Tormented Soul
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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
Modern Legal
Modern Beyond Horizons Legal
Oathbreaker Legal
Pauper Legal
Pauper Duel Commander Legal
Pauper EDH Legal
Planar Constructed Legal
Planechase Legal
Quest Magic Legal
Tiny Leaders Legal
Vanguard Legal
Vintage Legal

Tormented Soul

Creature — Spirit

Tormented Soul can't block and is unblockable.

paperhead on Shadows are my Friends

1 year ago

You seem to be short on chumps.
-4 Tormented Soul \ +4 Pharika's Chosen.
I've had a Darksteel Plate on a death-touch chump before, and it just baffles opponents, lol

azja on Yuriko (Optimized) Primer

2 years ago

Hey @Spirits, sorry for taking so long to get back to you! You asked such detailed questions, so I wanted to make sure I had time to write out detailed answers :D

Karn's Temporal Sundering vs Capture of Jingzhou:

Like you said, just a budget consideration. Yuriko is my pet deck so I don’t use any proxies, but I highly encourage it for others! While the bounce effect of Karn's Temporal Sundering is nice, I’m thinking of replacing it with Time Warp or just cutting it altogether for Treasure Cruise.

Enablers:

Since I don’t have any combos, I’m all in on the Yuriko damage plan. So having an enabler at all times is much more crucial for me, which is why I play 15 of them. Comparing my list to others, it seems 15 is on the higher end, so you could probably get away with cutting a couple. You’re correct about Tormented Soul, it can’t be pitched to Force of Will, as well as the mana base being more blue-heavy. As for the flying enablers, they’re included for redundancy (since there aren’t 15 unblockable 1-drops). It’s pretty rare for every opponent to have a flying/reach blocker, and we don’t really care who we attack, so flying does a pretty good impression of unblockable. Plus, many of them have relevant abilities, especially Faerie Seer’s scry 2 and Wingcrafter which can give Yuriko flying. If you’re mainly trying to win with combo, I wouldn’t play any of the 2 mana enablers except Tetsuko Umezawa, Fugitive. But don’t underestimate Augury Owl in the “winning with big spells” shell!

Kaito Shizuki

I haven’t tried him out yet, so I’m also unsure whether he makes the cut. Normally I wouldn’t consider playing a planeswalker, since we’re not very good at blocking to keep them around for longer than one turn. But with Kaito, we’re guaranteed 2 activations since he phases out eot, so I think he’s worth testing out for sure.

Win-Cons:

I think the wincons you described are all totally viable. Most of the cEDH Yuriko lists win with Thassa's Oracle + Demonic Consultation or Tainted Pact since it’s only 2 cards and 3-4 mana (and tough to interact with outside of counterspells). Doomsday is significantly weaker than fish-consul, but its also a reasonable win-con. It’s convenient that cards that would go in the doomsday pile such as Gitaxian Probe and Street Wraith are already good cards for the deck anyway. When I first built this deck, I didn’t include doomsday for power level considerations. Now, I doubt doomsday would be too powerful for my playgroup to handle, but I decided to leave it out since I prefer to win with Yuriko’s ability.

Scheming Symmetry

Scheming symmetry is pretty much my budget replacement for Imperial Seal until we get a reprint. It’s true that you can do some cute plays with Nashi, Moon Sage's Scion or Fallen Shinobi. But most of the time, I save it until someone is below 16 life, choose them to tutor with me, put Draco on top of my library, and eliminate them before they can use the card they grabbed.

Mutavault

I’m a big fan of Mutavault since it allows me to rebuild a turn earlier after a boardwipe, or just to have an extra ninja that usually goes unnoticed by your opponents. Unfortunately, colourless lands are really, really awkward in this deck, so I wouldn’t play more than 1 or 2 at the most.

Drowned Catacomb, etc.

