Mystic Remora

Enchantment

Cumulative upkeep {1} (At the beginninf of your upkeep, put an age counter on this permanent, then sacrifice this unless you pay the upkeep cost for each age counter on this.)

Whenever an opponent plays a noncreature spell, you may draw a card unless that player pays {4}.

Legality

Format	Legality
1v1 Commander	Legal
Archenemy	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
Oathbreaker	Legal
Pauper	Legal
Pauper Duel Commander	Legal
Pauper EDH	Legal
Planar Constructed	Legal
Planechase	Legal
Premodern	Legal
Quest Magic	Legal
Tiny Leaders	Legal
Vanguard	Legal
Vintage	Legal

Discussion (50)

SlangNTrees13 on Sidar Jabari of Zhalfir

1 month ago

Hey, really dig the deck! Ive been running it on xmage last few days and am well 70% win rate :)

One suggestion that made a big difference for me was to add some more non-knight mill to ensure we got knights in the yard. Just Mesmeric Orb (if you don't mind the hate) and Ripples of Undeath do the trick. Ripples is clutch as it mills and gives the option to tutor a non-knight card back to our hand in one each turn.

For knights, I switched probably 7ish to better suite my personal lower curve tastes, but a few ones I added I think are really strong to think about slotting in if you haven't caught them are Werefox Bodyguard, Ethersworn Adjudicator, Smitten Swordmaster and Knight of Dusk's Shadow.

Werefox is superb cause it's a reusable exile every time it hits the yard with commander damage trigger. Ethersworn although seems costly, is insanely good especially with Lightning Greaves added. (Ex. Had one game my Tithe was going off and I destroyed 4 creatures and untapped 5 times with Ethersworn in one main phase). Knight of Dusk I also think is clutch because I come up against a ton of combo lifegain ocelot pride etc. decks and this is a nice repeatable shut down effect for the deck that stops them in their tracks. Smittens adventure for one mana can also just end games and then you get your knight right back from his vacation for our other buffs.

I also think card draw addition is important with the draw / discard trigger and found myself running out of cards a few games too quickly, so I threw in Enduring Curiosity It does serious work with all our knights attacking and only 4 mana and returns as enchantment when it dies. Also another even lower cost one Dawn of a New Age has worked out really well for me and ensures us an extra card each turn once we get a few knights out for just 2 mana. Also added Mystic Remora cause we got blue why not.

My last real suggestion that has won games for me is adding Wonder all our knights having flying is just great and our draw discard and self mill is perfect synergy for it.

I lost The Circle of Loyalty for its high cost if we can't get the reduction and felt there's a fine amount of token production already (even though of course the theme is right on point!) and took out Basri's LT and a few of the other tribal buff lower mana cost knights for my mentioned additions. Also lost Swords for Toxic Deluge. Deluge is just so versatile, for just three mana it's too good a savior wipe I felt to leave out.

Sure you gone through sooooooo many knights for this one. I still have some pages to get through myself :D

LS-Metr0 on Alela, Enchantress of the Fae

3 months ago

Why no Rhystic Study or Mystic Remora? Also, the new Enduring Indulgence (tappedout can't find it yet) from duskmourne seems like a good draw engine, similarly to Caretaker's Talent. Anyway, +1 from me!

Profet93 on Arna's Kennundrüm: Counters Auraquipment?

3 months ago

Last_Laugh +1

I'm not too familiar with this archetype but I'll do my best. Given your deck has a focus on your commander which has built in ward and you are in blue, some additional draw can't hurt. I like Mystic Remora for a cheap and easy draw source. Perhaps even a Cloud Key or Semblance Anvil for artifact ramp? Speaking of artifacts, I would put in the Academy Ruins in the maybeboard over vault of the archangel. Vault requires a lot of mana and isn't necessary while academy requires less mana and can recur 1/3rd of your deck.

Sword of Vengeance > Wand of Orcus - You aren't a token or zombie based strategy. I do understand the appeal of having a wide token base which can help against edict effects. That being said, you already have a fair amount of hexproof/shroud so boardwipes are your biggest issues. I would suggest something similar to flicker as a means to reutilize ETB effects and protect from wipes but given it would remove auras and equipments, it isn't as helpful. As such Sword of vengeance is keyword soup which is also easier to cast at the same CMC.

Inspiring Statuary - Idk if this is good for your build but I imagine u can tap your (used) equipment to help pay for other stuff.

Stoneforge Mystic > Brotherhood Regalia - Ward is nice, can't be blocked is better. Do you need the redundancy for ward? I feel you might be better served with Stoneforge which replaces itself and can help cheat equipment into play.

How has Blade of Shared Souls been playing for you? Seems cool but not needed. Perhaps a Codsworth, Handy Helper might be more helpful as a ramp piece.

Same question with Assassin Gauntlet and Anduril, Narsil Reforged, how have they been?

