Archon of Emeria

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Legality

Format Legality
1v1 Commander Legal
Alchemy Legal
Archenemy Legal
Arena Legal
Block Constructed Legal
Brawl 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
Pre-release Legal
Quest Magic Legal
Standard Legal
Tiny Leaders Legal
Vanguard Legal
Vintage Legal

Archon of Emeria

Creature — Archon

Flying

Each player can't cast more than one spell each turn.

Nonbasic lands you opponents control enter the battlefield tapped.

kloac on Tax's Saga

2 months ago

GODKOFFIN19 hammertime is more competitive than this build. This is the original Death and Taxes deck, but without Leonin Arbiter and adding Urza's Saga. The idea of this deck is to slow the opponent’s strategy, incrementing his or her mana payment to cast spells or locking some interactions using Archon of Emeria.

Is a really fun deck to play, but it can be a bit complex to use at the beginning.

But, to sum up, hammertime is a tier 1 deck for sure, and this one maybe is a tier 2 (but I really enjoy playing original decks, so that’s why I like this build haha)

DreadKhan on Zurza's Saga

7 months ago

I love Urza's Saga in my Zur deck, but I don't really max out it's value, it's just another good card and a way for Zur to ramp me. It's nice to see someone take the time to lean into this! I have a few ideas for you, but most of them don't really use sagas, but I am a big fan of Zur decks and studied up on them a bit, most of the ideas are to increase the power level/offer backup plans that I think are thematically similar. If you're totally happy with this as is feel free to ignore, it's easy to make a Zur deck too strong and end up the archenemey

If you're going to be running Sensei's Divining Top, you might like Counterbalance, which Zur can find. Similarly, I feel like if you use Out Of Time you should consider Vanishing, this lets Zur wipe the board of creatures with safety, it also gives him useful protection. If you don't need Zur to keep swinging you can use some copy enchantments to lock creatures off the board, I think if you used Mirrormade (which I'm pretty sure you should run either way) and Estrid's Invocation, have Estrid's copy Out Of Time, then use Vanishing to protect Zur so you can swing next turn and get Mirrormade, copying the Estrid's Out Of Time, now you can just lock creatures off the board indefinitely, not sure if this is worth it or not, but I think all of the cards are good includes. I think since you can always choose to not return the Out Of Time creatures and then advance your board state with Zur it's probably worth a look vs pretty aggressive metas. There is also Copy Enchantment, I found in my competitive Zur list that having all 3 wasn't a problem very often, they're great to draw if someone has a Rhystic Study/Tithe, there are lots of splashy enchantments out there that are worth grabbing. If you do run a bunch of copy enchantment effects they are really good with All That Glitters as a fall back plan, ATG and a copy is sometimes enough to 1 shot people with Commander damage, I liked it because I already wanted the copy effects and I gained access to impressively large voltron at the cost of including only 1 card.

If Urza's Saga gets exiled somehow (or vs Proliferate maybe?), Luminarch Ascension can generate a ton of bodies, and while they'll be smaller they have flying, be 1 mana cheaper, and dodge Vandalblast. The Ascension is pretty easy to make work if you get it out early, and once it's online it's often the best thing you can do with your mana. If your meta is pretty harsh, you might toss in Solitary Confinement as a way to delay your demise, and if you're worried about sustaining Confinement all you need to add is Court of Cunning, this will pay for Confinement until you deck yourself, meaning you can use spare mana to make tokens while your opponent's can't do anything to you, they get swarmed by super cheap 4/4 Flyers.

Do you need to target your artifacts themselves for any of your interactions? I ask because I'm not sure if Hanna's Custody would be useful, it also protects your opponent's stuff, but when I play Zur I loved facing an artifact deck because you can just dig out Energy Flux and they either remove it or pretty much scoop. Flux can be a dead card, but when you run into a busted artifact deck this will punish them quite effectively, and Zur can dig it out whenever it's going to be relevant.

It's a pretty spicy card, but have you considered Hall of the Bandit Lord for Haste? Zur really wants Haste in my experience, but I built for cEDH and needed to move fast.

