Gemstone Caverns
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Legality

Format Legality
1v1 Commander Legal
Archenemy Legal
Block Constructed Legal
Canadian Highlander Legal
Casual Legal
Commander / EDH Legal
Commander: Rule 0 Legal
Custom Legal
Duel Commander Legal
Highlander Legal
Legacy Legal
Leviathan Legal
Limited Legal
Modern Legal
Oathbreaker Legal
Planechase Legal
Quest Magic Legal
Tiny Leaders Legal
Vanguard Legal
Vintage Legal

Gemstone Caverns

Legendary Land

If Gemstone Caverns is in your opening hand and you're not playing first, you may begin the game with Gemstone Caverns on the battlefield with a luck counter on it. If you do, exile a card from your hand.

: Gain . If Gemstone Caverns has a luck counter on it, instead gain one mana of any colour.

wallisface on Sliver Aggro

3 months ago

Some thoughts:

  • 16 lands is waaaay too low, even factoring in Manaweft Sliver, Aether Vial, and Lotus Bloom. As a reference, Burn decks run 19 lands and only run 1-2 mana spells... but importantly can function on having only 1 land for several turns (and this often happens in their games). You need to go to at least 20, probably 22 lands, to have any chance of functioning.

  • Gemstone Caverns is a card that is only really useful in combo decks that can't afford to wait until turn 2. Choosing to go second in an aggro creature-based deck is a recipe for disaster, but furthermore it makes the Caverns only any good if its in your opening hand - and useless in most other situations. This is particularly scary because you're a 5 colour deck. I'd say to ditch the Caverns for something more reliable.

  • If you're running any number of Aether Vial, then you should always be running the full playset (4-of).

  • Your sideboard just looks like extra cards that couldn't make the main - and additionally quite a few have too-high mana-costs to ever reliably get cast. I would suggest changing your sideboard to better accommodate for your bad matchups, instead of it just being a bunch of random Slivers.

Balaam__ on Sliver Aggro

3 months ago

The odds of getting a 3-4 land opening hand (let alone a Gemstone Caverns) is practically nonexistent with only 16 lands. I’d really recommend cutting a number of slivers and bumping up the overall land count.

Icbrgr on Nimble Obstructionist Vs Tale's End

4 months ago

Just wanted to follow up here stating how Tale's End performed tonight.... i faced the guy who was running Living End last week but this week he was playing Crashing Footfalls.

I lost both games....

soooooo there was like 40 min left in the round and we played some exhibition games.... Tale's End was able to interact and stop some cascade shenanigans...but in the end Violent Outburst is just one heck of a card when played on your end step and you just look at your Force of Negation with sadness....

I placed 6th tonight out of 10 players... got clobbered by affinity and rhinos but decimated Burn and humans.

SirChancelot on Quoth the Raven: "Nevermore"

6 months ago

Ashnod's Altar and Phyrexian Altar would be great for turning your Commander's ability into a mana source. Adding Pitiless Plunderer is great as well especially with the previous two cards mentioned. They actually infinite combo with Bloodsoaked Champion and either Zulaport Cutthroat or Blood Artist. Mikokoro, Center of the Sea is good in mono black decks imo. Also Peat Bog and Gemstone Caverns would be good additions to the land base as well. Boseiju, Who Shelters All it also very good for protecting stuff.

If you like these choices then I can help out with what to take out! Looks fun though!

MelpomeneZammarco on Liquimetal Foundry 2022

7 months ago

Hi! I'm done with this final version of the deck, EXCEPT:

I'm looking for a mana fix to get two mana with one land. The possibilities so far seem to be

*land like Gemstone Caverns

*Creatures like Skirk Prospector

*other one-drop fetch land or mana ritual, though I don't see any that are of better value than the two above.

I think 6 fixer total is a fine number for me, but I'd love to hear suggestions. The goal is to get two mana on turn one or two considering I might not always have 2 mountains right at the start. Thanks! I guess simply adding 2 Mountain can work but it doesn't have the same value to me, though I fear that the goblins are more vulnerables.

