Aether Gust

Combos Browse all Suggest

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

Aether Gust

Instant

Choose target red or green spell or, red or green permanent. Its owner puts it on the top or bottom of their library.

nbarry223 on LOTR... Modern Legal?

1 year ago

It is more like MH2.

I think the worst we can expect is something like the Moxes with additional downside, or some other "free" spells like the elementals which speed up the format even further (hopefully nothing along those lines is printed). Blue players are lacking a powerful card advantage spell to get them back in the game, to make sitting there passively worth it. As much as I hate sitting across from a blue player, I do think their toolbox is a little lacking currently.

I'd also like to see more color hate cards with power levels closer to some older format cards come from sets like these. The only specific color hate cards that are worth playing in modern right now are Veil of Summer and Aether Gust even though there's been multiple cycles. A lot of the older color hate was low cost removal, which has just been outdone by all the "free" removal in the format today, so it never sees play anymore.

I don't mind power-crept cards if they are narrow enough to be niche instead of staples. I think having color oriented hate would be the solution to this. If you have a card that is amazing against 2 colors, but useless against everything else, it will make good tech for decks that struggle with those 2 colors, but not be included in every deck in the format. We need good balance like that.

zapyourtumor on The Art of Deflection

1 year ago

The deck could definitely use some tuning, but I like the concept a lot, especially the flavor bonus of Jeskai plus a deflection theme.


Cards to Cut

First off I would cut a lot of the straight up bad cards. Divine Reflection obviously fits with the theme but the card just takes too much mana and offers too little for what it costs.

Shu Yun doesn't really do much for the 3 mana he costs, and his double strike effect even makes you pay two more mana every time.

Boros Charm is really more of a burn card, and I don't think it does very much in a tempo list like this. The indestructible choice can come in clutch sometimes, but the 4 damage or double strike options seem pretty mediocre. There are loads of great cards to run in Jeskai, and I don't think this is one of them.

Snapcaster Mage is obviously a great card. However, assuming you're on a budget, you also have to consider the fact that this card is taking up 1/3 of your decks price (for only 2 copies). More importantly, I'd actually argue that Snappy is far too slow for your tempo deck, which wants to be relatively aggressive with early threats like Swiftspear and Delver. The extra $40 you save can go towards some really nice upgrades for the deck, some of which I will suggest below.


The Manabase

I've had to build manabases for multicolor budget decks before, and I feel your pain. This is always easily my least favorite part of deckbuilding on a budget, and it just feels bad in general that your deck can't even run smoothly without spending a ridiculous amount of money on lands. But that's what WotC decided its going to make half its profit from so it is what it is.

I'm not going to make any specific card suggestions here, but your manabase is pretty clunky. This isn't really a criticism, since any manabase below a triple digits is going to be clunky, and I think the combination of basics+checks does an okay job all things considered. Thank god none of your cards have double pips of one color. I think any number of shocks are going to be out of your price range. Check lands are nice, but they basically require shocks to work well. Some other land cycles you can look into are Painlands, Innistrad Slowlands, Temple (Scry) lands, Amonkhet Cycle lands, and Pathway lands.


Maindeck Card Suggestions

Path to Exile: While some of the deflection cards can hit creatures, you technically only have three copies of bolt in the removal department. In my opinion, you should definitely expand that to a more diverse suite of removal spells which can cover all the bases. Path is probably the best catch-all creature removal you can run. It excels in the midgame, removes annoying threats like Murktide, Archon of Cruelty, Primeval Titan, Yawgmoth etc, and only costs one mana. It's also affordable! I think running around 1-2 copies would be good, with potentially another in the sideboard.

Prismatic Ending: A very strong removal spell that compliments Path very well. While path takes out all the high cmc creatures, ending deals with the cheap creatures easily while also dealing with any other problematic permanents. Most 3+ color decks of this kind that run white should run this card in my opinion. Ending also dropped in price a lot so it's quite cheap.

Lightning Helix: I definitely think you should max out 4 copies of bolt first, but helix would be like copies 5+. It also kind of fits the deflection theme since it gains you life (equivalent to preventing damage) while also dealing damage.

Monastery Mentor: Definitely on the more expensive side of my suggestions, but still a lot cheaper than Snappy. If you want to run a 3 cmc threat, I would highly recommend Mentor over Shu Yun. With all the noncreature spells you're slinging around, you will quickly amass an army of monk tokens with prowess.

Sprite Dragon: My replacement of choice for Stormchaser Mage. One of my favorite cards, Draggy is a threat that your opponent must answer quickly, or risk getting run over. Definitely a very solid 2 drop in this kind of deck.

Expressive Iteration: Iteration is a bit slower than most of my suggestions and most of the cards in your deck (besides Snap), but what we get for being slower is grind power and card advantage. EI is such a strong card that most decks from the aggro-midrange-tempo-control spectrum in UR colors choose to run it. Of course, if you are short of card slots then I think my earlier suggestions fit the deck a little better.

