Iona, Shield of Emeria

Legendary Creature — Angel

Flying

As Iona, Shield of Emeria enters the battlefield, choose a color.

Your opponents can't cast spells of the chosen color.

Discussion (46)

Balaam__ on {BUG} Praetor Reanimator

2 weeks ago

psionictemplar makes a good point. And that’s one of the strengths of a Reanimation build, the ability to select targets to exhume that can affect the table in multiple different ways. Without extensive playtesting we can only approach it with logic and reasoning, but you still get a decent idea of how it would perform against the common archetypes. I’d recommend copying Iona, Shield of Emeria first if possible, then Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur second. Sticking the first will greatly improve the odds of the second coming into play uncountered. From there you can set yourself up for subsequent turns. Griselbrand is worth considering too, maybe in place of Sheoldred, Whispering One. Lifelink and the draw ability will also help you out greatly.

Balaam__ on {BUG} Praetor Reanimator

2 weeks ago

Iona, Shield of Emeria is incapacitating if you can get it to stick. Ashen Rider is ok, mostly for it’s death trigger. Otherwise I’d say you could do better. I’d lean into Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur more myself.

Wishfallen on BR Wish Reanimator

2 weeks ago

META CHANGE / DECK CHANGE

Update at 01/2021

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SB OUT

1 Ashen Rider

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SB IN

1 Iona, Shield of Emeria

Wishfallen on BR Wish Reanimator

3 weeks ago

META CHANGE / DECK CHANGE

Update at 01/2021

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SB OUT

1 Iona, Shield of Emeria

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SB IN

1 Archetype of Endurance

Apollo_Paladin on Ultra-Budget Speed Dredge (2x 5-Card "Gold Hands")

1 month ago

@ maltheyounger

I've been toying around with the idea of some Artifact/Enchantment hate in case I run into one of those shutdown cards, but in practice this deck tends to speed together so fast that often things like that aren't a consideration (I admit an early Grafdigger could pose an issue, but that's also literally the only card of its type for the mana cost too, this could be a playgroup vs online type thing & it's possible other groups would see more benefit from something like this.)

The Dark Ritual line, I only have Culling the Weak in there because it can help towards my win condition of getting Annihilators out of the graveyard. The only "Graveyard-to-play" spell available for the mana of Dark Ritual is Exhume. If I want other options, I need at least 4 mana so that little bit doesn't really help me out as much as you'd think. Cabal Ritual could be okay, but along the same lines of trying for early wins; it doesn't provide enough mana at the time I'd be using it. Also, The primary focus of this deck has to be its win condition combos in order to function, so I'd be pretty hard-pressed at deciding which cards to cut out as all of them in here have a pretty defined purpose.

As for the Titan, I'm not a fan in this build since I already run on pretty low mana as it is and destroying my own lands isnt something I'm keen on. Especially not when Annihilator can eat opponent's lands at no cost to my own. I've found Annihilator creatures to be the most reliable win condition card to pull early from a graveyard; I've seen dozens of other speed dredge builds using other creatures, but they're usually something like an early Iona, Shield of Emeria which while nice, isn't 100% consistent against all deck types, and also these other decks tend to be quite expensive due to running various high-dollar power creatures.

One thing I like about my build is how inexpensive the selections are, which opens it up to a wider audience. I'd say the Titan definitely fits the Budget part, but as for functionality I'm not sold - though if you attempt this and it works out for you I'd be interested to hear about another spin on my build!

The other artifacts you suggested are far too high a mana cost to be any use in this build. You really don't want to be spending Culling the Weak mana on anything except pulling Annihilators from the Graveyard for optimal game play.

abby315 on GW REANIMATOR

2 months ago

Love the idea! I have a few suggestions to possibly make it a little more consistent:

Given that it makes up the core of your build, I recommend going to a full 4x Fauna Shaman and 4x Commune with the Gods and cutting the two enchantments. They cost too much mana to hard-cast and you'll be in a much better position if you don't wait to reanimate a creature until you have one of the two on the field. You'll instead get more consistency on the best cards for your gameplan.

I also don't think Triumph of the Hordes is very good - the odds that you have it in your hand and are able to cast it on exactly the turn where you can swing with your tokens/big creature before your opponent removes them are low. It also strikes me as a little win-more? In most cases you should either get a concede from putting 10+ power on the board in one turn, or they have a boardwipe and Triumph wouldn't help you anyway.

Instead, a fun thing you might want to consider is running an Eldritch Evolution package. In addition to reanimating a big Trostani's Summoner, if you run Eldritch Evolution, you could also turn that Summoner into something like Iona, Shield of Emeria or Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite. It'd also allow you to turn your 1-mana dorks into Fauna Shaman if you need it.

You could also run the Spike Feeder / Heliod, Sun-Crowned combo, since you can reanimate Feeder with the Vesperlark and find Heliod with your tutors!

Finally, you might want to consider discard options that don't need to tap so you can do everything in one turn. Seasoned Hallowblade is a great option and also gives you some defense or offense on the early turns. Vivien's Arkbow is a fun option too, which does need to tap but doesn't have summoning sickness.

It's a fun build anyway so take my comments with a grain of salt!

plakjekaas on Opposition Agent needs a preemptive …

2 months ago

SynergyBuild

The post I responded to described it as "That is the world we live in now" which sounds like Jay pictured it to be the only one as well, so I ran with that to show where I didn't agree with that vision. I don't think that magic without searching your library is as bad as this thread, and many others about this card, make it look. It's another thing to play around, just like you do with counterspells, boardwipes and carddraw denial. And it already was before this card. Yes, Opposition Agent is better than Aven Mindcensor or Leonin Arbiter, but search hate isn't new, taking other players' spells isn't new, even searching your opponents' library for a spell to steal isn't new. It's never been done this efficient, but shooting it down before it's released to see what the actual impact is, which was the purpose of this thread, is something I don't agree with. I think there's an upside to this card existing in the format, even though I'd rather see it toned down a little.

I'd have loved it if the card had only said: "you control your opponents when they search their libraries", so the impact of the card would be higher as more tutors would be played at the table. The theft part is a little gratuitous, but will force a shift in the meta and even playstyle just because of the huge blowout of not handling an opposing Opposition Agent the right way. It intrudes on what's the most powerful right now, and I don't really see how that's a bad thing.

The Maralen hard lock is the only real disgusting thing, but like with Iona, Shield of Emeria, I suspect if it will be as problematic as pictured, they will ban the lock piece instead of the utility piece.

zAzen7977 on Revelation 17:8

2 months ago

Hey Balaam, this looks awesome! I don’t know much about Vintage or the meta, but maybe Griselbrand and/or Sire Of Insanity would be a good addition to or replacement for Jin, for the reasons I previously mentioned. Iona, Shield of Emeria is fantastic, but against multi-colored decks you are still exposed. I think it’s best to lead with the Big G to get your draw engine going, then bring in Iona to lockdown the board. Then bam! 14 flying damage per turn.