Damping Sphere

Artifact

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

Each spell a player casts costs {1} more to cast for each other spell that player has cast this turn.

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	Legal
Legacy	Legal
Leviathan	Legal
Limited	Legal
Modern	Legal
Oathbreaker	Legal
Pioneer	Legal
Planechase	Legal
Quest Magic	Legal
Tiny Leaders	Legal
Vanguard	Legal
Vintage	Legal

Discussion (46)

Khurgar on Modern Lands

1 week ago

Allright, so here's the "how the fk does it work?" part.

The deck is a prett slow one that takes some time before it really activates, so several cards both in the main deck and side board are there to mitigate the pressure that we might suffer from early plays. Lightning Bolt, Fire / Ice and Arboreal Grazer fills these slots in the main deck.

What the deck wants to do is generally to discard lands with Seismic Assault to deal damage to the enemy, then use cards such as Wrenn and Six, Life from the Loam and Slogurk, the Overslime to recur those lands to your hand again.

Trade Routes is used for 3 reasons. The first is pretty straight forwards, use your land cards in hand to generate new cards. Second use is to be able to play your channel lands early in the game to give mana while being able to pick them up later in the game to use their channel effect. And the third one is to make Slogurk, the Overslime to grow rapidly. If you discard a land and opt to dredge a Life from the Loam, Slogurk, the Overslime can grow anywhere between +1 to +4 +1/+1 counters for a single mana, ontop of digging for utility lands that you can return later.

Sadly I have not had a lot of time playtesting it, and I think that the sideboard needs a lot of work. First and foremost I feel like I have doubled down a bit too hard on artifact hate, albeit with a lot of cards with multi purpose.

Anyways, the rundown of why I included the cards are as follows: Damping Sphere was included to stop decks such as tron and titan, and it also works well versus decks such as breach or storm or other more jank combos such as neobrand.

Pithing Needle and Relic of Progenitus dont need explaining.

Brotherhood's End was included to deal with asmo decks, affinity, prison tron, goblins, merfolk and other similar decks to these.

Force of Vigor is in the deck solely because I have no way to stop a turn 2 kill from hammer, other than blocking with an Arboreal Grazer. I am strongly considering cutting it though.

Haywire Mite is included to stop Kaldra Compleat, but will probably see play in the same games that my other artifact and enchantment hate cards.

Otawara, Soaring City is just so that you are more likely to draw them, especially in matchups where they run pithing needle to stop Boseiju, Who Endures, but is also really good for returning combo pieces to hand, or just big beaters like murktide. Its also really good vs tokens.

Boseiju, Who Endures just a really solid card, deals with most problems the deck faces, such as graveyard hate and blood moon effects.

Bojuka Bog is a fantastic card in this deck. With this card and Trade Routes you can exile your opponents graveyard every turn if you'd like, although it is only in sorcery speed.

Cards that I would like to experiment with: Expressive Iteration is a card that I am gonna experiment with in place of Fire / Ice. I think that Fire / Ice is much better at stalling out the game, but expressive is such a valuable card to have in the mid game.

Academy Ruins and Buried Ruin to be able to get artifacts back from the graveyard.

Shadowspear to deal with agressive matchups where the opponent have no good way of dealing with my constructs or Slogurk, the Overslime.

Orvar, the All-Form versus decks that enjoy discarding your hand, so generally versus decks that runs archong or liliana.

I hope you enjoyed the read, give me some thoughts in the comments if you have any =)

thefiresoflurve on WIP Control Deck

1 month ago

Hey, there!

First, what's your budget like? 'til I know that, I'll keep suggestions "standard".

Second: Cuts.

Sleep + River's Rebuke - not really an EDH card, since you usually have more than one opponent.

Martial Law - similarly, this is just one creature, and there are bound to be so many more problems than just one on the field at a time.

Invisibility - There are better sources of evasion (getting damage through to other players). Also, getting damage through is something Augustin isn't the best at, so that might not make for a strong win-con.

Robe of Mirrors isn't bad to protect your commander, but for 1 more mana you can use Curator's Ward (because Augustin reduces it) and then get 2 cards if someone uses a boardwipe later. I call that a deal. Diplomatic Immunity is another equally costed option as well, if you find your playgroup runs an obnoxious amount of enchantment removal, since it itself is also untargetable.

Consulate Crackdown - Kind of mediocre for what it does. For just one more mana, you can instead run Farewell or Austere Command, which both produce a much better effect.

Some things traditionally run in Augustin are used to basically slow the game to a crawl, and others are used to tax your opponents while this is going on to create advantages for you while you draw into your win conditions: Cursed Totem, Hushbringer, Thalia, Guardian of Thraben, Vryn Wingmare, Containment Priest, Reidane, God of the Worthy  ^Flip, Hushwing Gryff, Silent Arbiter, Ethersworn Canonist, Wandering Archaic  ^Flip, Smothering Tithe, Rhystic Study, Linvala, Keeper of Silence, Sphere of Resistance, Torpor Orb, Damping Sphere, Static Orb, Karn's Sylex, Meekstone, Crawlspace... not quite an exhaustive list, but it's a really good start, and gets the point across.

