Gitaxian Probe

Sorcery

({UP} can be paid with either {U} or 2 life.)

Look at target player's hand.

Draw a card.

Combos

• Gitaxian Probe + Golgari Grave-Troll + Underworld Breach

Legality

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

Discussion (50)

smilodex on Best Commanders in EDH [Tier List]

5 days ago

@Sephyrias: Raffine is good in many ways. She is evasive, has built-in protection, is fairly cheap to cast and in good colors. She generates value in the form of looting and buffs creatures, which can be good for so many valid competitive strategies like Doomsday, pseudo-Farm, Hatebears, reanimator, etc.

In our opinion there are differences between Evelyn, Anhelo and Zevlor. Sure, they could all win with a certain magecraft combo, but not only the combos matter, also synergy and a lot of other important points like overall gameplay value are part of the evaluation.

Zevlor for example can be part of Dramatic Scepter Combo, and he also breaks some cards like Intuition, Jeska's Will, Praetor's Grasp, Gitaxian Probe/Peek, Thoughtseize etc.

Anhelo is a 3 mana (mostly) do nothing, until you can sacrifice a creature to copy a spell. At least he has good colors and is a 1/3 with deathtouch, but Kess is in most usecases straight up better in competitive games.

Most of the time, we can compare commanders to already existing ones. Evelyn can be compared to Jeleva, Nephalia's Scourge, but Jeleva is one mana cheaper, and you have the ability to cast some good spells for free. One of the upsides of Evelyn is the fact that you can straight up win the game with the Worldgorger Dragon combo, BUT this upside is also a bit of a downside, since this combo is way too easy to interrupt and if you mess up, you straight up lose the game.

The list looks a bit different now, since we had to split the Tierlist. We didn't move Alela in a long time. Even if you have to jump through some hoops, Liara Portyr can generate quite some value with Wotc currently printing a ton of good red and white cards, with synergetic effects like myriad and other exile mechanics.

The Eloise, Nephalia Sleuth + March of the Machines combo is very slow and expensive and these cards aren't that great outside the specific combo, whereas Siona is very cheap to cast and also helps to search for the combo piece or a stax piece, while you can slow down the game with stax. Another big upside for Siona is, that she can win through most common hate pieces like Rule of Law.

@knusperklotz: You're kinda right, Baba Lysaga, Night Witch is a shaky candidate. I think she has the potential to be a high power commander. She can grind a lot of value in longer games, but he needs quite some set up to get going. We decided to first put her into mid tier, because she's in Lightning Bolt range and has no impact when she enters the battlefield. But she's definitely one of the better mid commanders. It's also very likely that we put her into high power when wotc release more synergetic cards for this commander.

cyeRunner on 【Emotional】▷ RANT ◁ WOTC's GREED has RUINED MODERN

5 days ago

I think WotC has lost track of what they want to do with modern, there are a lot of cards on the banlist because they can be cast without using mana: Once Upon a Time, Mental Misstep, Gitaxian Probe, Dread Return, Blazing Shoal and Eye of Ugin making your Eldrazi-Spells free.
Legacy should be the format of free spells; Not modern and printing the Evoke Elementals in a Set designed for modern contradicts that philosophy. The Evoke cost should have included {B}/{G}/{R}/{U}/{W} in addition to the exiling of the card in hand.

Regarding the pricing: I agree on your point that there are too many mythic rare pushed card that make the mondern High-Tier decks too expensive and WotC should change something about that. The pricing and the fact that Modern went from a turn 4 format to a turn 3 - 2 1/2 format makes Pioneer more and more attractive.

Regarding bans: there are currently 2 engines that dominate the Metagame:

• The 4c Elementals using Omnath, Locus of Creation and Wrenn and Six for Value and the free Evoke Elementals for Interaction represented in the 2 decks 4c Elementals and 4c Blink:
  I think Omnath needs to go for the following reasons: it replaces itself, provides t5 enough mana to also play Fury or Solitude, can be pitches for the Evoke costs and gains life against aggro decks. That's just too much for a single card, especially if you compare it to our Lord and Savior.
• The other is the UR engine around Ragavan, DRC and Expressive Iteration presented in decks like Murktide and Death's Shadow:
  The problem with these decks is that they are too effective in what they do in comparison to decks of the same arctype not running that engine, so they just need to be turned down a bit.
  For this reason i'd like to see Mishra's Bauble go: Pushing cards like DRC, Expressive Iteration, Unholy Heat and Ledger Shredder from "good" to "too good" makes this card a reasonable ban without destroying the decks.
• On a personal note: I'd like to have Teferi, Time Raveler banned. Interaction is what makes this game fun and having a card that says "I play magic, you play Hearthstone" is the opposite of that.

