Beastmaster Ascension

Enchantment

Whenever a creature you control attacks, you may put a quest counter on Beastmaster Ascension.

As long as Beastmaster Ascension has seven or more quest counters on it, creatures you control get +5/+5.

Discussion (51)

Epicurus on Get off my Land (and yours)

3 days ago

I love this deck! A couple suggestions...

• Replace Noxious Ghoul with Massacre Girl, since you have no other zombies in the deck.

• Fit Beastmaster Ascension in there somehow

• Life from the Loam? Crucible of Worlds? Wren and Six? Ramunap Excavator? Splendid Reclamation?

• Vivien Reid mostly for the ult, but her first ability feeds the theme somewhat as well.

That's all I got for now.

BigSwettiYeti on G/w Token

1 week ago

Beastmaster Ascension

slashdotdash on Golos attempt II

1 week ago

Hey there Kronhamilton,

First of all, I like the improvements you’ve made to your deck. It’s already looking a lot slicker and I can see you’ve made some very fun looking changes to how the deck plays.

You’ve got a nice array of threats (I always love to see the Bringers and Ur-Dragon) and a decent amount of ramp which are both a big plus. Additionally, you’ve got the beginnings of some nasty graveyard synergy shaping up, which looks really, really cool as a sort of plan B.

That being said, I’d like to make a few suggestions to help guide you toward a more consistent and powerful Golos deck. Please remember that these suggestions are just my informed opinion, and that I totally respect whatever deck choices you decide to make. I really just want to help you get comfortable with deck building and learning what to look for in a ‘good’ or ‘bad’ card.

Broad Suggestions

I would encourage you to add 2 Lands, 3 Removal cards, and 8 Draw cards. I’d also think about adding 2 more Ramp cards, but that is less critical to the overall health of the deck. Your Threats look great and I think your Sweepers are also appropriate. Anything that synergizes with your graveyard backup plan is great.

There are a couple of things to think about as you play this deck; 1. “Am I happy or sad to be holding this card in my hand or drawing it off the top of my deck?” – If a card seems to constantly be ‘the wrong card’ for the situation, or you can never seem to cast it, or you always play other cards instead, or you tend to die while holding a certain card, then you probably want to think about how well that card fits in your deck and whether or not you should cut it or modify the deck to support it. 2. “What ongoing advantage does this card give me?” – Some cards seem like a decent card based on having decent power/toughness, a fair cost, and some neat keywords or abilities. Just having those upsides alone though doesn’t make a card truly powerful. Instead, try to think about what ways a card can synergize with your deck to create crazy effects or otherwise how it will become more dangerous as the game progresses (like a Quartzwood Crasher, Scute Swarm, or Giant Adephage). Additionally, try to find cards that do multiple things such as Chasm Skulker which gets bigger when you draw cards and also explodes into tokens when it dies, or even Ravenous Chupacabra which deals with a threat and also acts as a blocker when you are facing pressure. The key is finding a way to levarage the most amount of value in each individual card – even a 2 mana ramp spell will set you up to play all of your future spells 1 turn earlier than normal for the rest of the game, which can be an insane advantage when you think about it. 3. “Am I out of options?” – If you can’t seem to find a solution to a problem or you’re ‘running out of steam’, then it is likely that you need more card draw and more ways to create ‘engines’ that accrue value. An example of an engine would be Fertilid + Evolution Sage or Rampaging Baloths + Elemental Bond or Kruphix, God of Horizons + Victory Chimes or Atraxa, Praetors' Voice + Ajani, the Greathearted or Anointed Procession + Endless Ranks of the Dead or Search for Azcanta  ^Flip or Deadbridge Chant or Mind Unbound, etc.

Ramp

Your ramp looks pretty good with 10 dedicated Ramp cards. I’d suggest adding 2 more Ramp spells to really help speed things up early. Examples would be Kodama's Reach, Llanowar Elves, Wild Growth, Farseek, Rampant Growth, Springbloom Druid, etc.

Ramp - 10

• Fertilid

• Palladium Myr

• Solemn Simulacrum

• Cultivate

• Arcane Signet

• Commander's Sphere

• Ketria Crystal

• Raugrin Crystal

• Savai Crystal

• Sol Ring

Not Ramp

• Azusa, Lost but Seeking - you don’t have enough land + card draw to really capitalize on Asuza’s ability.

