Back to Basics

Enchantment

Nonbasic lands don't untap during their controllers' untap steps.

Discussion (51)

The_Fallen_Duke on Eternal Dominion/Villainous Wealth/Torment of Hail

2 weeks ago

Fetch-lands are surely overpriced, but basic lands are almost for free, so I would not refrain to run a couple, especially islands and forests: they are not commonly played cards, but a Back to Basics or a Blood Moon would completely shut down your deck with no chance for recovery. A couple of pain-lands (e.g. Shivan Reef, Yavimaya Coast, etc.) could be considered, as they are quite cheap and do not enter the battlefield tapped.

l7lancer on

4 weeks ago

Balaam__ it's less about the life loss and more about beeing immune to Wasteland and Back to Basics.

dongerlord on Sevinne, the Chronoclasm Acid Flashback

1 month ago

It seems like you're running burn as your wincon.

Here are some cards that might help.

Static burn: Harsh Mentor, Zo-Zu the Punisher, Ankh of Mishra, Manabarbs

Finishers: Acidic Soil, Price of Progress. Molten Disaster is a decent finisher you can consider with split-second and also acts as a board clear (you might try replacing Devil's Play with this)

Since these are symmetrical burn, you could also run Glacial Chasm and stall it out. This is also the most important land card to run with these mono red sorcery finishers. Your Pariah is also a god level card with this setup. You might also consider Heartless Hidetsugu as a combo with these 2 cards.

For more drastic changes, you can fix around your landbase to cut a lot of nonbasics and add basics with a load of fetchlands, such as Fabled Passage, Prismatic Vista, , Ash Barrens, Terramorphic Expanse, Evolving Wilds, Myriad Landscape, Warped Landscape, some Panorama fetches, and keeping Flooded Strand + Scalding Tarn + Arid Mesa. I have this landbase in another of my burn decks and its fully sufficient for tri-colour commanders. In white, you get access to Land Tax as well so it helps further fix your mana - although in my experience with this landbase I would say its not even necessary.

With a basic land landbase, it opens you up to more burn, such as Price of Progress, Burning Earth. It also opens you up to hard stax cards if you have a vendetta against someone: Magus of the Moon, Blood Moon, Back to Basics.

---

An alternative package you can consider with your wheels is Narset, Parter of Veils and Alms Collector to discard their entire hand. You already have Smothering Tithe as well. Psychic Possession is also insane with wheels as it lets you draw 14 off a single wheel.

I would also just add Underworld Breach because its straight up insane.

You can also try Mana Geyser for a super explosive turn by recasting it from the graveyard again.

Dack Fayden is both a ramp card and a way to dump cards into your graveyard.

Good old Blasphemous Act and Chain Reaction are 2 of the best board clears you can pair with Sevinne.

Jace, Vryn's Prodigy  ^Flip Baby Jace is a VERY good card with Sevinne. Helps cycle into lands/ramp early and lets you cast spells from your graveyard once it transforms into Jace, Telepath Unbound.

---

Some cards I see that you could also try cutting/changing are:

Land Tax - you can run ramp artifacts instead, such as Surveyor's Scope. Surveyor's Scope is an excellent card with many fetchlands as you can tap them to sac as a cost, then activate Surveyor's Scope for up to 3 basics untapped since your fetchland is no longer on the field. Or basically any other 2 mana rock will do.

Mirage Mirror and Scroll Rack - these cards are a bit clunky to use and you can do more with mana rocks instead.

I would consider Ral, Izzet Viceroy a bit too slow.

You should swap Jeskai Ascendancy for the new Whirlwind of Thought

You have a lot of single target protection - Momentary Blink, Lightning Greaves, Diplomatic Immunity. I would suggest cutting one or two because you can still tutor for it.

Narset of the Ancient Way SEEMS a bit slow (but I have't seen this card in action yet), so you could replace it with Narset, Parter of Veils

Ray of Distortion is pretty omega slow. You might want to try Aura of Silence or a simple Disenchant

Personally I'm trying to build a cEDH Sevinne burn deck haha! Thinking of also trying Thought Lash with Thassa's Oracle

Long live our Overlord Sevinne

Sanguinolency on Kinnan, combo prodigy

1 month ago

Pretty solid list so far, I have a few suggestions though. First and foremost, if you haven't checked out the cEDH decklist database, I recommend it. If you're truly wanting to get in to cEDH, then that is a good outlet for deck brewing. There are a bunch of cards in your list that are solid picks for a Kinnan deck, but there are also some that aren't up to snuff with the meta, but that's not a necessarily bad thing. Competitive EDH is about play the most powerful cards in the your color pie to achieve your overall win condition and to do it as efficient and consistent as possible. Kinnan is quite new and people are still trying to find the best way to brew the deck, but his strategy is undoubtedly proactive, so we have to try to overwhelm our opponents as fast as possible.

Here are the cards in your deck that you just don't see in the cEDH meta. Not a bad thing, just something to consider.

