Rule of Law

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Legality

Format Legality
1v1 Commander 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
Gladiator Legal
Highlander Legal
Historic Legal
Legacy Legal
Leviathan Legal
Limited Legal
Modern Legal
Oathbreaker Legal
Pioneer Legal
Planechase Legal
Quest Magic Legal
Tiny Leaders Legal
Vanguard Legal
Vintage Legal

Rule of Law

Enchantment

Each player can't cast more than one spell each turn.

legendofa on Has WotC Been Doing a …

2 months ago

A (kind of) quick explanation:

Commander tends to encourage and support large creatures, fast combos, and accumulating resources (life totals, board presence, cards in hand, mana) to survive and defeat three opponents at once. 's strengths are rapid massed attacks and technical combat, defensive structure, and restricting opponents' options. Its long-term weaknesses include smaller than average creatures and reduced ability to generate resources quickly. This made it very poorly suited for EDH (now know as Commander). It was seen as a fairly viable support color for slower control decks, but unable to support a deck on its own and generally "unfun," with effects like Rule of Law, Armageddon, and Ghostly Prison only serving to stall and draw out the game. could set up a lock, but not provide many threats of its own to actually end a match. This meant that -centric decks were slow themselves and made everybody else slower, shutting down a match without providing closure.

Commander's increasing popularity and the strong advantages that , , and had over and in that format meant that these colors were often seen as weak and underpowered, even when presenting powerful options in Standard, Modern, and other formats more suited to their strengths. WotC responded by experimenting with ways to increase the viability of and in Commander without making them too strong in other formats.

I think they've done a reasonably good job overall, although the Legacy initiative decks probably represent a misstep, along with Smothering Tithe. Standard, Modern, and Pioneer have not seen an influx of cards drawing multiple cards each turn, while -centric decks are increasingly viable in Commander, although still need support at the highest tiers. Commander has always been a casual, highly variable format above all, where personal expression is encouraged as much as any mechanical balance. Still, the process is still very much in its experimental phases, and trial and error is the most cost- and production-efficient method of expanding 's (and every other color's) area of expertise.

Imagine if the fan-made format catered to 's and 's strengths. In this hypothetical, instead of trying to use all their old weird cards, the creators simply wanted to play as many different games as possible. Call it Rapidfire format. Life points start at 15, and the decks are singleton 45-card piles that use the colors of their commanders. Here, and are powerful, while and would need a lot of help--mill might be acceptable, but that's it. This little thought experiment is just trying to show that the apparent weakness of is simply residue of a single popular format that reduces its strengths and amplify its shortcomings.

This post was a lot shorter and less rambly when I started writing, I swear.

DreadKhan on Zurza's Saga

7 months ago

I love Urza's Saga in my Zur deck, but I don't really max out it's value, it's just another good card and a way for Zur to ramp me. It's nice to see someone take the time to lean into this! I have a few ideas for you, but most of them don't really use sagas, but I am a big fan of Zur decks and studied up on them a bit, most of the ideas are to increase the power level/offer backup plans that I think are thematically similar. If you're totally happy with this as is feel free to ignore, it's easy to make a Zur deck too strong and end up the archenemey

If you're going to be running Sensei's Divining Top, you might like Counterbalance, which Zur can find. Similarly, I feel like if you use Out Of Time you should consider Vanishing, this lets Zur wipe the board of creatures with safety, it also gives him useful protection. If you don't need Zur to keep swinging you can use some copy enchantments to lock creatures off the board, I think if you used Mirrormade (which I'm pretty sure you should run either way) and Estrid's Invocation, have Estrid's copy Out Of Time, then use Vanishing to protect Zur so you can swing next turn and get Mirrormade, copying the Estrid's Out Of Time, now you can just lock creatures off the board indefinitely, not sure if this is worth it or not, but I think all of the cards are good includes. I think since you can always choose to not return the Out Of Time creatures and then advance your board state with Zur it's probably worth a look vs pretty aggressive metas. There is also Copy Enchantment, I found in my competitive Zur list that having all 3 wasn't a problem very often, they're great to draw if someone has a Rhystic Study/Tithe, there are lots of splashy enchantments out there that are worth grabbing. If you do run a bunch of copy enchantment effects they are really good with All That Glitters as a fall back plan, ATG and a copy is sometimes enough to 1 shot people with Commander damage, I liked it because I already wanted the copy effects and I gained access to impressively large voltron at the cost of including only 1 card.

