Expressive Iteration
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Legality

Format Legality
1v1 Commander Legal
Alchemy Legal
Archenemy Legal
Arena Legal
Block Constructed Legal
Brawl Legal
Canadian Highlander Legal
Casual Legal
Commander / EDH Legal
Commander: Rule 0 Legal
Custom Legal
Duel Commander Legal
Gladiator Legal
Highlander Legal
Historic Legal
Leviathan Legal
Limited Legal
Modern Legal
Oathbreaker Legal
Planechase Legal
Pre-release Legal
Quest Magic Legal
Standard Legal
Tiny Leaders Legal
Vanguard Legal
Vintage Legal

Expressive Iteration

Sorcery

Look at the top three cards of your library. Put one of them into your hand, one of them on the bottom of library, and exile the third. You may play the exiled card this turn.

legendofa on

1 month ago

Looking at a meta Dimir Pioneer deck, https://www.mtggoldfish.com/archetype/pioneer-rogues#paper the new Faerie Mastermind has found a place, and Kaito Shizuki and Into the Story have slots. (Links not enabled, I apologize.)

https://www.mtggoldfish.com/archetype/pioneer-mono-blue-spirits#paper has Curious Obsession and Combat Research.

Expressive Iteration got banned in Pioneer for being too efficient at creating and maintaining a hand state.

You had mentioned the mulligan rule earlier. I'm not an expert on hypergeometric calculations, but that is an accepted part of play at all levels, and goes a long way to minimizing the rate of unplayable hands. How does Shota's deck perform if you assume one mulligan on a hand with 0-1 or 5-7 lands, keeping all hands with 2-4 lands?

My thoughts of Witching Well and Opt were more to demonstrate that in particular has the ability to fix mana in hand at any budget. I didn't really make that clear in my post. If the tournament decks aren't running these cards, it's because they're running more efficient options.

Magic is absolutely a tough nut to crack, and I don't pretend to have all, or most, or any answers outside of quick searches of tournament lists and results and my own experience. The topic of balancing all the needs of your deck--mana, card draw, threats, responses--has had literal books written about it by high-level professionals, and then all the advice changes every few years. What works now might not work two years from now, and today's weird jank draft filler becomes tomorrow's top-tier combo piece.

One more thought, and this is my personal response to your earlier statement that "Most people would call you crazy if your "fun hobby " is fun 75% of the time." In baseball, if you succeed as a batter by getting on base 40% of the time, that's very notable. At the time of this writing, in the MLB, only fourteen people out of over 1,000 have an On-Base Percentage over .400, and exactly one person, Luis Arráez of the Miami Marlins, has an OBP of .500. So a 75% "fun" rate isn't necessarily grounds for craziness.

Again, if you decide you're not having fun and want to pack it in, I wish you the best of luck. If you want to stick around and chat without actually playing, please do. If you simply want to make a clean break, I hope you find the hobby that brings you lasting satisfaction and fulfillment.

Khurgar on Modern Lands

2 months 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 =)

wallisface on Dual Laughing Crabs

2 months ago

It feels like you’ve deviated a bit off the mill path here.

I’m unsure why you’re running Monastery Swiftspear because you’re never winning by damage. Surely this should just be more crabs instead?

I’m unsure why you’re running Goblin Electromancer when the vast majority of your spells don’t have any non-coloured pips - there are very few spells you’re running that the goblin can actually help you with here.

Expressive Iteration also feels like a really strange choice here. Your mana curve is quite high, so being able to play the exiled-card is less guaranteed (your copy-spells don’t even want to be played this way). You could just be running something like Visions of Beyond and get to keep all 3 cards for half the mana-cost.

DemonDragonJ on Legacy Banlist

2 months ago

With today's banned and restricted announcement, I have added Expressive Iteration and White Plume Adventurer to this list.

zapyourtumor on Grixis Delirium Shadow

3 months ago

Not running 4 Expressive Iteration is almost definitely suboptimal.

A deck like this is able to achieve delirium fairly easily, so running cantrips that help full the yard like Consider and Thought Scour aren't really needed (which is why the MH2 era shadow decks never ran scour, while the old ones with Gurmag Angler did). You should be able to get Land + Creature + Instant very easily, and there are 13 Sorceries + Artifacts + Enchantments for the fourth type. Instead of running cantrips, it is probably better to just increase the general card quality by running better cards. 4th Drown, 4th heat, Inquisition of Kozilek, or the aforementioned copies 2-4 of Iteration.

I assume you have some sort of reason for not running Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer? It is probably one of the best cards you can cascade into.

wallisface on 【Emotional】▷ RANT ◁ WOTC's GREED has RUINED MAGIC!

4 months ago

PhyrexianPraetor

  • There’ve been many only polls around Teferi, Time Raveler and they all point to him being annoying but nowhere-near overly strong. The change of the card on arena is due to balancing it fir that format, not modern. The card is typically only good versus control & some combo decks.

  • Again, most pro-level players have no real issue with Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer as far as I can tell - the comparison to Deathrite Shaman isn’t a fair one: Shaman is always useful at almost every point of the game. Raganan is oftentimes found to be unuseful, particularly later in the game, if you’re on the draw, if the opponents deck has nothing worthwhile to cast etc. Dragon's Rage Channeler is imo faar stronger than the monke (but also not ban-worthy).

  • yep Wrenn and Six should habe either cost 3, or started with 2 loyalty.

  • Expressive Iteration is a card that creates more format variety, in that blue decks don’t typically run proactive cards, and red decks don’t often run passive cards. 90% of the time this is just an Anticipate that also gives you a land.

