Static Orb

Artifact

If Static Orb is untapped, players can't untap more than two permanents during their untap steps.

Discussion (51)

dingusdingo on Flex

1 day ago

It is true that there are infinite "what ifs" in a game as open as Magic, but we know that there are certain cards we can expect to see in the most competitive formats. If we look at what is currently being run and why its effective, we can better prepare our decks to be more resilient against them.

Your deck tries to combo out by ramping mana, drawing cards, and playing into a win-con. There are going to be certain styles of decks that are more prone to shutting you off, which is why I'm bringing up these strategies in particular. Since your combo window is turns 4-6, you need to be worried about two things in cEDH. The first is people comboing out faster than you. We see this in decks such as Gitrog, Godo Helm, or even Grenzo. When these decks are consistently busting their combo turn 2-3, you need to answer or lose. Relying on other players to put a stop to a win attempt will prove unreliable, which is why its so important that you slot removal. Your turn 4/5/6 answer does no good when the game is over by turn 2/3. If you have no way to turn off their win, you are asking them to goldfish to a victory on you.

The second type of decks that will prove problematic for a turn 4-6 combo deck is stax, because their deck is designed to deprive you of resources and push your combo window so far back that you are unable to combo before they have won. They drop very fast and efficient heavy mana rocks, and then put down tax effects to make you unable to play. This specific style of deck can be hard for your build because they can lock you out of playing your draw spells, they can steal your draws, or simply prevent your draws altogether.

Let me give an example to show you what I mean.

Stax Example Show

You go first, dropping a Forest

Your opponent goes second, dropping Ancient Tomb into Grim Monolith into Mox Opal , using Monolith to play Voltaic Key to untap Monolith to play a Trinisphere .

You take your second turn, you play another land, and are unable to play due to Trinisphere

Your opponent takes their second turn, playing a fetchland into Underground Sea . Tap tomb to make , untapping Grim Monolith with Voltaic Key , leaving . Tap Monolith up to , use sea and opal to get to . Drop Tangle Wire then Sphere of Resistance

You take your third turn. You tap your two lands to Tanglewire, play a third land, and are still unable to play due to Trinisphere .

Your opponents third turn, they drop Tangle wire to 3 before tapping tanglewire sphere and ancient tomb. They drop any land, use it for voltaic key to Grim Monolith, before using monolith for and opal for / for Timetwister / Wheel of Fortune / Windfall , gaining them 7 shiny new cards while making you lose your mulligan card quality opening hand. They pass, knowing you still can't play anything

Your fourth turn, you have to tap all 3 untapped lands to Tangle Wire , you play a land, and pass. You have basically been timewalked 3 turns in a row.

Your opponent starts their fourth turn, dropping Tangle wire to 2 before tapping wire and sphere of resistance to Tangle wire. They are now free to drop more stax pieces ( Nether Void Winter Orb Static Orb Thorn of Amethyst Lodestone Golem Stasis ), play whatever commander/s they run, tutor up very cheap and cost effective winning combos, or establish a game-winning board presence that leads to their game winning combos.

Your fifth turn starts, you tap two lands to Tangle Wire , and if you play a fifth land. You have 3 untapped, so you might be able to play a spell assuming they haven't dropped anymore stax pieces and aren't holding any counterspells. Note that you can only play a 1 or 2 cmc spell, Sphere of Resistance is out, so your commander is still a no-go, and Trinisphere ensures you are only getting 1 spell max here no matter what. Its more likely than not with your current build you won't be able to play any spells here at all because your average CMC is so high. You've basically been time walked 4 turns in a row.

Stax is a very common archetype in the competitive scene, which is why its so important that you try to stax-proof your deck. It looks to me as if stax can cause serious problems for you.

On top of taxing stax, there's another type that may shut your deck off. Heavy discard. An early Sire Of Insanity can hose your whole game, while Mindslicer can impact your card advantage enough to cause a loss. Multiple discard effects like Necrogen Mists Bottomless Pit Oppression landing by turn 2 will make your build extremely sad (Turn 1 Dark Ritual Cabal Ritual Mana Crypt + any producing land and drop two discard enchantments). Chains of Mephistopheles turns off all your big draws, so does Alms Collector or Notion Thief

Another set of cards I would recommend taking a peek at is recursion. It can help against discard effects that would otherwise shut you off, or serve as a 2nd/3rd/4th copy of your draw spell. Wildest Dreams would work surprisingly well in your deck, the mana aspect is negligible and lets you reuse multiple big draw spells from your graveyard, as well as recover from wipes. Nostalgic Dreams is arguably worse with the additional cost, but can translate extra basics tutored by your 3 cmc ramp spells into more draws. Regrowth is also fantastic.

I hope you don't mind the close inspection! I really enjoy your build, I'm just curious to know if you run into these cards and how you interact with them. Almost all the stax cards I linked are included in tournament proven cEDH lists with various commanders, so they're cards that are in the meta and will be played.

dingusdingo on Flex

4 days ago

Nice deck! A lot of neat combos tucked in here. I have some suggested edits for you though!

