Splinter Twin
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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
Oathbreaker Legal
Planechase Legal
Quest Magic Legal
Vanguard Legal
Vintage Legal

Splinter Twin

Enchantment — Aura

Enchant creature

Enchanted creature has ": Put a token that's a copy of this creature onto the battlefield. That token has haste. Exile it at the beginning of your next end step."

rckclimber777 on Build a Deck with Me …

5 hours ago

First a quick introduction. I've been playing magic off and on for years. When this site first started out, I was super active and then I stopped playing. I recently got back into it and plunged deep into the Commander format. I love building decks around interesting concepts and often trying to break cards.

My slightly ambitious goal is to create a series of threads that show my thought process as I build a commander deck. I figure it will serve two purposes: First, it will aid newer players who have some precon decks and perhaps are looking to upgrade them or they see a commander and want to build it, but aren't sure how. The second is purely self-motivated in that more experienced players can fine tune my own logic and make suggestions for my own improvement.

So with that, the first commander deck I'm going to build here is Ghired, Mirror of the Wilds. This is a card that begs to broken and creates for interesting and powerful decks. There are also several different lines you can choose to go with it. You can make it go infinite if you like degeneracy or don't like the people in your playgroup, or you can decide to go the way of building lots of tokens quickly and then turning them sideways and swinging.

So first things first, we need to think about what the commander actually does and what it is going to need to do that effectively. First, it says allows all nontoken creatures to tap and create tokens that I control that entered the battlefield this turn. So a couple things to point out: First is that it is tokens not creature tokens specifically, so treasures, clues, food, etc. is fair game. Secondly, it doesn't have to be my turn that the tokens came in, you can activate the ability at instant speed if you create a token on your opponent's turn. Now Ghired also is only 3 mana in Naya colors with Haste which means he's going to come down early in the game, so we'll want some other creatures out there when he comes down to start building up tokens right away.

With his abilities in mind, there are a couple things that we want to think about: Cards that create tokens, cards that double tokens, cards that untap things, and cards that do interesting things when they're tapped, example Wylie Duke, Atiin Hero, who comes down early as well, and when she is tapped I gain life and draw a card. We will obviously need to consider interaction, ramp, and card draw, but those are secondary in my thoughts. Every deck needs those, but what items you add of those often depends on what your deck is trying to do. In this case, we want to make tokens, tap creatures, make more tokens.

Token Generators

So a couple really good token generators here to start would be things that keep making them rather than one offs. In my playtesting Oltec Matterweaver is hard to beat. It comes in early (turn 2 if you can get a sol ring). When you cast a creature spell you can copy a target artifact or bring out a 1/1 gnome. Turn 1 you play a plains and a sol ring. Turn 2 you bring this out, turn 3 you bring out Ghired, creating a copy of sol ring, tap your Oltec Matterweaver and create another sol ring. You now have 3 sol rings on the field on turn 3... You are now the archenemy, congrats?

Some other standouts are Emmara, Soul of the Accord who when tapped creates a 1/1 soldier with lifelink. So tapping will actually create two tokens. Thousand Moons Smithy  Flip is another beast of a card. It comes down turn 4, Ghired is already out along with any other low cost creatures. Let's say you had a Birds of Paradise and Ghired when this comes down and maybe a mana rock. You create a 5/5 Gnome (2 creatures, 2 artifacts, and the gnome itself). Now you tap the bird and Ghired and create two more Gnomes. You now have 3 7/7s, on turn 4...

Honorable mentions here are things like Smothering Tithe who will create treasures each opponent's turn, tap a creature and create another. Rain of Riches, create some treasures, copy them cast something and get cascade.

Also, populate is a thing, I like Growing Ranks and Nesting Dovehawk for that.

Doublers

Ok, so doublers is a pretty easy topic, there are quite a few out there, they are expensive and honestly for this deck you don't need much. I chose a couple that I particularly like for this and by like I mean I own them and didn't have to go out and spend $50-60. Examples are Ojer Taq, Deepest Foundation  Flip, Mondrak, Glory Dominus, Primal Vigor (careful as this one applies to everyone not just you).