Since I’m currently playing 10 basics, I usually don’t have any problems with Drowned Catacomb and Sunken Hollow entering tapped. As for Mystic Sanctuary, it definitely sucks when you draw it and have to play it as a tapped island. But, imo it makes up for it in the late game when you can grab it with a fetch land and put an expensive spell on top of your library in response to a Yuriko trigger. If you’re including Tainted Pact, or just playing less basics in general, I would definitely cut those lands for City of Brass or River of Tears, like you mentioned.

Colourless Mana

I touched on this a bit in the Mutavault discussion, but you definitely want to stay away from colourless lands as much as possible. Although Ancient Tomb and Gemstone Caverns are really powerful lands in a vacuum, the early mana they provide isn’t worth it imo. I definitely agree with you that Reliquary Tower is a trap. I wouldn’t play it in very many decks in general, especially not in Yuriko. As for Glacial Chasm and Maze of Ith, they aren’t played enough in my playgroup for me to need an answer for them. But if they did become more popular, my plan would likely be to cut Mutavault and include Strip Mine/Wasteland instead.

I hope everything I explained made sense and was helpful to ya! Don’t hesitate to ask me more questions!

Spirits on Yuriko, Shadow of Fate EDH

2 years ago

Hey Virlym,

Thanks for all the great information, very much appreciated.

I've removed River of Tears and replaced with Tarnished Citadel. I prefer not to rely on an Island or Swamp for something like Drowned Catacomb (Not a T1 land) or Choked Estuary. Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth is out, likely helps opponents more than me anyway. Can't decide if Ancient Tomb any good here or if it's better than Tarnished Citadel, I think the T1 is more important than .

Wingcrafter T1, and then Commander Ninjitsu doesn't give it flying? T3 it's paired with Yuriko, the Tiger's Shadow. It's unlikely it won't have a target to attack T2 though without flying, not 100% but pretty likely.

Tormented Soul totally makes sense with the number of cards that need to pitch blue cards, and with how many CMC1 unblockables there are.

Prosperous Thief feels ok with the treasure, but only creating one is borderline. Am I missing any other key ninjas? There are a couple with ninjitsu with CMC1 which isn't bad for the draw, but their own abilities not that exciting?

Scheming Symmetry in Fallen Shinobi as you suggested or even a Opposition Agent or Nashi, Moon Sage's Scion will deliver maximum value for after Yuriko, the Tiger's Shadow punches for 12 damage.

I think Thassa's Oracle will be the main win-con, and Yuriko, the Tiger's Shadow damage with control/turns will be the alt. Avoid diluting any more cards. If Thassa's Oracle is exiled, likely games over before could get to a second anyway, Yuriko, the Tiger's Shadow is always there and can be taken advantage of.

Should Moon-Circuit Hacker be in here too for another drawing ninja? Or just try and tutor the best ninjas and try an win?

Kaito Shizuki feels wrong tempo / timing for the deck to me. I'll let others test him lol.

Scry 3 seems good, adding the Augury Owl to my maybeboard.

I'm thinking this is v1 for testing? Any glaring misses I should fill before spending a million bucks ehre lol.

Virlym on Yuriko, Shadow of Fate EDH

2 years ago

Just to not clutter up azja's feed, I'll give my input to the questions you asked. I'm no azja, so I can't answer for them, this is just my educated guessing.

Capture of Jingzhou is rather expensive, and it's easier to just run something like Time Warp over it. But for Karn's Temporal Sundering, it domes for 1 more when it's a trigger off Yuriko, the Tiger's Shadow, and it has a Void Snare attached to it, which could clear out some other problem like Platinum Angel (niche example, but gets the point across), or put a ninja back into your hand so you can ninjutsu it out on the extra turn.

Tormented Soul being just black is a huge drawback for what azja was going for in competitiveness, it also can't be pitched to Commandeer, Force of Will, nor Force of Negation.