Mouth of Ronom is a card you could very easily run. Green doesn't have a lot of targeted removal, and the opportunity cost for playing it is extremely low. If you swap your forests for snow covered forests, you're golden

I'm confused why you're running a fetchland at all. You don't need color fixing, and the deck thinning is extremely marginal when you consider how much it can slow you down against cards like Root Maze Back to Basics Thalia, Heretic Cathar Blood Moon Magus of the Moon Frozen AEther Kismet

Some of the card draw you run is pretty inefficient or extremely expensive. I'm specifically looking at Seer's Sundial and Sandstone Oracle . Sundial costs you 6 mana for the first card, while Sandstone is always dependent on opponents hand sizes for card draw, making it unreliable (and also costing 7 mana). I'm also not a huge fan of Sea Gate Wreckage but the opportunity cost for running it is extremely low. Have you considered Memory Jar or Howling Mine ? With your massive mana production Memory Jar could allow you to draw 7 and dump your entire hand. Howling Mine will accelerate your draws much earlier, although it is symmetrical. Beast Whisperer could be a good replacement if you don't want to give advantage to opponents, you certainly run enough creatures to justify. Life's Legacy is also a solid choice, especially since you're already running Greater Good

You run quite a few basic land tutors, some of them pretty low card quality. When you have access to Gaea's Cradle and Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx , why are you spending mana and card resources looking for basic lands? Specifically looking at Cultivate Kodama's Reach Nissa's Pilgrimage Seek the Horizon Journey of Discovery and Yavimaya Elder . If you ran fewer than 40 lands in this deck, you probably wouldn't have to run so many cards to deck thin to help your top deck, you could pretty easily cut to 34-36 lands. I'm also not wild about the very high CMC Hour of Promise , but it does search for non-basics. I'm also not very hyped about Tempt with Discovery , if you are playing against even mediocre or up skill level opponents you will be paying 4 CMC to search for one non-basic land. You're only getting more than one land off Tempt against bad players, or against players who can drop a Gaea's Cradle or other super value land against you.

Speaking of ramp, you should consider running Priest of Titania as well as Karametra's Acolyte . Currently you are very vulnerable to Armageddon and Ravages of War , two cards that see play in stax decks (as well as others). Having Ramunap and Crucible is a good choice, but you won't have access to those every single game you get hit by Armageddon. You should really consider mainboarding Carpet of Flowers as well, its virtually guaranteed someone will be running blue in a pod of 4, and it will let you hit turn 2 Azusa, and provide more value as the game goes later for very small investment.

On the topic of Stax, your deck is super vulnerable to getting caught. Almost all your draw is 3+ CMC, you have basically no removal, and you run a barebones 0/1/2 CMC ramp package. Thorn of Amethyst Sphere of Resistance Winter Orb Static Orb Thalia, Guardian of Thraben Lodestone Golem all cause immense problems for your deck. I understand that if you start your draw engine, you can escape from underneath them by dumping lands with your commander, but what do you do if one of those stax pieces lands on turn 1? Going fast works against stax, but there's no way you're going faster than a deck that runs the full suite of 0/1/2 cmc artifact ramp (which most stax decks do). You aren't going fast enough to threaten a win on turn 3, so you need to include removal. Having no removal is also a huge problem when beatdown is your wincon. What do you do against Moat ? Or Island Sanctuary ? Or Solitary Confinement ? A single piece of removal in the form of an 8 cmc creature is just not gonna cut it against real decks.

I would also recommend casting a really critical eye towards anything 5+ cmc. Cards that cost that much that don't actively win or directly lead to winning are most likely not worth the mana investment or the card space, even though you are a deck that ramps mana and draws cards. To put it in other terms, there are better things you could be doing with that mana. Your primary win con costs 10 mana to cast, 20 more to use, for a whopping 30 mana. Its forcing you to run pretty low quality cards like Mana Reflection and Zendikar Resurgent to get to that absurd amount of mana, on top of 40 lands. Running lower CMC spells will allow you to free up those expensive CMC slots that only enable you to play other expensive spells.

A couple more cards in specific you should reconsider Akroma's Memorial Ring of Three Wishes . Memorial you can replace with Lightning Greaves as a haste enabler for Craterhoof Lines, and Ring happens to cost you 10 mana to get a single card to hand, 15 for 2 cards, 20 for 3 cards, which we would call inefficient.

Would recommend Staff of Domination , especially if you include Priest of Titania or Karametra's Acolyte . Opens up lines for infinite mana and drawing your deck, or just provides a solid dump when you have too much mana and nowhere to go. I would also recommend Eldritch Evolution as another strong tutor. Uncage the Menagerie and Weird Harvest are a bit lower quality, but potentially what you're looking for as well. And I can't stress enough, add some removal to your deck. There are plenty of hyper efficient 1/2 cmc removal spells in green, as well as creatures that pack removal on ETB, which combines well with all the green tutors you run.

