Vivien's Arkbow

Legendary Artifact

{X}, {T}, Discard a card: Look at the top X cards of your library. You may put a creature card with converted mana cost X or less from among them onto the battlefield. Put the rest on the bottom of your library in a random order.

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

Discussion (47)

lagotripha on Elf Modern on a Budget - Keeping it simple!

1 year ago

I like the list, though there are some tweaks worth looking at.

Winding Way is a lead the stampede that also fetches lands and costs 1 less mana. Looking 1 card less is a small drawback.

Vivien's Arkbow and Pyre of Heroes opens you up to artifact hate a little, but massively improves reach.

Arbor Elf is another cheap dork if you want to go to 12. Quirion Ranger appears in legacy lists to power out high mana turns with count your elf mana. Copperhorn Scout can theoretically do the same, but Its usually cut first.

And if you really want to splash into another colour, Secluded Courtyard and Unclaimed Territory offer a lot of fixing.

seshiro_of_the_orochi on Wurm Tribal?!

2 years ago

Great list, love it. Oath of Druids and Vivien's Arkbow would be good additions to cheat out wurms. Also, how about Thicket Elemental and Genesis Hydra? Goreclaw, Terror of Qal Sisma would be another fitting ramp card.

hungry000 on GB Hell's Kitchen ($30)

2 years ago

Thank for the suggestions! I like the idea of running Darkmoss Bridge over Jungle Hollow. Geier Reach Sanitarium is also a great utility land.

I will have to respectfully decline some of your other suggestions, not because they're logically unsound, but because I think they aren't any better than what I have atm.

With Street Wraith, The Underworld Cookbook, and Bone Shards, the deck has ten discard outlets that cost one or fewer mana. We only need to naturally draw one discard outlet per game to cast Asmo because she finds another discard outlet in the Cookbook on her own, and we want them to be as cheap as possible so we can get Asmo into play early. Taking that into consideration, Vivien's Arkbow is a very expensive (cmc-wise) discard outlet for this deck, and it doesn't yield any additional benefit outside of discarding a card unless you pump a lot of mana into it.

I also don't think Vivien's Arkbow is a good replacement for Grisly Salvage, which has three roles: one, it finds Asmo or Street Wraith if we have an Asmo in hand; two, it fills our graveyard, which is perfect for finding Feasting Troll King, Cauldron Familiar, and Ovalchase Daredevil; three, it finds lands (the deck is very mana hungry when it has a Trail of Crumbs out). I value these things a lot more than an extra draw effect, because this deck's biggest weakness is its tendency to durdle when it doesn't have access to a payoff.

Glaze Fiend is tempting, but I think it's too susceptible to removal. All of our game-ending threats are recursive creatures, so it's very hard for opposing decks to win the long game; thus, the deck is better off playing spells that help it get to the long game rather than try to finish it quickly.

lagotripha on GB Hell's Kitchen ($30)

2 years ago

This list is great- there are a couple tweaks I'd consider - mainly be discard outlets to get unspellable name on the battlefield.

I've found Glaze Fiend to be an all-star in this kind of list. Its a big flier on any turn you are dropping a lot of artifacts, realling improving your clock.

Vivien's Arkbow is dirt cheap and gives the deck real reach - I'd consider it over salvage, as it serves much the same role, and plays almost identically to trail most of the time increasing reliability. Geier Reach Sanitarium is a solid utility land similarly- running 1 won't be a problem but I wouldn't go higher.

The high artifact counts available to lists like this make Darkmoss Bridge preferable to hollow, which also opens up Sojourner's Companion as fixing and Lifecraft Awakening for an indestructable beatstick.

I haven't managed to get Savvy Hunter to work in modern food lists, despite the obvious synergy. 3 mana is a lot.

seshiro_of_the_orochi on Big Green

2 years ago

This looks fun, good job. One suggestion: Maybe replace Aid from the Cowl? It just feels really slow, and you don't even have many ways to trigger it continuously. Vivien's Arkbow or Call of the Wild would both be great replacements. I'm also not too big of a fan of both Evolving Wilds and Terramorphic Expanse here. If I see it correctly, you have one landfall ability, and besides that, it'd only help you triggering Aid. Maybe just play two Forest instead?

edster on Synergies with Unbound Flourishing in Modern

2 years ago

Been testing unbound with newer cards and other deck lists: https://www.reddit.com/r/ModernMagic/comments/mdkh1w/ug_unbound_flourishing_tron/ https://www.mtggoldfish.com/articles/against-the-odds-unbound-wealth-modern-magic-online

Feels like Hydroid Krasis belongs in Game Winning. The value of a 2x/2x Flying Trample, draw x gain x is too much for most decks to come back from. Same for Walking Ballista, it's a great card all game. It can block then sac against aggro, disrupt creature combos and kill your opponent in the late game.