Kaito Shizuki requires further testing. in most cases, it's 3 mana for a single unblockable ninja token and a filter the following turn. You'll hardly ever even want to get the emblem due to trying to win through Yuriko, the Tiger's Shadow triggers utilizing small ninjas and not cheating out something big. It's more beneficial to have ninjutsu creatures in your hand so you can get them to hit an opponent utilizing an enabler rather than trying to find some way to deal combat damage with a rather lackluster attacking ninja.

Yuriko, the Tiger's Shadow enablers want to b as cheap as possible. There's a HUGE fall-off from having a 1 CMC enabler to having a 2 CMC enabler to where that extra mana, and delaying Yuriko, the Tiger's Shadow from hitting someone turn 2 better be a big payoff. Faerie Seer and Spectral Sailor are both 1 CMC enablers, and flying is generally scarce enough early game to where it effectively says "unblockable". Wingcrafter is a way to grant Yuriko, the Tiger's Shadow flying so she can activate her own ability fairly reliably, it also let's you cycle ninjas out by giving one flying, and using ninjutsu shenanigans to keep more expendable ninjas on the board. Example, you could have it paired with a Skullsnatcher, swing it in, ninjutsu it out for a Fallen Shinobi, then after damage (after the triggers and before combat is over) ninjutsu the Skullsnatcher back in so that the Fallen Shinobi can stay a little safer in your hand. Augury Owl Sage Owl being able to see 3/4 cards into your library helps set up a big Yuriko, the Tiger's Shadow play, or can at least give u information to see if you'll get answers to threats or if you need to crack a fetch as you nothing coming up and need to refuel, etc. That extra digging and set-up is basically a Sensei's Divining Top activation, but on an enabler body.

There's no instant-win combo in the deck because azja doesnt like them. "But I don't really enjoy playing combo decks, so I've opted to not include the aforementioned Demonic Consultation & Thassa's Oracle combo.". Having said that, Yuriko, the Tiger's Shadow is typically a really fast agro deck. It will have the general agro problems of puttering out if faced with a deck that has enough lifegain and board wipes. But that deck was also designed more in the cEDH realm, so if a game is going longer than 6 turns, the super control deck is probably going to win anyways. As for trying to throw in more alternate win-cons, you usually want to avoid that. If you need multiple cards for an alternate win-con and they cards otherwise could either be dead, or put you behind in your initial game plan, they are just a hinderance in cEDH. Every individual card needs to be doing something to push you further. You can't have dead combo pieces in hand when you have 5-turn games. Thassa's Oracle is more often than not a dead card in decklists like this. You need a deck build around what it wants you to do, otherwise it's just a 1/3 for 2 mana, and Yuriko, the Tiger's Shadow really doesn't need that baggage.

Scheming Symmetry isn't really a "play and win" card, it's just another 1 CMC top deck manipulation card. It also works REALLY well if you have something like Fallen Shinobi in hand, waiting to hit the person you just let search their library.

"Also, would avoiding the enters tapped lands be better? E.G. Drowned Catacomb, Mystic Sanctuary, Sunken Hollow be far better as say City of Brass, Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth, River of Tears, Etc.?" River of Tears is a bad card to try and deal with when you're running on a really low curve. If you play it turn 1, it adds B, so you can't play your 1 CMC enablers aside from Gingerbrute. If you play an island turn 1, and River of Tears turn 2, you now have double blue on turn 3 with no black, and if you play a black mana land, you now have double black and only one blue. If you need the double blue and a black, you would need to tap it before playing a land, but doing something like that makes it so you can't use it for ninjutsu. It's just a hassle of a land and adds too much to keep track up when there's already a lot that's going on in an EDH game. Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth is basically just a swamp. City of Brass would generally be a good include though, assuming you're ok with the price tag and games aren't typically decided by 4 life. Drowned Catacomb will generally always come in untapped if you play right due to the amount of fetches. Mystic Sanctuary will generally come in untapped in a deck this heavily blue, and the upside of being able to recur an answer or even a big spell that Yuriko, the Tiger's Shadow can trigger with makes the chance of it coming in tapped irrelevant. Sunken Hollow is the worst offender of the 3, but it still has the basic land typing, so it can be fetched. And that upside is generally enough to warrant including it.