Consider: While I don't think you have space to add Consider in addition to Serum Visions, I do think it is worth cutting Visions for this card. You lose a little bit of digging power, but the instant speed is invaluable in a deck that wants to hold up mana for counterspells and instant speed removal/deflection effects. Opt works if you want to save a little bit of money since you have no graveyard synergy besides Snappy (which I think you should cut anyways).


Sideboard Card Suggestions

Tormod's Crypt: Grave hate.

Spell Pierce: Additional copies of Pierce are always good for decks with lots of those noncreature spells.

Wear / Tear: Remains some of the best artifact/enchantment removal in these colors, especially good against saga decks. Cheap also.

Hallowed Moonlight: Hits a surprisingly large number of decks right now, from Creativity to Scam to Rhinos to Yawgmoth to Living End--you get the idea.

Dress Down: This card is just crazy versatile and absolutely hoses saga tokens, and it is probably relevant in more matchups than you would expect. You can cast it in response to Murktide to make it a 3/3, you can shut down hammer and Yawg, stop Titan and Archon from using their ETBs, cast it in response to a Thassa's Oracle, etc.

Alpine Moon: Mainly for Urza's Saga, but it also stops Tron and hits some random stuff like Valakut Scapeshift and Lotus Field shenanigans.

Mystical Dispute/Aether Gust: Just decent color-hate options, if you need more flexible sideboard pieces and have extra space.

Blossoming Calm: Another card I like in decks like this, great against Burn and Rakdos Scam but also stops stuff like Archon and Yawg Combo from targeting you.


Deck Description Suggestions

Each person usually has their own style of deck descriptions, but I can give some suggestions based on my own deck descriptions.

Accordion tabs are usually my go-to, and I'm glad you already started one here.

  • Deck overview/general deck goals
  • Gameplan
  • Maindeck card choices (can be broken up into sections: creatures, interaction, etc.)
  • Sideboard card choices
  • Matchups/Sideboarding Guide (optional)
  • Nonbudget Upgrades (optional)

In terms of stylistic choices, if you contact Yeago (the site owner) on the discord and request CSS perms you can do internal/embedded CSS. You can do inline css without perms, but it is pretty limited and only allows you to customize the objects in the description itself.


If you made it this far, thanks for reading all of my comments; I hope at least some of it was helpful lol. Happy brewing!

zapyourtumor on Murky Waters

1 year ago

Card Suggestions Show


I think the main decision you have to make with this deck is whether you want it to be a true control deck or a tempo deck. A true control deck would try to trade one for one and build card advantage before dropping a threat like Murktide or Jace or simply winning with Snappy beatdown. A tempo deck on the other hand would try to turbo out a quick Murktide and then protect that threat.

Mixing control and tempo is nothing new, and it sometimes works quite well. But because a lot of the cards from each type of deck don't necessarily go well together, you can sometimes end up in an awkward situation.

Here, you definitely have a mix of both types (which, I'd like to emphasize, is not necessarily bad). Archmage's Charm, Counterspell, Cryptic Command, Snapcaster Mage, Devastation Tide and Jace, the Mind Sculptor are all heavily control-flavored cards in your deck. They all either break even or generate card advantage, or massively stall out the game.

On the other hand, Force of Negation, Otherworldly Gaze, Thought Scour, Spell Pierce, and Subtlety are all tempo-flavored cards.

The problem with this combination in this deck is that half of your cards aim to turbo out a Murktide Regent as fast as possible with Otherworldly Gaze and Thought Scour and then protect it in the short term with cheap spells like Dismember, Force of Negation, Subtlety, and Spell Pierce. The main problems with these cards is that they are pretty terrible topdecks late game. Scour isn't too bad because it cantrips, but topdecking a Gaze when you really needed a counterspell or card advantage engine or a Murktide would probably feel terrible. And all the control-type cards aim to reach that stage of the game.

One example of a problem that arises when you try and combine these two archetypes is in the manabase. Tempo decks typically don't need many lands; depending on the deck's mana curve, we are generally looking at 19-20 lands, and occasionally even 18 or less. On the other hand, control decks almost always want at least 22-23 lands, sometimes up to 24-26 lands in order to reliably play their more expensive spells on curve like Archmage's Charm, Cryptic Command and Snapcaster Mage, and to also always have mana held up during their opponents turn for a reactive spell.

Of course, many cards fit very flexibly into both tempo and control decks, for example Counterspell is just so strong it works in both, while Consider being a cheap cantrip also fits into both types. So in my opinion one of the most important decisions you should make, if you want to make the deck more cohesive and just function smoother as a whole, is whether you want to lean more towards tempo or control.

Quick disclaimer: I think it is definitely possible to make the deck more competitive while keeping both tempo and control aspects; however you should probably then trim both the very slow control-leaning cards (Cryptic Command, Devastation Tide, Jace, the Mind Sculptor), and the cheap tempo-leaning cards (Otherworldly Gaze, Thought Scour, Force of Negation) and replace them with cards more towards the middle ground. The rest of the cards, like Archmage's Charm, Subtlety, Force of Negation, Spell Pierce, Dismember, and of course Murktide Regent are all flexible enough that they can slot into both types of decks.


