Karmic Guide

Creature — Angel Spirit

Flying, protection from black

Echo (At the beginning of your upkeep, if this came under your control since the beginning of your last upkeep, sacrifice it unless you pay its echo cost.)

When Karmic Guide enters the battlefield, return target creature card from your graveyard to the battlefield.

Discussion (51)

VarietyBlack on The Punk Rocker And Her Goodest Boy

1 week ago

Upvote! It's really cool to see the different ways people are building Nikara & Yannik. I, myself, went with a sort of Blink subtheme trying to take full advantage of Nikara as a card advantage engine. If you feel so inclined, you could check out my list here. I highly recommend Karmic Guide if you're leaning so heavily on Yannik. With the Ashnod's Altar, that's infinite mana and infinite +1/+1 counter placement!

ijakobe on Selvala, Avacyn's Explorer

2 weeks ago

Basically you have 2 ways to go about it with your style of deck I think. Try to protect your board state and ride your early advantage to victory. Or set yourself up to bounce back after a board wipe. I'd say a combination of the two is best. For bouncing back, you not only need cards, you have nice draw engines already, but also the mana to get back on the board quickly and in force. I'd try to get more lands onto the battlefield, not with boring Cultivate or the like, but I'd recommend Azusa, Lost but Seeking, Oracle of Mul Daya, which profit from good carddraw and provide strong landramp. For protection Heroic Intervention is cheap enough that it doesn't interfere with your momentum. Teferi's Protection while providing a powerful effect, is just too expensive in your style of deck imo. I would recommend creatures for this task as well. In my Selvala deck, I have quite the different gameplan overall I think, I use Reveillark, saffi, eriksdottir, Sun Titan, Karmic Guide and Dauntless Escort as creatures that are able to disvalue board wipes because I get a lot back immediately, saving me time and mana, when for example a Saffi rescues a Sun Titan, which then gets back something useful (like a saffi:-)) It depends on how much you wanna water down your theme and the combat quality of creatures, if you want to go a similar route. Cutting will be hard, I am not a huge fan of the white finale or genesis wave, as they just put more stuff on the battlefield to get swept away. That is preference though and I can see them being awesome in many situations.

StopShot on Alesha: A Slug is Faster Than A Corpse

2 weeks ago

You might want to mess around with Banewhip Punisher as you can destroy a creature every turn with it. It’s better than Ravenous Chupacabra as you don’t need a sac-outlet to keep re-using it from the grave and you can get some pretty good value abusing it with Sun Titan. Another positive to reanimating spot removal through Alesha is counter spells can’t interact against it. If you have problems against tokens/mana-dorks I greatly recommend Necroplasm instead. Most Alesha decks don’t run the Necroplasm because a lot of them often produce a lot of creature tokens themselves, but your deck is pretty light on that theme.

It seems you are running only one infinite combo. If either Kiki-Jiki or Village Bell-Ringer gets exiled you’ll have to win through sheer combat strength. If you want to increase the consistency and durability of this combo I recommend using Felidar Guardian as your Village Bell-Ringer back-up because it too can go infinite with Kiki-Jiki. Felidar Guardian also goes infinite with Molten Echoes naming “cat” as you can always have the haste cat token blink the original Felidar Guardian which then will re-trigger the Molten Echoes. Molten Echoes in this case being your Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker back-up. If you find Molten Echoes too narrow you can run Flameshadow Conjuring instead as the process is practically the same except every time the original Felidar Guardian enters the battlefield you must use its ETB to blink a red mana producing land to effectively untap it so you can keep paying Flameshadow Conjuring’s cost. This second combo can also bypasses your Cursed Totem which turns off your Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker’s ability.

There is a catch however. If Felidar Guardian ends up in your graveyard and you want to win using it and either four-cost red enchantment, reanimating the Felidar Guardian through Alesha will instead waste up your combat step which means you can still create infinite haste tokens, but they won’t stick around for the next time you get another combat step to attack on. If you find yourself needing to salvage this combo you’ll need to cast a reanimation spell like Karmic Guide before your combat step. In this case I recommend adding Animate Dead and/or Necromancy to your deck as these will work as well and are much cheaper to hard-cast. Even without the Felidar-version of the combo either of the black reanimation spells are still beneficial as you can get back your larger stuff like Sun Titan or Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite and you can always use your Hall of Heliod's Generosity to recur the black enchantments for further re-use which can make them valuable if your Karmic Guide ever gets exiled. You can also use them to pull stuff out of your opponent’s graveyards unlike Karmic Guide as well. They even make recurring your Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker combo better as recurring him with your commander means having him sit on the battlefield for a whole turn cycle before you can go off while hoping none of your opponents draw any removal or worse, winning the game before you do. Having more flexible ways to reanimate creatures before the combat step can mean a huge difference when your goal is to win on your combat step.

