Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer

Legendary Creature — Monkey Pirate

Whenever Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer deals combat damage to a player, create a Treasure token and exile the top card of that player's library. Until end of turn, you may cast that card.

Dash {1}{R} (You may cast this spell for its dash cost. If you do, this gains haste, and is returned from the battlefield to its owner's hand at the beginning of the next end step.)

Tokens

• Treasure

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
Gladiator	Legal
Highlander	Legal
Historic	Legal
Leviathan	Legal
Limited	Legal
Modern	Legal
Oathbreaker	Legal
Planechase	Legal
Pre-release	Legal
Quest Magic	Legal
Tiny Leaders	Legal
Vanguard	Legal
Vintage	Legal

Discussion (48)

wallisface on Oops, all mountains!

5 days ago

Two thoughts:

• I’m not sure what Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer is doing here - it doesn't really fit with what the rest of the deck is trying to do, and it’s not standard legal anyway. I’d swap it for Mountain personally.

• Standard decks only need to be 60 cards big. I’d suggest dropping 40 cards to get down to that number, as it’ll increase the reliability of what you’re doing and give you better odds of drawing the cards that matter.

Other than that, this is looking super competitive!

wallisface on Why Do Some Players Keep …

1 week ago

jethstriker i‘m not convinced that legendaries were ever deliberately made to be more powerful because of their inherent drawback - this feels like something that players would intuitively expect to be the case (because it would make sense), but looking through magics history of the strongest cards in formats, we don’t see that to be true - moderns past is littered with staples like Snapcaster Mage, Tarmogoyf, Death's Shadow, Siege Rhino, Arcbound Ravager, Goblin Guide, Bloodbraid Elf, Stinkweed Imp, Fury, Solitude, and Orcish Bowmasters. Yes there’s stuff like Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer and Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath, but I don’t think there’s enough density/evidence to conclude legendaries are inherently built stronger.

I would also be sceptical of this being the case because it would be weird for Rosewater to be wanting to remove the Legend rule if it served a mechanical purpose

This might be a question for Blogatog?

jethstriker on Why Do Some Players Keep …

1 week ago

"As far as the rule existing, I see no mechanical reason for it to exist."

The mechanical purpose of legend is to create a drawback so that card designers can create more powerful cards than ordinary. Can you imagine facing against multiple Ragavan, Nimble Pilferers or Mox Opals at a single given time in a non-singleton format.

However, most of the reason the drawback from being legendary is reduced, I believe, is because of:

-the rise of EDH as the main format. The legend rule doesn't matter in a singleton format.

-the power creep of design as time goes by. Non-legendaries most of the time now rivals the power level of legends, again making the supposed drawback pointless.

Niko9 on Has Anyone Tried a Multi …

1 month ago

TypicalTimmy I hear you on missing it : ) If I could play like 7 player ice age block with my brothers and all their friends again, it would be my favorite format ever. And that's a really fun way to do it that you guys had with the face down keeps draws. I could see that really being a factor in deckbuilding, having to be consistent and playable hands as much as possible.

I also hear you on time, effort, and expense, for sure. I really like playing my decks with friends, or every now and then testing them on this site vs current meta, but the direction of card design has really killed it for me. I mean, my favorite set ever was Ixalan, and I haven't even looked at the new one at all, just because there are too many external factors crumpled up with design now. Wizards used to just want to make a good game or a good story, and sometimes it had hiccups, but for the most part there was a single direction. Now it's like, sets have to be designed to have big pops, probably big bans down the road, but we won't address that for a while while the packs are selling.

And the part that really gets me (and this might be part rant) is that Wizards will address things publicly but always skirt the actual issue, and it often comes off to me as super patronizing to players. They won't say that they won't ban Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer because it's going to see a secret lair reprint and they are directly invested in how much of a staple it is in modern, but they will talk about how it helps red aggro stay competitive. The game isn't being designed to be a good game, and formats aren't being moderated for anyone playing in them, so it's just a feeling of, what can make this feel fresh again?

But definitely keep at the custom cards! You have some really fun ones : )

legendofa on Has Anyone Tried a Multi …

1 month ago

It's an interesting idea, but it feels like it rewards prediction, or even lucky guesses, more than gameplay.

Let's say I'm in a Modern tournament, and I start with Yawgmoth. Opponent starts with Tron, and I lose to the bad matchup. I switch to Boros Burn, thinking I can win a race, but opponent switches to Izzet Murktide and grinds out a match win with lucky pulls from Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer. If either of us had started with our other deck, I would have had the better matchup in both games.

Yawgmoth < Tron

Yawgmoth > Izzet Murktide

Boros Burn > Tron

Boros Burn =< Izzet Murktide

So assuming both people know what the other one's bringing, and have a reasonable idea of the +/- matchups, once you see the other person switch decks you know what to do. The best way around this is to use the same boxes and sleeves for both, and not reveal whether or not you switched (put both under the table and pull one back out or something). And that just goes back to pre-and mid-match prediction/guessing, rather than gameplay.

moo1234 on Card creation challenge

2 months ago

Chilhuaca, Harbringer phoenix {R}{R}{R}

Legendary Creature - Phoenix God

Flying Haste

When ~ deals combat damage to a player, create an ash token with "{T}: Return Target Phoenix card from your graveyard to the battlefield"

If you control 6 or more phoenixs, phoenix's you control get +3/+3

2/3

"Chilhuaca roams freely and unopposed these days, If your village is her next target, leave, we tried killing her in the past, we did. But we still lost"

---

not my best flavour text.

Phoenix's are very cool cards in general. They are not very good in commander though, and they are only sometimes good in modern or pioneer. I have good memories of playing with Arclight Phoenix and nightmares of playing against Rekindling Phoenix. And I've always tried to make a phoenix deck work in either commander or modern but, it just doesn't quite work. Despite being powerful modern phoenix's are just not very quick compared to other red strategies, and there's almost no phoenix tribal for commander. So this card solves both issues.

It's very pushed but not as much as Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer so it's fineee....

Next Challenge: Make an uncard along the same lines as Shahrazad where you pause the game and play something outside the game.

wallisface on Why Do Recent Sacrifice Effects …

3 months ago

DemonDragonJ In the current age of magic, its too easy to amass an amount of tokens (Treasure, Clue, Food Map, Blood, Creatures, etc) incidentally. In that regard, there's no "strategy" to gaining these tokens, they just happen, as players play the game with generically strong cards like Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer, Fable of the Mirror-Breaker  ^Flip, Orcish Bowmasters etc.

In this world, having a card that forces an opponent to just sacrifice any nonland permanent becomes useless, and there'd be no reason to run such cards (even before these cards were printed, forced sacrifice was an overwhelming-rarity in the game, just because the effect is soo average).

Added to this, the inherent "strategy"/payoff of running a go-wide tokens deck is that you render the opponents killspells pointless, because you're not running any strong single-card-creatures worth targeting. If you're running any nontoken creatures in such a deck, you're doing it wrong anyway (speaking from a 60-card format standpoint).

I wouldn't consider "amassing an army of tokens" to be "good strategy", as there's no inherent strategy to this - it's just an option for deckbuilding, which comes with its own list of pros and cons, the same as any other deckbuilding choice.

DemonDragonJ on Why Are So Many Recent …

5 months ago

wallisface, I agree with that, and some particular examples of my own are Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer, who is far too powerful for one mana, and Thalia and The Gitrog Monster, a card that I absolutely love, but definitely is too powerful for four mana.