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.

Legality

Format	Legality
1v1 Commander	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
Oathbreaker	Legal
Vintage	Legal

Discussion (45)

wallisface on Pure Lifegain

1 day ago

Some thoughts

• Most Modern decks typically can't justify running more than 4 cards costing 4-mana, and often run nothing above this. You've got a whopping 16 cards costing 4-or-more, which is going to lead to some really slow/clumsy plays. In particular, all those cards costing 6-or-more mana (Angelic Skirmisher, Devout Invocation, Mass Calcify, Iona, Shield of Emeria) have no chance at all of being cast in a game with your current landbase (You'll have ~50% odds of having 6 lands by turn 9, which is longer than any magic game will take, and also pretty-bad odds). I would suggest just keeping 3-4 of your 4-mana cards, and ditching the rest costing this-or-above.

• Even once you reduce the mana curve, you will still need to play more lands. With 21 lands, your odds of getting 4 into play in any reasonable time is still really poor. I'd suggest going to 23 minimum, but probably 24 is the correct number here.

• A word of warning that lifegain is one of the absolute weakest mechanics in magic, and without some massive payoffs for gaining life, it's never really worth it. I would suggest if you want to pursue a lifegain based deck to use cards like Righteous Valkyrie and Speaker of the Heavens as your build-around cards, as these are some of the very few cards available that make lifegain actually worth playing. An example budget decklist using those cards is here on mtgGoldfish. In any case, I would advise strongly against "gaining life just for the sake of gaining life", as this pretty-much always means your cards aren't doing more productive things, like establishing a stronger board-position, and usually just means the deck sets itself up for failure.

Delphen7 on 【DMU】▷ Exile【EVERYTHING】COMBO【Deck!】w/ Temporary L

3 weeks ago

The deck was really neat! You definitely struggled against Tron though.

I'm not sure how good Leyline of Hexproof is, as it was never brought in, you can out race burn, and discard mostly helps your ultimate plan, plus Grief (If it stays in) shuts down opponents' options. Maybe a card for tron would help that matchup? Haven't followed reanimator lists too closely though so not sure on that one.

Following your thoughts on swapping out the elementals for other targets, these are all things that came to mind:

• Terrastadons, as that card was beastly against everything.
• Ashen Rider (Removes anything, including tron pieces)
• Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur (Dies to bolt, but lets you dump cards/find reanimate spells really quickly and forces opponents to deal with it or lose)
• Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger (Nasty critter that ends games if its allowed to attack)
• Iona, Shield of Emeria (Shuts off mono colored strategies, and is annoying against even 2/3 color decks)
• Sundering Titan (The more colors the more backbreaking)
• Griselbrand (With some tweaking maybe its a comboey list? Nasty critter on its own too)

As for Temporary Lockdown, it definitively has legs in modern. It was super sweet against everything you went against, and there are many other tier decks it would hurt

freezerboy on Is a color changing strategy …

2 months ago

Here's the latest build, and I've gathered quite a few of the more useful cards from all the decks provided as well as any I could find on TappedOut. I'm sure that there are some hiding somewhere since there isn't a tag for "color hate" or something like that.

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Garth the Color Blind

Commander / EDH* freezerboy

7 VIEWS | IN 1 FOLDER

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I'm curious if there are any strategies that stand out with the collection of cards. There does seem to be some control options, but they seem on the border of Iona, Shield of Emeria which makes the game not fun. Are there any other strategies that could possibly work, or is this theme destined to be not enjoyable by anyone at the table?

Dromar39 on What ONE card would you …

3 months ago

I agree with unbanning Recurring Nightmare. Iona, Shield of Emeria would be another one I would consider.

AstroAA on What ONE card would you …

3 months ago

I would unban Iona, Shield of Emeria because angels are my favorite tribe, and I have both the Iona, Shield of Emeria and the Iona, Shield of Emeria versions and I need an excuse to run them.

If I couldn't get Iona, Shield of Emeria unbanned, I'd go Paradox Engine because I still have my foil one from back in the day and it's banning killed my Karametra, God of Harvests storm deck.

Unlife on What ONE card would you …

3 months ago

It may be just my playgroup, but based on how we play, there's a lot of cards I could see being unbanned and not warping the format. I agree that Iona, Shield of Emeria could easily be unbanned, Hullbreacher, Upheaval and Trade Secrets as well. Out of those 4, I think I would choose to unban Iona, Shield of Emeria because I'm most likely going to play her in a couple of my decks.

TypicalTimmy on What ONE card would you …

3 months ago

My vote is for Iona, Shield of Emeria. I'd say go ahead and keep her banned in 1v1, but in multiplayer games she's perfectly fine. If you want to spend 9 mana and lock yourself in mono-white as a Commander and draw the ire of the table, that's perfectly fine by me.

Sure she can become problematic if you find a way to copy her a bunch of times and name all five colors (Helm of the Host), but honestly the table with self-correct. They may be salty the first time it happens, but you'll quickly become the Archenemy the subsequent games.

If you are personally fine drawing that much hate, and you thrive in that sort of a 1v3 challenge, by all means go for it! :D

plakjekaas on Why are people calling for …

4 months ago

It's just a Commander that can only do annoying stuff to others. Not just once, but whenever anything happens with it, there's a huge bummer enclosed for one player at the table. Not bannable, but something to sigh at whenever someone reveals it as their Commander. Like Tergrid, God of Fright  ^Flip, like Hokori, Dust Drinker, nobody who runs this at the head of a deck has fun in mind for the entire table, just annoyance for anyone who isn't them. I don't think that's the way to play a casual format, but I don't need a ban to explicitly tell me that. But they have banned Iona, Shield of Emeria so who knows what the RC will decide on it.

That being said, my prediction is that when you build the deck, and it does the thing a few times, it will get boring for the pilot soon enough that it won't be that much of a problem in the long term. I think the format has self-regulated worse cards than this before and it's more clout than this Commander deserves to be called out for instabanning.