Grind on jErRy

2 weeks ago

sweet deck!!
you could consider adding Karmic Guide and Reveillark and maybe something like Wall of Omens if you wanted to have another combo line.
also any thoughts about deck filtering using cards like Heartwarming Redemption, Thrill of Possibility, or Reforge the Soul?

nospamspam722 on Life After Death

3 weeks ago

I was thinking Deathpact Angel because it has a high CMC and doesn't seem very important to the deck's theme.

Pillory of the Sleepless is okay control but I think you have enough other control and life-loss cards in the deck that losing it wouldn't cause much harm.

Syndicate Messenger is okay, but it's a bit expensive for its Afterlife and flying. Of course, flying is always important in any deck, especially when you run white, but taking advantage of Afterlife in cheaper creatures (which create double the tokens with Teysa) fulfill that part of the deck. (Check out my deck for examples if you want)

Knight of Sorrows is also a little too expensive to be fairly valued for its Afterlife.

Karmic Guide is extremely expensive, especially with its echo cost, and only provides a bit of recursion.

I think it's fair to replace Yawgmoth's Vile Offering with Bone Splinters or Spark Harvest because they provide the same removal and Yawgmoth's Vile Offering only has one card of recursion more than they do and costs more to cast. You could also take out Utter End Vindicate, or Mortify for the similar reason of simply lowering your average CMC.

Also, Worn Powerstone is not a very good mana rock, but it's in for a totally different purpose than the cards I recommended so of course if you need that mana then keep it in.

Hope this was helpful! I really like your take on Teysa!

Brimstone on Teysa, Orzhov Scion - kinda cEDH (WB)

3 weeks ago

I don't think I am understanding the Tidehollow Sculler combo. I see how Teysa, Orzhov Scion + Reveillark + Karmic Guide + Tidehollow Sculler allows Teysa to use her exile ability infinitely, and that means Tidehollow is going to the grave and coming back again. So each time it enters, you force an opponent to exile a card, but then each time it is sacrificed, they get that card back.

Am I missing something?

MTGconstructor on How to Get Kicked out of Your Playgroup

4 weeks ago

makarzorklin Im not sure if you have ever played Karador, Ghost Chieftain or not, but Karador is not a high priority to cast. Meaning there are better ways to cheat in my creatures other than raw casting them. Karador is a late game play, when you have a full graveyard and the ability to pay for high CMC creatures. As for going more "creature heavy" I like the balance where it is at, again Im not looking to cast Karador any time before turn 5,6,7, or 8.

Not sure if you have read any of my previous responses, but if you are playing reanimator and still pay face value for creatures, then its not worth it. Creature ramping doesn't add much synergy, and is a dead draw late game.

Crucible of Worlds to Ramunap Excavator is valid, but either one works. The reason why I have the crucible is because its slightly harder to kill than creatures.

Obzedat's Aid is a fantastic card in any reanimate deck, but specifically this one. If Altar of Dementia, Deadbridge Chant, Crucible of Worlds, Greater Good, etc. Wind up in the graveyard its a direct hit, rather than jumping through hoops with Eternal Witness, or Greenwarden of Murasa. its just an added bonus with more options.

Ob Nixilis, the Fallen and Vengeful Pharaoh are purely test pieces right now, I see your point with Ob Nixilis, but I found that Vengeful Pharaoh is a an added thorn in my opponents side, he benefits from just sitting in the graveyard.

Birds of Paradise is a good piece, but so is Chromatic Lantern, so I may just have both.

Faeburrow Elder is another good option.

Grisly Salvage is a good card, again it doesnt always need to be attached to a creature. And allows me to grab creatures I need in short term plays, Karmic Guide, Eternal Witness, Phyrexian Delver, etc.

Deadbridge Chant is another synergistic card that plays very well into Karador. Milling ten, then getting pure value after that seems fine. Death's Oasis is another great option and both would work great.

Thanks for the comment

Crow-Umbra on Awkward Eye Contact with Death

1 month ago

The deck has gone through a few different iterations, as I've tried out different elements that I like, especially since I hadn't really played this type aggro or reanimator strategy in the past.

I think what I currently have in mind for win-con lines for this deck:

• Reveillark + Karmic Guide + Sac Outlet combo would be the main combo piece that the deck can win around.

• Cards like Impact Tremors, Panharmonicon, & Flameshadow Conjuring can additional value to ETBs from reanimation or created tokens.

• Aggro swarming with evasive creatures, and adding stacking damage with cards like Hellrider

I think I wanted to have some elements of reanimation, creature aggro, and group-slug. In one iteration of the deck, I had more token creators like Mogg War Marshal, Hanweir Garrison, New Krenko, and Noosegraf Mob, but cut them for yard-filling cards.