Haunting Voyage

Sorcery

Choose a creature type. Return up to two creature cards of that type from your graveyard to the battlefield. If this spell was foretold, return all creature cards of that type from your graveyard to the battlefield instead.

Foretell {5}{B}{B} (During your turn, you may pay {2} and exile this card from your hand face down. Cast it on a later turn for its foretell cost.)

Legality

Format	Legality
1v1 Commander	Legal
Alchemy	Legal
Arena	Legal
Block Constructed	Legal
Brawl	Legal
Canadian Highlander	Legal
Commander / EDH	Legal
Commander: Rule 0	Legal
Duel Commander	Legal
Gladiator	Legal
Highlander	Legal
Historic	Legal
Legacy	Legal
Leviathan	Legal
Limited	Legal
Modern	Legal
Oathbreaker	Legal
Pioneer	Legal
Pre-release	Legal
Standard	Legal
Vintage	Legal
Casual	Legal
Custom	Legal
Quest Magic	Legal

Discussion (39)

HerbivoreDragon on Ur-Dragon's Multiverse Onslaught | *PRIMER*

1 week ago

What a nicely written Baldur's Gate Update MattN7498!!

When Wrathful Red Dragon got spoiled i also knew right from the start this is gonna be a staple in Dragon Tribal Decks, period. Same goes for Thrakkus the Butcher. Doubling the attackpower of every Dragon you control? Insane. Giving them trample via Garruk's Uprising for example and double strike via Atarka, World Render or a quick The Ur-Dragon trigger into Sylvia Brightspear in addition and we look at a pretty effective Overrun.

I think we still don't quite get how powerful Miirym, Sentinel Wyrm will be in this deck, it's gonna be almost hilarious. Double Terror of the Peaks and Scourge of Valkas triggers are going to make me smile, haha.

I switched Crux of Fate (i know, i know..) for Blasphemous Act as my Playgroup tends to steal my cards, so they use Crux of Fate to wipe the board with all my dragons or i can't wipe their board as they control MY dragons. With Blasphemous Act i make sure everything dies and comes back to MY graveyard, it also serves as a finisher with Blasphemous Act + Wrathful Red Dragon , shoot x times 13 Damage at non-Dragon targets, including life totals, where x is the number of Dragons you control. With Blasphemous Act you also have yet another way to get your Dragons into the Graveyard for mass reanimation spells like Patriarch's Bidding, Living Death, Haunting Voyage or Twilight's Call.

By the way I really like Twilight's Call as you can play it at instant speed which can be a game changer for example when someone tries to exile our graveyard. More often then not did the Foretell mechanic of Haunting Voyage hindered me by ONE turn to win the game and made me loose, which is why i changed it to Twilight's Call.

I wish cards like Old Gnawbone and Ancient Copper Dragon wouldn't be as expensive as they are, as they would also be a fine addition for my The Ur-Dragon Deck, for obvious reasons.

In general, you were a HUGE inspiration for my own iteration of an The Ur-Dragon Deck and i always come back to your Primer when i need some advice or thoughts on cards. So thank you for the write-up!

Some day I would love to show you my The Ur-Dragon Deck, as i would very much appreciate to hear your thoughts on some of my card picks! (I still need to post it on tappedout..)

Cheers!

RadicalCrawdadx on Pioneer Swarm Drain

2 weeks ago

Going to be replacing the two Patriarch's Bidding with Haunting Voyage, and Verdant Catacombs with three more Overgrown Tomb.

Guerric on Rhythm of War

1 month ago

Hi Doc_Hoss! It makes me so happy to see this! Trynn and Silvar are some of my favorite commanders, and are deeply underrated. I haven't had a chance to write a full primer for that deck yet (though I do have a detailed description), but the list is here-

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Time for a Scooby Snack!

Commander / EDH Guerric

SCORE: 3 | 161 VIEWS | IN 1 FOLDER

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My engine in the deck works incredibly well (I play it a lot, and have made lots of refinements) and consistently puts up threat and draws cards, sometimes without even casting the commander. The key to understanding them is that they lead an aggro deck and a humans tribal deck. While there is an aristocrats subtheme they aren't a total aristocrats strategy, and while they generate tokens they aren't a token deck. Ideally in this deck tokens are mostly fuel for drawing cards and making Silvar indestructible, and the aristocratic elements are a good deterrent to board wipes. I also find that they work well with an indestructible subtheme. Eldrazi Monument, for instance , is an all-star card here. We can always make tokens to fuel it with Trynn if no one else, and it protects our pieces while getting them all through for damage. It's also key here to protect our board state with cards like Eerie Interlude, which can even save us from Cyclonic Rift style board wipes or other pieces that recover our board like Gerrard, Weatherlight Hero and Haunting Voyage, or other indestructible effects. I'll give your list a more detailed look later when I have some more time, but those are some general guidelines!