There are some weird cards that you can use as win conditions to go with the "stax" style, like Azor's Elocutors.

If you're interested, https://edhrec.com/commanders/grand-arbiter-augustin-iv has some more suggestions as well - in my opinion, it's not a terrible place to start as a new player, although I'd encourage you to switch it up as you and your wallet like from what's listed there.

https://scryfall.com/ can also be a really good tool if you like to go full nerd and search for alternative cards with similar effects to really expensive cards - I've stumbled across a few hidden gems over time by using it.

Hope that helps, and Happy building!

wallisface on Nimble Obstructionist Vs Tale's End

5 months ago

Some sideboard thoughts in general against those decks you listed, and keeping in your colours:

• Living End: Rest in Peace.
• Tron: Damping Sphere. This card is also incidentally alright versus LivingEnd and Prowess also.
• Affinity: Fracturing Gust or Hurkyl's Recall
• Goblins: your mainboard already looks well positioned against this deck. I think Pithing Needle would be good here however.
• Swans: imo you shouldn’t need to have sideboard cards specifically to combat this deck
• Tokens: more board wipes? Not sure this deck poses much of a threat to you though?
• Prowess/tempo: killspells? Not sure how this is an issue at all with your current mainboard?

wallisface on Mono Blue Control

6 months ago

As you’ve already eluded to, the sideboard reads more like cards you wanted to fit into your deck, as opposed to being anything helpful towards shoring-up bad matchups. Specifically, i can’t see any reason for any of Cryptic Command, Kraken's Eye, Lone Revenant, Spellskite, Stubborn Denial, Swan Song, or Telepathy. It just feels like a collection of other needless counterspells… you want to be running flexible cards that deal with decks that threaten you - like Damping Sphere for Tron/Storm, graveyard hate for Murktide/Dredge, Engineered Explosives for Rhinos/HammerTime, etc. The exact cards you’ll need will be entirely meta dependant, but if you know what you’re likely to face i can give you some suggestions.

I think 20 lands is fine with 20 cantrips, but what you’re building doesn’t lean well into a control archetype - your creature quantity and spell selection lends into wanting to play a fast tempo based game. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it does suggest that you should dial-back a bit on your quantity of counterspells. Personally i’d say to just run Counterspell and not any of the other counterspells.

StoryArcher on Woodland's Wrath

6 months ago

And definitely consider swapping Damping Sphere in place of Bond Beetle in your sideboard. It shuts down Tron and Storm decks, among others.

StoryArcher on Don't Let Em Breathe (Quick)

6 months ago

Slashdance (love the name btw)

I appreciate the kind words. The fetch lands are there to make sure I get a trigger on the Narnam Renegade and to thin out the deck a little so that any draws I get from Werewolf Pack Leader get the most bang for their buck. You could probably go with straight forests to save some cash, but if you do I'd probably pull the Renegades for +1 Experiment One, +1 Pelt Collector and 2x Young Wolf. Going with more basic lands will protect you a bit from cards like Blood Moon and Magus of the Moon as well.

As far as some other budget options, Boseiju, Who Endures is also a very expensive, fairly new card. It's a very strong addition for what it does but is in no way necessary for the deck to operate. That could easily be a Forest as well. If you go all Forests, consider adding in a couple of Treetop Village or Lair of the Hydra and maybe a Dryad Arbor.

Sideboards are largely a product of your local meta and the one I have listed is just a handful of quality generic options. Prowling Serpopard, Scavenging Ooze, Beast Within, Damping Sphere and Grafdigger's Cage are just a few budget options out there, depending on what you're trying to stop.

Batman18 on G/W Aggro *Primer*

6 months ago

Damping Sphere? It also doesn't hose your cards during your opponent's turn so your Veil of Summer will still be 1 green and not 3 colorless and a green. Leyline of Sanctity? Pithing Needle? Naturalize, Nature's Claim,or Back to Nature,Disenchant, maybe some Oblivion Ringlike effects. Cut Rest in Peace unless your meta is graveyard heavy. Why are you running Secure the Wastes in the sideboard?

Rebullet on Counter Deck

7 months ago

the deck is likely viable from this point forward. now you just need to tweak for efficiency and such. when it comes to the sideboard what you should do is identify common decks that you might run into and prepare a response for them in kind. then after you make considerations for decks rank them based on how hard the matchup is for you and prioritize putting in helpful cards against their decks. have a hard time against storm? put in 2 Damping Sphere's. having a really hard time against storm? put in 2 Damping Sphere's and 2 Rule of Law. having a hard time against hand hate in the early game? put in 3 Leyline of Sanctity. it really depends on what you consider the harder matchups and also whatever group of players you usually play against. my store always had an enchantment player, an elemental player, and a bunch of grixis control. so i prioritized my sideboard for the grixis and then the enchant player and then the elemental player. i had little trouble with anything else. but i still put a few things in against decks that i knew i would have a problem with if they ever popped up like tron and storm.

another rule of thumb is that if you need to have the card in the early game then you need to run more of the card. for example, Thoughtseize is only good if you can consistently play it turn 1. that means if you ever run Thoughtseize you always run 4. same is true of Leyline of Sanctity never run less than 3 or else you may find it hard to ever get in your opening hand.