• Empowered Autogenerator – this card is vastly too slow to be considered a true Ramp card. At best I would call it a ‘Ramp Support’ card, because it is there to slowly help you in the late game, not propel you in the early game like a true Ramp card (Rampant Growth, Farseek, Fertile Ground, Llanowar Elves, Wild Growth)

Draw

Overall, I think your card draw package needs a little bit of love. I want to note I see a lot of ‘looting’ effects like the ones on Teferi, Master of Time or Obsessive Stitcher and while these cards are great for a graveyard strategy they still don’t count as card draw. I’d keep most of these ‘looting’ type cards, but try to find cards that get you about 2 or 3 cards such as Harmonize, Concentrate, Escape to the Wilds, Urban Evolution, Moldervine Reclamation, Deathreap Ritual, Recurring Insight, Mind Unbound, Underworld Connections, Cloudblazer, Mulldrifter, Drawn from Dreams, Return of the Wildspeaker, Harvester of Souls, Momentous Fall, Dream Trawler, Keeper of Fables etc.

Draw - 2

• Bringer of the Blue Dawn (nice)

• Reconnaissance Mission

Not Draw

• Barrin, Tolarian Archmage – drawing 1 card does not really count. If anything, Barrin is like slow, bad removal for dealing with your opponents’ stuff temporarily. If you’re interested in reusing Golos’s land finding ability I would recommend playing Soulherder instead.

• Solemn Simulacrum – He has sort of ‘incidental value’ with his death trigger but doesn’t actively net you a bunch of cards like Keruga, the Macrosage or Beast Whisperer. Sad Robot is still great though.

• Titanoth Rex – still keep this guy because he is a threat that isn’t dead in your hand on turn 5.

• Void Beckoner – same story as the Rex

• Teferi, Master of Time – Teferi’s great, but he is really at his best when you’ve got 4-7 card in hand so that you can throw a bunch of big threats to the graveyard and hopefully draw a reanimation spell. Other than that, Teferi isn’t going to refill your hand so he doesn’t count as true draw.

Removal

Your removal package looks like it needs a couple more additions to keep your deck responsive and able to handle imminent-doom type threats. It is worth noting that cards like Blatant Thievery or Mythos of Illuna can save you in certain situations, but be wary of their crazy mana costs and the fact that they are not instant-speed answers. Examples include Mythos of Nethroi, Beast Within, Price of Fame, Reality Shift, Terminate, Return to Nature, Putrefy, Utter End, Eat to Extinction, Murderous Rider, etc.

Removal – 4 (aim for 7)

• Mortify

• Despark

• Barrier Breach

• Disenchant

Cuts

There are several cards that I would consider cutting first when modifying the deck.

• Lukka, Coppercoat Outcast - he relies very heavily on luck and only interacts with creatures. This makes him good with only 30% of your deck. Additionally, Lukka can’t ‘protect’ himself like Garruk can (making tokens to block for him), nor does he have an immediately accessible removal ability like Teferi. Overall, Lukka is interesting but a little lacking in consistency, defensibility, and power.

Azusa, Lost but Seeking – you don’t have enough land + card draw to really capitalize on Asuza’s ability. Yes, you can use the double lands (like Gruul Turf) to bounce a land to hand and then play that land with Asuza, but realistically that’s such a narrow and relatively tame synergy (in this non-landfall deck, that is) that you would be better off playing a Farseek or a Rampant Growth or even a Fertile Ground.

• Sparkhunter Masticore - This little fellow has a major drawback and no seriously crazy abilities that make him worthwhile. Yes he can deal with planeswalkers, but so can a Murderous Rider or an Eat to Extinction. Yes he can be an indestructible 3/4, but you have to pay 3 mana just to make him indestructible. Under normal circumstances that’s 6 mana for a 3/4 that dodges death one time - a 3/4 just isn’t fantastic. The biggest bad news about this robocat is its “additional cost to cast” ability which means that even if you hit it with Golos’s ‘Rainbow Wheel of Death’ ability, you still have to discard a card for a 3/4. I just honestly think you’d rather have a removal spell (Beast Within, Mythos of Nethroi) instead of this cat any day.

