Blood Moon

Enchantment

Nonbasic lands are Mountains.

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
Duel Commander	Legal
Gladiator	Legal
Highlander	Legal
Historic Brawl	Legal
Legacy	Legal
Leviathan	Legal
Limited	Legal
Modern	Legal
Modern Beyond Horizons	Legal
Oathbreaker	Legal
Oldschool 93/94	Legal
Planar Constructed	Legal
Planechase	Legal
Premodern	Legal
Quest Magic	Legal
Tiny Leaders	Legal
Vanguard	Legal
Vintage	Legal

Discussion (45)

Liquidbeaver on Ib Halfheart, Goblin Sac-tician [PRIMER]

3 weeks ago

Ib has decided to commit the greatest blasphemy and has cut Blood Moon and Magus of the Moon!!!

He claims that it is a form of torture that no longer excites him, and Father knows best after all...

BotaNickill on Buttercup Full O Poison

3 weeks ago

Malsorn, Thanks for checking out the deck and for some input! Always appreciated! I'll look around and see if I have that one! With All the Tri-lands available now The mana base seems to be pretty consistent, but I know I would be pretty screwed if I went up against Blood Moon or similar effects having no basic lands. Hopefully I would have a few mana dorks out by then, and some mana rocks.

Femme_Fatale on Commander bracket recommendation

1 month ago

Anything anyone thinks is missing with this?

Tutor:

"Search your library for ... card"
Exception: Tutors that, within the above string, have the words basic, Plains, Forest, Island, Mountain or Swamp.

This should catch instances of multiple cards being tutored.

Individual cards: Demonic Consultation, Divining Witch, Tunnel Vision

Mass Land Denial:

"Destroy/Exile ... lands"
"Each player/opponent sacrifices ... lands"
"Return ... lands to their owner's hand"
Exception: If the above ... is "two" or "three" for any of them.
Note the requirement for the word land to be plural.

"Each player/opponent ... chooses ... land(s) ... sacrifices/destroys/exiles the rest."

"Return all lands/permanents to their owners' hands."

"Whenever a player .... that player returns a land they control to its owner's hand."

"lands don't untap"
"Players can't play lands"
Exception: If the card is instant or sorcery.

All instances of the word land dictated as a requirement in these strings can be swapped with "nonbasic land", "Plains", "Forest", "Island", "Mountain" or "Swamp".
All instances of the word land/lands must not be nonland.

Individual cards: Blood Moon, Desolation, Equipoise, Hall of Gemstone, Mana Vortex, Mist of Stagnation, Parallax Tide, Sands of Time, Storm Cauldron, Tangle Wire, Temporal Distortion, Thoughts of Ruin

edit: quietly adds "Hall of Gemstones" as a synonym to Hall of Gemstone

legendofa on Commander bracket recommendation

1 month ago

Femme_Fatale Thanks for the response and for taking action!

I have the same experience with Blood Moon. I'm not sure there's a good way to print a card that shuts down Tundra, Gaea's CradleGC, and Tolarian Academy but not Bloodfell Caves and Rupture Spire, so it's kind of all or nothing for non basic land hate.

Is this a good thread to post further feedback on?

legendofa on The New Commander Brackets Beta

1 month ago

I've been struggling with this for a couple of my decklists recently, and I'm trying to summarize my thoughts here without starting a new thread. So this is semi-stream-of-thought, and I apologize if it gets a little rambly.

There are several criteria being tracked by the current bracket system, including resource generation, speed, reliability, and oppression, and possibly others.

Game changers: A combo like Demonic Consultation/Tainted Pact + Thassa's OracleGC gets a key card on the game changers list, because it's fast and reliable, ending a match on turn 3-4. These are speed game changers. Other game changers generate resources just by playing the game, like Rhystic StudyGC or Smothering TitheGC. This group often also includes oppression, since a lot of them tax the opponent. Another group is cheap (1-2 mana) tutors, like Vampiric TutorGC, Enlightened TutorGC, or Survival of the FittestGC, that increase a deck's reliability for very little opportunity cost. Most game changers can be sorted into one of these four categories. Ancient TombGC and Gaea's CradleGC are speed and resource generation, Drannith MagistrateGC and Force of WillGC are oppression, and so on.

Bracket Guidelines: From Gavin Verhey's announcement article, here's what each of the brackets mean and expect. Important to note that the system is still in beta testing, so this is probably going to be different in the future.

• Bracket 1: Decks with more focus on a gimmick than on winning. "Winning is not the primary goal here, as it's more about showing off something unusual you've made. Villains yelling in the art? Everything has the number four? Oops, all Horses? Those are all fair game!" This bracket doesn't allow extra turns, two-card infinite combos, mass land denial, or game changers, and restricts tutors.

• Bracket 2: Decks that can win, but are not tightly focused, or slow to develop. "While Bracket 2 decks may not have every perfect card, they have the potential for big, splashy turns, strong engines, and are built in a way that works toward winning the game. While the game is unlikely to end out of nowhere and generally goes nine or more turns, you can expect big swings." This bracket doesn't allow any game changers, mass land denial, two-card infinite combos, or multiple extra turns in a row, and restricts tutors.

• Bracket 3: Decks that are focused on winning efficiently, but are not optimized. "They are full of carefully selected cards, with work having gone into figuring out the best card for each slot. The games tend to be a little faster as well, ending a turn or two sooner than your Core (Bracket 2) decks." This bracket does not allow mass land denial or multiple extra turns in a row, and restricts game changers and two-card infinite combos, and allows tutors freely.