Overall it's a solid deck. I think my favorite card in here is the conqueror's flail! Triple boost while requiring them to use instants prior to battle, gotta love it all for 2 mana! I like how you have a balance of removal, defense and artifacts. Your creature count is slightly low for my tastes but given your commander is the lynchpin of the deck, it makes sense to prioritize artifacts > creature count.

Kiyomei on The Lost Cat 迷い猫

6 months ago

Self Note ordered.

In 13 ______________

Harvester of Misery

Ingenious Prodigy

Orcish Bowmasters

Satoru, the Infiltrator

Shadow of Mortality

Sheoldred, the Apocalypse

Talion, the Kindly Lord

Force of Despair

Weathered Runestone

Sol Ring

Bloodchief Ascension

Mystic Remora

Rhystic Study

Outo 13 ______________

Inkrise Infiltrator

Mist-Syndicate Naga

Nashi, Moon Sage's Scion

Thieves' Guild Enforcer

Grafdigger's Cage

Enter the Infinite

Personal Tutor

Temporal Mastery

Chain of Vapor

Dig Through Time

Dispel

Miscast

Nexus of Fate

DarkKiridon on Shorikai Drift

7 months ago

Taida I love all those options. I do want Minn, Wily Illusionist in the mainboard but I have yet to obtain a copy. Mystic Remora, I only own 2 copies so far and they're in other decks at the moment but will certainly get one for here as well eventually.

Thanks for the other suggestions and the upvote!!

Taida on Shorikai Drift

7 months ago

Maybe you can include Unctus, Grand Metatect so you can dig even deeper. Midnight Clock can also help both being a mana rock and letting you draw quite a lot of cards. I also saw you have Minn, Wily Illusionist, and I think it could be in the mainboard. It cheats a lot of things into play with the illusions, and with Shorikai, Genesis Engine you draw the cards needed to trigger the ability.

Mystic Remora is also a very good card that you can consider. Although you will eventually need to sacrifice it, the card advantage it gives you is insane. If you also go for the route of mass drawing, Ominous Seas can flood the board very quickly, but you may need to include some cards to have no max hand size.

Another planeswalker that fits VERY well is Teferi, Temporal Pilgrim, and the illusions it creates are amazing with all the card draw from Shorikai, Genesis Engine.

Btw, amazing deck, I still have to upload my Shorikai deck here, but it is much less flavorful, just centered around tapping and untapping Shorikai, so I love the much more dedicated vehicle theme, it is definitely a +1.

rckclimber777 on Build a Deck with Me …

7 months ago

Sometimes when I'm deckbuilding, I focus less on the commander and more on an interesting concept/combo that I want to use or exploit. This is the case with one of my favorite decks in my profile and actually one of the first commander decks I ever built. This deck began years ago when Magic finally started caring about the EDH format. It was a more simple time then, Rhystic study was $1.27 (exactly the price I paid for mine over 10 years ago), Cyclonic Rift was a bulk rare, and demonic tutor could be found for $10.

The combo that I was interested in was Palinchron and Deadeye Navigator. The latter was my favorite card at the time and is still one of my favorites. It was a great tool and with all the ETB effects that were out around then it was an underrated and uber powerful card. In fact, the entire blink mechanic was and is a very powerful strategy.

When I built this deck, I played a few times in shops and was quickly told that edh is a casual format and interaction of any kind is not fair (was told this by a land destruction deck...) So this deck is definitely more on the competitive side, but it would be the distant fringe of cedh. Alright with that let's get into it.

Initial thoughts

So we have a combo that we like Palinchron and Deadeye Navigator, but we don't even have a commander yet and going mono-blue seems not great, so we want to figure out what color(s) to add and what commander to choose. In a combo deck, there are generally three things that I like to make sure I include beyond the normal ramp, and card draw. That is redundancy, the ability to tutor up my combo pieces, and ways to protect my combo. So when thinking about tutoring up my combo pieces, I generally like to have the best tutors. Those are in black. So things like Wishclaw Talisman, Demonic Tutor, Vampiric Tutor and Imperial Seal (if you have money to burn or your playgroup is fine with you proxying the best cards so you can obliterate their precons j/k I proxy all my expensive cards and put them in a binder in case someone has an issue).

So we have Blue and Black and we can certainly add another color if we wanted to, but at the time I liked Dralnu, Lich Lord because Snapcaster Mage was in standard and flashback was cool. So I stuck with it when I revamped it, but decided that I wanted something that could ensure I can protect my combo from any threat and then also use it to win if I wanted to. The answer came in the form of Ertai Resurrected. He can counter basically anything from spells to activated abilities (which will come in handy) or he can take a threat on the field at the cost of letting your opponent draw a card.

So now that we have our commander, how to build the deck?