If Urza's Saga gets exiled somehow (or vs Proliferate maybe?), Luminarch Ascension can generate a ton of bodies, and while they'll be smaller they have flying, be 1 mana cheaper, and dodge Vandalblast. The Ascension is pretty easy to make work if you get it out early, and once it's online it's often the best thing you can do with your mana. If your meta is pretty harsh, you might toss in Solitary Confinement as a way to delay your demise, and if you're worried about sustaining Confinement all you need to add is Court of Cunning, this will pay for Confinement until you deck yourself, meaning you can use spare mana to make tokens while your opponent's can't do anything to you, they get swarmed by super cheap 4/4 Flyers.

Do you need to target your artifacts themselves for any of your interactions? I ask because I'm not sure if Hanna's Custody would be useful, it also protects your opponent's stuff, but when I play Zur I loved facing an artifact deck because you can just dig out Energy Flux and they either remove it or pretty much scoop. Flux can be a dead card, but when you run into a busted artifact deck this will punish them quite effectively, and Zur can dig it out whenever it's going to be relevant.

It's a pretty spicy card, but have you considered Hall of the Bandit Lord for Haste? Zur really wants Haste in my experience, but I built for cEDH and needed to move fast.

It's potentially pretty unfun, but if your Zur deck isn't often casting multiple spells you should consider Rule of Law/Arcane Laboratory if your opponents won't revolt, Zur already cheats out an enchantment and you can make tokens with mana, how many spells do you really end up casting compared to people playing more traditional decks? Lots of people like to run really low curve decks these days, Rule of Law effects (I'd also consider Archon of Emeria maybe, since those decks also love untapped lands) really make life hard for those decks. If your area has players that like small draw spells then Rule of Law is going to feel pretty good.

DreadKhan on Need help ruining a combo players day

8 months ago

Thorn of Amethyst, Glowrider, Sphere of Resistance, Vryn Wingmare, and Eidolon of Rhetoric all exist, but I'm guessing they didn't make the cut?

Retribution of the Meek might be a reasonable wipe with so many smaller creatures, ditto Elspeth, Sun's Champion. If a wipe is one sided it's not just resetting the board, not sure how many of these you're willing to run. Elspeth makes a small army, much better at blocking than the Samurai from Wanderer fwiw, but Wanderer is really strong too. Smothering Tithe is great with Stasis out, Brago, King Eternal might be fun too. If people are running obnoxious stuff, you could run Enlightened Tutor to find your Stasis/Tithe cards as needed, Muddle the Mixture can find both Stasis or Brave the Sands, while also being a counterspell. If you like Stasis, you could also try Static Orb, Meekstone, Crackdown or even Winter Orb/Rising Waters, not sure how hostile you want to be but Stasis is harsher than these. How often do you cast Approach of the Second Sun in here? I ask because there are a lot of tax effects, but if it's not trouble have you thought about running some tutors to find it? The best ones I can think of are Mystical Tutor, Personal Tutor, and Solve the Equation, they can also find other cards as needed, handy if you need removal, a wipe or a counter.