It's potentially pretty unfun, but if your Zur deck isn't often casting multiple spells you should consider Rule of Law/Arcane Laboratory if your opponents won't revolt, Zur already cheats out an enchantment and you can make tokens with mana, how many spells do you really end up casting compared to people playing more traditional decks? Lots of people like to run really low curve decks these days, Rule of Law effects (I'd also consider Archon of Emeria maybe, since those decks also love untapped lands) really make life hard for those decks. If your area has players that like small draw spells then Rule of Law is going to feel pretty good.

Azoth2099 on Narset's Work Out Plan

8 months ago

Bkotz

This version of Narset looks so fun, man!

One thing that I feel is fundamental when remembering Narset, Enlightened Exile's function as a Commander is that her ability gives you Graveyard hate as well as pseudo card draw by giving you access to your opponent's Graveyards as well as your own, meaning that you will always have card advantage as long as you protect your Commander.

That being said, I would definitely find room for Lightning Greaves, Swiftfoot Boots, Mother of Runes, Giver of Runes, & an abundance of Counterspells. Personally, I don't like spending more than 1 Mana for a Counterspell these days. Red Elemental Blast, Pyroblast, Dispel, Swan Song & An Offer You Can't Refuse provide a crazy ceiling of value for a single Mana. If you wanted to roll with 2-drops for budget reasons, though, Delay, Arcane Denial, Dovin's Veto & Negate are all easy to cast, & throw a wide net. Misdirection & Bolt Bend are also options here.

Secondly, Narset, Enlightened Exile can only trigger on your own turn, & you need to ensure that everything is going to go as planned. Grand Abolisher & Conqueror's Flail will lock your opponents out of your turn without giving your opponents the same utility like cards like Teferi, Time Raveler & Defense Grid notoriously do. Silence, Revel in Silence  Flip, Abeyance & Orim's Chant can do something similar for 1-2 Mana.

Speaking of Stax, there are a few concise, utilitarian pieces that you may want to consider. Drannith Magistrate, Sanctum Prelate, Archon of Emeria, Lavinia, Azorious Renegade, Boromir, Warden of the Tower, Aven Mindcensor & Containment Priest shut down a LOT of strategies. You'd be surprised how little most decks can do once you take away their ability to cheat stuff in, Tutor and/or cast things for free. Personally, every deck I have is heavily handicapped by all of those pieces. I wouldn't even be able to target them with removal if you played your cards right.

For noncreature Stax, you've got Chalice of the Void, Cursed Totem, Thorn of Amethyst, Deafening Silence, Grafdigger's Cage (which your Commander's ability gets around btw, very strong here), & Rule of Law as a few solid options.

You do need quite a bit more card draw, though. Scroll Rack & Sensei's Divining Top are obviously great, but the level of toolbox utility they actually give you in practice is even better than it seems! Archivist of Oghma, Faerie Mastermind & Ledger Shredder all give you card draw that scales with what your opponents are doing, which is fantastic. Other things like Deep Gnome Terramancer & Wandering Archaic  Flip do the same thing, though they technically aren't card draw. Hell, might as well throw Monologue Tax out there too since I'm talking about scaling.

There's also Careful Study, Frantic Search, Tolarian Winds, Faithless Looting, Cathartic Reunion, Burning Inquiry, Thrill of Possibility & Dragon's Rage Channeler, which are great synergy here!

Speaking of synergy, let's get into that! The foremost synergies for Narset, Enlightened Exile imho is Underworld Breach + Lion's Eye Diamond + Brain Freeze & Intuition, and much of the deck should be geared towards maximizing on that. They're all very easy to Tutor up via cards like Enlightened Tutor, Mystical Tutor, Idyllic Tutor, Solve the Equation, Fabricate, Reshape, Transmute Artifact, Reckless Handling, Goblin Engineer & Gamble, in addition to being easy to recur via your Commander's ability. It's actually absurd, truly busted. I wouldn't recommend throwing Wheels like Wheel of Fortune or Windfall into the mix, though. They're very overrated, & you can just run Brain Freeze for the combo instead. No need to give all of your opponents a bunch of cards for free if you don't have to! Queen Kayla bin-Kroog is for sure worth consideration, though, if you choose to run Artifact Stax.

Maximizing on Underworld Breach, however, means running Storm. I'd recommend Birgi, God of Storytelling  Flip, Storm-Kiln Artist, Urabrask  Flip, Desperate Ritual, Pyretic Ritual & Seething Song to keep your Storm engine from shutting off. I personally don't condone Runaway Steam-Kin, as it's just too freaking slow & conditional compared to other options.

