Ashling, Flame Dancer

Legendary Creature — Elemental Shaman

You don't lose unspent red mana as steps and phases end.

Magecraft — Whenever you cast or copy an instant or sorcery spell, discard a card, then draw a card. If this is the second time this ability has resolved this turn, Ashling, Flame Dancer deals 2 damage to each opponent and each creature they control. If it's the third time, add {R}{R}{R}{R}.

Legality

Format	Legality
1v1 Commander	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
Historic Brawl	Legal
Legacy	Legal
Leviathan	Legal
Limited	Legal
Modern	Legal
Oathbreaker	Legal
Planar Constructed	Legal
Vintage	Legal

Discussion (2)

kamarupa on Cumulative Fire

1 month ago

hmm, I'm not sure I see what you see, Cloudy2024. I can't know how familiar you are with the Turbo Fog archetype, but typically, it relies not just on packing a ton of Fog spells, but also a lot of draw card (usually group draw), which are an essential component to keeping your hand full of Fog spells. It's just not enough to have lots of Fogs in a deck. A deck must also have a way of getting all those fogs into our hand. There's simply no avoiding the need for land, so even if a deck had 40x Fog and 20x Land, there's a 33% chance every draw step yields a land. Which means that it's likely an opponent is going to get to hit us eventually. Unless we can draw more cards each turn. So in my mind, adding more Fog spells at the expense of draw card will actually make the deck work less well.

I did consider dropping Ghostly Prison or cutting it back to fewer copies, but that doesn't yield a lot of slots and more importantly, the advantage Ghostly Prison gives the deck is a static defense that allows us to have a chance of tapping more mana on our own turns without being completely defenseless. I'm not 100% sold on that strategy, namely because I really don't like dropping 3 mana on it, but I know it works, so the real question is how much weight can it pull in this brew.

When it comes to other non-fog spells, the most slots are devoted to Ashling, Flame Dancer and Leyline Tyrant, which are basically 33% of the combo. Without those creatures, the cumulative mana we get from Braid of Fire evaporates before we can use it to cast Banefire at Sorcery speed. Since neither red nor white really have anything I'm aware of for creature tutoring, there's no way I can see cutting them.

I really don't like Idyllic Tutor as it's not only quite narrow in a deck that requires more than just an Enchantment to win, but it also costs 3 to cast. At least with Ghostly Prison we can a static defense. With Idyllic Tutor, we get a single use out of that 3 mana while also exposing the card we need, which, in many cases, won't get cast until the next turn. If I could grab anything and not reveal it (like Mastermind's Acquisition, I could see the possible value of adding more tutors. But it's just too inefficient to add more tutors that are so specific. I'd have to devote space in the deck for Sorcery, Enchantment, and Creature tutors. Which bring us back to the value of simple card advantage spells. I need all the spells in the deck. United Battlefront gets us slightly closer than Idyllic Tutor, but still misses on creatures (and my essential creatures are too big anyway). So my verdict is still out on that spell, but I'd likely not choose to run a full set if I thought there was even room for it at all.

I suppose I could try to run more creatures like Kami of False Hope and go the Tocasia's Welcome route, but that seems... I dunno... convoluted.

So to sum up - in my mind, "focus[ing] more on the strategy of the deck is probably the opposite of what you suggested - not more fog and white control spells but less. I could drop the Fog spells altogether and resort to creature based defenses. Not the worst idea, but I think it would come at a higher mana cost, which slows down Banefire.

The only other thing I'd add to all this is that the biggest issue Turbo Fog faces is decks that aren't creature driven. Things like Burn, Mill, Life-drain, etc go right through Fog. That's the primary reason I included Riot Control - because it doesn't just stop combat damage - it stops ALL damage. I mainboarded it because it also has the potential to result in a big lifegain, which is a good stall tactic against lifedrain (keep in mind this is intended to be a multiplayer brew, so it could very easily be facing threats from both creatures and lifedrain in the same game). And that's the other major issue with going in even harder with the Fog strategy (which is itself a secondary, defensive strategy). Granted, the sideboard can help a bit to shore up Turbo-Fog weaknesses.

Bottom line - While I really don't expect this brew to be top tier in any sense, I do like exploring with brews and try to make them the best I can. It's probably clear that I think about strategy, uh, let's just say, "enough." I want to be clear about this though - I'm not saying "I'm right and you're wrong" or that I don't appreciate your advice. It's quite the contrary - I write all this because I'm [overly] interested in these things and want to have conversations about all of it. I understand if you're not interested in that. I just don't want you to feel like I have any intent of antagonizing you, etc. It's just so easy to give/get the wrong impression over the internet.

OxygenDestroyer65 on Ashling Cast Trigger and Madness

2 months ago

If I have Ashling, Flame Dancer out and I cast a copy spell like Display of Power, and when her discard effect triggers I discard Fiery Temper, which I then cast for its Madness cost, can I target Fiery Temper with Display of Power's copy effect? Of do I have to pick targets before Fiery Temper is cast?