Ox of Agonas

Creature — Ox

When CARDNAME enters the battlefield, discard your hand, then draw three cards.

Escape—{R}{R}, Exile eight other cards from your graveyard. (You may cast this card from your graveyard for CARDNAME's escape cost.)

CARDNAME escapes with a +1/+1 counter on CARDNAME.

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
Vanguard	Legal
Vintage	Legal

Discussion (42)

ArtistaFeo on Chishiro Precon 1

11 months ago

Easy Cuts

Old-Growth Troll, Walking Skyscraper, Smoke Spirits' Aid, Vastwood Surge, Sword of Vengeance, Unquenchable Fury, One with the Kami, Elemental Mastery,

Ox of Agonas (Swap for Inspiring Call), Ulvenwald Oddity  ^Flip (switch for Primal Rage), Spearbreaker Behemoth (Swap for Heroic Intervention I have a copy of this card to give you.), Ascendant Acolyte - maybe cut? good card but i think you can do better.

Shifting Shadow, only keep if you have a lot of creatures with ETB effects. By a lot I mean at least 10.

Blackblade Reforged, Bonehoard, andFireshrieker can be upgraded for more synergistic equipment or auras. For example Bone Sabres, Fractal Harness, and Luxior, Giada's Gift. Search scryfall for equipment with counter keywords, then do the same for auras. You should absolutely play Sword of Truth and Justice

Search scryfall for cards with "evolve" for early game creatures that are growers, not showers. I highly recommend Experiment One and Gyre Sage! Gyre is 100% better than either spell I talk about below. vv

Most ramp spells in your deck should cost 2 or less CMC. 3 is fine. But you want to play them early game rather than late game. Cards like Tanuki Transplanter are very good ramp spells, but you only want 1 or 2 ramp spells that cost 4 or greater in your deck. I would keep this card in your deck depending on what the rest of your ramp looks like. Rampant Rejuvenator is another 4 cmc ramp. it does synergies with your counter theme, but its less dependable ramp because it has to die and your deck isn't playing sac outlets like Phyrexian Alter. on the plus side it is nice to beef it up and wait for that pending board wipe to slingshot your land base past the rest of the table. These are the tough decisions we are faced with. You should cut one of these cards. Keep Bear Umbra, it is better than both above mentioned and has the same CMC.

I would cut most lands that enter the battlefield tapped, they really f*ck up your early game. its ok to have a few, but they better be worth it.

PaulMuadDib on

1 year ago

Take a look at other similar commander lists like Ilharg, the Raze-Boar and Etali, Primal Storm which also can be built to heavily utilize ETB triggers.

A. Sundial of the Infinite will prevent you from sacrificing creatures that you copy and not just the ones from your commander's effect.
B. Sneak Attack is great for putting something out to copy that you can't cast yet.
C. Captivating Crew repeated steal.
D. Chancellor of the Forge doubles the number of creatures on your board.
E. Emissary of Grudges can instantly counter an opponent's effect if you use your commander's ability in response.
D. Mindclaw Shaman repeated cast opponent's spell.
E. Ox of Agonas repeated draw 3 that can be gotten back if it's in your graveyard.

Avaliere on Kess Mutiny

2 years ago

Good idea! I'll buy a copy of Entomb someday. A lot of the seemingly valuable cards in this build serve multiple purposes for my EDH and modern decks. Entomb is just a little outside of my comfort zone on spending, but I'll pick it up if there's a price drop. Thanks for commenting!

Buried Alive might not be as effective as you might expect because the only creatures I want in the yard are Kroxa, Titan of Death's Hunger and Ox of Agonas

hungry000 on $15 Dredge

2 years ago

TheBubbaEA Thanks!

In general, I would reference a non-budget Dredge list (from MTGgoldfish or another website like it) when you make upgrades, since those lists contain all the cards you'll want to get in the exact configurations you'll need. However, the Dredge deck in particular requires large investments alongside certain cards (like sets of fetchlands with Life from the Loam) in order to make them work, which can be difficult to figure out on your own.

I'd recommend making smaller upgrades first; the $25 Mardu version I listed above (Dredge ($25)) adds some white tri-lands to the mana base for Thrilling Discovery, Smiting Helix, and sideboard cards. Any other upgrades you'll want to make are going to be really big investments, so it'll be good to have a solid but fairly inexpensive base to play with while you work towards the more expensive stuff.

Now, it's important to consider which particular variant of Dredge you want to build before you start investing: some decks splash white for Thrilling Discovery and Prismatic Ending, some go for the traditional Jund list, others are straight Mardu. As of right now the most successful Dredge decks are cutting white for 1 mana enablers like Merchant of the Vale and Burning Inquiry for more speed (since graveyard hate is very popular atm). I personally like the white splash, but you do you.

Once you've figured that out, the most important upgrades you'll need to make are to the mana base. Competitive Dredge is heavily reliant on land synergies with Bloodghast, Life from the Loam, and by association Conflagrate (which is usually casted from the graveyard for big X values after filling your hand with lands via Loam). Fetchlands are by far the most important cards to have if you want to go this route. Having a nice suite of lands will also help with casting costs, which is always an issue with budget mana bases.