Ojallday on 5-color Mana Base

9 months ago

My advice is to run all the fetches since you have most of the original duels. Other than that all of the lands that produce any color mana is the way to go (ie. City of Brass, Forbidden Orchard, Mana Confluence, Command Tower, Gemstone Caverns). I'd avoid anything that enters tapped but that is just my opinion. With the fetches duels and gold lands that's 25 lands leaving room for utility lands or lands that tap for multiple mana like Gaea's Cradle, Ancient Tomb and City of Traitors.

azja on Yuriko (Optimized) Primer

1 year ago

Hey @Spirits, sorry for taking so long to get back to you! You asked such detailed questions, so I wanted to make sure I had time to write out detailed answers :D

Karn's Temporal Sundering vs Capture of Jingzhou:

Like you said, just a budget consideration. Yuriko is my pet deck so I don’t use any proxies, but I highly encourage it for others! While the bounce effect of Karn's Temporal Sundering is nice, I’m thinking of replacing it with Time Warp or just cutting it altogether for Treasure Cruise.

Enablers:

Since I don’t have any combos, I’m all in on the Yuriko damage plan. So having an enabler at all times is much more crucial for me, which is why I play 15 of them. Comparing my list to others, it seems 15 is on the higher end, so you could probably get away with cutting a couple. You’re correct about Tormented Soul, it can’t be pitched to Force of Will, as well as the mana base being more blue-heavy. As for the flying enablers, they’re included for redundancy (since there aren’t 15 unblockable 1-drops). It’s pretty rare for every opponent to have a flying/reach blocker, and we don’t really care who we attack, so flying does a pretty good impression of unblockable. Plus, many of them have relevant abilities, especially Faerie Seer’s scry 2 and Wingcrafter which can give Yuriko flying. If you’re mainly trying to win with combo, I wouldn’t play any of the 2 mana enablers except Tetsuko Umezawa, Fugitive. But don’t underestimate Augury Owl in the “winning with big spells” shell!

Kaito Shizuki

I haven’t tried him out yet, so I’m also unsure whether he makes the cut. Normally I wouldn’t consider playing a planeswalker, since we’re not very good at blocking to keep them around for longer than one turn. But with Kaito, we’re guaranteed 2 activations since he phases out eot, so I think he’s worth testing out for sure.

Win-Cons:

I think the wincons you described are all totally viable. Most of the cEDH Yuriko lists win with Thassa's Oracle + Demonic Consultation or Tainted Pact since it’s only 2 cards and 3-4 mana (and tough to interact with outside of counterspells). Doomsday is significantly weaker than fish-consul, but its also a reasonable win-con. It’s convenient that cards that would go in the doomsday pile such as Gitaxian Probe and Street Wraith are already good cards for the deck anyway. When I first built this deck, I didn’t include doomsday for power level considerations. Now, I doubt doomsday would be too powerful for my playgroup to handle, but I decided to leave it out since I prefer to win with Yuriko’s ability.

Scheming Symmetry

Scheming symmetry is pretty much my budget replacement for Imperial Seal until we get a reprint. It’s true that you can do some cute plays with Nashi, Moon Sage's Scion or Fallen Shinobi. But most of the time, I save it until someone is below 16 life, choose them to tutor with me, put Draco on top of my library, and eliminate them before they can use the card they grabbed.

Mutavault

I’m a big fan of Mutavault since it allows me to rebuild a turn earlier after a boardwipe, or just to have an extra ninja that usually goes unnoticed by your opponents. Unfortunately, colourless lands are really, really awkward in this deck, so I wouldn’t play more than 1 or 2 at the most.

Drowned Catacomb, etc.

Since I’m currently playing 10 basics, I usually don’t have any problems with Drowned Catacomb and Sunken Hollow entering tapped. As for Mystic Sanctuary, it definitely sucks when you draw it and have to play it as a tapped island. But, imo it makes up for it in the late game when you can grab it with a fetch land and put an expensive spell on top of your library in response to a Yuriko trigger. If you’re including Tainted Pact, or just playing less basics in general, I would definitely cut those lands for City of Brass or River of Tears, like you mentioned.

