Dark Petition

Sorcery

Search your library for a card and put that card into your hand. Then shuffle your library.

Spell mastery — If there are two or more instant and/or sorcery cards in your graveyard, add to your mana pool.

Discussion (51)

SideBae on Phenax, God Of Deception

1 day ago

So I think you should run Preordain in addition to your Ponder. It's a similar effect and is a powerful t1 play. I wouldn't run Brainstorm until you run at least three more fetches, though they don't have to be Zendikar/Onslaught fetches to work; consider Terramorphic Expanse, Bad River or even Prismatic Vista.

I think you should run Toxic Deluge, though it can be a bit pricy. Have you considered running snow-covered lands and Dead of Winter? I'm a big fan, even though it gives you less control than Toxic Deluge.

In general, I do not like 3-mana mana-rocks at all -- 2-mana mana-rocks are common enough, and 3-mana mana-rocks feel like they're just a turn behind. In that vein, I think you should cut Darksteel Ingot and Dimir Locket for cards like Dimir Signet, Coldsteel Heart, Sky Diamond or Charcoal Diamond. These are especially good if you lead with a t1 Sol Ring or choose to run Ancient Tomb.

So, I think you should definitely look at running Eater of the Dead. It's a REALLY old card (1994), but it's actually kinda funny in Phenax, God of Deception. You can use its ability to exile a creature you've milled and untap him, then tap him using Phenax and repeat.

You could consider running Lantern of Insight or (if you got $$$) Field of Dreams. These can give you intel as to whether you want to mill an OP before they draw or on their end step, which in turn lets you choose their draws for them. (In modern/some legacy, this is called 'lantern control.')

Dark Petition and Lim-Dul's Vault seem like they'd be good in addition to your Demonic Tutor and Mystical Tutor.

Windfall? It's REALLY good with Narset, Parter of Veils or a Notion Thief out.

One thing that I notice frequently going wrong with decks with generals who don't directly produce card-advantage is that they often simply run out of cards. I highly suggest bringing Fact or Fiction in from your maybeboard, and potentially running things like Chart a Course, Night's Whisper, Treasure Cruise, Necropotence, Dig Through Time, Chemister's Insight etc. to make up for this.

Right. That's all I got. Good luck.

multimedia on Big Black Deck (K'rrik)

1 day ago

Hey, yes Insidious Dreams is an underrated, underplayed, tutor and it's an instant. If you have or can get Yawgmoth's Will then definitely add it. I didn't see that you're playing Zombie Infestation and you're right it can make a Zombie for Gravecrawler as long as you have two cards to discard which can be faster than Dreadhorde Invasion. I'm honestly not a fan of Infestation, but if it's working for you then great.

Other ways to consider to make your deck more competitive is more speed. Lower the avg. CMC with more one drops; cards that make mana and/or cards that can draw. One drops that draw can draw you cards faster because you don't have to pay mana for them as well as put more counters on Krrik faster. One drops that make mana are helpful to make mana for colorless mana costs of cards to assemble combos faster.

Rain of Filth and Bubbling Muck are powerful when playing a lot of Swamps. Culling the Weak and Sacrifice is good with Krrik or other creatures. All four of these cards can be particularly helpful when you're trying to assemble Aetherflux + Citadel which needs seven colorless mana. Sacrifice makes seven mana by sacing Krrik. Krrik is not needed after you assemble this combo and Sacrifice is an instant. You can pay Phyrexian mana for Citadel, pay Phyrexian mana for Sacrifice, sac Krrik to then make mana to pay for the rest of the combo.

Black one drops that draw to consider (I'm honestly only a fan of Wisps): Aphotic Wisps, Cremate, Scarab Feast, Fade from Memory. Cycling can be paid for with Phyrexian mana.

