Howling Mine
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Legality

Format Legality
1v1 Commander Legal
Archenemy Legal
Arena Legal
Block Constructed Legal
Canadian Highlander Legal
Casual Legal
Commander / EDH Legal
Commander: Rule 0 Legal
Custom Legal
Duel Commander Legal
Gladiator Legal
Highlander Legal
Historic Legal
Historic Brawl Legal
Legacy Legal
Leviathan Legal
Limited Legal
Modern Legal
Oathbreaker Legal
Oldschool 93/94 Legal
Planechase Legal
Premodern Legal
Quest Magic Legal
Tiny Leaders Legal
Vanguard Legal
Vintage Legal

Howling Mine

Artifact

At the beginning of each player's draw step, if Howling Mine is untapped, that player draws an additional card.

StopShot on Is Staff of Completion a …

3 days ago

I'm a bit late to the discussion, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say cards like Temple Bell and by extension Horn of Greed are not bad cards and they're perfectly fine to run in non-group-hug // non-wheel decks.

I see the argument that one card for you is collectively three cards for your opponents, but last I checked, hardly ever do all three of those cards get aimed at you to begin with unless you're running a tier 0 meta-deck against a group of casuals who already see you as the archenemy. Do you want to know what is also one card for you, three for your opponents? The draw steps taken by you and all your opponents, so by the same logic it would imply you already start off with a massive disadvantage the moment you start any game which is just silly. Like, how could a seven-card hand ever beat a collective 21-card hand that is your opponents'?

Let me put it another way, if my opponent plays a Temple Bell by the same logic for every one card that Temple Bell gives me, it's collectively giving three cards to my opponents. When applied by that perspective doesn't that not make Temple Bell sound like a serious threat of a card to my game plan? Well, it's not. The logic just doesn't hold when put to practice.

Now look, if there was another card with the same CMC that had "{T}: Draw a card." Then yes, that would be serious leagues better than Temple Bell. If something like that exists for you to slot in definitely make the cut or hell, why not run both? Both is fine in my opinion.

My analysis on Temple Bell is that it is mostly good, not amazing, but definitely serviceable. Its only con is that you're using up a card to effectively double the number of draw steps for everyone. If this was a 1v1 format having a one-card disadvantage just to alter the flow of the game is just gimping yourself for a loss unless you have some serious payoff tied to both you and your opponent drawing extra cards. In a multiplayer format where wins and losses can be heavily dictated by how much the table wants to gang up on someone Temple Bell's drawback is incredibly negligible when compared to the forces that are beyond your control. (Though if you wanted to, you could argue giving your opponent's extra cards can have some political sway over how much they would be willing to team against you which can be a pro in of itself, but I digress.)

Temple Bell has two pro's that I'd argue make it worth it over its one con, but the trade-off is very debatable so let your preferences be the deciding factor here.

(1) One pro to consider is, if you play a game of EDH and in this scenario everyone's decks were perfectly balanced such that those decks could consistently win by turn 8 always, then the player with the best chance of winning in that scenario would likely be whoever started the first turn of the game as that player would reach their 8th turn before everyone else could take their own 8th turn. Your odds of being the first player is not favorable and if the probability of drawing something game changing is what your deck is banking on for a win, then Temple Bell changes the dynamic almost as if you were the player that had started first. That is to say if it is turn 7 and you're going last you can tap Temple Bell to draw your eighth card on turn 7 and while this will also give your opponents their eighth card at the same time, it will be during your main phase while everyone else will have to wait for their main phase after yours before they can use any sorcery speed card they may have drawn. Keep in mind this only impacts effective turn order where card draw is concerned as it doesn't affect other aspects such as additional land drops and additional combat steps. Also keep in mind Temple Bell benefits you only every other card drawn such as in this scenario your opponents will still draw their 9th card before you, but you'll still be able to effectively draw and use your 10th card before them and so on. Do note this is still much better than having your opponents always drawing and using their Xth card before you do without Temple Bell in the same scenario. And in scenarios where you're the player who goes first where your draw step always comes before everyone else's draw step, having Temple Bell effectively double up on your draw step which only furthers the advantage of going first. These are advantages you wouldn't get with Howling Mine and Font of Mythos and is why Temple Bell and Horn of Greed should be seen as a serious upgrades from those cards.