Other than that, the only upgrade you can really make until you have the lands is adding 3 Ox of Agonas for 1 Haunted Dead and 2 Smiting Helix; it's not too expensive to do this, but it also happens to be better with fetchlands, as they help pay for Ox's escape cost.

For lands, you'll want 8 R/X fetches, 4-5 R/X Dual lands, a couple fastlands, 3ish five-color lands, and one or two basics (~19 lands total). My recommendation for a 4c (RBgw) list:

• 4 Bloodstained Mire
• 4 Wooded Foothills
• 2 Stomping Ground
• 2 Blood Crypt
• 1 Sacred Foundry
• 1 Copperline Gorge
• 3 Gemstone Mine or a split of Gemstone Mine and City of Brass/Mana Confluence
• 2 Mountain
• Note: you don't have to get green lands like Stomping Ground until you have Life from the Loam.

Other Upgrades:

• +3 Ox of Agonas, -2 Smiting Helix, -1 Haunted Dead
• +3 Life from the Loam, -3 Silversmote Ghoul Must have fetchlands
• +1 Bloodghast, -1 Silversmote Ghoul Must have fetches and Loam
• +2 Conflagrate, -1 Darkblast, -1 Golgari Thug Must have Loam

Hope this helps!

zapyourtumor on Modern Rakdos Burning Inquiry Midrange

2 years ago

Hollow One, Asylum Visitor, Ox of Agonas, (Faithless Salvaging?)

Cornonjacob07 on Never Break the Chain (Chainer, Nightmare Adept)

2 years ago

FunnyDuck

After further testing and time to parse through the upcoming Forgotten Realms regular and commander cards, I think you're right about the "discard hand, draw 3" model. While it sometimes works, it takes far too much commitment and loss of control to rely heavily on. I will keep Ox of Agonas as I still think its Escape mode is pretty great, but Anje's Ravager and any others are out. I'm also putting Stinkweed Imp back into the deck because being able to process 5 cards without spending mana, just a draw, is powerful.

I think for now, I should tighten my sources of card advantage. Though it adds a bit more consistency to have more smaller looting cards like Thrill of Possibility or the aforementioned Anje's Ravager , I could just be using those slots for more powerful cards that actually impact the board or are otherwise useful while consolidating the draw power to the heavy hitters like Magus of the Wheel , Vilis, Broker of Blood , or Disciple of Bolas for example. Specific tools and answers will be handled by the tutors I was adding anyway and the general system will be greased with odd cards like Squee, Goblin Nabob and Phyrexian Reclamation .

Everything else needs to be playtested rather than theorized about, but I think it's safe to say this is a core part of the deck that I should reconsider and upgrade. I'd also like to put forward the new Warlock Class as a possible replacement or partner to Archfiend of Despair and the possibility of Heartless Hidetsugu .

I'm also interested in the new Hurl Through Hell , Fevered Suspicion , and Orcus, Prince of Undeath . The former two I'm more optimistic about, and am willing to sacrifice a little reliability for their potential and because they look like a lot of fun, but I suspect Orcus will be one of those cards that look a lot better on paper than in practice.

As always, thanks for your suggestions and consultations. I hope Shenanigans and Hellkite Tyrant have been working for you as they have for me.

FunnyDuck on Never Break the Chain (Chainer, Nightmare Adept)

2 years ago

Cornonjacob07

I like your idea of Hellkite Tyrant so I've made a swap for him, getting rid of Vandalblast while simultaniously moving Ingot Chewer out for Shenanigans . I'll have an opportunity soon enough to test those things out, so I may as well make the change for now. Thanks for that suggestion! :)

I personally am not a fan of the forced discard of your entire hand that Ox of Agonas has. At least, not for just three cards. Wheel of Misfortune is a good enough Wheel of Fortune impersonation that I would still prioritize it over the 'discard hand draw 3 creatures'. Draw 7 is so much more powerful for a deck reliant on burst damage such as this one. And in a roundabout sense, self-milling using Dredge cards is much the same result, so perhaps one of the options between Ox, Ravager, or Reveler is a good subtitiute to replace Stinkweed Imp if you like those effects more.

And as for nuPurphoros, I am not a fan of him here. In a mono-Red deck sure, but there's just too many Black creatures here for him to be consistent with his effect, which is the major thing differentiating him over other Haste enablers. He's very borderline worth the 5 mana as a Haste-granter, and certainly not worth it as an 8 mana Sneak Attack that only works with half your creatures. If you're having trouble with keeping Chainer on board as your primary Haste effect, always keep in mind that you don't have to send him to the Command Zone everytime he's done in. Conserve some of your redundant recursion ( Reanimate , Dread Return ) for him. Or just jam Lightning Greaves and/or Ogre Battledriver somewhere in the deck!

ChrisHansonBiomancin on Red-Blue Anon

2 years ago

Fling is a cool idea, tho from playtesting this deck Rielle is typically only up to probably about 7 or 8 power on average by the end of the game so it wouldn't be something that could do the job entirely. Also, Ox of Agonas tends to be a very important card for breaking the game in my favor so he gets dibs on the bulk of the graveyard- obviously you want to leave as many instants/sorceries in the yard as possible for Rielle and Magmatic Channeler , but generally speaking those cards and triggers from Ox are more important.