Additional Combat Phases would also be of great use here as opposed to trigger doublers like Strionic Resonator or something. Aggravated Assault, Waves of Aggression, World at War & Seize the Day are the only ones I'd consider running, though. You don't wanna load up on too many synergy effects when you can just Tutor for the best of them when the time's right, ya know?

Since you're running Dockside Extortionist, I'd also consider Cloudstone Curio. With one other Creature (like Spellseeker for example), you can produce infinite Treasures & ETBs with little effort, which is usually more than enough to get you to the finish line.

Your ramp package is looking solid enough, but I'd include 2 more Rocks as well as the rituals I named previously. Fellwar Stone is, functionally, a 5-color Rock for 2 Mana, which is absurd. I tend to not condone 3-drop rocks, with the exception of Chromatic Lantern, which was just reprinted recently and is currently super cheap.

Oh man, now that I think of it Isochron Scepter + Dramatic Reversal gives your whole team infinite power and toughness via your Commander, as well as giving you infinite Mana if you have enough Rocks on the field. Maybe consider it lol.

Monastery Mentor seems to fit like glove here as well, offering some much needed redundancy and a surprising amount of board presence. It's kind of like Deep Gnome Terramancer or Wandering Archaic  Flip in the sense that it just provides waaaay more value while playtesting than you thought it was going to!

Also, consider giving yourself Hexproof with stuff like Witchbane Orb to protect your own Graveyard.

To summarize, I really think your best bet with this one is building a system that gets to either an Underworld Breach + Lion's Eye Diamond + Brain Freeze combo win or an Intuition win as quickly as possible, with other combos like Dramatic Reversal + Isochron Scepter being strong potentialities on the way.

Cheers!

wallisface on Bow Down to Sheoldred

8 months ago

idfkgabe decent creatures in white and/or black are aplenty, but might depend on your budget. Some options include Giver of Runes, Esper Sentinel, Solitude, Dauthi Voidwalker, Orcish Bowmasters, Leonin Arbiter, Skyclave Apparition, Grief, Dark Confidant, Thraben Inspector, and Archon of Emeria

Andromedus on Progress and Poverty

8 months ago

wallisface I agree regarding Fury, it can be a bit hairy. We do run 3x Dromoka's Commands (the fight mechanic ignores double strike) and chump-blocking a non-flyer isn't generally a challenge for this deck, so on the whole I usually prefer the ETB-less Fury. Tossing a red spell to get it out is a major downside for the opponent, and if we're trading hits then we only need to get a couple +1/+1's onto our Hushbringer before we're breaking even with it. But I do agree there's a potential risk depending on board state.

What I've found is that, whenever Hushbringer is weak, Archon of Emeria is strong. So much so that I'm thinking of replacing the one-off Kozilek, Butcher of Truth in the sideboard with a fourth Archon of Emeria (I don't really think this deck needs the Kozilek anyways).

For example, against Crashing Footfalls, Archon of Emeria completely hoses all cascade effects since they can't cast their "free" spell, which includes 4xShardless Agents and 4xViolent Outbursts, and means that when Crashing Footfalls finally casts off suspend they also can't do anything else that turn but sit on their hands. And without Fury's ETB, it's very hard for them to remove the Archon of Emeria.

It also hoses Murktide as mentioned before, I think that's pretty common knowledge.

For Underworld Breach it hoses Ledger Shredder, Underworld Breach (since escape counts as a cast, they can't use it), Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer's dash is pretty well hosed since it counts as a cast, Expressive Iteration while not totally hosed is definitely hampered, Mishra's Bauble becomes pretty much a dead draw. Only Teferi, Time Raveler really helps the deck but imo it's not enough.

Domain Zoo is one of my tougher match-ups. We do run 3xBoseiju, Who Endures to destroy the triomes, and we have a lot of vigilance which is helpful against aggro. Still I'd probably swap in our Runed Halos in that matchup, in addition to our Hopeful Initiates and Burrenton Forge-Tenders.

Anyways I appreciate the constructive criticisms. Hopefully with time I'll get the list tightened up more.

Andromedus on Progress and Poverty

8 months ago

wallisface Whether this deck ever places in any tournaments remains to be seen, but I'm not about to throw the concept out in favor of making just another scales or taxes deck. If I wanted to do that the copy/paste function would have saved me a lot of time.