Magus of the Candelabra from testing feels like Great or even Game Winning. The copy goes on the stack, so you can target the same land twice. E.g. x=1, target Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx, copy also targets Nykthos. Use Nykthos once after copy resolves, and again after original ability resolves. If you have lands that produce more than one mana, such as Castle Garenbrig, Nissa, Who Shakes the World, Utopia Sprawl, Magus becomes insane.

Prismatic Ending would be god tier but the number of colors (converge cost) isn't copied. The copy can only exile a 0 cost nonland. This card is amazing even without unbounded. Probably belongs in Poor tho.

Repeal could be upgraded from Poor to Neutral / Good. Any card that double cantrips with Unbounded is decent. From my own testing and decks in the link above, it does well.

Shatterskull Smashing  ^Flip, Agadeem's Awakening  ^Flip and other modal lands are Good in the right decks.

The problem with cards like Genesis Wave, Vivien's Arkbow, Electrodominance, Fiend Artisan etc that put a card into the battlefield is your deck probably has cards with cost {x}. You have to pick x=0, so you have some dis-synergy. For that reason, unless you build around this, losing out on some really great {x} cost cards, they go down one synergy rating in my books. They are still great but not perfect. ;]

Animist's Awakening is a trap. I think it belongs in Neutral or Good in landfall decks. In a deck with 30 lands (which I doubt), without unbound you expect x/2 lands since half your deck is lands. With unbound, you expect x lands so pretty much it doubles your number of lands. Sure it gives you back your mana this turn and double next turn, but it doesn't quite affect the board state enough compared to other cards.

seshiro_of_the_orochi on Detroit: Become Wurm

2 years ago

That Stuffy Doll in here is hilarious, great card for the deck. I might really just build my own Grothama now...

I always thought Wild Pair to be a great card in wurm decks. In most decks, you'd have to tweak the creature suite to fit the enchantments effect, but most of the good wurms just happen to be 7/7. And it can become even cooler with Panglacial Wurm being another 14 for Wild Pair.

Two more ideas: Vivien's Arkbow and Pyre of Heroes. Bow is just a great green card in general, and Pyre could sacrifice a Grothama with some damage on it to draw cards while tutoring a MV6 wurm.

lagotripha on Mt. Fuji

2 years ago

As far as newer player decks go, this is far more together than I expected. It should be perfect for casual play. The tutor package that can look for removal or threats is a solid spine for the deck.

In terms of cards to consider that are cheap and still do well, I'd look at Ayula, Queen Among Bears as a removal etc option, which plays nice with changeling effects that can take advantage of samaruai synergies.

Mangara of Corondor is a feature of classic lists, loving blink effects and sacrifice to break the symetry of his effect.

Vivien's Arkbow never found its place in competitive lists, but still puts creatures from your deck on the battlefield, which plays really nice with the existing tutor package.

1 mana legendaries will do good even if they aren't perfectly 'on theme' - Zabaz, the Glimmerwasp , Oviya Pashiri, Sage Lifecrafter are both cheap rn.

Blackblade Reforged points to legendary land synergies, but legendaries that put lands into play have had their price pushed up by commander and Scapeshift decks. For that price reason, I will reccomend against becoming a Kamahl's Druidic Vow ramp deck.

Bushido likes being blocked by a lot of creatures, making Lure effects strong, but samarai isn't well represented as a tribe. This means that it would need to fill out ranks with your Changeling Hero type cards.

Finally, the biggest piece of advice- cards aren't expensive because they are good, they are expensive because they are in short supply, and everyone needs lands. Making your manabase good is the place to invest money - there are cool, format warping, cards at $0.20, but to play them you need good lands. Look for lands as they rotate out of standard and pick them up - they'll be cheapest as there is a spike in supply, and after a few set rotations you'll have a solid set of cards to build from.