The second important decision to make is what secondary color, if any, you want for your deck in order to complement the primary color (blue). The main issue with mono blue control is that you have very few ways to deal with resolved permanents, which is why most players typically splash white or black (or occasionally red). Blue only has access to bounce spells, which are decent in tempo decks but generally bad in control decks because they are card disadvantage (and also terrible late).

Here, I see you kind of "splashed" black, but your only maindeck spell with black pips uses phyrexian mana anyways, while the only black spell in your sideboard can be casted with only blue mana. In my opinion, since you already have black lands, I would commit fully to a UB manabase by including a few more fetches (U fetches since that's your main color) because it gives you access to a lot of strong options:

Drown in the Loch is a really good spell doubling as both removal and countermagic at only 2 cmc, and only gets stronger as the game goes on. Fatal Push is another great removal spell which is generally stronger than Dismember, although it needs at least around 7 fetches to show its full potential. You can also run discard like Inquisition of Kozilek, although that is more tempo/midrange-esque so it may not be a great fit for this deck. Black also gives you an actual boardwipe in the form of Damnation, which is definitely a lot stronger than something like Devastation Tide since it gets rid of the creatures permanently and indirectly generates CA by trading with multiple enemy creature cards. It also doesn't hit Jace. If you don't think you need it in the mainboard, it can be a great sideboard inclusion. Lastly you have access to some sideboard options like Unmoored Ego.

If all of the blue pip spells like Counterspell and Archmage's Charm have you worried about mana fixing issues, you can run the filter land Sunken Ruins which is great in these types of decks to ensure you can cast both BB and UUU spells.


Those two main points aside, I have a few other card suggestions I think could work well here, some of which lean more control and some which lean more tempo.

Ledger Shredder is a great card which leans a bit more towards tempo but unlike Gaze/Thought Scour it helps turbo out a Murktide while also growing into a significant threat itself.

Aether Gust and Mystical Dispute are decent color-specific sideboard cards.

Remand is a tempo-leaning card that is generally not great in pure control lists, but could be good here if you decide to stick to the turbo murktide strategy.

Spreading Seas is probably the best sideboard option mono-blue has against Urza's Saga.

Memory Deluge has a bit of antisynergy with Murktide, but a very good digging spell if you decide to go towards control.

Orvar, the All-Form is another great sideboard card which instantly turns the tables on any Creativity player thinking they auto won the game after cheating out an early Archon of Cruelty.


If you made it this far, thanks for reading all of my comments. I like the deck and I'm excited to see where you can take it in the future. Happy brewing!

nbarry223 on In defense of Veil of …

1 year ago

I would actually argue that powerful but niche cards like Veil of Summer and Aether Gust is something the format needs more of. They aren't strictly better than other counterparts, but give some "narrow" hate that can be quite powerful in the right matches. We need more hate-cards in the format which are relevant in this manner. Wedge hate cards like this are great, and it's a shame that they aren't all at the same power level.

Cards like Devout Decree, Celestial Purge, Noxious Grasp, Deathmark, Fry, and Rending Volley just aren't powerful enough. White does get some decent creatures that fit the mold like Auriok Champion and Sanctifier en-Vec but those require a little more than a slight splash.

So in conclusion, rather than argue that Veil of Summer (a fixed Autumn's Veil) is too powerful, I would argue that the counterparts from other colors are just too weak, being outclassed by normal removal options.

We need more narrow cards that fit into what the color wants to do, and hate against what its enemy colors want to do better. For example, maybe some kind of Searing Blaze type of effect (deals with creatures and goes face) for against , and a effect against that punishes them for swarming and is a form of removal.

SpammyV on In defense of Veil of …

1 year ago

I think that given the power of former staple Cryptic Command and current staples like Force of Negation, Aether Gust, and Grief; that Veil is just a necessary evil in Modern so that there is some counter to these cards. Like Teferi, Time Raveler in that it's too much for the smaller Pioneer cardpool but needed in the larger one unless they want to ban whole swaths of cards.

Andramalech on Modern Amulet Artifacts

1 year ago

I noticed that there isn't a sideboard detailed, and I did notice how your mana based is arranged, so I'll take it you prefer Bant () colored spells. I'd recommend:

I noted that you said you haven't constructed this yet so I keep that in mind with my recommendations; afterall, Broken Bond may do what you need it to better than Force of Vigor but honestly go off, either way, I see the great potential you have to make this an unorthodox at your local tourney. It would certainly raise eyebrows, and I think it could be fun. Best of luck with your building!

Jett2112 on

1 year ago

Very cool deck, I love the specter aesthetic! I'm gonna try Blackmail in my deck Pox Diamond. I would reccomend from your maybe board Drown in the Loch and Vandalblast for sure Grixis staples. Also have you ever considered Painter's Servant? Its got synergy with your commander making them discard all spells plus it makes cards like Pyroblast, Aether Gust, and Leshrac's Sigil even better.

ThisIsMyAccount on Modern Murktide moon

1 year ago

My recommendation would be -1 Spell Snare for +1 Blood Moon. Then, Archmage's Charm in the board could be Mystical Dispute or Aether Gust instead if you want. Good deck, though.

Load more
Have (2) reikitavi , gildan_bladeborn
Want (1) AdamChafee