Spirits on Yuriko (Optimized) Primer

2 years ago

azja,

Couple early questions if you don't mind. Let me know if I'm a bother :) My Yuri Deck

Karn's Temporal Sundering hitting an opponent for 6 is good, but wouldn't Capture of Jingzhou be more efficient for CMC1 less? Perhaps its a budgetary/availability consideration?

You have 15 enablers, I read the notes on them, couple questions. What's the critical mass on this, like would 10 be deterimental. When I did a rough pull in had the following questions:

Why is Tormented Soul excluded, is it just as simple as the Force of Will? He still not better than the 2CMC options like Augury Owl?

Kaito Shizuki thoughts? I'm worried that the CMC3 for the -2 is the wrong tempo/timing, but, he does come in, make a unblockable, then phase out to also get the draw next turn. If you don't need the unblockable, it's draw 2 for CMC3, tough to see hitting his ultimate at 7. 3CMC planeswalker are usually good, some I'm tempted to think this one will be too? But I have no play experience on this deck.

I just can't get my head around the flying evasion guys though, Faerie Seer, Spectral Sailor, Wingcrafter, Augury Owl, Sage Owl. They feel "sub-optimal" to me and difficult to include, but as I said what's the critical mass here? I was considering Baleful Strix in the 2CMC drop, just because he replaces himself in hand (which may just be discarded anyway, but looting never that bad anyway), with deathtouch less likely to be blocked by flying/reach, and he can be an effective (deathtouch) defender.

I've roughed in "12" for the timebeing.

Honestly my first thought was this is a turbo-draw to tutor, fish-pact/fish-consul strategy. I was looking at Tatsunari, Toad Rider instead, but I think I like "big splashy spells" more than the aristocrats method. So that got me thinking, what the heck do I win with, is this viable or am I off-base here:

Primary: Thassa's Oracle + Demonic Consultation or Tainted Pact ASAP / Draw for tutors

Tertiary Maverick 'Turn and Burn': Temporal Trespass, Temporal Mastery, Temporal Manipulation, Capture of Jingzhou with perhaps something like Sea Gate Restoration  Flip or Dig Through Time as possible damage enablers in addition to the 'turn'.

I skipped Secondary intentionally, is there no room here for a Doomsday? I can think of multiple stacks with varied CMC, E.G. if devotion to blue 3 + Doomsday + Thassa's Oracle (BBBUU) is a win, if you don't have Thassa's Oracle, somethig like Doomsday + Gitaxian Probe/Street Wraith into a Night's Whisper or something could be around CMC7, Gush kinda useless here for a CMC3 (BBB) stack.

Thoughts on that? I see you intentionally don't run the fish, but this seems viable for this deck?

For Scheming Symmetry doesn't the player just pull a counterspell to stop your win, does it really "win on the spot", if you have to pass it feels useless, but with Nashi, Moon Sage's Scion or Opposition Agent it does work. Reliability? I "should"? run it?

Has Mutavault been enough value for a possible swing vs. the downside of the colorless mana? It dodges board wipe and is a ninja, so kinda-of makes sense to me, but I'm on the fence?

Also, would avoiding the enters tapped lands be better? E.G. Drowned Catacomb, Mystic Sanctuary, Sunken Hollow be far better as say City of Brass, Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth, River of Tears, Etc.?

I do have TOO MANY potential colorless mana Ancient Tomb, Gemstone Caverns, Reliquary Tower, Strip Mine. I feel like Reliquary Tower is a trap and I should remove, where I feel like, what's my strategy vs. a Glacial Chasm or Maze of Ith.