For your current deck there's less reasons to play so many high CMC creatures because you're winning with combo. Vilis, Razaketh, Pontiff, Sidisi and Gray are the best here. Instead of playing others, you could replace them lower CMC cards or other tutors: Mastermind's Acquisition and Dark Petition which can find important combo pieces. Tutors taking up high CMC card spots can better advance your game plan of winning with a combo rather than just having a big creature on the battlefield.

enpc on Opinion: Banning Tutors in EDH

2 weeks ago

I am firmly of the opinion that this is a terrible idea. And there are a few reasons why:

If you only ban some tutors, all that's going to happen is that people are going to move to the "next best set".Can't run Demonic Tutor? Just run Grim Tutor. Can't run Grim Tutor, just run Diabolic Tutor or Dark Petition. If you start banning some of the tutors, people will just roll over to the next available option.

If you're going to ban all tutors, then you can't do it by rules text. Ban lists are supposed to be black and white, not open to interpretation. So just banning all cards that contain "search" and "library" in the rules text would also mean that (as well as banning all land ramp), you would be banning cards like Path to Exile and Assassin's Trophy. You also have cards like Lim-Dul's Vault. It's a tutor, is it banned? You MUST have an exhaustive banlist, thats why 99.99% of games/formats within said games have exhaustive lists.

And if you're going to ban all tutors, then draw card becomes the new tutor. All of a sudden, every deck contains blue because they want every cantrip/draw effect available because nobody wants to topdeck. And now since every deck contains blue, you'll see a lot more of a rise in counterspells because more decks are running blue.

On top of that, without tutors, you've made every commander game basically double in length. I don't know about you, but I personally have a busy life and only get to play magic once/twice a fortnight (if that). And I really don't want to spend the whole night playing 1 game of commander where I previously would have gotten 2-3 games in.

Even if aggro suffers somewhat under tutors, getting rid of them would kill the combo archetype. And you would just see combo decks crammed to the brim with redundant pieces/lots of card draw/counterspells to try and counteract the loss of tutors. But it would generally make them unplayable. Not to mention that voltron would suffer as well - voltron needs tutors to assemble its lethality, otherwise it just folds to battlecruiser style decks.

Oh and the other thing - not everybody hates tutors. I for one enjoy having access to them in my deck. I like the idea of being able to make a 100 card singleton deck more consistent. That's why you see poeple running functional reprints of cards and lots of similar effects. While there is a part of the communtity that just wants to play top deck big smashy cards, you'd find that that isn't the majority of players (but that people who are content with the format as it is are generally just less vocal).

If your playgroup doesn't want to play with tutors, that's great for you. If your playgroup wants to enforce any other house rules, again, I'm happy that you're all in agreement. But the long and short of it is; a format is healthiest with a small a banlist as possible. And on top of that, sweeping decicisions like this which make group A happy generally royally screw over group B. The RC has already indicated that if poeple don't like something, the easiset solution is to house rule. But don't try to enforce that crap on the rest of us. And if people just want to play a card game with big, smashy creatures, then go play Yugioh or something.

dingusdingo on Fish, Kess, and Consultation [Competitive]

3 weeks ago

With the recent addition of everybody's/nobody's favorite fish Thassa's Oracle, the competitive scene has been in a tizzy trying to figure out how to adapt and react. Most brewers have been fixated on adapting two lists to fish, specifically TnT Flash Hulk and Najeela Consultation Hulk, which are arguably tier 0 deck builds and are head and shoulders ahead of other tier 1 competitive decks because of the printing of Oracle. I think most people have missed a third well known commander who benefits massively from the printing.

Kess, Dissident Mage is very promising in this new meta, and I would like to present the argument that Kess is a tier 0 build in par with TnT Fish Hulk and Layered Najeela.

For those unaware of how the combo works, here we go.

• Start with Kess, Dissident Mage in play
• Use Demonic Consultation or Tainted Pact, naming Thassa's Oracle. We now exile until we find Oracle
• Play Thassa's Oracle. We let it resolve, and we put the trigger on the stack.
• We hold priority, and use the ability from Kess, Dissident Mage to play a spell from our GY. The spell we pick is either Demonic Consultation or Tainted Pact.
• We resolve the forbidden tutor, naming or digging for a card that isn't in our deck, effectively exiling our entire deck.
• We resolve the winning Oracle trigger to win.

