Damping Sphere

Artifact

If a land is tapped for two or more mana, it produces instead of any other type and amount.

Each spell a player casts costs more to cast for each other spell that player has cast this turn.

Discussion (51)

itachi45 on Abzan Midrange

12 hours ago

Off the top of my head? Cards that come to mind... Liliana, the Last Hope , Damping Sphere , Lyra Dawnbringer . Those can all help swing bad match-ups. Collective Brutality is an especially good option in decks using Lingering Souls.

Duckerinu on Wherever you Thar - Lord Windgrace cEDH

1 week ago

How about Titania's Song or Damping Sphere ? and is there any replacement for Wrenn and Six?

graycattt on Squirrel Evolution

2 weeks ago

hungry000: Fiend Hunter is a cool idea in here, though maybe better for the sideboard? Not sure why I don't have a Thragtusk , it's just about the best 5-drop SB card I could evolution into! Acidic Slime makes some sense, and could replace a Damping Sphere since it's good against Tron as well. It probably is time to jam an Ouphe in there along side the 2 Stony Silence with all the Urza's out there. I do love me some Thrun, the Last Troll , though it does feel harder to make room for in this list..

saturn999 on Epidemic Devotion

2 weeks ago

Build a sideboard. Hero's Downfall is slow but it’s the best walker removal we have if we don’t hit them with discard. Pithing Needle Damping Sphere Ratchet Bomb Cry of the Carnarium Grafdigger's Cage and Nihil Spellbomb are great for us. Also find room for a little more spot removal if possible. Dismember is great and gets rid of Gideon. Cast Down isn’t bad. I play a similar deck and these cards I’ve suggested worked for me but, that’s only because my meta plays cards that don’t do so well against them. And maybe Languish ? Good luck and have fun!

saturn999 on Epidemic Devotion

2 weeks ago

Build a sideboard. Hero's Downfall is slow but it’s the best walker removal we have if we don’t hit them with discard. Pithing Needle Damping Sphere Ratchet Bomb Cry of the Carnarium Grafdigger's Cage and Nihil Spellbomb are great for us. Also find room for a little more spot removal if possible. Dismember is great and gets rid of Gideon. Cast Down isn’t bad. I play a similar deck and these cards I’ve suggested worked for me but, that’s only because my meta plays cards that don’t do so well against them. Good luck and have fun!

kamarupa on Orzhov lifedrain - Your life is mine

2 weeks ago

Declaration in Stone is pretty decent, but it is also a Sorcery. I think people have a misconception that Instants are better strictly because they allow for more immediate response. While speed is an undeniable advantage, in a deck without ramp, making use of mana on opponent's turns can also be more efficient. For example, with an Instant in hand, you can use untapped mana to remove a threat on an opponent's turn, then untap those lands on your turn, whereas a with a Sorcery, you have to wait until your turn and then choose between casting a removal spell or a creature spell. And then there's range - not all removal spells are equally useful, and in my humble opinion, Generous Gift is pretty solid - not only is it an Instant, but it works on everything. Of course, it also comes at the top of realistic CMC, vs stuff like Fatal Push and Path to Exile that are much narrower, but also allow versatility in casting more spells. I usually run 1-2x of a couple different removal spells that overlap, but also give me range. The added upside to singleton removals is that spells like Surgical Extraction etc that consider additional copies in hand/deck/graveyard, etc fizzle. The downside is against spells like Duress that reveal your hand, as singletons will make it easier for opponents to count your cards (as is true with land art). That's not something I usually care about, but I understand why other people do. I usually prefer white removal to black, so I might run something like 1x Blessed Alliance (versatile and works against hexproof/indestructivble), 1x Generous Gift (works against everything at Instant-speed), 1x Declaration in Stone (very strong against tokens and it exiles), 1x Cast Down (value of speed and application). I don't think this approach is favored in competitive play. Indeed, part of the reason for it is budget-related. If I could afford 16 copies of Path to Exile, it would be in a lot of my decks. And certainly, some of the same logic is generally reserved for Sideboards, which I also use to pad out my top removal spells along with other utilities like Pithing Needle , Ratchet Bomb , Nevermore , Celestial Purge , etc.