It's still a work in progress, I think I need more Ninjas then I have, still evaluating them one by one, and trying to figure out what each tutor gets me, but first I need to know what my win-con plans are to know what i'm looking for!

Thanks for any feedback you can provide.

bomb_arie on Umezawa's Demons

2 years ago

I like what you did with the Demon theme. Some good cards here that really are supporting the deck. I have a feeling that you are running a low count of cheap evasive creatures. These are really a must playing this commander and every mana counts if you want your deck to be competitive.

So cards like Gudul Lurker or Slither Blade playable for only and Tormented Soul for only are really worth a slot because they are sometimes better than Flying or Shadow.

And if you are running Crypt Ghast for ramp my advise is playing Nirkana Revenant as a back up. And speaking of back-ups, what I am going to add to my deck are cards like Vampire Charmseeker or Possessed Skaab can help to return your combo pieces form the graveyard when going infinite.

I'll keep an eye on your deck and see how it evolves.

DrkNinja on Dead Silence

2 years ago

Ok so I didn't check to see if any of these were in the deck already but... here's my list of suggestions!

It's a lot of cards so...

Again some of these may be cut worthy but off the cuff this is what I came up with. Also I didn't include any ninjas... I figure they are easy enough to find

azja on Yuriko (Optimized) Primer

3 years ago

It's great to hear from ya again Snake57! I've been a bit busy with school, and getting back into in-person modern events, so I haven't been playing much edh lately :( but here's what I think of the cards I'm testing:

  • So far Gingerbrute feels like a good fit for Yuriko. I think the upside of having haste outweighs the downside of having to pay to make it unblockable. I chose to cut Tormented Soul because it also can't be pitched to Force of Will and I want to keep my density of blue cards high, but I still think it's a solid enabler.

  • I've also been pretty happy with Ponder over Personal Tutor. The problem I have with Personal Tutor is that I don't have a ton of sorceries that aren't just big, clunky extra turn spells. In contrast, Vampiric Tutor and Mystical Tutor have a lot more targets and provide utility at every point in the game, not just on the final turn. I would definitely suggest Ponder over Consider because you can also control what's on top of your deck, not just the card you draw.

  • I have mixed feelings about Chain of Vapor. It's awesome in the early game when your opponents don't have enough lands to reasonably sac one to copy it, but it feels pretty bad in the mid-late game when they do. Also at 1 cmc, it doesn't do Yuriko any favours. I chose to cut Spire Owl in its place because I had 4 2-mana enablers, and it felt like a bit too many. From what I can tell, I think 3 is the right number.

  • Dauthi Voidwalker has been an awesome addition to the deck. It hinders graveyard strategies, can be used as enabler if needed, and most importantly, steals an opponent's removal spell or counterspell. I chose to cut Throat Slitter because my meta used to be filled with black aristocrat decks. But lately it's been shifting from that, so I may try to find a spot for it again.

Now for the cards you mentioned:

  • I've tried Opposition Agent in some other decks, but not in Yuriko. I've found that it mostly ends up stealing someone's ramp or fetchland, rather than an actual tutor. This makes me think it might be a bit underwhelming in Yuriko.

  • I've really been liking Street Wraith so far. It's a heavy hitter when you reveal it with Yuriko, and you can immediately cycle it for a more useful card. It also fuels your delve spells, and you can use it to set up a miracle Temporal Mastery.

  • I also feel like the overall cmc can be a bit low, so I think adding Boon of the Wish-Giver could be a good call. At 1 mana it's pretty easy to cycle, plus it's not too bad of a card either.

  • I would hesitate to play Scion of Draco because we can only reduce it to 8 mana, making it almost uncastable. If you need another big card for burn, I would maybe go with Enter the Infinite because both Mystical Tutor and Vampiric Tutor can tutor for it, and it can be exiled to Force of Will.

As always, thanks for commenting and let me know if you have any more suggestions from the new sets!!

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