DO NOTE: We must have no duplicates of basic lands in our mana base to use Tainted Pact. While competitive pact players may know this, it is worth restating for the purposes of education and discussion in the thread.

If we are holding Oracle + Pact in hand, we don't need Kess to reuse. We can simply Oracle, then in response to ETB use the pact.

This combo has gained a lot of resiliency over previous Laboratory Maniac or Jace, Wielder of Mysteries lines.

• Thassa's Oracle is cheaper to cast by .
• We do not need to run a draw spell with Oracle in order to win, while we do with Labman. This most likely saves us another mana, and it definitely saves us being required to hold another card to cantrip to win.
• The combo is safer to resolve if we face interaction. We resolve Oracle first, the trigger goes on the stack. A trigger is much harder to counter than a spell. Once the trigger is stacked, anything that happens to Oracle we don't really care about, since we can win with 0 devotion assuming 0 cards in library. Previously, a Laboratory Maniac could be removed in response to whatever draw would cause you to win, meaning you would lose instead.
• Fish Consultation allows you to attempt another win if stopped. Lets say we are on Labman + Pact. If our Tainted Pact resolves, but our labman is countered, we are most likely going to lose. While using Oracle + Pact, if our Pact is countered, we still have our library and can attempt another win. Similarly, because we resolve the Oracle first to get the ETB trigger stacked, we aren't in danger of Oracle getting countered and then us using Pact and being left with no library.
• If you have Kess in play, you can execute the entire combo for 4 mana. If you already have both pieces, you can execute the entire combo for 3 mana and ignore graveyard hate.

So how is this any different than Fish Hulk? Simple. Kess, Dissident Mage can turn a single tutor into a winning line. The ability to use Demonic Consultation or Tainted Pact allows us to assemble and execute the entire combo from a single tutor, as the component that exiles for us also tutors the second card needed for the combo. This means that Kess + Forbidden Tutor is a winning line, similar to how Najeela has a few different one card combos with the commander for winning. Before the Oracle printing, a Kess deck would also have to stock up on cheap "draw a card" spells to supplement the Consultation strategy. Now that need is gone, and the overall strategy can be executed much faster due to the lower mana cost requirements and also card requirements. This means that you have more ability to simply race other decks if that is the best gameplan. The value nature of Kess allows you to go longer in grindier games or match ups. Most decks are pigeonholed into all-in combo or grindier control, but the speed and resilience of the combo paired with being able to reuse our GY really gives Kess the best of both worlds.

I would also argue that new printings have added resilience and more consistency to the build as well. Spellseeker is another way to find the 1 card wincon. Dark Petition is certainly more fringe but could very well see play, especially in lists that skew Ad Nauseam for Bonus Round. Scheming Symmetry is another new topdeck tutor, and the symmetry can be broken on it by cantripping, then immediately starting the winning line. The deck will continue to benefit from any new usable tutors, removal, or card draw that is printed, and these new prints won't invalidate lines or cause grief when making changes for them.

The final piece of the puzzle is the large amount of flex slots in a Kess deck. If you want an additional combo, you can slot it pretty easy and there are good choices. If you want more hate pieces because you see Fish Hulk every pod, you can grab things like Cursed Totem very easily. Lots of green dorks or creature heavy boards you can get Pyroclasm and friends. Kess is blue, and already slots a good amount of counterspells and interaction. On top of protecting the combo, you can also choose to play a more midrange game and stop win attempts early, and grind value before comboing out later. Alternatively, you can just jam the combo if you have the tutors and mana to make it work. While Flash is easier to cast, Flash Hulk does require two pieces in hand to get the combo rolling, making it easier to see coming and harder to assemble.