Thank you for coming to my Ted talk.

Niko9 on Does this infinite combo with …

2 weeks ago

I like it! Looks like a fun combo, and yep, seems like it would work.

What do you think about Aetherflux Reservoir to go with your infinite spell casting? It would also give you the option to use phyrexian mana spells like Gitaxian Probe to start the combo on 0 mana. After the first two casts, the probe will be netting you life, and will go into reservoir's second ability.

You could also use something like Birgi, God of Storytelling  ^Flip and Lightning Bolt then every other spell cold be bolt and every other could be Needle Drop for double infinite : )

I think the hard part of this deck will be getting the right creatures on board in what's largely a spells deck. It's doable, for sure, but may take a lot of work testing.

And, maybe Angel's Grace might be good in this deck in general. If you plan to be recasting things over and over, that's a great way to stall : )

Roboticwarrior on Official missing/incorrect card/token thread

4 weeks ago

Hello. Was making my first Legacy deck on this site and its showing my deck is legal in Legacy with Gitaxian Probe in it. Not a big deal, just confused me for a second and had to look up it legality on the gatherer because the Gitaxian Probe page on this site is incorrect.

azja on Yuriko (Optimized) Primer

3 months 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!

lagotripha on Need help rebuilding an old …

3 months ago

Over the last few years, modern has changed a lot, and the cards printed in MH2 have really pushed the game's power curve higher.

A lot of the budget brews I did 5 years ago are no longer viable, and even teir 1 decks need serious work-overs. There are options, but its important to look at how your local meta has changed rather than leaning too hard on generic advice.

The most important cards to get to grips with to know how the metagame has shifted;

Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer - card advantage, ramp, it goes in every deck that can afford it, until wizards finally gets around to a banning.

Solitude,Grief and the rest of the cycle made flicker effects very good.

Expressive Iteration - its card advantage that is defining R/U

Counterspell has been printed into modern.

Prismatic Ending (and recently, March of Otherworldly Light) has replaced Path to Exile as it hits all nonland cards, making enchantress/noncreature combos more vulnerable.

Dauthi Voidwalker, which is killing graveyard interactions.

Mishra's Bauble is out there pretending to be Gitaxian Probe, making every deck 4 cards smaller or more when it can be cast from the graveyard (though less now Luurus is banned).

Triomes, fetches for multiple colours, treasures etc mean that there are a lot of '4-5 colour good stuff' type lists, or two colour decks just splashing for one card.

Hammer time is no longer a meme.

Crashing Footfalls/Living end got some incredible cascade/cycling cards, so have a plan for lots of creatures early.

'Competitive' B/R is mostly just jamming voidwalker, pilferer then thoughtsieze/lightning bolt.

All of that said, there are options.Black/Red has just got a glut of tokens, that point to artifact sacrifice or similar shenanigans - I've had fun messing around with Glaze Fiend/Slaughter-Priest of Mogis. I can't say its competitive, but its not completely out of the running.

Asmoranomardicadaistinaculdacar/The Underworld Cookbook. He offers removal, life gain graveyard synergy and card advantage.

Kalain, Reclusive Painter creature buffs, tokens and ramp.

Oni-Cult Anvil makes 1/1 artifact tokens and pings.

Rakdos Headliner points to more discard strategies, but doesn't yet have enough support cards.

Brew hard, and best of luck finding something that works for your modern group.

akki007 on Death's Shadow

3 months ago

Attempting to make this modern playable, sans sideboard. I'm of the opinion that your 60 card pile IS your pile

So to start:

Removed

-2x Sulfurous Springs
-2x Underground River
-2x Gitaxian Probe
-2x Ponder
-2x Preordain
-1x Brainstorm
-1x Lurrus of the Dream-Den
-1x Thoughtseize

Added

+4x Scalding Tarn
+2x Dress Down
+3x Opt
+3x Consider
+1x Inquisition of Kozilek

Spirits on Yuriko (Optimized) Primer

3 months 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.