Halimar Excavator

Creature — Human Wizard Ally

Whenever Halimar Excavator or another Ally enters the battlefield under your control, target player puts the top X cards of his or her library into his or her graveyard, where X is the number of Allies you control.

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
Modern Beyond Horizons	Legal
Oathbreaker	Legal
Pauper	Legal
Pauper Duel Commander	Legal
Pauper EDH	Legal
Planar Constructed	Legal
Planechase	Legal
Quest Magic	Legal
Tiny Leaders	Legal
Vanguard	Legal
Vintage	Legal

Discussion (50)

Crl255 on Turn 4, Mill 600 Cards Please... [Primer]

8 months ago

Lol, I made a deck just like this before I found this website, it even had Halimar Excavator.

KongMing on Allies From The Grave

8 months ago

You're missing out on a crucial piece of this combo, Halimar Excavator and Jwari Shapeshifter. You can mill your opponent and yourself out much faster to generate targets for recursion this way. You can also go for a mill win. Get rid of the Helm of Possession, Maskwood Nexus, Gideon Ally of Zendikar for a playset of these two, maybe even cut a couple Ondu Clerics.

Also, Eerie Interlude has interesting interaction with Bala Ged Thief, just a thought...

nuperokaso on Esper Allies

9 months ago

• Don't play Counterspell. You tap out most of your turns, and the double blue is not going to work with your mana base.
• Don't play blue at all. Halimar Excavator in this build is weak, as you have only 2 March from the Tomb as a payoff. And that is also not the best. Void Rend can be replaced by a lot of other removals.
• You should avoid 5 mana cards. With only 20 lands in your deck, you won't be able to play them.
• Play 4 Hada Freeblade. It's the best turn 1 play you have.
• An aggro deck needs some other 1 mana plays as well. I would suggest maybe some 2 Expedition Envoy, 2 Changeling Outcast and 1 Cliffside Lookout. That would bring the number of 1 mana creatures in your deck to 9, which is about right if you want to have one in your opening hand.
• Retreat to Emeria and Kor Entanglers are garbage. Don't play any of them.
• Don't play more than 1 Lantern Scout. Second copy does pretty much nothing. Talus Paladin is better and you should play 2-3.
• In the end, you have to decide whether you want to go all-in on life-gain/drain, or all-in on attacking and +1/+1 counters. Now you are split and then you do neither efficiently.
• The path with attacking is probably better. In that case, you want to play 4 Kazandu Blademaster, 4 Bojuka Brigand, 4 Kabira Evangel, a few Rally the Ranks and remove Cliffhaven Vampire, Ondu Cleric.
• If you go with life-gain, add 4 Serene Steward

wallisface on

1 year ago

ampersand_09 to get to 9 mana by turn 5, you effectively need to be playing your land drop every turn as well as some form of ramp on those first 3-4 turns. With 19 lands you only have a 23% chance of making your land drop on each of the first 5 turns, and with only 11 ramp cards your odds of scraping the extra 4 mana put if those is even more grim. I’m not seeing how this is happening reliably at all.

I would be swapping the counters (and Coco) for mor lands and more ramo, as well as 2 more Spellskite, and maybe something like Summoner's Pact so you can more reliably get Halimar Excavator into play.

Romer on General Tazri's Allied Corps

1 year ago

elliotmward97 sometimes yes, though it depends on which ally you’re talking about because different allies have different effects.

For the more powerful allies, you’ve got it right. Something like Hagra Diabolist will deal damage = [number of allies entering the battlefield] x [total allies, including those entering the battlefield]. So if you had the Diabolist in play with one other ally and then 2 more allies ETB, you’d have target opponent lose 8 life (4 allies total x 2 ally ETB triggers).

This calculation also applies to allies like Halimar Excavator, Ondu Cleric and Murasa Pyromancer.

Some of the ally triggers are pretty simple though, so Umara Raptor just gets a +1/+1 counter for each ally ETB. If two allies ETB at once, then the raptor gets two +1/+1 counters - he doesn’t care about the number of allies you control.

legendofa on halimar pauper

1 year ago

Apologies for the double.post, but this deck also doesn't have any way to get multiple creatures in play at the same time. Casting normally, each Halimar Excavator's ability needs to resolve before the next one can be cast. "Flicker" cards like Displace and Ghostly Flicker can get you the effect you're looking for, and Ghostly Flicker can also help Iceberg Cancrix as you flicker lands.

wallisface on Ally mill ish

2 years ago

Some thoughts:

• you’ll never be able to mill anyone out as the deck currently stands. I’d suggest ditching mill cards like Halimar Excavator as they’re not going to help you (and will probably enable any graveyard strategies the opponent has).

• Supreme Verdict in a creature-based deck seems like a bad idea.

• Your deck doesn’t support Emeria, The Sky Ruin at all - you have no way to accelerate lands into play, pretty-much no card draw, and a pretty low land count… on average you’ll need to draw half your deck to see 7 planes, that’s turn 22ish… it’s not happening.

• I’d suggest ditching Ephemerate and Feeling of Dread. You have no good Ephemerate targets, and Feeling of Dread i think is probably just a bad card.

to_regatha_and_beyond on Busted Ally Deck

2 years ago

Good synergies you're establishing!

A few cards I would cut:

• Maskwood Nexus, you can't really use its first ability for much since every creature in the deck is an ally, and its activated ability isn't really powerful enough to bring it to the same level as the rest of your cards.
• Halimar Excavator isn't going to be super useful since you aren't really running enough mill to make it particularly viable as a strategy.

A few additions I would make:

• Tajuru Warcaller can often give your creatures +4/+4 each turn, with Panharmonicon that number goes up even more. Super helpful.
• Beastcaller Savant can provide some mana-fixing and ramp, which is quite useful in a 5-color deck, while also being an ally.
• Hada Freeblade is a great play for turn 1, as it will likely be a 2/3 by the time it attacks and will be huge by the late game.
• City of Brass instead of some of those vivid lands, it's faster as it enters untapped and it can profuce any color later in the game as well. If you're willing to spend a lot more money, you could use Mana Confluence instead because it's techically better, but in my opinion the price difference isn't really worth it.

If you're going to add a sideboard, I would include these cards:

• Kabira Evangel, it can be very helpful when you're playing against monocolored decks or removal-heavy / burn decks.
• Drana's Chosen can help by generating extra tokens in case your opponent runs a lot of spells that make you sacrifice creatures, or they can be used as chump-blockers.