Hasuil12 on Brago, King Eternal

6 days ago

Thank you darkone8 so much for the suggestions. I agree with dropping the Whispersilk Cloak and Approach of the Second Sun . The switching out of Man-o'-War for Reflector Mage is way better value. As for Mana Vault , Enlightened Tutor , and Static Orb ill have to add them to the deck at a later time.

Zimmers_0 on The Deckwatch [Home Base]

6 days ago

Working on a Kozilek, the Great Distortion edh, what are some awesome colorless combos that should be added? Kinda moving towards a Winter Orb based kinda feel but not Static Orb so I can still use artifacts for mana.

hkhssweiss on Circu's Apathetic Sadism (Combo)

1 week ago

@ naturesnake420

I personally wouldn't run it in my Circu list as it does't help towards the win condition that I am going for. Discovery / Dispersal is a bit too weak for my liking, I rather use cards like Mission Briefing or Winds of Rebuke if I'm going that route as I can also use Isochron Scepter to copy it and reuse them.

Winter Orb + Relic Barrier are cool ways to go prison along with other effects like Static Orb and such, however it is an entirely different build your going for if planning to go towards that route. That is something akin towards a Prison Lantern Deck. I'm basing this one off of a Lantern Combo/Control. Hope that makes sense~

cdkime on Kangee, Aerie Keeper EDH

1 week ago

hkhssweiss and IAmTheWraith - sorry for the delay in responding, I was extremely busy with work so did not have the time I generally like to put into responding to deck suggestions.

IAmTheWraith - I like that suggestion and will be playtesting around with it more. My one concern is Clock of Omens does not play entirely nicely with Static Orb , but I will need more playtesting to determine how big of an issue that is.

hkhssweiss - I added Jhoira's Familiar and artificer's assistant (though I cut Artificer's Assistant to make room for playtesting Clock of Omens ). I had both Aven Mimeomancer and Teshar, Ancestor's Apostle in here originally, but found they under-performed.

Aven Mimeomancer was fun and on-theme, but there were not enough creatures to really capitalize on this benefit, and the additional +1/+1 to each bird on the upkeep if used alongside the commander was disapointing.

I found Teshar, Ancestor's Apostle came down a bit too late to make much of a difference. There were other cards I wanted to play with my four mana, and by the time I wanted to cast Teshar, Ancestor's Apostle , my hand was devoid of historic spells, so it was only when I topdecked an artifact that the ability became relevant.

Thanks both of you for the suggestions!

darkone8 on Brago, King Eternal

2 weeks ago

I wouldn't run Whispersilk Cloak because it is too expensive of an equip. Also, I wouldn't run Approach of the Second Sun because it is way too overcosted and gives your opponents seven turns to prepare for it. You're missing an Enlightened Tutor to go fetch your win cons and/or stax pieces. You're only missing two mana rocks - Mana Vault and Sol Ring . I also run Static Orb and tanglewire. I run Reflector Mage instead of Man-o'-War . I would also run Unquestioned Authority to give Brago unblockable and an extra draw off of combat. I run Preordain over Ponder . You can also board wipe you opponent by exiling all creatures with Parallax Wave , all lands with Parallax Tide , and all nonland permanents with Oblivion Ring . Another way to reach your win con would be to run Tezzeret the Seeker , who makes excellent artifact tutoring.

NoOneOfConsequence on Sen Triplets Artifact Control

2 weeks ago

So, you have Ad Nauseam and Angel's Grace . Cool. What's the game plan from there? Draw your whole library, sure. Then what? Play Laboratory Maniac ? Well, you can't actually win with that alone, because you'll then die as a state-based action during the next upkeep. You'd have to save a Ponder , Preordain , or Brainstorm . That's 10 mana to go off--not exactly great for a 2-card combo. Sure, you have Reliquary Tower to not have to draw your whole library, but you'd probably still just kill yourself, all the same. And I wouldn't really recommend using Ad Nauseam any other time, frankly--you have a bad curve for it, with a number of 5 drops, 6 drops, and a 9 drop. Also, you're only playing 23 artifacts, including your commander. I'd recommend playing at least 25.

I see you're also running Dramatic Scepter, Top + Future Sight + Sculptor, and Paradox Engine . That's all well and good, but I don't really see the payoff apart from Blind Obedience . That's a whole ton of combo pieces to put together--not great.

Cut Ward of Bones , Consecrated Sphinx , Darksteel Forge , Armageddon , Dissipate , Phyrexian Arena , and Perplex . Put in Static Orb , Shimmer Myr , Winter Orb , Tangle Wire , Grafdigger's Cage , Pongify , and Terminus . Considering you're running Mystical Tutor , Personal Tutor , Sensei's Divining Top , Brainstorm , and Future Sight , it shouldn't be that hard to miracle it.