Untapping Abilities

Untapping abilites can make it even worse as time goes on. If you have a Seedborn Muse you untap each upkeep so they draw a card, Smothering Tithe creates a treasure, during their end step you tap your creatures creating more treasures. Untap on the next opponent's untap step, rinse and repeat.

This is also where infinite combos begin to happen. Sunstrike Legionnaire untaps everytime a creature enters the battlefield. Make a creature token, tap sunstrike legionnaire, create another creature token, sunstrike legionnaire untaps, rinse and repeat, gg. Midnight Guard works too for one mor mana. Other options include making copies of your own creatures that untap creatures when they enter the battlefield like Hyrax Tower Scout, Zealous Conscripts, Sparring Mummy. Mix that with notable salty cards like Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker, Molten Duplication, Splinter Twin, Jaxis, the Troublemaker and you're off to infinite again. (Jaxis uses his ability, sparring mummy comes in untaps him, now Jaxis just taps to make a copy of the sparring mummy token (from Ghired) which has haste, it comes in untaps Jaxis, rinse and repeat, swing with a legion of sparring mummies)

Cards that do cool things when tapped aren't super plentiful, but the two I've mentioned already are great for this deck. (Wylie and Emmara).

Interaction, ramp, card draw

Now for the ramp, interaction, and card draw. Ramp is fairly straightforward, since we have the Oltec Matterweaver, I opted to put in some signets, but left some other stones out. Normally when I'm in green I go heavy on green ramp. I opted for cheap ramp spells like Rampant Growth, Farseek, Three Visits and Birds of Paradise (could maybe use more mana dorks since having a body later will help in producing larger tokens).

Interaction is super important in this one. Board wipes are coming, targeted removal is coming, so need to prepare, but we also need to be flexible in taking out our opponents. So to save us from board wipes, we have Heroic Intervention, the ubiquitous and hopefully soon to be reprinted (one can dream) Teferi's Protection, Boros Charm, and Smuggler's Surprise (which is heroic intervention in disguise).

Getting rid of threats is crucial, so Path to Exile, Swords to Plowshares are useful, but not as useful as Beast Within, Generous Gift, and Stroke of Midnight. These obviously target more than just creatures, but also produce tokens. There are situations where a well-timed beast within on your own treasure token to create a 3/3 beast that you can copy a bunch of times is the right play. That make it not just removal, but also a token generator.

Finally, we come to card draw. Since we are producing tokens (hopefully most turns) we can include things like Bennie Bracks, Zoologist and Idol of Oblivion. I also like Welcoming Vampire for this deck. It is creature heavy so Guardian Project is great, so is Beast Whisperer and Garruk's Uprising. Esper Sentinel is always good. We already have Wylie from earlier. Getting card draw is vital to the survival of any deck and particularly this one as we need to be producing tokens regularly and you need cards to produce them. I chose to run about 11 card draw engines in the deck to ensure I'm drawing regularly.

Lands... I mean... make sure you have dual lands in the deck and triomes if you can. One noteworthy utility land is Grove of the Guardian which can have a nice payoff when you create an 8/8 with a few creatures out along with Ghired.

I'll post the deck that I built from this thought process on my page in case you want to see the final product. And if you made it this far thanks for joining me on this, I hope it was helpful. Feel free to comment on how you would do it differently or cards that should have been mentioned.

king-saproling on "Wake Up, Wasteland! It's Me, Three Dog!"