As for alternatives that can do similar things, you might look at either Zur the Enchanter or Hinata, Dawn-Crowned as alternatives that offer more offensive punch while still offering a solid route to shutting the table down. Zur can dig out enchantments like Rule of Law, Stasis (and Black Market Connections) and various ways to fairly quickly win the game, all while being able to hold up lots of mana for interaction, be it counters or removal. Hinata is another tax effect, but you get access to Red as well, and Red has some interesting additions to the Stax department, you'd definitely want Grand Arbiter in your Hinata deck, and you'd run most of the same cards, but you also have the option of running a bunch of cards that care about Hinata's discount, Hinata makes interaction better, especially if it has multiple targets, the annoying thing for both is that they're much harder to cast than Grand Arbiter, so you'd have to raise your budget to have the same consistency. The big problem with Zur is protecting him. If there are literally specific players you know are a problem you can run either Baral, Chief of Compliance or Talrand, Sky Summoner, Baral is better at playing 'Counter Everything' but Talrand can be just offensively good vs a specific player since he also is generating evasive bodies while interacting with that player's win attempts. The nice thing about he mono-Blue approach is you can just brutalize a player or two while letting the others play a smaller (but more normal) game.

Oh, if those players run specific colours (and nobody else likes them as much) there are old school colour hosers, cards like Karma can make life extremely hard. They exist for all colours, and they were so staggeringly unpopular that the developer stopped printing cards like it.

Azoth2099 on Narset's Work Out Plan

8 months ago

Bkotz

This version of Narset looks so fun, man!

One thing that I feel is fundamental when remembering Narset, Enlightened Exile's function as a Commander is that her ability gives you Graveyard hate as well as pseudo card draw by giving you access to your opponent's Graveyards as well as your own, meaning that you will always have card advantage as long as you protect your Commander.

That being said, I would definitely find room for Lightning Greaves, Swiftfoot Boots, Mother of Runes, Giver of Runes, & an abundance of Counterspells. Personally, I don't like spending more than 1 Mana for a Counterspell these days. Red Elemental Blast, Pyroblast, Dispel, Swan Song & An Offer You Can't Refuse provide a crazy ceiling of value for a single Mana. If you wanted to roll with 2-drops for budget reasons, though, Delay, Arcane Denial, Dovin's Veto & Negate are all easy to cast, & throw a wide net. Misdirection & Bolt Bend are also options here.

Secondly, Narset, Enlightened Exile can only trigger on your own turn, & you need to ensure that everything is going to go as planned. Grand Abolisher & Conqueror's Flail will lock your opponents out of your turn without giving your opponents the same utility like cards like Teferi, Time Raveler & Defense Grid notoriously do. Silence, Revel in Silence  Flip, Abeyance & Orim's Chant can do something similar for 1-2 Mana.

Speaking of Stax, there are a few concise, utilitarian pieces that you may want to consider. Drannith Magistrate, Sanctum Prelate, Archon of Emeria, Lavinia, Azorious Renegade, Boromir, Warden of the Tower, Aven Mindcensor & Containment Priest shut down a LOT of strategies. You'd be surprised how little most decks can do once you take away their ability to cheat stuff in, Tutor and/or cast things for free. Personally, every deck I have is heavily handicapped by all of those pieces. I wouldn't even be able to target them with removal if you played your cards right.

For noncreature Stax, you've got Chalice of the Void, Cursed Totem, Thorn of Amethyst, Deafening Silence, Grafdigger's Cage (which your Commander's ability gets around btw, very strong here), & Rule of Law as a few solid options.

You do need quite a bit more card draw, though. Scroll Rack & Sensei's Divining Top are obviously great, but the level of toolbox utility they actually give you in practice is even better than it seems! Archivist of Oghma, Faerie Mastermind & Ledger Shredder all give you card draw that scales with what your opponents are doing, which is fantastic. Other things like Deep Gnome Terramancer & Wandering Archaic  Flip do the same thing, though they technically aren't card draw. Hell, might as well throw Monologue Tax out there too since I'm talking about scaling.

There's also Careful Study, Frantic Search, Tolarian Winds, Faithless Looting, Cathartic Reunion, Burning Inquiry, Thrill of Possibility & Dragon's Rage Channeler, which are great synergy here!

