Force of Will

Instant

You may pay 1 life and exile a blue card from your hand from the game rather than pay Force of Will's mana cost.

Counter target spell.

Discussion (51)

SynergyBuild on Urza Paradox Scepter

5 hours ago

Depends on the situation. When you have half of a combo or two, like you have a Narset, Parter of Veils and Dramatic Reversal , you may fetch a Isochron Scepter , Windfall , and Timetwister , any of them can win you the game. Paradox Engine is always a decent combo target, etc.

Additionally, when you need to answer something, you can fetch a Force of Will and choose an opponent who also wants it answered. Occasionally you can pile Force of Will , Force of Negation , and Pact of Negation if you don't have an ally. You can also do things like pile Trinisphere , Winter Orb , and Static Orb to hate on your opponents', or Cyclonic Rift , Chain of Vapor , Legacy's Allure , Gilded Drake , and/or Blast Zone .

Forkbeard on Sliver Overlord: Slivers Gone Wild

1 day ago

Hey there tiresias, thanks for the comment. I too am real pumped on the new slivers and am looking forward to slotting a few of them in here.

The paths to sliver victory are varied, but for me personally I win via beatdown more than combo because it becomes a game of 'kill it with fire' as soon Sliver Queen is on the table. Slivers just by themselves stir up a fair amount of hate so just try to get used to it I guess, haha.

I'm actually pretty happy with the current build but if money were no object I'd pimp out the manabase/ramp with fetches, ABUR duals & only the finest rocks. Likewise with the support spells ( Force of Will , Mana Drain et al). If you want to see an example of a seriously tuned sliver deck with all the $$$ cards, check out the The Queen's Egg for inspiration.

SideBae on Vial Smashes Affinity

3 days ago

So my first thought is that you should run a LOT of instants, rather than just 2. Vial smasher can trigger on ANY turn, not just one, so running something like Dig Through Time would be... really good. Generally, you'll want these instants to draw you more cards, so Fact or Fiction and Glimmer of Genius are also fine choices. Cards with alternate casting costs also tend to have high CMCs: for example, Force of Will is a Lava Axe in this deck, as well as a counter spell. While Force may be a pricey card, other cards from the same cycle aren't. Contagion is well under a dollar, and can potentially also 2-for-1 with opposing creatures, while Pyrokinesis is even stronger. Misdirection and Commandeer also come to mind. If you want to get REAL spicy, Mind's Dilation is another good way to cast spell on your opponents' turns, but bear in mind this card tends to be killed pretty fast.

Flash creatures like Torrential Gearhulk also seem like pretty good ideas.

I suggest replacing Vedalken Orrery with Leyline of Anticipation . It's (very) slightly harder to remove an enchantment than an artifact, but more importantly if Leyline is in your opening 7, you avoid having to pay its cost. I can see a world where you play both, though.

I see you're running a few mana rocks, but I advise more. Two mana rocks tend to be far superior to 3 mana rocks, so Dimir Signet and Rakdos Signet are likely better than Thought Vessel or Worn Powerstone . Talisman of Dominance and Talisman of Indulgence also come to mind. Being in green means you have access to a whole host of dorks, like Llanowar Elves , Fyndhorn Elves , Arbor Elf , and Elves of Deep Shadow . These 1-drops may not look like much, but being able to accelerate you into quickly casting your general and then the following high-cost cards is a good thing. Orcish Lumberjack is a personal favorite in any red-green deck. However, if you choose to go via artifact ramp and not dork-ramp, this opens you to using effects like Pyroclasm or Volcanic Fallout to keep opponents' creatures in check. Ancient Tomb tends to be REAL nice for powering out turn-one 2-drop rocks. Depending on how blue-heavy your meta is, Carpet of Flowers can range from good to a straight-up powerhouse. If you take this part of my advice, your curve will drop significantly and you will be able to run 32-ish lands with no real problem.

You'll also probably want a good card-draw package, if you're planning to cast a lot of spells. Azra Oddsmaker is a goldmine if you have an open opponent to attack, and black has access to enchantments like Phyrexian Arena . Night's Whisper and Ambition's Cost are also good, and work well with Kydele.