Redundancy

Combo decks need redundancy. If you don't get your two cards or one of them gets exiled, you need a backup plan, or scooping is your only option. Fortunately, there are some great redundancies here. We have Ghostly Flicker and Displace. Both of these will blink your creatures (ghostly flicker will also blink artifacts). Displacer Kitten can be helpful too, but I don't own it and it is a little more chaotic than I need it to be. Palinchron is great because you can return it to your hand and potentially play it again and create infinite mana through the use of High Tide, but a similar combo that has added benefits is Peregrine Drake, Archaeomancer, and Ghostly Flicker. This bounces both the drake and the archaeomancer untapping 5 lands, and returning ghostly flicker to your hand. Rinse and repeat for infinite mana. Archaeomancer also will help in returning key counterspells and tutors to your hand. Nothing like doing double duty. Mnemonic Wall and Great Whale also fit here. The great thing about this combo is that each component is useful in and of itself. Bring out your Great Whale early untap some lands and do some other stuff or play out the rest of your combo with the untapped lands. Cast Archaeomancer to grab a used tutor for another combo piece.

One note here, if you get Peregrine Drake (or one of the other two) paired with Deadeye Navigator and you generate infinite mana you can now draw your deck with Ertai as commander: Step 1: Bounce Deadeye, when he enters don't soulbond with anyone.
Step 2: Cast Ertai, don't choose anything or if you want kill one of your opponent's creatures. It doesn't matter.
Step 3: Soulbond ertai and deadeye. Step 4: Bounce Deadeye and while that is on the stack bounce Ertai. Step 5: Ertai enters the battlefield counter the Deadeye bounce on the stack Draw a card Step 6: Soulbond ertai and deadeye again rinse and repeat. Draw as many cards as you need. Which means draw until you find your wincon.

Wincon

Since this is an infinite mana combo we need something to use all that mana. Obviously the activated ability on deadeye is great, but we need something to actually win with. I went with Commander's Insight and Blue Sun's Zenith. Both of these cards are useful even when they aren't being used to force your opponents to draw their cards. Blue Sun's Zenith works nicely because once you cast it goes back into your deck, which I showed above you can draw as many cards as you need so you cast it once, put it in your library draw again until you find it, cast it again on the next opponent, then again. You can also tutor them up or bring them back from the graveyard with the tutors or the archaeomancer/mnemonic wall from earlier. I like this more than straight damage, because if you don't have infinite mana these cards will still draw you cards.

Tutors

This is a fairly simple step, we need some good tutors. There are a number of good choices in black so I won't belabor that too much. I don't have some of the standard ones and feel like the deck performs fine with the ones it currently has. I do have a Tribute Mage in the deck because nearly all my mana rocks are 2 mana and so is Wishclaw Talisman. I found that the consistency with the deck is vastly improved by being able to tutor up my ramp. Also with deadeye I can bounce it multiple times and get more rocks or the talisman.

Protecting the combo

So I needed to figure out how to protect my combo and do so in a way that is flexible or can be used as needed. So Counterspell. Honestly, this part was fairly simple, most blue counter magic is here. Only reason Fierce Guardianship isn't here is because I don't have it. Other than that we have the typical cards here Force of Will, Mana Drain, Cyclonic Rift, Force of Negation, Pact of Negation, etc.

I also have a couple other standouts. Venser, Shaper Savant is great here as it can be bounced with Deadeye Navigator to essentially boomerang my opponent's board and all their spells. Ertai Resurrected also protects the combo and with deadeye becomes a nice repeatable counter/removal spell.

glen_elandra_archmage can be bounced when she has her -1/-1 counter allowing her to be used again and again to counter noncreature spells.

Typical stuff

There is a lot of ramp in the deck, so Mana Crypt, Sol Ring, and other mana rocks including some larger ones like Gilded Lotus and Basalt Monolith to really get the ramp going, the sooner you can get to 7-8 mana the sooner you can combo out.

For card draw some key performers here are Rhystic Study, Black Market Connections, Phyrexian Arena, The One Ring. Mystic Remora. In my initial hand I want to have 3 lands, and one of these/tutor to find one or I typically mulligan.

Special notes

A couple other cards deserve mention here. Time Stretch and Time Warp. These are both repeatable with Archaeomancer and Mnemonic Wall and I can honestly say that if I'm able to resolve either of these, it is unlikely that I'm going to lose, especially Time Stretch. With the ramp in the deck or a well timed Dark Ritual/High Tide I can play this fairly early and get a huge advantage.

Lands

Since this deck tends to be fast, you don't want lands that come into play tapped, so this deck uses fetch lands, shock lands, and duals that have the ability to come in untapped. (there are a couple that come into play tapped, but they are fetchable so I fetch them only when I know that I'm not going to be able to use the mana and only on an opponent's turn.)

I've had this deck for a while and it performs far better than any of my other decks. It always presents interesting lines that if followed will lead to surprising victories. As always let me know what you think in the comments and if you have a commander in mind that you want to see me build put it in the chat.

Here is the final decklist: Unlimited Power!

NiceRobin312 on Zombies

10 months ago

Counterspell Mystic Remora Ashnod's Altar