Speaking of synergy, let's get into that! The foremost synergies for Narset, Enlightened Exile imho is Underworld Breach + Lion's Eye Diamond + Brain Freeze & Intuition, and much of the deck should be geared towards maximizing on that. They're all very easy to Tutor up via cards like Enlightened Tutor, Mystical Tutor, Idyllic Tutor, Solve the Equation, Fabricate, Reshape, Transmute Artifact, Reckless Handling, Goblin Engineer & Gamble, in addition to being easy to recur via your Commander's ability. It's actually absurd, truly busted. I wouldn't recommend throwing Wheels like Wheel of Fortune or Windfall into the mix, though. They're very overrated, & you can just run Brain Freeze for the combo instead. No need to give all of your opponents a bunch of cards for free if you don't have to! Queen Kayla bin-Kroog is for sure worth consideration, though, if you choose to run Artifact Stax.

Maximizing on Underworld Breach, however, means running Storm. I'd recommend Birgi, God of Storytelling  Flip, Storm-Kiln Artist, Urabrask  Flip, Desperate Ritual, Pyretic Ritual & Seething Song to keep your Storm engine from shutting off. I personally don't condone Runaway Steam-Kin, as it's just too freaking slow & conditional compared to other options.

Additional Combat Phases would also be of great use here as opposed to trigger doublers like Strionic Resonator or something. Aggravated Assault, Waves of Aggression, World at War & Seize the Day are the only ones I'd consider running, though. You don't wanna load up on too many synergy effects when you can just Tutor for the best of them when the time's right, ya know?

Since you're running Dockside Extortionist, I'd also consider Cloudstone Curio. With one other Creature (like Spellseeker for example), you can produce infinite Treasures & ETBs with little effort, which is usually more than enough to get you to the finish line.

Your ramp package is looking solid enough, but I'd include 2 more Rocks as well as the rituals I named previously. Fellwar Stone is, functionally, a 5-color Rock for 2 Mana, which is absurd. I tend to not condone 3-drop rocks, with the exception of Chromatic Lantern, which was just reprinted recently and is currently super cheap.

Oh man, now that I think of it Isochron Scepter + Dramatic Reversal gives your whole team infinite power and toughness via your Commander, as well as giving you infinite Mana if you have enough Rocks on the field. Maybe consider it lol.

Monastery Mentor seems to fit like glove here as well, offering some much needed redundancy and a surprising amount of board presence. It's kind of like Deep Gnome Terramancer or Wandering Archaic  Flip in the sense that it just provides waaaay more value while playtesting than you thought it was going to!

Also, consider giving yourself Hexproof with stuff like Witchbane Orb to protect your own Graveyard.

To summarize, I really think your best bet with this one is building a system that gets to either an Underworld Breach + Lion's Eye Diamond + Brain Freeze combo win or an Intuition win as quickly as possible, with other combos like Dramatic Reversal + Isochron Scepter being strong potentialities on the way.

Cheers!

Azoth2099 on Sen Triplets - Esper Control (Seeking Help)

9 months ago

Iraeus

Okay, so if you're specifically trying to outdo Aesi, Tyrant of Gyre Strait, you're going to have to make sure that you're not being outdone by it's immense card draw & Ramp. Deep Gnome Terramancer, Archivist of Oghma, Esper Sentinel, Alms Collector, Monologue Tax, Smuggler's Share, Consecrated Sphinx, Faerie Mastermind & Ledger Shredder will help accomplish this. Black Market Connections, Scroll Rack, Sensei's Divining Top, Dark Confidant, Dark Tutelage & of course Necropotence are also great card draw options, but won't scale with whatever your opponents are doing. Tithe, Gift of Estates & Land Tax are generically great, but extra great in this context.

Consider Rule of Law, Arcane Laboratory & Archon of Emeria as well. Sanctum Prelate, Void Winnower & Chalice of the Void will also hit 'em with a big ole "NOPE" when adequately applied. Decree of Silence + Solemnity will do so as well.

