Gurmag Angler

Creature — Zombie Fish

Delve (Each card you exile from your graveyard while casting this spell pays for .)

Discussion (51)

channelfireball12345 on Kinochirophobia

4 days ago

Well I guess it's always better to have a lower curve than a higher one, but I'd say it's also important to be mindful of curving out in order to maximize the value you get from playing lands, which is very difficult to do with a deck comprised exclusively of one and two drops, as it requires you to cast a higher number of cards from your hand on a given turn. This is compounded by the fact that your deck includes cards like Rotting Rats, as well as certain cards in the maybeboard, that require both players to discard cards; it seems like an inevitability that your deck will eventually slow to a halt once you run out of impactful things to play/cards to force your opponent to discard from their hand; that's always been the biggest thing I've disliked about dedicated discard strategies, and probably the only significant deterrent preventing me from brewing one up myself. Your deck is also lacking a true finisher; with all the cards that will inevitably end up in your graveyard over the course of the first few turns of the game, it may not be a bad idea to try out Gurmag Angler. A few other curve-smoothing options for you include Thorn of the Black Rose, Phyrexian Rager, Dusk Legion Zealot, and then maybe Bone Picker and Gray Merchant of Asphodel for a way to close out the game once your opponent is out of action. Defile and Snuff Out offer some nice, efficient removal as well, for adaptability's sake. I hope you find my suggestions helpful, and that I did a decent job of explaining mana curve to you.

ephraimctr on Arcanist GDS

1 week ago

Interesting build. I like the inclusion of Crash Through for Dreadhorde Arcanist to recast. It seems really land heavy though and I don’t think the fast lands are really necessary. Dark Confidant is also not very good at accelerating the growth of Death's Shadow since he doesn’t really let you stabilize and can potentially kill you if you flip a Gurmag Angler. I’d throw in three more copies of Thoughtseize if you have them since they are one of the best non land ways to control your life total. Other than that it’s a spicy build. +1

MrMortifex145 on Dimir Control - 2020

2 weeks ago

Poseidon31 Yeah Cast Down is the better removal now, it's just that I don't really want to order just two cards lol and I use tappedout a lot to remember my paper decklists so I didn't update it. The one drops you listed are good, but it kind of beats the purpose of the deck. I have many tapped lands so that in the late game I can out-control my opponent, and to actually win I need cards in the graveyard to delve Gurmag Angler, so Forbidden Alchemy is my go to card. Also in my experience not too much happens in the first turn, at least nothing that I can't deal with later on. You can use all those cards, they're good cards but maybe it's better to play Dimir Faries or UR instead.

MrMortifex145 on Mono Black Control - 2020

3 weeks ago

LeaPlath Yeah Cast Down was actually the card I was most excited about, but in the end it wasn't as useful in the current meta. The top tier decks are Stompy, Faries, Tron and Boros. The only scary black creature in these decks is Gurmag Angler and it is only in the Dimir version of Faries and it's at most two copies. And MBC has effectively died out in my experience, if for some reason people start playing it again or black creatures become more prevalent, adding Cast Down will be the right choice, for now Chainer's Edict and Defile can take care of the occasional splash. And Cast Down has a major downside, like all targeted removal, which is Tron interaction. Whenever they flicker something in response to a target, that target is no longer legal, but an edict effect doesn't target anything and the only thing necessary is after all the flickering nonsense is that a creature gets sacrificed, hence the two Geth's Verdict in the Sideboard instead of Cast Down. Personally I like Defile more than Cast Down because it has better tempo and there a lot of 2/2 and 3/2 that are threats. And for the non swamp options for my personal preference the mana base is good, non swamps black sources come tapped, as far as I know, and two Bojuka Bog are more than enough, 17 and potentially 19 untapped mana is such a good feeling lol.

PuddinWing on UB 8-Delver

4 weeks ago

With the prominence of Gurmag Angler, my choices of Lapse and Memories are here to deny cards from entering my opponent’s graveyard. I would love to find room for Street Wraith though and it’s a toss up for me between Fumes and Decay. But I also don’t want this to become a copy/paste of other Delver decks.

Blackberry_PR on Dredge/ Delve

4 weeks ago

ponderthewonder I'll take your advice for cards that replenish my library. But the whole purpose of this deck is delving so I can pay for creatures without using mana. Dredging is mainly for boosting my creatures. The card Gurmag Angler delves cards in exchange for mana which allows me to play other creatures and spells for free. I dredge for +1/+1 counters on creatures and I delve for free mana.

hungry000 on Death Bird Aristocrats

1 month ago

Thanks! I've found in testing that if this deck doesn't have Bone Picker, it often loses to chump blockers (if opponent has some sort of clock or combo), so the trample from Rancor is extremely useful. So the one in the main board is most definitely not an afterthought, and the card itself is pretty essential in stalled board states. In fact, I'll probably go back up to 2 Rancor after I run thes a few more times, since it almost always performs well.

My original builds of this deck all had Unearth in them, and frankly I find the card underwhelming. Since the deck doesn't play any 3 cmc creatures and the 2 cmc ones it does play aren't very powerful on their own, the ceiling on Unearth is really low. At best, it brings back a 2 mana 2/2 or a sac-able 1/1 for 1 mana. If the game ever gets to the point where I'm casting Unearth to get back destroyed creatures from the graveyard, I think I'd much rather be casting Winding Way or a Gurmag Angler instead, and I feel that reducing early game consistency by cutting creatures for a mid-late game payoff isn't where this deck wants to be.

I could go more in depth on that and talk about card advantage but I'm a bit lazy

Xica on Silent Scepter

1 month ago

We live in a day where Wild Nacatl, is not the "creature so strong it need a ban", its an insignificantcard that doesn't see play anymore.

Punishing Fire is terribly weak, when it faces card like Gurmag Angler, Bedlam Reveler, Thing in the Ice  ^Flipand the likes.