Delve spells will act sort of like X-cost spells, but be easier to cast late-game and harder early-game. Empty the Pits may be interesting, but you should also consider Logic Knot , Treasure Cruise and Tasigur, the Golden Fang . Tasigur will give you an out later in the game for excess mana, and will allow you a level of recursion. In order to make these cards powerful, you need cards in the graveyard. For that, I recommend Faithless Looting , Jace, Vryn's Prodigy  ^Flip and Dack Fayden . While these last two are pricier cards, I think looting is the best here of the three, as you can cast it turn one to filter out a hand that may be too heavy in lands or spells. The flashback is also very significant. Jace is a powerful card in that he allows more card filtration on a permanent, and allows you to snap back a spell if you want. Dack Fayden is a boss in EDH, where stealing a Sol Ring is very common. So even if you don't need to filter your draws, stealing a rock should be an option about 98% of the time.

Speaking of card filtration, Ponder , Preordain and Brainstorm are all potent cards in any blue deck. While they may not work particularly well with Vial Smasher, they all work rather well with Kydele while also giving you a cantrip to cast turn 1. A lot of times, these are the cards that make a boarderline-keep hand into a keep hand for me, as they are extremely good at finding lands and/or spells as need be.

With Kydele, cards like Windfall , Wheel of Fortune and Winds of Change all become rituals in addition to their usual effects. Running Notion Thief in conjunction with these 'everyone draws' spells is... good. Similarly, targeting an opponent with Dack Fayden 's +1 while Notion Thief is on the field is a pretty good way to tip the card-advantage scales in your favor.

I like Whip of Erebos . You should consider running some Entomb or Buried Alive effects with it, as that would allow you to get some one-shots in with powerful creatures when hitting an opponent or just when entering the battlefield. Nicol Bolas and Massacre Wurm comes to mind.

Good luck with deck building!

Njirk on Urza Oppression

3 days ago

How about Chrome Mox , Mox Opal , Mox Diamond , Mana Vault , Mana Crypt and Sensei's Divining Top instead of the janky equipments? Also, I would probably run stuff like Mana Drain , Force of Will , Swan Song , Pact of Negation and the new Force of Negation in a mono blue combo deck like this (if money is not an issue).

You can also add Intuition and Reconstruction so you have an additional tutor to search for your artifact combo pieces. (Search for Reconstruction , Buried Ruin / Academy Ruins and the combo piece.) Good thing about these cards is that they are also useful on their own.

Tolaria West can be a useful tool to tutor for specific lands or your zero mana stuff (especially usefull if you add pact of negation).

DuTogira on Modern Horizons Announced

1 week ago

Can we take a moment to discuss the name “force of negation”? RND literally combined Force of Will and Negate and just went “hey... force of negation!”
What a lazy name! And who picked that over “negation of will” given that this seems almost exclusively designed for counter wars

CyborgAeon on Commanders by Power Level [EDH Tier List]

1 week ago

@ThrunTheTroll628

Godo is nuts

Your points are absolutely valid and I can definitely understand why you'd believe that godo is a slower deck that shouldn't be considered as high-power as it is. Here I'll hopefully show reasonable counterpoints to your arguments.

1: Godo is a 1 card combo

Forgive me if I'm wrong (@otherGodoPlayers) but Godo is considered a 0 card combo, as all you need to have is mana. It's irrelevant what's in hand, or on board, as you require only 11 mana to win. Furthermore, there are combos that become 1-card and require 5 mana fewer to pull off.

A fantastic example is Panharmonicon . This card allows you to search for Hammer of Nazahn in addition to helm, meaning that godo enters, gains indestructible and equips for no additional cost. Panharmonicon is also replaced in this instance by any "copy" effect - ie Heat Shimmer , Twinflame etc. all allow you to pull off this same effect for significantly less mana.

2 Godo must be built in one of two ways

If you look into the extensive amount of work, time and research that went into this brew, you'll find that many cEDH players ie gtoast99, insertcleverphrasehere have spent a lot of time refining builds to come up with an evenly stax & combo efficient build. Looking at some builds that are only ritual effects and combo pieces, I could understand you'd be convinced the deck has flaws. But it's been proven time and time again that the best pilots show how worthy the deck is of it's tiered placement.

3 no matter how much ramp

When you look at cards like Treasonous Ogre you may think "well, I'll add a mana here or there", but you could - in a godo build, see it as a single card that ends the game, as you have a 0 card combo in the command zone.