Guerric on Dealing with politics as an …

1 month ago

Hi Dazard! What a great question! I avoided aggro strategies for awhile for this reason, but as my sneaky combo strategies are hard for some groups I play with to decode, I decided to make some good old honest aggro decks, and I think I've figured out a good balance.

To begin with, don't play like in a 60 card, 1v1 format. In those games you have little incentive not to go for broke all the time, and to commit all of your resources right away. In EDH there are several key principles of good aggro play.

One of them is controlled growth. Even if you can commit all of your resources to powerful plays early you shouldn't do so. You need to make sure that you set up card draw engines and other things to keep your tank full in the long run. You should be attacking, but keep in mind you don't need to attack with everything. Chip away at peoples' life totals rather than hitting one person hard. Once you slam one person you will be the archenemy of all, so don't do that till you are a turn or two from winning or they will destroy you. Knocking out an opponent early doesn't necessarily help as that person is a target for someone else and can help keep someone else under control.

A second principle is try to win all at once via pump effects. Its almost better to keep your tokens as 1/1s as long as possible and then suddenly in a single turn make them gamewinning with Coat of Arms, Shared Animosity, Jazal Goldmane, or Mirror Entity. Don't play these cards early either! Your opponents will just kill them, so play them the turn that you can win. Surprise is one of the most powerful things in EDH. If they know you can kill them you are a threat, if they don't see it coming you will win.

Thirdly is politics via threat assessment, not deals. Sometimes people just think of politics as bribery, but its better to simply point out what other opponents are doing. "Hmm..he just played Ashnod's Altar. That's a combo piece. What's he up to?" is far more powerful than promising not to attack someone. This is self-interested, but it is also helping your opponents play better by noticing more than obvious threats. When I play against aggro I might have a board wipe, and yet hold off if I'm not afraid of imminently dying to let the aggro player do some of my dirty work for me and keep attention away from the combo I am putting together. My one friend who has been quite good at aggro has become adept at pointing out what I am doing and keeping things honest. It's also a good idea with early attacks to take turns attacking different opponents for only a small amount of damage, or even rolling the dice to see who you'll attack first. If your opponents wonder why you're holding back you can just say somewhat honestly that you're trying to spread the love around and keep blockers and critical pieces in play.

A fourth principle is board state protection. Others mentioned Unbreakable Formation and Teferi's Protection as helpful cards. Don't forget also about Make a Stand, Flawless Maneuver, and Cosmic Intervention. The latter won't save your tokens, but it will save other pieces. The same is true with Eerie Interlude and Semester's End which can also dodge even a Cyclonic Rift. Lapse of Certainty can also delay a board wipe for a turn and waste your opponents' investment, and is good tech as well. Eldrazi Monument is also a good card, because you'll have endless tokens to fuel it, and all of your stuff will be flying and indestructible, keeping your opponents from easily stopping you. One final way in your deck is just by making board wipes painful, which you can do with aristocrats. Blood Artist and Syr Konrad, the Grim will make your opponent think twice about wiping the board. Again, don't commit too many resources at once, and hold up mana for protection. This helps with controlled growth and helps you rest easy during your opponents' turns.

A fifth principle that is great is to always have a backup plane for when things go wrong. One way to do this is to have a single infinite combo to win out of nowhere when things are down. When you're playing aggro opponents are always looking at your board state, but they can be taken by surprise when you combo the win. For Markov the best one is probably Exquisite Blood and Sanguine Bond. If your opponents can win with this stuff then its only fair that you can in a pinch too! This also fulfills the old idea talked about on MtgGoldfish that you should always have a way to win out of nowhere. The other and more honest way to do this is just to have a way to recover your board state. Patriarch's Bidding and Haunting Voyage can help you recover all of your creatures in a single turn. Having these backup plans will make life easier.

Don't get discouraged, aggro is better than ever in EDH today due to new board protection and recovery tech Wizards has printed and reprinted in the past couple of years. All you need to do is master the playstyle and you'll have a lot more fun and success!