Colourless Mana

I touched on this a bit in the Mutavault discussion, but you definitely want to stay away from colourless lands as much as possible. Although Ancient Tomb and Gemstone Caverns are really powerful lands in a vacuum, the early mana they provide isn’t worth it imo. I definitely agree with you that Reliquary Tower is a trap. I wouldn’t play it in very many decks in general, especially not in Yuriko. As for Glacial Chasm and Maze of Ith, they aren’t played enough in my playgroup for me to need an answer for them. But if they did become more popular, my plan would likely be to cut Mutavault and include Strip Mine/Wasteland instead.

I hope everything I explained made sense and was helpful to ya! Don’t hesitate to ask me more questions!

Spirits on Yuriko (Optimized) Primer

1 year ago

azja,

Couple early questions if you don't mind. Let me know if I'm a bother :) My Yuri Deck

Karn's Temporal Sundering hitting an opponent for 6 is good, but wouldn't Capture of Jingzhou be more efficient for CMC1 less? Perhaps its a budgetary/availability consideration?

You have 15 enablers, I read the notes on them, couple questions. What's the critical mass on this, like would 10 be deterimental. When I did a rough pull in had the following questions:

Why is Tormented Soul excluded, is it just as simple as the Force of Will? He still not better than the 2CMC options like Augury Owl?

Kaito Shizuki thoughts? I'm worried that the CMC3 for the -2 is the wrong tempo/timing, but, he does come in, make a unblockable, then phase out to also get the draw next turn. If you don't need the unblockable, it's draw 2 for CMC3, tough to see hitting his ultimate at 7. 3CMC planeswalker are usually good, some I'm tempted to think this one will be too? But I have no play experience on this deck.

I just can't get my head around the flying evasion guys though, Faerie Seer, Spectral Sailor, Wingcrafter, Augury Owl, Sage Owl. They feel "sub-optimal" to me and difficult to include, but as I said what's the critical mass here? I was considering Baleful Strix in the 2CMC drop, just because he replaces himself in hand (which may just be discarded anyway, but looting never that bad anyway), with deathtouch less likely to be blocked by flying/reach, and he can be an effective (deathtouch) defender.

I've roughed in "12" for the timebeing.

Honestly my first thought was this is a turbo-draw to tutor, fish-pact/fish-consul strategy. I was looking at Tatsunari, Toad Rider instead, but I think I like "big splashy spells" more than the aristocrats method. So that got me thinking, what the heck do I win with, is this viable or am I off-base here:

Primary: Thassa's Oracle + Demonic Consultation or Tainted Pact ASAP / Draw for tutors

Tertiary Maverick 'Turn and Burn': Temporal Trespass, Temporal Mastery, Temporal Manipulation, Capture of Jingzhou with perhaps something like Sea Gate Restoration  Flip or Dig Through Time as possible damage enablers in addition to the 'turn'.

I skipped Secondary intentionally, is there no room here for a Doomsday? I can think of multiple stacks with varied CMC, E.G. if devotion to blue 3 + Doomsday + Thassa's Oracle (BBBUU) is a win, if you don't have Thassa's Oracle, somethig like Doomsday + Gitaxian Probe/Street Wraith into a Night's Whisper or something could be around CMC7, Gush kinda useless here for a CMC3 (BBB) stack.

Thoughts on that? I see you intentionally don't run the fish, but this seems viable for this deck?

For Scheming Symmetry doesn't the player just pull a counterspell to stop your win, does it really "win on the spot", if you have to pass it feels useless, but with Nashi, Moon Sage's Scion or Opposition Agent it does work. Reliability? I "should"? run it?

Has Mutavault been enough value for a possible swing vs. the downside of the colorless mana? It dodges board wipe and is a ninja, so kinda-of makes sense to me, but I'm on the fence?

Also, would avoiding the enters tapped lands be better? E.G. Drowned Catacomb, Mystic Sanctuary, Sunken Hollow be far better as say City of Brass, Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth, River of Tears, Etc.?

I do have TOO MANY potential colorless mana Ancient Tomb, Gemstone Caverns, Reliquary Tower, Strip Mine. I feel like Reliquary Tower is a trap and I should remove, where I feel like, what's my strategy vs. a Glacial Chasm or Maze of Ith.

It's still a work in progress, I think I need more Ninjas then I have, still evaluating them one by one, and trying to figure out what each tutor gets me, but first I need to know what my win-con plans are to know what i'm looking for!

Thanks for any feedback you can provide.

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