Witchbane Orb

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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
Planechase Legal
Quest Magic Legal
Vanguard Legal
Vintage Legal

Witchbane Orb

Artifact

When Witchbane Orb enters the battlefield, destroy all Curses attached to you.

You have hexproof. (You can't be the target of spells or abilities your opponents control, including Aura spells.)

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!

legendofa on I need help coming up …

1 year ago

Rhonas the Indomitable's combat restriction and activated ability strongly support a stompy-style deck. I'm not trying to dissuade you from building the deck you want, but I do suggest at least considering other indestructible options like Anara, Wolvid Familiar + a partner, Nylea, Keen-Eyed, or Toski, Bearer of Secrets, each of which offers a different dynamic in addition to indestructibility. Neyith of the Dire Hunt can be played as mono-green if you want to lean into the fight angle, and Kogla, the Titan Ape is another potential commander there.

TurboFog can be built in mono-green. Aside from the Fog effects like Moment's Peace, Sunstone, and Tangle, cards like Arboria, Elephant Grass, Silent Arbiter, and Crawlspace restrict attacking options. Orbs of Warding and Witchbane Orb offer more protection. Heroic Intervention should be a given if you have access to one, and there's a good number of instants that grant single-target protection. You're going to want to draw heavily, so look at artifact-based draw, top-deck searching like Commune with the Gods or Vessel of Nascency, and Sylvan Library, Harmonize, and Greater Good.

Green's win conditions are heavily based around creatures and attacking, and that's only gotten more true in recent years. Helix Pinnacle works as an alternate win con for a slower game, and artifact combos are always applicable.

hootsnag on Oloro White Blue Black Creatureless Control

1 year ago

Glad you enjoy seeing the decks I make. I will answer your questions and give some insight into my decision making. First, I considered Expedition Map a long time ago and decided to go with more normal tutor cards such as Demonic Tutor etc. The map only grabs a land so it is limited in use. Mindslaver is one of those cards that can definitely cause all kinds of chaos but I chose to go for a faster win condition and less of cards like this. It takes too long to set up and get going. Lethal Vapors isn't a card I would run honestly. I would prefer a card like Spreading Plague or The Abyss instead. I chose exile as my main removal in this deck. Doing so counters graveyard strategies somewhat and indestructible. As for Static Orb and Winter Orb, these also interfere with my own win conditions. I'm trying to cast Approach of the Second Sun as fast as possible. This deck is very much control based and not really built to be a stax deck. Lastly, I've been asked before about why I don't run Yawgmoth's Will. I just don't think this particular deck is built to get value from it. It's an amazing card but I just didn't build this deck to support using such a card. Honestly, it would be more of a filler card for me.

Now, for the next set of questions. You are correct when you say that someone can still play one creature with Ward of Bones in play. The idea is to stop people from flooding the board with more than one. It is just a card to stall my opponents until I can draw or tutor my win conditions. This is the same reason why I use Portcullis. It keeps more than two creatures from being on the battlefield. Any creatures played on the battlefield beyond two get exiled until Portcullis leaves the battlefield. Again, I'm just slowing down and stalling my opponents so I can tutor or draw my win conditions. I feel that any creatureless deck should always run Portcullis. The value is just too insane. Energy Field is a card that I use to stall as well. It may last a couple of turns and that may be just enough to survive and tutor/cast my win condition. Null Brooch is such a fantastic card. A colorless artifact ability that just counters a non-creature spell is insane. It also combos crazy good with Ensnaring Bridge so that no creatures can attack because you have zero cards in hand. Witchbane Orb is just nice to have. It prevents a lot of bad things targeting you. It comes in handy more than you realize. You can't die to Grapeshot or other things with it in play. Norn's Annex forces people into a bad decision. They either pay white mana, lose life, or they can't attack you at all. Also, because of the Phyrexian Mana cost, you can play this fast to get value out of it quicker. Remember, if you make someone lose at least 8-10 life just to attack you, they are more vulnerable to other players killing them. The only other card I would put in place of this is No Mercy. Lastly, Mox Tantalite and Lotus Bloom are great for this deck. If I play them early enough, they allow me to cast Approach of the Second Sun very fast. Also, both suspend cards synergize with Tolaria West. Since the cards have a mana value of zero, you can use transmute from Tolaria West to search for them. I hope that shows you some of my reasoning and decision making. If you need to know anything further, feel free to ask.