Skaso on 5color Sliver

2 months ago

Yes the Locust God infinte combo is not really going with the flavor of my deck. I included Toxin Sliver, Brood Sliver and Kindred Summons. For funnzies added Mindlash Sliver, Basal Sliver, Enduring Renewal, but will change that for Diffusion Sliver, Haunting Voyage, Venom Sliver

MagicMarc on 5color Sliver

2 months ago

It is nice to see you making changes in a good direction with the deck!

Regarding your land; I would suggest spreading out your basics. You have a lot of plains but only a singleton or so in the other colors. Even it out as best you can since you are playing a 5 color deck. If anything, I would go higher on forests than any other basic because your mana slivers are green and your spells to get more land are green.

About the cards you added to the deck; I would drop Dormant Sliver, Metallic Sliver and The Locust God and add in Brood Sliver, Toxin Sliver, and Kindred Summons. Dormant Sliver is a trap. The card draw sounds awesome but when you play it you take away the one thing that slivers do best, Attack! You should never be on the defensive with a tuned sliver deck. Your opponents need to be. Metallic Sliver is a contradiction of Sliver Tribal. It is a vanilla sliver that adds no new ability to the tribe. It should never be in any Sliver deck. About the The Locust God. I understand how good this card is, but this is a Sliver deck and not a token Izzet deck. Save that for a different deck. Drop it for Galerider Sliver, Diffusion Sliver, or Venom Sliver. Seriously speaking, giving Slivers flying or death touch will just win games and you won't miss The Locust God.

About making more room in the deck; You have a lot of spells for a tribal creature deck and there is a little room to shave. I would suggest removing Aphetto Dredging, Bala Ged Recovery  ^Flip, and Chain Reaction. Aphetto Dredging just does not do enough in this deck. To begin with, you need to have played and lost three Slivers to see its total benefit. So if you arent losing Slivers or did not play any good ones, this card is dead in your hand in many games. I would try to get a copy of Haunting Voyage instead. Casting this can flip a game in your favor. It is the same with Bala Ged Recovery  ^Flip. No one Sliver is important enough to get back by itself so unless a card gets them all back or puts them into play then it is just sub-par. You already have a bunch of removal, maybe even too much so I would cut Chain Reaction. It is not one-sided and does not have any extra benefit. Replace all three of these with more slivers. Especially from the list I already suggested.

You need to focus on what the deck is. It's all about Slivers. Any card in your deck that is not a Sliver should already have it's value questioned by you. So it has to do something great to win games or help you win games to stay in the deck. Anything else can be cut for more Slivers.

Most of your other cards are good support, removal or counters. I think you could still shave a few more cards but I would wait to see after you make adjustments and play the deck for a while before cutting anything else. Once you have more Slivers in the deck and in play during games you should see a big change in it's performance.

awatts30 on Varina

2 months ago

Thanks, Guerric! There’s a lot to parse here, so I may take it in parts.

Firstly, the extra lands are temporary. My target is 36, but I had 13 extra spells, so I added 7 basics (35% rate) to be able to goldfish effectively. Sometimes I can learn a bit more about the deck and make changes that way. As I pare down spells, I’ll take out lands too. I thought about Crucible of Worlds, but opted against it because it would change my play style, but without tutors or duplicate effects it’s too high-variance.

The Stifle is mostly there to stop graveyard hate, which tends to be one-off abilities (Bojuka Bog, Scavenger Grounds, Tormod's Crypt, Relic of Progenitus) and which could really mess up my plans. That’s a good point on Dovin's Veto; maybe I’ll swap it for a Negate.

I really like Reconnaissance because it not only allows me to attack into unfavorable board states but also gives pseudo-vigilance, allowing me to commit all my zombies without worrying about the crack back. Anything to maximize those Varina triggers! Flawless Maneuver might need to come out, though.

I’ve used Plumb the Forbidden to great effect in my Mazirek deck. Since it’s instant speed, it’s really good at turning creatures that would die to unfavorable combat or a board wipe into card advantage, and since it’s 2 CMC I can always just put the mana into Varina if I don’t wind up needing it. I had Kindred Discovery in there originally, but in a deck that’s both ETBing and swinging this much it seemed like overkill (plus it’s crazy expensive). A lot of my perspective on card draw may need to change, too. Like I said, I’m not used to using my graveyard, and while Varina let’s me look at a lot, I’m still uncomfortable throwing cards away. After all, they’re all in there because I want to cast them! I need to get better at choosing what to pitch (which is kind of the whole point of making this deck), but corollary to that is figuring out how much draw-to-hand I need and how much I can lean on my ‘yard.