1 month ago

Man this commander is so crazy. Seems like you'll need a lot of dry-erase cards to write up aura tokens haha. Anyway these would be my swaps:

Grim Reaper's Sprint -> Hope Against Hope
Reconnaissance -> Born to Drive
Swiftfoot Boots -> Mantle of Leadership
Armored Skyhunter -> Cartouche of Solidarity
Nomad Mythmaker -> Nurturing Presence
Mesa Enchantress -> Valor of the Worthy
Wyleth, Soul of Steel -> Squire's Devotion
Tiana, Ship's Caretaker -> Archon of Sun's Grace
Sphere of Safety -> Ajani's Chosen
Unquenchable Fury -> Boon of the Spirit Realm
Sigarda's Aid -> Forgeborn Oreads
Angelic Destiny -> Pious Wayfarer
Court of Ardenvale -> Knight of Doves
Kellan, the Fae-Blooded -> Akki Ember-Keeper
Cass, Hand of Vengeance -> Gift of Wrath
Danitha Capashen, Paragon -> Breath of Fury

Here are some other considerations: Shifting Shadow, Gift of Immortality, Splinter Twin, Soul-Strike Technique

nbarry223 on Dec 4th 2023 Ban announcement

4 months ago

I second that free mana like SSG is deserving of its ban.

I’d like to see some further unbans as well, but only the “safe” ones. Honestly a lot of the dominating cards previously wouldn’t be nearly as problematic in today’s modern, due to how efficient removal has become. A card like Splinter Twin would probably be safe to unban in today’s format, but I am not expecting to see it unbanned because of how dominant it once was (I don’t think its counterpart, Birthing Pod is safe to unban yet, since there’s not enough crazy powerful artifact hate).

Cards I would be happy to see unbanned are:

All the artifact lands
Deathrite Shaman
Ponder
Punishing Fire
Umezawa's Jitte

nbarry223 on Colorshift Land Control

7 months ago

Yeah that alongside some effect that forces them to tap a land/permanent could be pretty disgusting. Would just be difficult to assemble all the pieces.

I’ve built the ramp into TopDecking lands strategy before, and it was surprisingly competitive, but that was back when Splinter Twin and Birthing Pod was most of the meta.

TheAgentofBlight on MagicalHacker - List of All 2-Card Infinite Combos

7 months ago

Felidar Guardian works with Splinter Twin on an opponents end step by flickering the Splinter Twin and putting it onto the untapped token each time. This then allows you to untap with the tokens and attack because if done during the end step, the Splinter Twin tokens do not get sacrificed until your end step.

nbarry223 on Ban list day!

8 months ago

I'm disappointed, but not surprised by the announcement.

They had a lot of opportunity to make the format healthier in my opinion, and definitely missed on it. Clearly the replaying of The One Ring is the "unforeseen loophole" that makes the card too powerful and unfun to play against. It was a huge missed opportunity to make it the first restricted card of the format (yes, it's unprecedented I know, but I think it would make sense, since the opportunity to die to your ring instantly becomes very real).

I also feel like they could have hurt the MH2 elementals a bit by limiting them to 2 copies, removing the unhealthy consistency of a turn 1 overpowered beater that decimates your opponents resources in the process. Anything under 7 copies is a little difficult to reliably get in an opener, especially if it's only half of the combo. 3 colored elemental decks like that aren't super viable, since you need the correct colored card to exile for them.

A semi-restriction like this would eliminate the abuse of the MH2 elementals, while keeping them as powerful tools, instead of just outright banning them. I think it would help to keep the cards' initial intent while removing the consistency of what many (including myself) see as the degenerate side of them. Pitching 2 cards for the effect is fair enough to me, but then getting a beater for an extra mana is just absurd value. This turn one play often ends games, especially with a card like Grief which trades 2 cards (their worst card) for 2 (your 2 best cards) and gives a 4 power beater with evasion for 1 mana. In that context, the card sounds insanely broken, and it really is, that's why Scam is the #1 played deck.

As far as unbans go, lots of missed opportunities there I think. I feel that the artifact lands could be safely removed if we had a "restricted" slot, since having access to 20, enough to make your entire manabase artifacts was the problem. 5 total would be fine, and a fair trade-off to being more susceptible to hate cards.

If the goal is to really move to a more interactive format, why not unban Deathrite Shaman? the "1 CMC Planeswalker" would definitely help in making the format more interactive, giving those midrange control type of decks a much needed tool.