Your mana dorks are higher in CMC that the meta heavy mana dorks. This puts them being cast usually around turn two, which is when you want to be casting Kinnan.

Elvish Mystic, Fyndhorn Elves, Llanowar Elves are more reliable turn one creatures. Maybe try cutting Silver Myr, Maraleaf Pixie, and Quirion Elves for these.

Arcum's Astrolabe - It's just way too circumstantial, especially when you only have 6 snow lands in the deck. This card would be dead in your hand most of the time. There are also better mana rocks.

Mind Stone has been sub-par for a while. In cEDH, you want to get plenty of mana as soon as possible so you can start setting up for win quickly. This is why Grim Monolith and Mana Vault are very prevalent in the meta. They are net positive mana rocks that come in quickly.

Whir of Invention and Blue Sun's Zenith are on the cusp of being played in the meta and not, mostly Blue Sun's Zenith as it's used to help draw the deck after getting infinite mana. Usually you see these more in mono blue decks because they have plenty of blue to pay the non-generic mana and can go big with the X cost, however, once you leave mono blue it's very difficult to keep up mana for interaction after casting these and usually when X is greater than 2, it's worth someone countering it. If they're countered, the feel bads set in as you're now 5-6 mana behind. I would suggest cutting at least Whir of Inventions for a cantrip like Brainstorm, Ponder, Preordain that nets you cards for cheap.

Chord of Calling - Most of the creatures in your deck are very low cmc, so I don't think the redundancy of a Green Sun's Zenith is needed, especially when it costs 2 additional green mana.

Force of Vigor - It's not bad, I've seen a few decks run it that are more on the control side, but Kinnan is trying to be more proactive than reactive. Blue has some of the best removal in the game for cheap. Maybe consider a Chain of Vapor. That way if there is a problematic card for you on the board such as Cursed Totem or Linvala, Keeper of Silence, you can hit it regardless of what it is for one mana regardless of whose turn it is.

Ghost Quarter - if you need to get rid of a problematic land, I suggest Strip Mine over this, as it doesn't have the downside of letting the opponent replace the land.

With Tree of Tales and Seat of the Synod it's better off to just run basic lands, in case you encounter Back to Basics or Blood Moon.

There are a few suggestions I'd like to make for you to add that are practically staples for most of the cEDH Kinnan decks:

Seedborn Muse to help you use your commander more and acquire an overwhelming board state.

Training Grounds and Biomancer's Familiar to reduce the cost of Kinnan's activation.

Grim Monolith, Mana Vault, and Fellwar Stone as they're some of the best mana rocks in the format.

Right now, if you were to play a game with this list, I wouldn't be afraid of you activating Kinnan because there's nothing that will severely impact the game. Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur is in a lot of the other cEDH decks because getting this guy on the field is detrimental to every opponent's strategy. I suggest you get a higher creature count and put more scary things in the deck. You'll whiff a lot with on activations with a creature count that low.

Here is a link to my current Kinnan build that has been assembling win (in a vaccum) very consistently between turns 3 and 4: Kinnan Activations cEDH

davidsays1 on You don't have Talrand's permission

1 month ago

Maybe Abjure, and Back to Basics.

Pulse of the Grid is interesting, but not super needed.

dingusdingo on Alesha's Drag Race

1 month ago

I have been brewing Alesha in the competitive scene for over a year and playing in tournaments weekly. Here are my thoughts.

• Don't run lands that enter tapped in competitive. Don't run mana rocks that enter tapped in competitive.
• The Ravnica bounce lands are tempting, but they enter tapped. They also really hurt when your opponent plays Blood Moon or Back to Basics, both of which are competitive staples. They are also 2-for-1 on yourself when an opponent uses a Strip Mine or Wasteland.
• When you run this many combos to win, you risk drawing lower quality pieces during the game. For example, if you start with the A part of one combo, and the B part of another, then draw the A part of a third combo, you now have 3 cards that are dead in your hand. All of your combos except Kiki jiki + Bellringer require 3 pieces to function as well, and all 3 pieces are required on the board or in the yard to hit the combo. Requiring 3 pieces means its easier for an opponent to remove one or counter one while you are trying to get the combo assembled. You should consider cutting down on the number of combos you run to help you hit the better combos you already have, more reliably. My first cut for the combos would be the Anafenza combo, since it is not always 100% guaranteed to fire correctly.
• I highly recommend running all Thrill of Possibility Wild Guess Cathartic Reunion Tormenting Voice, they generate big card advantage by throwing away creatures you can recur easily with Alesha.
• I recommend re-evaluating your hate bears on the list for the current meta. Tomok does not stop the Gitrog/Dakmor combo, and is only hating out a small number of cards. Kataki is not actually stopping combos, just making them take longer to get to. Kambal stops storm decks, but most will be able to remove him, and storm decks are not in the meta right now. The scariest combo is Demonic Consultation + Thassa's Oracle. I recommend Rule of Law Ethersworn Canonist and Eidolon of Rhetoric, which accomplish slowing on most decks while also blocking the current fastest combo. You also have some other holes in your hatebear/stax plan. You don't have any way to remove graveyards, and you don't run very many "hard stop" effects, you run mostly tax and delay effects.
• I would add more interaction. Red Elemental Blast and Pyroblast are both relatively cheap in dollars and extremely effective. You will see blue in almost every competitive pod. On top of protecting your own cards from counterspells, they also get rid of scary cards like Rhystic Study and can stop Thassa's Oracle while its on the stack. I'd also recommend more removal in general. Check out Aura of Silence, it has a nice tax effect, removes two different permanent types, and recurs with Sun Titan.
• My last recommend is to acquire Imperial Recruiter. It layers your deck by being a one card out to finding a combo. Imperial Recruiter fetches Kiki jiki, kiki copies Recruiter to fetch Bellringer, Bellringer untaps Kiki to start the combo. It means if you only have 1 tutor in hand and 0 combo pieces, you can still find your entire combo by tutoring for Imperial Recruiter. Recruiter also fetches relevant hatebears in a pinch if you can't combo out yet. It also recurs off Alesha if you have sac outlets or any way to kill it.