(2) The other pro is that giving your opponents more cards in situations where one of your opponents is in the lead makes it much easier for the table to gang up on them and set them back, and in situations where you're in the lead you can simply choose not to ring the bell just to maintain your advantage. You can make the counterargument of what good is a card if it has no use under a given scenario, but the only scenario where it doesn't have a use is if you already happen to be winning. Would you really scrap a card that could save a game you would have lost if it can't be counted as a win-more type card? At worse it will definitely prolong games, but I'd hardly ever say it hands a win to an opponent on a silver platter. If an opponent was able to power through three opponents that had extra card fodder to throw at them then it likely wasn't a game you were going to win without the Temple Bell anyway. This is one advantage I'd give Temple Bell over Horn of Greed, but if your deck has a means of removing the horn easily when you're ahead then they'll both work great especially if you're operating a deck that can easily fly under the radar of your opponents.

To conclude this massive word wall I want to restate, Temple Bell is a serviceable card. Not amazing and not bad either. As always, if you can find a similar replacement that gives only you card draw with negligible drawback, that should always be the better pick, but again there's also nothing wrong with running both. If a card isn't breaking anything in your deck, then why make an excuse to fix it?

nuperokaso on Brian Stacks' Anvil (E)

1 month ago

fluffyeel on The apocalypse (Sheoldred)

1 month ago

Yay, darkness. Here are some thoughts that might synergize with your deck:

Elocutiona on Owling Mirror (Dandân homebrew)

2 months ago

predation We've actually found in playtesting that deciding when to play a Howling Mine is quite a balancing act :)

All else being equal, it's usually better to wait for your opponent to play theirs, since you can bounce it back to their hand, and of course they're the one spending the mana on it. Relic Barrier further reinforces this, since tapping down your own mine means neither player draws a card, while you can tap down theirs such that only they draw a card, making their mine a liability. The best way to use the mines seems to be as finishers once you have the tools to capitalise on it. The ideal turn 5 hand would be something like casting two mines, holding up a red mana for Runeflare Trap on the opponent's turn, dealing huge burst damage out of nowhere. You can get away with casting mines early in the game, but it's a risky play, not to mention that your mana could be spent on playing owls, or even drawing cards deliberately to dig for damage sources before your opponent can find them, since you'll be discarding to hand size anyway.

In sum, it actually tends to become a pretty tense game of chicken, with constant risk vs. reward evaluation on both sides. Waiting for the right time to put your mines on the board has definitely contributed to that :)

Godzilla2012 on Sage of Hours

2 months ago

Unfortunately, I haven't used this deck since 2016, and now that I exclusively play EDH/Commander, I don't think I will be making any changes to this deck. I did add Elven Rite, Earthen Arms, and Howling Mine to the Maybeboard for Thewayoflife234, as well as Collected Company for b0n3m4r3.

nuperokaso on You want more cards? You can’t handle more cards!

6 months ago

leon_bulminot on Advertise your COMMANDER deck!

6 months ago

deck chart

Animar Horde 4

Commander / EDH leon_bulminot

46 VIEWS | IN 1 FOLDER

So this is the...4th or 5th or 100th iteration? I'm honestly not sure. But 4th decklist I put up.

So!!! Main goal of this deck is interaction. My interaction with the opponents is smacking you with Animar. My counterspells are reducing life to 0. My ramping is how many +1 counters can I stack on Animar before my hand runs out.

Jokes aside, the philosophy of this deck is "I'm playing Magic. You're playing Magic. I don't care what you do. I'm playing Magic on my turn. Because my turn is my turn, no matter what you play."

Obviously that has some downsides to interaction with the board. The upside is that it definitely lessens a focus on worrying about what your opponents will counter and more about who looks like they're bleeding the most, and how to get more.

Trying to focus a bit more on creatures doimg things, which is why if a creature could do it, I replaced artifacts and sorceries and instants with Creatures.

Kami of the Crescent Moon replaced Howling Mine. Mana equivalent or less is what I tried to go for. Hence why no Gaea's Cradle. I am pondering The Great Henge but I'm not sure how I'd manage it for now.

Andramalech on The Iron Giant

9 months ago

Profet93 for each response!

  • Expedition Map was already in the list and likely to return.

  • Howling Mine will stay out of the list, it was just a colorless draw I could remember.

  • The Kozilek suggestions are bomb dot com and I hadn't used them in favor of more artifact-specific body presence. However, pretending to be blue is a great comparison and both of those variants have a spot here.

  • Land Fetching is great and all, and surprisingly Field of the Dead... might be useful. I mean you're right on the regard of Myriad Landscape and it's intention, but Environmental Sciences had a spot in the list. I think maybe I just need to trim the list.. somehow.

Feedback was super helpful and I think I'll need to shed some flavor from the list in favor of more function. Thanks again!

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