Cursed Totem

Artifact

Activated abilities of creatures can't be played.

Discussion (51)

lloptyr on Sneaky Purphuros

1 month ago

KiKiwiKiwaii both is good lol.. but for real... the cheat-ins are overwhelmingly disgusting.. I love it, but I want a Cursed Totem next time I play against it

zAzen7977 on KAALIA'S CATACLYSM - Aggro/Stax [cEDH Primer]

1 month ago

XinZhao, I had the opportunity to play a few games recently, and I’ve decided to swap Cursed Totem with Grand Abolisher , since I encountered two situations in which I had Linvala, Keeper of Silence and Totem at the same time, and I wish I had Abolisher instead. In the past I ran Abolisher, but I took it out because my meta was less control-heavy and I was dealing with more creature abilities.

While I don’t run any infinite combos, I do run the Possibility Storm + Rule of Law / Drannith Magistrate hard lock, so Abolisher protects me while I assemble the combo.

I also dropped Fellwar Stone and Rakdos Signet and added Grim Monolith and Mana Vault , to help with hard-casting big creatures or the Possibility Storm combo if Kaalia is neutralized.

Coletrain69 on Grixis Spellslinger EDH

1 month ago

Ponder might not be a bad idea and I have a few of them, Gitaxian Probe is also decent for knowing when to save a counter spell and I think I have one of those as well. Three Wishes is a really interesting card that I think would be a lot more fun in commander; I have a couple. Frantic Search might also be decent if you don't like what's in your hand. Cyclonic Rift is also really good and despite it being expensive I'm pretty sure we own one. Talrand, Sky Summoner is also a classic for this kind of deck, and there's also Murmuring Mystic . One of my favs that I think would work really well is The Locust God . Jace's Archivist is really interesting as well and can help you if you're top decking and hurt everyone else, another great option for the same thing is Whispering Madness . Torrential Gearhulk might be slightly pricey but he matches well with what you're doing. Lim-Dul's Vault is also super handy and can be pretty zaney especially for it being cheap. Disallow is pretty crazy too for blocking activated abilities. Bolas's Citadel is also worth looking at. Cursed Totem is really expensive but would also be CRAZY in this deck. Also check out Propaganda .

As far as removal goes, Go for the Throat is always a good option.There's also Slaughter Pact and Force of Despair . Preemptive removal like Sadistic Sacrament would be a great idea as well. Decree of Pain is good but it's mana cost is kind of high; Life's Finale is an equally viable card. Unsommon is super cheap, Boomerang , Undo , Snap , do more or less the same thing.

Lanzo493 on Dealing with Kinnan

2 months ago

Kinnan is my cEDH deck. So I’ll divulge lots of the strategies. You’ll want to stop the infinite mana, but there’s a lot of ways that it does infinite mana. Mainly, just 2 categories. Storm off with Tidespout Tyrant or Isochron Scepter / Lithoform Engine with Dramatic Reversal and mana positive mana rocks or do infinite untaps with Freed from the Real , Pemmin's Aura or Basalt Monolith . With the introduction out of the way, let’s talk interaction. The best would be Null Rod type effects. You can’t run Cursed Totem sadly given your commander. Cheap enchantment or artifact removal is also good. Heartwood Storyteller prevents them from storming off easily. So would Damping Sphere . Grafdigger's Cage could work. Although it is narrow, if the only infinite mana outlet they have is Kinnan, they won’t be able to use his ability. It also stops Chord, Finale, and Green Sun’s Zenith.

smilodex on Best Commanders in EDH [Tier List]

2 months ago

This list is compiled from a competitive point of view and in the upper tiers we compare the cEDH variants of the respective decks and here Yuriko often serves as a strong value engine (like Edric or Tymna for example). In contrast to Thrasios, Kenrith or Najeela, Yuriko isn't a direct wincon with which you can win in the first two rounds. Yuriko is simply very strong by nature, because you don't really have to pay command tax at all, which makes it difficult to interact with her. She also deals damage to every opponent AND you still draw many cards. BUT on the other side you can shut Yuriko out of the game if somebody get a Cursed Totem , Linvala, Keeper of Silence , Pithing Needle / Phyrexian Revoker or a Containment Priest on the board. If that happens, all of a sudden the deck is stuck with a lot of expensive spells and pretty useless ninjas.