Olde_English on Dragon's Eye Sanctuary | Dragonlord Ojutai EDH

2 months ago

StefanKaminski: Please excuse the essay XD

My main gripe with equipment is that they tend to be a lot more mana intensive than auras and you have to run extra pieces, like Sigarda's Aid or Stoneforge Mystic, to cheat those high costs, which takes away valuable spots that could be dedicated to better cards. I chose auras over equipment after extensive play-testing and although auras are more brittle than equipment, being able to attach them early and generate huge advantage is very powerful.

I do really like Umezawa's Jitte seeing as it pumps up Ojutai and can effectively eliminate opposing mana dorks and hate-bears, I'll test it out and see how it plays. This deck is shooting for optimization, while equipment like Sword of Feast and Famine are very solid pieces in high or mid-powered metas, in competitive games they take too long to set up or are disrupted before you can generate any value from them. Voltron is just one way to win with this deck, mostly Ojutai serves as a massive distraction piece who also generates card advantage.

Muddle the Mixture is very spicy, thanks for the suggestion! As far as specific stax pieces go, I really like Deafening Silence style effects their only downside is that they are a non-bo with combos I play like Dramatic Reversal + Isochron Scepter + Blind Obedience. I can run Disenchant effects to break parity with my own stax pieces, I just worry that I'll lock myself out of potential wins. You are right though, one spell per turn effects really hose quick combo decks and I should include one, it's just tough to identify exactly what I could swap for it.

Winter Orb and Back to Basics have been great "no untapping allowed" pieces so I haven't felt the need to have another. I'd like to play-test Static Orb and see if I prefer it over any of my other pieces.

I have play-tested both Sphere of Resistance and Thalia, Guardian of Thraben and didn't like how either performed. Usually they slowed me down as much as my opponents and didn't cause enough disruption to warrant including in the main board.

In this particular list, Cursed Totem functions as a better version of Linvala, Keeper of Silence and is easier to tutor up in Azorius colors. The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale is similar to Timetwister, great cards and I'd run them if I had several thousand dollars to spend on them, unfortunately I don't have that kind of cash lying around.

I love Approach of the Second Sun and if I was ever powering down this list it would go right back in right alongside a ton of crazy equipment. Trying to optimize things though makes keeping a seven mana spell that doesn't win the game on the spot tough.

I imagine you already know but just in case, Helm of Obedience is meant to pair with Rest in Peace to kill off one person at a time, it isn't the most streamlined combo but Azorius in general suffers from a lack of ultra-efficient game winning combos. The best way to navigate it is to play Rest in Peace early on, then use something like Whir of Invention to put Helm of Obedience into play on the end-step before my turn begins, kill a player, start my next turn, untap and kill another player. I go back and forth a lot on whether or not to remove Helm and add effects like Luminarch Ascension (which can also win with Dramatic Scepter combo), extra mana rocks or hate pieces. It's a never ending tinkering process.

Scroll Rack pairs incredibly well with Land Tax and is a solid way to get out of dead hands. I can also use it to put two or three dead cards on top of my library, deal damage with Ojutai, filter the top three and set myself up for fresh draws. It might not be an optimal card choice but it always performs well when I need it too and is a versatile tool to have at my disposal.

And yes Blind Obedience does need a white or black producing mana rock in order to stack infinite extort triggers. Six out of my ten mana rocks can produce white mana, seven if you count Copy Artifact. It's not perfect but sometimes when you're trying to make a fringe strategy work you've got to bank on a bit of luck.

Thank you for all your feedback, I appreciate it!

Grind on Edric's Home for Evasive Weenies

2 months ago

cool deck!!!
given your mana base -- maybe Back to Basics?