Punishing Fire is another slower toolbox card that could probably be unbanned. The modern of today is far too fast, and giving some tools back to control players may actually shift us away from the Aggro/Combo meta to a bit of a slower format with a more equal spread between Aggro/Combo/Control.

Splinter Twin is potentially safe enough to unban in today's modern. Modern has become such a removal heavy format, that Splinter Twin could probably be policed well enough to not completely dominate the format. There are cards like Force of Negation that keep me hesitant of unbanning it though, so not sure if I would actually unban this particular option, but it is getting close to a reasonable power level in today's meta. If Force of Negation wasn't a card, I think this would be able to be unbanned, but with Force of Negation + Subtlety existing, I just can't get completely behind it. If they were limited down to less than 4 copies, I think it would be reasonable to unban.

Umezawa's Jitte is another option that could potentially be unbanned, but I'm also not sure about it. There's not too much it brings to the metagame, so it may be better to just leave it banned. It may give the smaller creature decks too much of a toolbox that it becomes a jitte vs. jitte format, that pushes other creatures out of the format. There's already enough aggro decks running around, so I don't think we need to give them more tools currently.

DadHumanPraetor on Iroas, Menace to society

1 year ago

I run Fighter Class to grab Hexplate Wallbreaker and also Glimmer Lens and Mask of Memory and some other equipments. I also run Sigarda's Aid because I run Splinter Twin to combo with Combat Celebrant and Zealous Conscripts I love Iroas, I equipped a helm on him in a game last night and had 4 of him on the board lol.

wallisface on 【Emotional】▷ RANT ◁ WOTC's GREED has RUINED MAGIC!

1 year ago

PhyrexianPraetor

  • There’ve been many only polls around Teferi, Time Raveler and they all point to him being annoying but nowhere-near overly strong. The change of the card on arena is due to balancing it fir that format, not modern. The card is typically only good versus control & some combo decks.

  • Again, most pro-level players have no real issue with Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer as far as I can tell - the comparison to Deathrite Shaman isn’t a fair one: Shaman is always useful at almost every point of the game. Raganan is oftentimes found to be unuseful, particularly later in the game, if you’re on the draw, if the opponents deck has nothing worthwhile to cast etc. Dragon's Rage Channeler is imo faar stronger than the monke (but also not ban-worthy).

  • yep Wrenn and Six should habe either cost 3, or started with 2 loyalty.

  • Expressive Iteration is a card that creates more format variety, in that blue decks don’t typically run proactive cards, and red decks don’t often run passive cards. 90% of the time this is just an Anticipate that also gives you a land.

  • Comparing Ovalchase Daredevil to Splinter Twin is extremely unfair. Twin was hugely popular and you could slot the combo into literally every blue deck. Daredevil requires deckbuilding considerations, has a pretty low level of consistency, and a very low play rate (hint: there’s a reason it sees almost no play). Reanimator can definitely “go off” on turn 3, and i’d argue would be more consistent in doing so without Daredevil. Also all of the high level Grinding Station decks i’ve seen don’t use Daredevil at all (they use Underworld Breach, and with that can go off on turn 3 also).

  • I forgot to mention Mishra's Bauble last time but I don’t see that card getting banned. It does nothing on the turn you play it, and makes opening-hands feel more like a gamble. The card is strong, but only really sees play to activate delirium. I think this card will only ever get banned if something else is printed that can abuse it far too much - which will probably happen at somepoint, but we’re not there yet.

  • Underworld Breach has only really caught peoples eyes over the last month, where people have realised you can slot it into a LOT of decks and just get incidental free-wins if the game goes long. I think its definitely ban-worthy pending how popular it ends up becoming, and how the meta shifts to deal with it.

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If i were taking a guess at how likely these cards were to be banned in the next 3-5 years, with a “10” being guaranteed, and a “0” being not-ever-happening, i’d have to guess:

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