Skillville on QQ

3 months ago

king-saproling whoa, love the response. ok, where to start...

I'll wrap up any creatures with activiated abilities by saying my previous versions of QQ included the tap, put land into play creatures but took them out to avoid worrying about Cursed Totem . Decided to go a different route because of that.

Most of the other cards I just cant fit in the deck but Intution is interesting, I may pick one up to play test.

The most valuable suggestion you provided was Ghostly Flicker , for the ewit sanc combo.. didn't think about that when brewing and I initially had it in my maybe list but removed it after I updated it. I'll have to find a spot... any suggestions to make it fit?

Heavy-Metal on Yuriko Ninja, Go Ninja, GO!

3 months ago

hey, don't you think that Cursed Totem would hurt your ninjitsu just as much as other peoples decks.

plakjekaas on Opposition Agent needs a preemptive …

6 months ago

Yeah, no. I'm not buying it. I think a lot more players than you assume, play the game to play the game, and just don't like to lock up tables in the magnitude you're suggesting. Because the way you picture it, there will be no decks left not playing blue or black in the world.

I will not be jamming Hullbreacher in my temur landfall deck, Opposition Agent will not make the cut for Rankle, Master of Pranks, nor for Vaevictis Asmadi, the Dire (excellent answer right there in the command zone btw). Commander players all over the world like to play suboptimal decks with janky combos, tokens, big creatures, tribes, any way to personalize the experience and make it fun to play. The problems you are projecting are only for tables that rely on their tutors to do anything they want to, with only interaction, tutors, and instant, hard-to-interact-with win-the-game combo pieces in their deck.

Which is currently the most powerful way to play magic in EDH, because you're playing singleton. But not really, because every tutor counts as every other card in your deck that it can find. OP agent, like Aven Mindcensor, Stranglehold,Mindlock Orb and Leonin Arbiter, will absolutely WRECK cEDH tables, nobody will disagree with that. If you can't answer a 3/2 with your hand and/or boardstate, without searching your library, or if your deck can't win without its Thassa's Oracle, yes, then this card is a major problem for you.

But in the top 100 cards on EDHrec, there's 16 that get hosed by OP agent. 9 of them only search your library for land(s). If that was enough to be banned from a format, Null Rod and Collector Ouphe would have been banned ages ago, because almost every deck plays mana rocks (23 out of 100 are hosed by those). Getting your stuff stolen feels bad, however, so this will immediately make the top Salt Cards list on EDHrec.

It sounds like only the most powerful decks and tables are not ready for the impact of this card, the paradigm shift that searching your library to find exactly what you need at any time, can be answered now, and might no longer be the best thing to do in any situation, it might even lose you the game now. The rest of the world, who can just cast a 6-power creature from their hand, or the command zone, and start beating the player who forbids them to play their deck until he is no more, along with the other 2 players who don't have an OP agent in play and like to see it gone, will shrug and consider this the next unfun stax piece, like Stasis, Winter Orb, Armageddon, Cursed Totem, Drannith Magistrate, Notion Thief, Narset, Parter of Veils, Counterbalance + Sensei's Divining Top, Glacial Chasm and others that have mostly been self-restricted at 90% of all EDH playgroups in the world, but not banned.

So to preemptively ban this card because a small subset of commander metas around the world will have a hard time dealing with it, is hard for me to get behind, especially if that's the same subset that will have a Force of Will, an Assassin's Trophy, a Cyclonic Rift and/or a Mystical Tutor to find those or a different answer with OP agent on the stack.