Mystifying Maze
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Legality

Format Legality
1v1 Commander Legal
Archenemy 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
Planechase Legal
Quest Magic Legal
Tiny Leaders Legal
Vanguard Legal
Vintage Legal

Mystifying Maze

Land

: Add to your mana pool.

, : Exile target attacking creature an opponent controls. At the beginning of the next end step, return it to the battlefield tapped under its owner's control.

Tur on Hidden Power - Crop Rotation

3 months ago

Hello everyone! This will be a trial forum post for a "Commander - Hidden Power" series. My goal is to show relatively inexpensive cards which are often overlooked by commander players in semi-competitive and casual play. (This post is not designed for competitive play.) If you enjoy the topic, please provide positive feedback and I will consider creating similar posts.

The powerful card I plan on discussing here is Crop Rotation.

This card under five dollars and is one of the most powerful mono-green tutors. Period. Yes, I'm counting all mono-green tutors. This includes: Worldly Tutor, Finale of Devastation, Green Sun's Zenith, Survival of the Fittest, Chord of Calling, Natural Order, Tooth and Nail, Sylvan Tutor, Time of Need, Scapeshift, Hour of Promise, Tempt with Discovery, Reshape the Earth, Boundless Realms, Traverse the Outlands, Rampant Growth, Harrow, Cultivate, Harvest Season, Explosive Vegetation, etc.

It's one color, one mana, instant, searches for any land, you can sacrifice a tapped land, and puts the land onto the battlefield untapped (unless otherwise specified).

Although, Crop Rotation is often overlooked by players because of the very expensive cards it can search and not being "flashy" enough. Yes, Crop Rotation is ideal with any of the following cards: Gaea's Cradle, Mishra's Workshop, The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale, Serra's Sanctum, Bazaar of Baghdad, and Diamond Valley. However, suppose we don't have a one thousand dollar mana base and cannot play the land cards above. Is Crop Rotation worthless? No. It is still one of the best mono-green tutors. There are so many utility and theme lands which are excellent targets. Ramp lands and color-fixing are also viable options. Here are a few categorized ideas:

Utility Lands:

Theme Lands:

Ramp Lands:

Color-Fixing Lands:

There are many more unlisted cards in each category which could fit your specific deck.

Some of the cards listed above have some pretty cool synergies with Crop Rotation here are a few:Urza's Saga, you can let the saga get to chapter III, then with the ability on the stack sacrifice it to Crop Rotation to get both the artifact and land. Field of the Dead is ideal in every two or three color commander deck with a sufficient mana base (in fact some of my win conditions are given by Field of the Dead). You can also use Field of the Dead as a combat trick. Scavenger Grounds and Bojuka Bog are fantastic for graveyard combo disruption. Maze of Ith and Glacial Chasm will hurt your lands, but sometimes it is needed to stay alive.

Simply having the ability to greatly effect the board state using a one-mana instant speed spell is impressive: life gain, damage prevention, removing steal effects, getting around blockers, denying counterspells, combo stoppers, unlimited hand size, sacrifice engines, haste, recursion, ramp, creating token blockers. The list goes on-and-on-and-on. If fact, if you're playing 3-4 of the lands listed above you should really consider Crop Rotation in the ninety-nine.

All in all, I'm always surprised the number of deck lists which do not play Crop Rotation. This is a fantastic card and one of the best mono-green tutors. It has so much hidden power. Ask yourself if there is a nonbasic land which you are playing (or would play) that would do well with Crop Rotation.

Max_Hammer on I’m Rick Grimes, Bitch 2.0

3 months ago

Howdy, I think your mana base could use some work-shopping. As for what you have right now, it's good. You don't need to remove anything, nothing here is hurting you. However, there might be something you missed. The only reason I can see for having this number of basics is for Emeria, but I think you could get even more value elsewhere. For the record, I'm not saying to include all of these, but I am giving you some choices as to what you might wanna include. I suggested the ones that seemed like the best choices.

Removal:

For removal, we have a few choices. Scavenger Grounds is graveyard hate, which is fine because we only have one piece of recursion and it's Emeria. Blast Zone is pretty solid removal, just in case. Field of Ruin can get rid of someone else's Emeria or other problem land. Eiganjo, Seat of the Empire can be removal when you need it, and a land when you don't. And lastly, Kabira Takedown  Flip in a token deck takes down pretty much anything without hexproof.

Protection:

Your stuff is important! Keep it safe with these cards. Eiganjo Castle is nice for anyone especially important, as can Karakas, if you can swallow the high pricetag. Sejiri Shelter  Flip can keep a creature safe once, assuming you don't need the mana. Nephalia Academy is fun when playing against specific deck strategies. Now, for a lot of them all at once, Kor Haven, Mystifying Maze, and Labyrinth of Skophos (With a shoutout to Maze of Ith) all prevent people from bonking you too hard.

Misc.

Everything else that wasn't in those two categories. Windbrisk Heights can play you a free Mass Calcify when you need it, just for swinging with 3 tokens. Reliquary Tower because this is Commander. War Room, depending on how much draw you need. Idyllic Grange may as well replace a Plains if you plan to keep focusing on Emeria. Arcane Lighthouse is just another Detection Tower effect. And for the final one, Karoo. I dig the bouncelands. They're perfect turn 2 plays and might help you ramp a little bit extra.

And one more thing aside from all of this! Caged Sun is, in my opinion, better than Gauntlet of Power. One extra mana for blocking out my opponents feels worth it.

Kashai on LifeGain

6 months ago

TheOfficialCreator

Dark Confidant would be an interesting choice, there is already quite a few card draw enchantments so moving the card draw onto a creature would spread and balance the deck better I think but I feel like people run more creature removal in general (at least my friends do) so it may just be an easy target. Although it is mana cheaper to cast . . . I'll have to think about this one some more but good suggestion!