A lot of the deck techs I’ve looked at leaned into Varina’s activated ability. I didn’t much like that because (1) it makes her into a glorified token factory, (2) I want to push myself to use the cards in my graveyard, and (3) why would I want to spend 2 mana and two cards for a vanilla zombie when I can spend 2 mana and one card for a Corpse Knight, a Wayward Servant, or 3 mana for a Diregraf Captain. In the little bit of goldfishing I’ve done, though, she’s dumping cards so fast that exiling two of them isn’t even a problem. I had originally taken Tormod, the Desecrator out, but wound up putting him back in because of the number of cards I was exiling. I’d like to bring it back toward a reanimator strategy, and I think Syr Konrad, the Grim would be a good payoff for that.

You have a ton of good suggestions, including Crashing Drawbridge, Dusk / Dawn, Necromancy et al. (I knew there were others, I just couldn’t remember them!), Living Death/Rise of the Dark Realms, Haunting Voyage/Patriarch's Bidding, and the talismans, but I still need to cut 13 spells to even get down to 100 cards, and then more to make room for any of them. This is my problem!

Guerric on Varina

2 months ago

I think I can help with this deck! I've built a lot of tribal decks and have pondered building Varina myself. I like to help thoroughly, so I am going to give a bit of feedback, and might separate the posts out for convenience. I'll also upvote it and draw some others to this page to provide feedback as well!

To begin with, I commend the choice of avoiding infinite combos. Though Varina has a few, she can be plenty powerful without them and while I play a lot of combo decks myself, it gets boring sometimes. I guess we'll start with cards to cut, and then we'll get to direction and cards to add! To begin with, the first thing to cut is lands. 43 is way too many for any deck that isn't a landfall deck. I realize that you are playing Field of the Dead and that lands help it, but you won't see that card every dame due to no tutors, and its potential is limited without access to green. Playing Field is fine, and you may even want to play Crucible of Worlds so you can just discard your lands and play them from your graveyard and for synergy with Field, but don't get too excited about it. 37 is the golden mean for most decks in EDH, and with an engine commander like Varina I'd play 35 personally, though 36 could be a compromise. I also don't think you need Flawless Maneuver. When your zombies die you can just bring them back! I don't think you need Reconnaissance either. Your Zombies are fodder for the horde, and you can just bring them back. Just don't attack with Varina and you have nothing you need to worry about protecting. Lazotep Plating is fine, but you'll mostly use it to protect Varina, so I'd think of it as a protection spell. Void Rend's mana cost is prohibitively highly (3 colors is too much). I'd just play Generous Gift instead. Smothering Tithe is a great card that I play in three of my decks, but I wouldn't play it in Varina. Its a slow grindy card more suitable to control and combo decks, and you'd rather be casting Varina on turn 3 and Zombies or Zombie spells every turn after. I'm not sure if cEDH is what you usually play, but cards like Stifle and Songs of the Damned are often a bit one off and limited for standard EDH. The latter could maybe be fine for flavor, but I'd definitely cut the prior. If you want a more flexible spell play Disallow which will be a lot more flexible. Nykthos Paragon is a neat idea because it does something with your life gain, but it is pretty high costed at six and isn't a Zombie, so I might not play it, but it will bring slow value if it isn't killed.

I'd also cut down on your card draw pieces. I never say this, but with Varina you'll see lots of cards, and can play a lot from discard or the graveyard, so I'd focus on the highest impact one and cut some of the bad ones like Plumb the Forbidden. Cards like this have limitations because you have to sac them (versus letting them die in combat), and you won't always want to do that. The best ones are the high impact ones like Teferi's Ageless Insight and Alhammarret's Archive. I'd also cut Bontu's Monument. The ramp isn't very good and the aristocratic effect isn't as good as you think its going to be.

Now for what's great here- all of your Zombies. Seriously, it's a great list, all of them! You also really want to play a few cards from your maybe board too. Syr Konrad, the Grim is a must play. Seriously, it'll be the best card in the deck bard none. It's not an infinite combo, but he's amazing with recursion cards, board wipes, and death (more on that below). You also need to play Haunting Voyage and Patriarch's Bidding. They are in your maybe board and are must plays!