• Pursued Whale - While this whale is kinda cool and he does force combat, he is just sorta expensive for what he does. 7 mana for an 8/8 is pretty standard and giving your opponents tokens (that they could just attack you with or sacrifice to an effect) can be a bad idea in some situations, such as when they have an Beastmaster Ascension or a similar effect on the field. While his semi-hexproof ability (3 more mana to target) seems nifty, that is one of the only really powerful highlight abilities of this card, meaning that ability is protecting a relatively low-powered card. A couple immediate alternatives come to mind for me; Geode Rager to force combat AND keep you safe, and Dream Trawler for a flying, hexproof, lifelinking, card drawing threat.

• Renata, Called to the Hunt - She just isn’t fantastic. You aren’t playing a devotion centric deck in which she might become a 10/10, and your strategy doesn’t really care about 1/1 counters either. I would consider replacing her with a Harmonize or another 3 or 4 drop with more impactful abilities. Heck, even another reanimation spell could be nice like Unburial Rites or Grave Upheaval since your deck seems to have some tendency to but things in the graveyard for later.

• Lorescale Coatl - Cards like this (or his bigger cousin Chasm Skulker) are really designed for “wheel decks” that play “wheel effects” like Windfall or Reforge the Soul. He is fine, but really not much better than that. If you want a threat that can grow faster and do more important things, try Managorger Hydra or even Scute Mob.

• Colossification - This aura is too expensive, taps your creature down, and worst of all is an aura. Auras are generally quite bad because your opponent can destroy your creature and the aura attached to them with one spell – and odds are they’ll do that because it is usually too juicy not to. The fact that you can’t attach Colossification and attack immediately means that your opponents will have a full turn to deal with it before you get a chance to use it (and keep in mind your Colossified creature needs to survive 3 opponents’ turns!). This means you’ll most likely run out of cards in a hurry without accomplishing anything.

• Door to Nothingness - Unlike Progenitus, you can’t reanimate the Door, nor can you get its full value off of the Rainbow Wheel of Death. The only time this card does anything at all is when you literally have 10 mana of the exact color combination necessary to use it. It’s still your call, and I know some people make it a goal to Door their opponents, but be warned: you probably don’t have as much ramp as you need to make this work well. I’d consider supporting this crazy cards (and your many expensive threats for that matter) with a few more ramp spells – Boundless Realms, Migration Path, Circuitous Route, Kodama's Reach, Explosive Vegetation, Zendikar Resurgent

• Azor's Gateway  ^Flip – This card belongs in a very specific variant of Golos. That variant is the Minamo, School at Water's Edge Golos deck which also runs stuff like Vizier of Tumbling Sands, Fatestitcher, Kiora's Follower, and other payoffs like Jegantha, the Wellspring, or Captain Sisay. Especially considering that Sanctum of the Sun (the flip side) adds X mana of only 1 color, I think this card is just rarely going to work like you want it to unfortunately.

• Lathliss, Dragon Queen - Basically, you only have 3 other dragons in the deck so I would either exchange a bunch of cards for more dragons or cut Lathliss, since she will rarely be able to use her best ability (5/5 tokens). Keep in mind, you could also run a bunch of cards with the ‘changeling’ keyword if you wanted to get really funky, in which case you may as well also play stuff like Yuriko, the Tiger's Shadow, Reaper King, Crested Sunmare, The First Sliver but that’s a very slippery and insane slope that I’m not sure you want to get sucked into.

Summary

Nice changes Kronhamilton, I can see that your deck is really starting to shape up as a rampy graveyard-mingling Golos deck, and that’s really cool. I encourage you to try and pay attention to what situations you find yourself in, as that’s often the best way to tell what cards you need to cut or add to the deck for it to work best. As a default, I’d consider making a few of the changes I mentioned in the Broad Suggestion section, as those changes should just generally help with your deck’s consistency.

Please do let me know how you decide to tune your deck – it’s really fun to watch honestly, and I’m always down to help advise you. Other than that, take care and enjoy Golos!

Best,

-Slashdotdash

1empyrean on Old Yeller

1 week ago

Also, I forgot to add, this deck looks pretty focused, and looks like it runs well. +1 from me.

Infect might scare people and paint a target on your back, and if that happens you might get ganged up on and the deck might not get a chance to play like it should (playgroup and meta dependent). Kinda sucks when it happens, but whatever. They should be glad you aren't flickering Ukkima several times a turn.

Oh, maybe Beastmaster Ascension has a place here?

dingusdingo on Pattern Recognition #170 - Kobolds

1 week ago

Altar of the Brood + Cloudstone Curio + Crimson Kobolds + Crimson Kobolds for a combo kill with just 4 cards and mana.

