sure you can play quickly.

Naya Charm -> Artifact Mutation can help make some earlier tokens.

Brindle Shoat and Call of the Conclave are some decent options for turn 3 tokens you might consider, as well. But adding those would also require cutting other stuff.... horrible choice I don't envy you : P

Sorry for the wall of text...Hope that helps, and happy building!

Mr.Himer on Will this create token lands …

1 year ago

This might be really convoluted and stupid but that's what I like about Magic so bear with me. Thanks in advance for any help.

At the start of my turn, I have a Growing Ranks, a Helm of the Host, a Thornglint Bridge, and a Druid Class which is at level 2 on the battlefield. During my first Main Phase, I spend the mana to put Druid Class at level 3 and target Thornglint Bridge making it a creature that's power and toughness are each equal to the number of lands I control. If I then equip Helm of the Host to the Thornglint Bridge land creature and go to my combat phase, I get a token copy. Is that token just a copy of Thornglint Bridge or is it also a land creature that I could then target with Growing Ranks at the beginning of my next upkeep?

If it's not a creature, could I target that token copy of Thornglint Bridge with Living Terrain and make it available to be targeted by Growing Ranks?

I like the idea of getting myself a bunch of indestructible land tokens. Is there an easier way to do this and I'm just dumb? Probably. Thanks for any and all help!!!

SirArevacoso on A Big Box of Chocolates

1 year ago

Hi, thefiresoflurve

True that Growing Ranks seems too slow, I removed it earlier but forgot to save the edit XD

I'm not 100% on board with Runic Armasaur because I have mostly only creatures I would be "happy" to pull almost anytime. But Wolverine Riders seems certainly interesting, because while it doesn't make eggs, I have some mechanisms to turn everything into eggs, so it wouldn't be a bad pull. Plus, I have some cards that generate some value with creature sac. On a different note: an all the deck versions that I have tested and in around 15 games, card draw only served me if I was royally screwed with my commander, if I had egg game going on I almost never played things from hand, so not super worried about card draw for now.

Idol of Oblivion and Pyrohemia seem like fire suggestions, apart from the fact that I wanted to cut artifacts and enchantments to add more removal.

Thanks!

thefiresoflurve on A Big Box of Chocolates

1 year ago

Looks a little bit light on sac outlets:

Pyrohemia would be great as a "sac outlet" to sweep your board clear of eggs, and also do some bonus control against your opponents. It also happens to synergize really well with the Enrage mechanic (which you aren't running a lot of, but it's a bonus still).

Idol of Oblivion was made for Atla Palani, excellent draw card here.

Having played Trostani Populate as an edh deck before, in my opinion Growing Ranks is just too slow to be worth it. Depending on your table, Runic Armasaur or Shapers' Sanctuary might be good cards to up your draw power some more. Wolverine Riders is also another possibility if you want more token generation in that slot (note: each upkeep), but it can't make eggs.

thefiresoflurve on Ghired, Conclave Exile

1 year ago

Scaretiller -> Solemn Simulacrum - same cost, but scare tiller has fewer cards it synergizes with in your deck. Especially since you don't have an excess of draw, and solemn can help with that a bit, too. Bonus points if you clone it with Feldon of the Third Path etc.

Leaning a bit into the red side of token creation, some things I might recommend:

Growing Ranks/Vitu-Ghazi Guildmage -> Determined Iteration - a lot cheaper for a similar effect. Note: definitely keep the Guildmage if you can manage infinite mana; it's a great outlet.

Heart-Piercer Manticore -> Fable of the Mirror-Breaker  Flip.

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