  • Comparing Ovalchase Daredevil to Splinter Twin is extremely unfair. Twin was hugely popular and you could slot the combo into literally every blue deck. Daredevil requires deckbuilding considerations, has a pretty low level of consistency, and a very low play rate (hint: there’s a reason it sees almost no play). Reanimator can definitely “go off” on turn 3, and i’d argue would be more consistent in doing so without Daredevil. Also all of the high level Grinding Station decks i’ve seen don’t use Daredevil at all (they use Underworld Breach, and with that can go off on turn 3 also).

  • I forgot to mention Mishra's Bauble last time but I don’t see that card getting banned. It does nothing on the turn you play it, and makes opening-hands feel more like a gamble. The card is strong, but only really sees play to activate delirium. I think this card will only ever get banned if something else is printed that can abuse it far too much - which will probably happen at somepoint, but we’re not there yet.

  • Underworld Breach has only really caught peoples eyes over the last month, where people have realised you can slot it into a LOT of decks and just get incidental free-wins if the game goes long. I think its definitely ban-worthy pending how popular it ends up becoming, and how the meta shifts to deal with it.

——————————-

If i were taking a guess at how likely these cards were to be banned in the next 3-5 years, with a “10” being guaranteed, and a “0” being not-ever-happening, i’d have to guess:

PhyrexianPraetor on 【Emotional】▷ RANT ◁ WOTC's GREED has RUINED MAGIC!

4 months ago

wallisface

Teferi, Time Raveler is not bannable? Despite your argument it is overpowered. They even had to alter it in online mtg by making it cost four and changed it’s ability from “your opponents can only cast spells at sorcery speed” to “your opponents can only cast spells on their turn”. They had to alter it’s ability so that counter magic could still be used against it’s controller. That is it’s main problem, once resolved it literally makes it so the opponent can’t respond to what you’re doing and makes the game very one sided.

Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer is a card that me and my hyper-competitive friend have talked about alongside the other cards on my list. He believes Ragavan might get banned at some point due to doing to much for 1 mana and actually forcing the opponent to have an answer for it. This was the same exact argument that WOTC used for banning Deathrite Shaman.

Wrenn and Six should never have costed 2 mana. If it costed more it would probably be fine, but it comes down too early and effectively warps the game. Having consistent land-drops was meant to be something you had to work at (like drawing tons of cards).

Expressive Iteration is the one card my friend actually mentioned to me. In the last year he has played at every local modern event and says it generally leads to whoever can cast it first ends up winning.

Ovalchase Daredevil fits into the same argument that Splinter Twin did. They thought about leaving twin in and banning the creature it was paired with, but they decided to ban twin not only due to overrepresentation (which cookbook isn’t overrepresented), but due to it being the engine for the combo. Daredevil effectively is an engine, without it The Underworld Cookbook would suddenly gain a downside and actually cost cards to use it. As is, it has no downside whatsoever. My friend has been showing me what decks it gets used in. One is a Grinding Station deck that uses the daredevil+cookbook combo and was the least offensive one he showed me and my other friend. The two that see the most play where I live are both archon decks that use the combo as part of a reanimator package and even with main-board graveyard hate, were ultimately very difficult to stop or next to impossible to stop. In all three cases, these decks wouldn’t have been able to go off turn three without the cookbook. Which again, WOTC has had a history of hating combos and strategies that go off before turn 4.

Believe it or not, Underworld Breach sees no play where I live. It has been considered unplayable by my local meta ever since Endurance started seeing more play. One guy tried it and ended up giving up on it after a few months.

All in all, the cards I listed all fit into reasons other cards got banned. Either due to being an engine for a combo, unfun to play against or do too much for next to no investment. I ain’t going to hate on you, cause everyone is entitled to their own opinion. But my statements still stand and are valid. Especially with WOTC’s history of reasons to ban cards seemingly being ignored now.

wallisface on 【Emotional】▷ RANT ◁ WOTC's GREED has RUINED MAGIC!

4 months ago

PhyrexianPraetor your experience has been a very different one from mine, and likely the community as a whole - mtgGoldfish is showing a far wider variation of competitive decks than had ever been there pre-mh2. Indeed, most of the decks you listed as playing against still exist and are still competitively viable today. Its a shame your local meta has disintegrated because of these recent sets, though i’m not sure that’s the norm (though i do know some people who play a lot less these days).

Going over your ban-thoughts:

  • If Teferi, Time Raveler ever got banned it would be because the community found him too unfun - he would never be banned for power reasons. White already has loads of effects that prevent you casting stuff during their turn, so the effect is nothing new. Added to that, loads of decks are completely unaffected by its interactions. I agree the card is strong, but nothing ban-worthy.

  • Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer is often sided-out in game-2 because its just not useful enough. In loads of matchups its on-hit effect does nothing. The card is again strong, but nothing worth banning, particularly with the level of interaction in modern.

  • I definitely agree Wrenn and Six probably needs a ban at somepoint. I don’t think banning Omnath with solve the problem inherent in those decks.

  • Expressive Iteration is very strong, but i’m not sure its ban worthy.

  • I’m super surprised you think Ovalchase Daredevil needs to go, cause it really doesn’t. Asmo decks represent almost none of the meta, and are super unreliable (despite your consistency concerns, they lose to they’re own draws all the time). Added to this the card does nothing without other supporting cards being in play, and is super-easy to disrupt with literally any amount of graveyard hate.

The card i’m surprised you didn’t mention is Underworld Breach. That is what i’d consider being the absolute biggest offender in the modern metagame at the moment, alongside Wrenn and Six.

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