Ionize

Instant

Counter target spell. Ionize deals 2 damage to that spell's controller.

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 (49)

Icbrgr on

1 year ago

@TheoryCrafter Honestly I never thought of or knew about the interaction between Darksteel Citadel and Cleansing Wildfire; that sounds neat! I really like the Render Silent suggestion too.... but Ionize is actually really tempting too because of the lack of {U}{U} demand in its cost.

Thank you!

TheoryCrafter on

1 year ago

Have you considered just putting a full playset of Cleansing Wildfire into the deck? Combine this with Darksteel Citadel, the card draw and the ramp would be more effective than just the cycling lands. Especially since many of your spells and abilities have a mana cost of 4 or higher.

Other counterspells you may want to consider for this deck are Ionize and Render Silent.

I hope this helps. Happy Hunting!

wallisface on Question about cards that utilize …

1 year ago

9-lives addressing each of your comments in order:

• keeping in mind my list isa rough draft, it still is packed with a lot more win conditions than a typical control deck should have. Namely, Boros Reckoner+Blasphemous Act do massive damage, and then the game becomes fairly easy to close out with the various creature copy/steal spells.

• I’ve already explained multiple times why Ionize and Essence Backlash are terrible counterspells. The small amount of damage they deal doesn’t redeem them - they’re still heavily overcosted and too niche in application. Control decks win by controlling the board and then presenting a win condition when your opponent is low on resources. An extra 2-4 incidental damage won’t matter, especially when your opponent has been given soo much free-reign to do-what-they-want.

• the reason I suggested Control Magic over Clone is that Control Magic steals their creature, taking something from the opponent. Clone only copies it, meaning the opponent still has their stuff and you’ll likely end up just 1-for-1 trading thise creatures.

• Your quote of ”Also, the aikido archetype requires that I do damage whenever I counter. That's basically what aikido does.” is just plain wrong. That does not fit in with the glossary definition of the archtype provided above, nor does it fit-in with what actual Aikido lists (seen in edh) try to achieve. You’ve created your own warped definition of the term, and are now holding yourself ransom to it.

• your quote of ”Spellweaver Eternal is an aikido card because it does damage by blocking.” - not what the card does, not what Aikido decks in magic want to do.

• the land count in your deck is most-definitely too low, but i can see you’re not going to see reason here. Doing some stats using this site, with your current land count you’re going to miss playing your 3rd land on-time 45% of the time! You miss your 4th land 65% of the time.

9-lives on Question about cards that utilize …

1 year ago

The Question with that list is, wallisface, how the heck am I going to win? You can't counter your way into winning if you don't get at their life points. That's why I'm running Ionize and Essence Backlash. Especially the latter would be great against big creatures. And, every single one of my wizards benefits from Harmonic Prodigy, so I don't understand what you mean by my deck not having much use from it. Since I'm running budget, and already have Clone, I'd rather run that than Control Magic. I already own all of the cards in my deck except for having to buy Irencrag Pyromancer. The only non-budget things in my deck are the lands. Also, the aikido archetype requires that I do damage whenever I counter. That's basically what aikido does. I deleted my planeswalker and the fatespinner. 75 cards is as low as I'll go now.

wallisface on Question about cards that utilize …

1 year ago

The strongest card with this effect is probably the one dominating Standard at the moment - Sheoldred, the Apocalypse.

However, assuming you're trying to make tweaks to this deck of yours, you have much bigger issues to worry about:

• Ponder is banned in Modern, you can't run that card.

• You're running 79 cards, which is waaay over the 60 card limit, and will lead your deck to being very inconsistent and clumsy.

• Dialing your currently landbase to 60 cards, you're only running the equivalent of 18 lands, which is WAAAY too low considering your mana curve. Burn decks run 19 lands and only play spells costing 1-2 mana. Your deck looks like it needs to be able to reliably hit 3-4 lands to be able to do much of anything. imo you need to be running at least 23-24 lands in a 60-card deck (that's 30-32 lands in a 79 card deck).

• You're running some really suboptimal spells here. In modern you never want to be spending more than 2 mana for a counterspell - Essence Backlash and Ionize are both severely underwhelming (control decks never win by dealing 2 damage. They will however often lose by not being able to counter an important spell in the first few turns of the game). There are also a ton of much better drawspells than Deliberate (like Serum Visions or Consider)

• Your deck has no clear direction. Cards like Basri Ket and The Wanderer are both really weak and have no real purpose here. It's very hard to tell what this deck is actually trying to achieve, and that is going to make it play really awkwardly and make it harder for you to secure wins.

• Harmonic Prodigy and Spellweaver Eternal both want to be in aggressive, pro-active decks, but that's not what they've been allowed, as the rest of the deck looks like it wants to be playing super defensively. However, if you're aiming to be playing something more controlley, you're running waaay too many creatures, and waaay too little interaction.

wallisface on Burn/Control

1 year ago

Some thoughts:

• the idea of mixing control and burn is going to be a very difficult tightrope to navigate, because both these ideologies want different things. Control wins by gaining incremental card-advantage, and generally needs a game to go long to pull-ahead. Burn on the other hand doesn’t typically care about card advantage, and will usually waste all their cards haphazardly in an attempt to win the game as soon as possible (and before the opponent can stabilise).

• From a control standpoint, i’d recommend against stuff like Blink of an Eye (it gives you card disadvantage), Essence Scatter (its application is too narrow, Mana Leak is better 99% of the time), and Ionize (its just too weak/ineffective when soo many good 2-mana counterspells exist, including Counterspell).

• From the burn standpoint, i’d suggest ditching cards like Goblin Electromancer (you have almost no spells that benefit from this, and in any case its a creature for combo decks), Guttersnipe (its very slow, and waaay weaker than it might read), and Imperial Recruiter (again, too slow for burn. Also messes with cobtrol tempo).

• cards that could help you here are Dragon's Rage Channeler and Delver of Secrets  ^Flip. Both if these cards can come into play cheaply, which lets you hold up mana for countermagic, and they both become fairly aggressive quickly. You’ll prolly want Mishra's Bauble to help enable the Channeler.

9-lives on

1 year ago

I've used Ionize and Essence Backlash more than intended. Archmage Emeritus with Harmonic Prodigy has been great in drawing up to four cards with one instant per turn. Drawing power is definitely something not to be denied. Spellweaver Eternal is basically a burn card against blocking, but still great. I have generally been able to take my opponents into long games of attrition. Gonna try out my skill at the next FNM with this deck and see how it fares.

9-lives on

1 year ago

I'll define aikido as follows:

1. Receiving damage, then dealing damage; exempli gratia: Deflecting Palm, Boros Reckoner.

2. Causing damage through combat by using a defense against them; exempli gratia: Spellweaver Eternal, Eternal of Harsh Truths.

3. Preventing spells and dealing damage through this prevention; exempli gratia: Ionize, Essence Backlash.

Do you see the common thread in this? It's that there is a transformation of receiving damage into dealing damage, or preventing damage into doing damage, or if the opponent prevents damage then causing that damage. This is essentially the aikido martial art's goal. Aikido doesn't deal direct damage like a burn deck. It seeks to simply transform damage.

I know that in order to be useful as an archetype it has to be literally a useful gameplay. Although, the cards Boros Reckoner, especially when paired with Gideon's Sacrifice, and Deflecting Palm have won me a few games alone, and I've only played a few games with a burn deck and my testudo deck. The two former are excellent when someone becomes too cocky and swings with all (s)he's got. However, a archetype will not always be the best, just ilke a defense-to-damage deck is very difficult to play.