Admittedly, when you begin reviewing cards such as Soulbright Flamekin I can understand that the mana investment may not seem strong enough. Nonetheless, with all the fast mana available - the deck consistently pressures wins from 1-2 cards required. Though ritualling to victory is still an option

4 Interaction & opponents

Absolutely fairly - you've found the crux of the deck. A pilot needs this card to resolve, or it's all for naught. With that in mind, I believe most decks run the full suite of blue specific counters, some even using Burnout . This is not always enough, but comparatively, often charbelcher wins legacy tournaments, just because sometimes you luck out and your opponents don't open with Force of Will . For that reason, both decks are considered strong

5 Beaten by stax

Yes, you've got a great point. Godo folds to A LOT of stax cards, but similar to the above, it consistently wins before these are an issue.

This point could be summed up with the above, but it's relevant for me to mention that many decks have switched from some of the above stax pieces to combat Flash -hulk decks, as they're just as fast as godo, but have more interaction and a greater consistent speed. While Torpor Orb & friends are great, most people have cut it from lists, as it doesn't do enough to combat the more common threats.

TL;DR: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26SblcKLQsM

hellhole3927 on On Tilts

1 week ago

LiquidGaming if you are playing Faerie Trickery as a counterspell for the exile ability on it you might want to consider Dissipate and Void Shatter . Another counterspell I would HIGHLY recommend is Rewind . At first it seems good just slightly too expensive, but I'll just say from my experiences with this card it's a 10/10 as a counterspell. BTW, even if you don't add both Dissipate and Void Shatter to this list I would recommend you cut Faerie Trickery for Void Shatter only for a few very minimal benefits ( Tarmogoyf , Red Elemental Blast , Pyroblast , Iona, Shield of Emeria , etc). The only possible downside to Void Shatter that I will bring up is that you can't pitch it too Force of Will , but your mono blue so this will probably never cause an issue. If you do find this to be an issue I would still recommend you change Faerie Trickery to Dissipate for the very minimal benefit of slowing Tarmogoyf .

BTW, nice list and if you would like me to take the time to list any/all possible upgrades/suggestions for your list I would be more than happy to do so. Just let me know if you would like me to make these suggestions or not.

LeonSpires on Simic Moonfolk Landfall

1 week ago

Murphy77 Thank you so much for your suggestions!

You can totally build an EDH deck around turning lands into creatures. The deck would definitively run a lot of the ramp that I run in my deck. However in EDH with Wrath of God , Damnation and many more field wipes in existence it is a risky strategy. Eldrazi Monument would be an auto include for this idea as well as Ramunap Excavator and Crucible of Worlds .

As far as planeswalkers: If I were to build Simic Superfriends I would run Gilder Bairn , Deepglow Skate , and Doubling Season in addition to a lot of the Blue and/or Green planeswalkers. However as far as this deck I like winning too much off of Avenger of Zendikar , Rampaging Baloths and other landfall triggers. If I was to add in a lot of planeswalkers I feel that I would cut down on the lands matter synergy and end up weakening the deck as a whole. Not to say I wouldn't run a planeswalkers. If wizards printed a planeswalkers with a good + ability Kiora, the Crashing Wave 's -1 and and Nissa, Vital Force 's -6 ability or something similar I would totally run it. But as it stands there aren't any planeswalkers that fit the synergy of the deck enough for me to run with out changing to Simic Superfriends.

As for counterspells other then Force of Will which I would include if it cost less money. I have been considering Familiar's Ruse for the shenanigans that can be pulled with Eternal Witness and other ETB triggers. However I don't know if I have enough ETB triggers to justify it. I plan on testing it soon. Now that general tucking isn't a thing I typically try and not run counterspells over the CMC of 2 that don't have alternative casting costs. As for Rewind I would not run it in cEDH. But in a deck that can dump lands out and with Kruphix, God of Horizons 's ability to float mana on the opponent's end phase before your turn it is basically in this deck is a free counterspell and nine times out of ten you aren't losing the mana for.

Thanks again for the suggestions. I noticed you have a lot of standard and modern deck on your page. Are you thinking about getting into EDH? If you need any help I would be happy to help!