Necramus on Miirym, Dragon Mommy

1 year ago

Atarka's Command, Tibalt, Rakish Instigator, and Leyline of Punishment are all good ways to keep your friend from gaining life from pinging you, then you can bonk him with dragons to the dome.

Orbs of Warding and Witchbane Orb are both excellent for giving you hexproof, making him unable to target you with his Commander's ability.

Three Visits and Farseek are great ramp spells that are pretty cheap that can replace some of your more expensive ramp. I'd also definitely advise picking up the Talisman of Unity in your maybe board.

You have a good density of creatures, in particular your dragons. I'd consider cutting some of the higher cost ones that have no immediate impact on the board to sub out for things like Old Gnawbone, Dragon Tempest, Dragonlord's Servant, Utvara Hellkite and Goldspan Dragon, though. These are things that help your gameplan (Dragon storm) and have immediate impact on the board. Some of those are kinda spensive, but #longtermgoals. Shared Animosity is also a nuts card in tribal decks.

Love,

Poppa Blake

wallisface on

1 year ago

Just read through your second tourney breakdown.

  • Against Rhinos i think you’re in a rough spot, as you have to mulligan really aggressively to a winning hand. Personally i’d be mulling to 4 looking for either Chalice (buys you a bit of time on X=0), or natural-tron alongside either All Is Dust or Karn, the Great Creator. Karn being able to immediately cast/resolve any of Trinisphere, Ratchet Bomb or Engineered Explosives cando wonders - and from there Karn should survive long enough to get something else to win you the game. The problem is that the specific-tron draw is super unlikely, so you’ll be mulling for Chalice most of the time versus this deck.

  • Calibrated Blast can be a bit rough. I think an early Thought-Knot Seer can be great, other than that just try an be as aggressive with damage-dealing as possible and hope they lose-to-themselves (the deck is horribly inconsistent). If you can cast Witchbane Orb its a free win.

  • Voidwalker matchup i’m not too familiar with, but i’d say running more mainboard Dismember would be your best option here. This feels like a matchup where you just need to swing with big creatures fast, so i’d prolly be boarding-out the Chalice post-sideboard (assuming there was anything to swap them with). Karn, the Great Creator feels like the best thing to have in hand because Voidwalker has no reason to take it, and setting up Ensnaring Bridge probably just lets you durdle along for an eventual massive Walking Ballista.

Overall I wouldn’t get too beat-up about these losses, all 3 of those matchups look like they’d be slightly in the other decks favour, and presumably these players also have played a lot more with their builds than you have with yours. Over time I think these matchups should feel less-scary (though they are undoubtably all still reasonably scary for E-Tron to face).

wallisface on Lobotomy

2 years ago

Wabbajacke a typical Lanturn control list would look something like this:

So, if you're wanting to keep to just blue and black, and include Circu, Dimir Lobotomist, then I would suggest a list that looks something like this (you'll note the deck can be a lot more tool-boxy than the above because Whir of Invention lets us search for whatever we want, so for example we only need 2 bridges):

EleshNornsFs on Any group hug experts here?

2 years ago

I am by no means a group hug expert, but some cards to de-incentivize people from targeting you probably isn't a bad idea. Ghostly Prison, Propaganda , Norn's Annex , maybe even a Witchbane Orb . I think there is also a cycle of enchantments out of the ikoria commanders that makes creatures attack players other than you.

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