Weird stuff like Deathgrip will also probably help you lock the game down, but it might not translate very well outside of trying to take down Aesi, Tyrant of Gyre Strait lol. Depends on how heavy your group is, really.

Speaking of that, you really might just need more Counterspells or something! Stuff like Tale's End seems pretty good for your goal here. More Mana Rocks seems like a great idea here too. I'm sure you're buddy is running a bunch of traditional Ramp & Dorks, right? You absolutely must keep up, or you're gonna lose.

More Tutors will help you grease the wheels, too. They can get pretty expensive dollar-wise, but options like Diabolic Tutor, Diabolic Intent & Wishclaw Talisman are very affordable right now.

Let me know how you feel about these suggestions! Cheers!

Azoth2099 on Esper Lounge Presents : Weaver of a Thousand Faces

9 months ago

JackNavi

Oi! Sen Triplets is so busted lol, great choice.

Consider more Tutors if you're looking to keep up with high-power pods more effectively, unfortunately there's really no way around it. Recruiter of the Guard could also pull a lot of weight here, considering all of the applicable pieces like Walking Ballista & Grand Abolisher.

Stuff like Paradox Haze, Mnemonic Betrayal, Praetor's Grasp, Mindslaver & Word of Command also offer value and pseudo-redundancy to this Commander, but they might be getting a little too cute with synergy too.

Card advantage pieces like Ad Nauseam, Dark Confidant, Dark Tutelage, Scroll Rack & of course Necropotence get around card draw Stax pieces like Notion Thief & Narset, Parter of Veils. You may also want to consider those two in this list! Lavinia, Azorius Renegade, Linvala, Keeper of Silence & Chalice of the Void will ruin a lot of game plans as well. If you were running Reanimator I'd also recommend Void Winnower, but this may not be the Commander for all of that...Definitely consider Silence & Angel's Grace, though! Perhaps some Rule of Law effects like Archon of Emeria as well, but it seems like you're trying to go fairly fast here so maybe not lol.

I know they're "boring", but cards like Brainstorm, Ponder, Careful Study, Tolarian Winds & Dark Ritual are just...really, really good haha.

Rhystic Study & Sensei's Divining Top are obviously absolute bangers. Same with Sea Gate, Reborn  Flip & Agadeem, the Undercrypt  Flip, can't recommend them enough.

Lastly, a piece that I don't see often but is definitely worth it in high-power pods: Deep Gnome Terramancer. This lil dude Ramps you so much you'll think you're playing a deck, it's actually absurd.

Cheers!

zAzen7977 on K'rrik the Masochist

1 year ago

Hey theyounghansolo, I have a lot of experience playing K’rrik competitively and I have a few suggestions to help you improve your competitiveness:

ssteves1069 is spot on, Chainer, Dementia Master is crucial to this deck’s functionality. Since his ability is an activated ability, it bypasses Rule of Law and counterspells, which are this deck’s greatest weakness. To use Chainer, you need a proper sacrifice outlet like Dimir House Guard or Razaketh, the Foulblooded. Once you have Chainer, Guard/Razaketh, and Gray Merchant of Asphodel on the board, you’ve assembled an infinite combo and drain each opponent to death. You can also accomplish this with Buried Alive and Necrotic Ooze.

Final Parting targeting Reanimate in hand and Vilis, Broker of Blood in the grave usually wins you the game. Scheming Symmetry should never be run in a competitive setting since you are likely providing an opponent with a combo piece or counterspell.

Beacon of Unrest is too slow, I’d replace it with Shallow Grave. Recurring your artifacts is not critical to your strategy.

Sheoldred, the Apocalypse has the same functionality as Aetherflux Reservoir, but is a creature and can be reanimated. She pairs perfectly with Vilis. Plus Shelly and Peer into the Abyss either gains you lots of life or usually eliminates another player.

To be continued…

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