Of course, Fish has other applications. Hermit Druid spiked in price for a reason, as did Sacred Guide. A card like Hermit Druid also requires haste enablers to make it go, which lowers your overall card quality and puts the pilot into awkward binds of either jamming the Druid and passing a rotation, or holding Druid in hand and trying to assemble Greaves + Druid or Banditland + Druid. Sacred Guide similarly hurts deckbuilding, mostly by requiring that a color in the identity be completely ignored for the sake of the combo. They are also basically worthless outside of the combo. Tainted Pact is an enabler and a tutor at instant speed, as is Demonic Consultation. You can always use them to fetch Pact of Negation or Force of Will in a pinch, should you have no other options to stop an opponent from winning. While it is unlikely you are going to win after exiling 0-99 cards in order to find whatever you name, you are being improved from "losing" to "most likely losing". The most important part of it is though that the forbidden tutors are actually tutoring while exiling, serving a dual purpose in the deck and improving slot efficiency. This even has a leg up over other Consultation builds, where the forbidden tutors are seen mostly as dead-draws for A + B for winning.

TL;DR Consultation Kess is also arguably a tier 0 build and was a big winner from the Fish printing.

Kapitein_Koekblik on We Love Freebies! *Primer*

1 month ago

Hi Cloudius

After playing this deck for a few months I sadly have to retire it. My local gamestore(s) have banned extra turns on commander nights (why they haven't banned the color blue instead is up for discussion I guess). I have won a fair share of commander nights with it (maybe 5-6 or so?) All I can say is that Cavern of Souls has saved my ass more then one would think, I also replaced 2 Island's with a Tundra and a Scrubland. I cut Blinkmoth Nexus for Command Beacon, because let me tell you, seeing it get destroyed/removed 3 times can become rather costly and this card really helps out then. I also preffered to run Mox Opal over Mox Diamond seeing I had more luck with artifacts in play then lands in my hand (Land Destruction is a well known theme in these parts). I also ditched Dark Petition to run Imperial Seal instead, in all my games Yennett never hit Dark Petition and casting it from my hand was to painful for that mana cost (all this was ofc, personal experience). Hall of the Bandit Lord can be pretty hit and miss and I tried to run it a couple of times, It either becomes a dead pull when I needed it, or it became to costly to pay the 3 life. I cut it in the end.

I will keep an eye out from time to time on your deck. For me, until they unban extra turns will retire this deck. Looking forward on how you can adjust this deck in the future.

Phroggy1 on Breya Combo Deck

1 month ago

i feel like you need more instant speed interaction, as well as a few more ways to grab your combo pieces. these are some mostly budget suggestions Diabolic Intent Memory Lapse Disallow Wipe Away Whir of Invention Dark Petition Reality Shift as well, it looks like you need a chunk more mana rocks being sans-green, i would highly recommend the talismans and the signets, they will help ramp and mana fix at the same time. i'll try and pull out some of my bulk to help you next time i see ya. good luck man

Gattison on Morph Precon copy

1 month ago

Hey there, fellow Kadena-player here. =)

I've got some suggestions you might like:

• First off, I would highly recommend doing whatever you can do upgrade your land base first. Take out all the bouncelands , guildgates and fake gates , and replace them with basically anything that does not ETB tapped. even basics would be better most of the time.
• As for ramp, I decided to start by testing a bunch of rocks that add . Things like Gilded Lotus , Basalt Monolith and Llanowar Tribe . I don't know if you're into that, so alternatively there's the standard sets of Lockets, Signets, Cluestones, etc.
• Ugin, the Ineffable + Obscuring AEther is another way to get "free" morphs.
• Along those same lines, there's also Dark Petition .
• Zoetic Cavern is a land that can be morphed, enabling some sneaky tricks during attacking or blocking.
• Ezuri, Claw of Progress is also a neat trick to include if you're going the aggro route, since he'll buff all your colorless morphed creatures.

Those are all just quick suggestions, off the top of my head. If you want some more inspiration, feel free to check out my deck (The Wolverine Who Laughs (Kadena/Morph EDH)) or Enral's deck (It's Always Willbender), which I like because it's a nice-looking control-oriented version of Kadena.

Slicor01 on Vilis, Broker of Blood

2 months ago

pidyon Yep I've found that's a pretty good combo. Also, as far as tutors go, my preferred options are Demonic Tutor , Diabolic Intent , and Dark Petition . If your budget is a little less slim, Vampiric Tutor is a great one.