Yes, I think you should still try to lower the CMC. In a fast format like Modern, 5 mana on T5 isn't a lot! That's a total possible casting power of 15 over the course of your target game, and that's assuming you play a land each turn. (That also means you'll only be looking at a maximum pool of 12 cards, and 5 of those must be lands! So what 7 spells can you cast for 15 mana? That's only 2.14 mana on average!) If you consider the likely possibility that at least 2 of that 15 must be spent in preventing an opponent from winning, that leaves a maximum of 13 mana to cast other spells. If at least 1 of those other spells is going to be a wincon that costs 4 or more, that leaves 9. This is why spells like Sorin, Vengeful Bloodlord are so difficult to use. If you cast him, you're left with only 5 mana total over the course of 5 turns to cast other creatures and spells. That's only 2x 2CMC creatures. Having 20x 2cmc creatures guarantees you'll get a couple, but it doesn't offset the price of trying to play bigger spells. If Sorin gets removed, or hit via evasion, trample, etc, you can lose a lot of limited resources, and because of spells like Generous Gift and Beast Within , opponents can remove any big threat for less than you can cast them. This can easily slippery slope into getting a combo and protecting it at all costs, which I think, while sometimes fun, is also not as good as a deck without a central/obvious threat. I'm big on value and synergy. Like, I think 30x Champion of the Parish and 10x Brave the Elements would beat just about anything. This all applies to your report on trouble with heavy counterspell/removal. Without a lot of disruption, you've got to be able to play creatures for less than opponents spend to remove them. That usually means no more than 4 spells at 3CMC and only 1-2 at 4+CMC. It also usually means at least 6 1CMC spells. Of course, you're constrained by the theme of the deck, which is all about life-drain, and I think you're way out in front of foolhardy decks trying to play Exquisite Blood+Sanguine Bond among a smattering of other 3CMC+ spells. That said, you still want to make your deck as competitive as possible within your budget, so anywhere you can make the deck faster, more efficient, and more consistent, you want to trade power all the way down to the minimum. Most games, you only need to get opponents from 20 life to 0.

To address Tron, I think it's worth going back to removal options briefly to point out that Generous Gift works on lands, which can be used to shut down Tron decks or at least slow them down. The great thing about GG is that it works on other stuff, too, making it considerably better than something like Rain of Tears , which is so specific and narrow, it's hard to justify even in a sideboard. Other stuff that's great against Tron: Ghost Quarter and less budget friendly, Field of Ruin . Damping Sphere is solid, too, and will favor your heavy-ish use of limited mana, as it's very possible you'll only have enough to cast 1 spell on many turns. To some degree, all this also depends a bit on what sort of threats the Tron decks you're facing are putting down, as it's a pretty broad archetype. Sometimes more removal or board wipes can be useful, but given the mana Tron produces, it's usually difficult to keep up with it once it's assembled. Oh. I got really carried away. Sorry about that. I hope some of this is useful.

king-saproling on Kazuul’s Mono Red Stax

2 weeks ago

Breaking new ground here! Nice. You might consider these cards: Angel's Trumpet , Goblin Engineer , Goblin Welder , Daretti, Scrap Savant , Pyrohemia , Storage Matrix , Damping Sphere , Storm Cauldron , Buried Ruin , Hoarding Dragon

Kavle on New format idea: Modern Restricted

3 weeks ago

So I have a couple things that bother me personally when building modern decks.

For starters, modern may have a huge pool of cards, but the format seems "solved" as you put it. Everyone who plays modern knows that they have to include sideboard slots to fight dredge and other graveyard decks, or tron. I always include Damping Sphere and Ravenous Trap in all my sideboads. The top decks are the same 9 times out of 10. Thats why I find the format stale.

Secondly, the price of modern is getting absurd. The most receny deck I brewed for modern costs more than $1000. I know people will build decks that cost $50-$100, but to compete in the format you have to have deep pockets.

Thirdly, on sort of the same note, decks are becoming just variants of the same deck. My most recent deck i built was a variant of lantern control. It has most of thr cards from that deck. I think if a format has gotten to the point where people are just changing a few cards of a deck, the creative part of deck buiding is almost dead in the format. Waiting for a new set to gain inspiration turns me off of modern.

So I think a new format would not only bring standard players in, allowing the deck that they are losing to rotation to possibly be able to keep being played and upgraded, but make cards that are just not being played to be those upgrade pieces. It would be cheaper than modern and subsequent formats like legacy and vintage. And it would bring in some inspiration to all formats with combinations of cards no one is looking at because they aren't a relevant power level.

At least those are my thoughts.