Does incredible work with Mana Echoes, pair with any X spell.

Does incredible work with Paradoxical Outcome, especially with storm cards or Aetherflux Reservoir

Free cantrips with Glimpse of Nature, fantastic with multiples. This was the basis of a legacy deck, here's a link https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/508428#paper It is a deprecated deck, but it is probably 1 or 2 printings from a spicy return, and should be looked at in any serious discussion of kobolds

Also see Beast Whisperer, Primordial Sage, and Soul of the Harvest.

Huge ramp with Gaea's Cradle

Wombo combo with Essence of the Wild for beatdowns

Can even go for casual beatdowns with Tribal Unity or Coat of Arms or Beastmaster Ascension.

Just because you can't think outside the box doesn't mean they are terrible cards. It took me five minutes to find these combos and this deck, probably less time than it took to write your article.

Kher Keep is not a bad card. Instant speed token creation has lots of uses, especially blocking in EDH. Being on a land means it is extremely hard to interact with. Off the top if my head, it can be useful for creatures in a Polymorph style deck, or any deck that doesn't want to slot creature cards in the deck.

He_Who_Hungers on The old ways

2 weeks ago

Thanks a lot again for your suggestions. I'm sure I can find something of use in there. I like the look of Steely Resolve a lot, since it also plays into the Tribal theme. I might also dig into my Kamigawa collection for a Dosan the Falling Leaf, since it about provides the same effect as City of Solitude, only I probably already have it on hand to try out. I also have a Kamahl which was in my Omnath list but I've been hesitant about putting it in this one since I'm not sure he's going to be able to do enough for my creatures (much like Beastmaster Ascension which you also already pointed out). I'll give the others a think and see what I come up with.

Moose-Storm on Party Hearty

2 weeks ago

Beatismcscoots This deck wins mainly through combat damage. Beastmaster Ascension can make that easier to do, however, I have won by swinging without it. There is also the Najeela, the Blade-Blossom+Sword of Feast and Famine combo, but this deck isn't tutor heavy because it isn't designed to go for a combo. It's designed to get value and swing with your party.

I plan to keep this deck around the same budget, I originally built it with three fetch lands, but decided to switch out Blighted Woodland for Bloodstained Mire (since I was able to get one for a decent price on TCG player). I don't plan on adjusting the lands anymore any time soon (I'll probably get more fetches if the reprint next year drops their prices decently though). The creatures are pretty set as is currently, I may slightly adjust a creature or two down the rode if I decide I like an effect more than one I have. So overall, I expect the budget to stay the same.

Spell_Slam on Rhys the Redeemed (Shell)

2 weeks ago

I think you'll be happier with Cryptolith Rite over most of your ramp. All the tokens you make can now be used for mana, which you can dump into Rhys or cast your big stuff.

Beastmaster Ascension is easy to activate the turn it comes into play with all your tokens. You can easily the end game in one swing with this card.

Mirror Entity is another good way to turn your token army into huge game-enders at instant speed. It also protects them from dying to damage by growing them out of range.

Hour of Reckoning can be a pretty one-sided board wipe against most decks, leaving you with your token army. Not to mention you can use your tokens to pay for it.

Second Harvest is amazing because it works at instant speed. Playing this at an opponent's end step before your turn is an easy way to steal a win.

This might seem to go against the game plan, but Skullclamp is a very easy way to draw an extra 2-6 cards each turn at the expense of a few tokens. Definitely worth including.

Mentor of the Meek is another excellent way to take advantage of your token creation to get more cards out of the deal.

Aura Shards takes advantage of so many creatures coming into play on your side and makes sure no artifacts and enchantments stay in play under your opponent's control without your permission.

Wellwisher will net you insane amounts of life very quickly with Rhys' elf tokens. Might be better than Soul Warden.

Epic Struggle would allow you to win against Pillowfort decks, provided you can protect it for a turn. Good combo with Teferi's Protection I guess.

Since your commander is an elf you could benefit from Wirewood Lodge. It also works well with something like Priest of Titania or Wellwisher. In the same vein as Priest of Titania, you could also probably use Wirewood Channeler.

In terms of cuts, I think Emmara Tandris, Oviya Pashiri, Parallel Evolution, Arcane Signet, Growing Ranks, and Curious Herd seem the least essential or least powerful for your deck. I think it would also be easy to find swaps for my suggestions with cards that do similar things. Let me know if you need more help with cuts or swaps.