SufferFromEDHD

I see what your saying about Shambling Vent and Maze of Ith and I think you are probably right, and if Mystifying Maze ends up being too slow for what we need it for we can swap it with Maze of Ith, losing out on the mana sucks but if prevents being rushed down then its worth it I say. Running Absorb instead of Counterspell would be cool but its a matter of playing around and seeing if we can afford leaving the additional mana up to cast, if we can get away with it then I don't see why not!

Thanks for the suggestions! Continue to leave more if you think of them

Kashai on LifeGain

6 months ago

Some changes im thinking about

switching out Blighted Steppe, Shambling Vent and Vault of the Archangel for Maze of Ith, Mystifying Maze and Reliquary Tower

Monologue Tax for Dark Tutelage

Words of Worship for Venser's Journal

and Brainstorm for Counterspell

overall these would lean the deck further into control and with the amount of card draw adds some needed increased hand size options

thoughts?

Kashai on Zombie Draw Mill Combo Deck

6 months ago

hey try out Reliquary Tower, Sign in Blood, Barren Moor, Fabled Passage, Mortuary Mire, Evolving Wilds, Overburden, Arcane Laboratory, Curse of Verbosity, Forced Fruition,Orbs of Warding,Collective Restraint, Rhystic Study, War Tax, Dissipation Field, Halimar Depths, Skyline Cascade, Ipnu Rivulet, Leechridden Swamp, Blighted Fen, Fetid Pools, Blighted Cataract, Mystifying Maze, Maze of Ith,Glacial Chasm, Jwari Disruption  Flip. Sea Gate Restoration  Flip, Blackbloom Rogue  Flip , Ponder

PlutoniumWedding on Pinball Wizard

1 year ago

Hey!

Golos really embodies Timmy edh in that sense of 'I don't care what I'm casting as long as it's big and flashy!', doesn't he? :D

I have a few ideas and comments, in no particular order.

Expropriate seems like it would be one of the big ones for a bit more pay-to-win oomph.

I think Field of the Dead is amazing in Golos decks, since your five colour edh land base is unlikely to contain many duplicate names. It's not the wincon it apparently was in... Historic? But it generates a very steady stream of chump blockers. It's apparently still like $10, though.

Emergent Ultimatuming up a board wipe and Fated Return sadly only works if Golos for some reason is already in the graveyard, since you cast the two spells immediately and will need to choose targets for Fated Return before the wipe resolves. You can of course get some other big thing that's died during the course of the game.

The flat damage spells (Sorin's Vengeance, Searing Wind) seem weak - they only impact the game if someone is already at 10 or less life, and even then only if they're currently the threat. I'd look to those if you need to make cuts for higher quality cards.

Rise of the Dark Realms and Clone Legion are a few ways to get instant boards. Both work very well if you can sneak in an Eternal Witness (or Archaeomancer) as they can recur the little creature for infinite fuel, even though you're of course unlikely to cast either more than once per turn.

Omniscience is a great way to get all the fat spells in your hand to actually be useful. It's wonderful if you get it off of Golos, but perfectly OK to hard cast before emptying your hand of bombs.

I know you're mostly going for instants and sorceries - is there a reason for this? You don't have to have one, but there are a lot of nice permanent bombs that fit the Golos playstyle, like Etali, Primal Storm, Debtors' Knell, Worldspine Wurm and Mind's Dilation. Ugin, the Spirit Dragon is a boardwipe that spares Golos and sticks around as a nuisance and possibly even a long-term threat.

Another great card with Golos is Illusionist's Bracers. Twice the madness.

Given the deck's reliance on Golos himself, I'd think it almost mad not to run some protection, such as Lightning Greaves, Darksteel Plate, Swiftfoot Boots, Hammer of Nazahn etc. Counterspells would be an option, but it's so sad to flip them with Golos...

Since Golos ramps on ETB, flicker cards like Teleportation Circle, Soulherder, Conjurer's Closet and Thassa, Deep-Dwelling can each get you one free land every turn, not limited to basics. Running all of them is probably... A different deck. One or two might be nice.

If you do go with that approach, you have lots of options, like Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth + Cabal Coffers for lots of mana, The World Tree, Cascading Cataracts and Crystal Quarry for fixing, or utility lands like Maze of Ith and Mystifying Maze. Since these are lands that are perfectly fine to draw on their own, this takes up a lot less deck space than it might initially seem like.

I hope I've given you some ideas at least!

seshiro_of_the_orochi on Mystifying maze VS. Argentum Armor

1 year ago

Ok, a stack question :)

Step 1: The creature wearing Argentum Armor is declared an attacker. Armor triggers and its ability goes on the stack. They choose Mystifying Maze as the target.

Step 2: Your opponent passes priority and you can activate Maze, targeting the creature.

Step 3: No one wants to cast or activate anything else, so the stack starts resolving. Maze exiles the creature. That happens. Next, the ability from Armor destroys Maze.

Step 4: The stack is empty. In case nobody does anything else, the rest of combat happens as usual.

Named_Tawyny on Mystifying maze VS. Argentum Armor

1 year ago

So here's your stack - you wrote it out a bit out of order, but I think you do have it correct in your head.

Creature swings, Argentum Armor triggers. Opponent targets Mystifying Maze.

In response, with AA trigger on the stack, you tap MM and target the creature.

No other actions at this time.

MM Activated ability resolves, attacking creature is exiled. AA trigger resolves, MM is destroyed. (Abilities on the stack exist independently of their original source)

The rest of combat happens. Then 2nd main phase.

At the start of the end step, exiled creature returns to the battlefield (assuming it wasn't a token). AA is NOT attached to it.

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