• Bracket 4: Decks that are optimized for their strategy. "Bring out your strongest decks and cards... This is high-powered Commander, and games have the potential to end quickly. The focus here is on bringing the best version of the deck you want to play, but not one built around a tournament metagame." This bracket has no restrictions.

• Bracket 5: Decks that expect to win at the most competitive levels. "There is care paid into following and paying attention to a metagame and tournament structure, and no sacrifices are made in deck building as you try to be the one to win the pod." This brackets has no restrictions.

Deck Analysis 1: The deck I've been struggling most with is Clear Waters. As I listed in another thread, it has an infinite turns combo (Wanderwine Prophets + Deeproot Pilgrimage + Merfolk Sovereign) and mass land denial (Opposition + Seedborn Muse, Quicksilver Fountain), and a selection of tutors to pull these together (Forerunner of the Heralds, Idyllic Tutor, Merrow Harbinger, Seahunter, and Sterling Grove). This should put it squarely into Bracket 4.

My concern is that it's neither high powered nor optimized. On the axes of speed, resource generation, reliability, and oppression, I would score it high on oppression, pretty good on reliability, and low on speed and resources generation. Looking at examples of other Bracket 4 decks around the internet, all four of those criteria need to be high in this bracket. The infinite turns combo is slow and easily removed, and the land denial is optional (Opposition can have other targets) or temporary (Quicksilver Fountain can remove its own effect).

It would be easy to simply add a big pile of game changers to improve all of these facets. Right now, it has one game changer in Grand Arbiter Augustin IVGC, and that one's not essential to the deck. That's not the direction I want to go with the deck, though--I want to keep it reasonably budget, and even adding the three least expensive of the game changers I'm considering would basically double the deck's cost.

I know that people in brackets under 4 want to be able to play their deck, and the infinite turns and land denial shut that down. These are clearly stated in the announcement article -"A single extra-turn spell can be fun and splashy. However, extra-turn spells take a ton of time away from other players and their ability to play the game and tend to be unfun when repeated."- that's why they're forced into brackets 4 and 5. But if a deck isn't able to compete against high power, optimized Bracket 4 decks, can it be considered Bracket 4?

Deck Analysis 2: Another deck that I've been struggling with is an enchantment deck, Do Not Mistake Peace For Passivity. The point of concern for this deck is land denial. Blood Moon is classic mass land denial, and the deck is designed to play around it with Abundant Growth, Fertile Ground, Prismatic Omen, and similar cards. It also has a combo that doesn't directly deny lands, but punishes their play and use: Manabarbs + Citadel of Pain. Otherwise, the deck fits all the criteria of a Bracket 2 deck--no game changers, no infinite combos, few tutors, and no extra turns.

This deck can be converted into a pure Bracket 2 deck without much effort by replacing Blood Moon and Manabarbs. But as it stands, a single card pushes the deck up two brackets, according to the guidelines. Again, I don't feel the deck is high powered or optimized, and would not be able to compete in a Bracket 4 match. It could probably survive in Bracket 3, since it's highly synergistic, but nothing any higher.

In this case, adding a bunch of game changers and power cards would somewhat dilute how the deck functions. A few, like Smothering TitheGC or Trouble in PairsGC, could slot in, but most others would be more gratuitous.

Conclusion: To quote the article again, "There's some wiggle room, and while playing against decks that are all inside your bracket is ideal, you can usually wiggle within one bracket away from you safely." "You should play where you think you belong based on the descriptions." All of this can be discussed in a Rule 0 talk. I strongly believe the brackets are intended to help this conversation, not replace it. As an example, for the Clear Waters deck, I would say that the deck is not optimized to Bracket 4, and I think it fits best into Bracket 3, but it's controlling and has a potential three-card infinite turns combo. I'm willing to announce when the combo is assembled and ready to start, to give everyone a turn cycle to react, and reduce the use of Opposition to creatures and artifacts.

I feel like the current setup is a little too restrictive of the kind of combo-control decks I like. I can have fun smashing big creatures into each other and outmaneuvering everyone else, but I will enjoy locking down the board and establishing my inevitability, and I'm having a harder time trying to find ways to do that in lower brackets. Some people have already offered me excellent feedback and suggestions that I'm taking into consideration, but I'd also like to see how people are responding to the bracket system so far.

For comparison, here's a few more of my decklists:

• Bracket 2: But if you smash one helm...

• Bracket 3: Above such mortal concerns

• Bracket 4: Arrogant. Ruthless. Oppressive. Victorious.

legendofa on Commander bracket recommendation

1 month ago

SaberTech Thank you, that's the kind of feedback I was looking for.

I think I'm going to keep Blood Moon and Manabarbs in the mail deck for now, and have a sideboard of Blood Sun and something like Form of the Dragon if people would prefer no land manipulation.

CommanderNeyo on LongLegs

1 month ago

If you are worried about Blood Moon, you could consider adding Prismatic Vista instead, so you can search for the basics before the moon hits.

Balaam__ on LongLegs

1 month ago

@CommanderNeyo I think you’re right. I initially had more Leaden Myrs to help out with this, but some got axed as the build went along. Blood Moon pops up every now and again so I’m a little gunshy on removing all the basic Plains, so I’ll probably keep one just in case. But thanks for the suggestion—I’m forever forgetting about Silent Clearing, Llanowar Wastes etc.