I'll answer much of this when I get the description written on how to pilot it. To hit an easy one: Anointed Peacekeeper is a replacement effect, not an ETB trigger, so Hushbringer has no effect on it.

Regarding Hushbringer hitting only three decks in the meta, based off MTG Goldfish data this assertion simply isn't true. In addition to hitting Scam (Dauthi Voidwalker, Seasoned Pyromancer, Grief, Fury), Omnath (Endurance, Omnath, Locus of Creation, Fury, Solitude, Elesh Norn, Mother of Machines), and (both Jeskai and Azorius) Control (Solitude, Wall of Omens, Elesh Norn, Mother of Machines), it also hits Creativity (Archon of Cruelty), Hammertime (Kor Outfitter, Stoneforge Mystic), Temur Rhinos (Fury), Living End (Architects of Will, Grief, Subtlety), Mono-Green Tron (Wurmcoil Engine), Yawgmoth (Young Wolf, Blood Artist, Strangleroot Geist, Endurance, Geralf's Messenger), and Scales (Hangarback Walker, Zabaz, the Glimmerwasp, Arcbound Ravager).

So the decks that Hushbringer doesn't touch are Burn, Murktide, Underworld Breach, and Domain Zoo.

The top 15 decks represent exactly 80% of the meta (per MTG Goldfish), with the four above decks that Hushbringer doesn't touch representing 21.5% of the meta. So assuming Hushbringer has no impact on the missing 20% of the meta not represented by the top 15 decks (definitely untrue, Death and Taxes, Eldrazi Tron, Merfolk and Amulet Titan being four obvious examples that Hushbringer hoses just off the top of my head, but let's pretend) it still prevents something in 58.5% of meta competitive decks.

Granted it's not a great card against all of those decks, but it still disrupts something, while sitting on a 1/2 flying lifelink body.

Regarding those decks that Hushbringer's static ability doesn't impact at all, four quick points:

  1. She can be an excellent chump blocker or damage trader in a deck with 4x Giver of Runes when the opponent lacks trample, plus lifelink is naturally strong vs burn.
  2. Not all +1/+1 counters are created equal, you get a lot more mileage on a lifelink flyer than on most other creatures, especially if you're trading.
  3. Those four decks are generally hosed by other aspects of the deck (by design), i.e. Archon of Emeria hoses Murktide, as does much of the list, frankly. That's not to say it always beats Murktide, but it does hold its ground respectably (at least in my playtesting).
  4. Our sideboard is designed to help us most vs our weaker matchups, and since it's white it's a pretty solid toolkit. I do think the sideboard could probably be further improved.

In general, since we're trying to deny value and slow down the game, we're looking for mana dumps and value engines that help us grind ahead. The +1/+1 counter engines help us do that, and when placed on a lifelink or vigilance creature punch above their weight.

If you think it's a garbage deck concept then that's fair. I've playtested vs a handful of the top competitive archetypes with surprisingly good results, but it may be that despite my best efforts I'm just no good at piloting other decks. In any case I'll entertain feedback that helps it do what it's meant to do better, but I'm not looking to create just another deck that everyone's seen a million times except with a slight two-card tweak just so I can call it innovation. I hope that makes some sense.

When I get a description written up I hope to make things a bit clearer. Undoubtedly the deck isn't for everyone, and may not ever end up on a meta list. That's ok.

Andromedus on Progress and Poverty

9 months ago

wallisface I appreciate the feedback. I think there may be some confusion as to how the deck works, which I'll straighten out in a write-up eventually.

It's really built around Hushbringer; any similarity with other strategies is purely incidental, and because those strategies don't use her they of course look completely different.

Running a full playset of Hardened Scales, for example, would be a disaster for this deck, as we run the risk of being flooded with scales with no counter generator. We can't throw modular creatures in as they would be impeded by Hushbringer.

I personally wouldn't call Ozolith, the Shattered Spire just a slower version of scales, because it can function as a counter generator (and, as a mana sink, synergizes with Archon of Emeria).

For Aether Vial I'll play around with a full set. It may be the better choice.

Cheers.

Andromedus on Disregard

9 months ago

Edit: Removing this post as I answered my own question (I thought my post here had been deleted when I could no longer find it).

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