Once Upon a Time

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Legality

Format Legality
1v1 Commander Legal
Archenemy Legal
Arena Legal
Block Constructed Legal
Canadian Highlander Legal
Casual Legal
Commander / EDH Legal
Commander: Rule 0 Legal
Custom Legal
Duel Commander Legal
Gladiator Legal
Highlander Legal
Historic Legal
Legacy Legal
Leviathan Legal
Limited Legal
Oathbreaker Legal
Planechase Legal
Quest Magic Legal
Tiny Leaders Legal
Vanguard Legal
Vintage Legal

Once Upon a Time

Instant

If this spell is the first spell you've cast this game, you may cast it without paying its mana cost.

Look at the top five cards of your library. You may reveal a creature or land card from among them and put it into your hand. Put the rest on the bottom of your library in a random order.

BotaNickill on Enamored Rotpriest

1 month ago

Upvote for the Venerated Rotpriest enthusiasm! I like the interaction with Ivy, Gleeful Spellthief for sure, and I have a playset of her just in case I go back to the darkside (blue), but I am mainly a Selesnya player and my Rotpriest deck builds have been geared that way. I have mostly been playing it on Arena, first in Historic, but now mainly in Timeless. (But I do have a modern vs as well). Access to Once Upon a Time has been nice for consistency, and I've been considering adding Channel for the possibility of castion out most of my hand onm T1 But White offers some noice options for removal, like Swords to Plowshares and Annex Sentry, there's also some great white targeted spells, Defiant Strike, Ephemerate, Gird for Battle, Gods Willing etc. I usually choose to mulligan until I get a rotpriest in my opening hand and at least a land or two and a protection spell. But keeping Rotty on the board is always a challenge as he has a giant target on his back. How has this all worked out for you in Simic with being able to copy the rotpriest?

DreadKhan on Funny Elves

11 months ago

I found Once Upon a Time really useful in my Elves deck, really smoothe

Is Ezuri, Renegade Leader x1 too off theme? I feel like the Overrun would be sick in here. It's not always the most efficient option, but Joraga Warcaller has very nice versatility, if you have 5 or 7 mana it's a huge buff. If you use Warcaller, I really liked having 1 or 2 Immaculate Magistrate, which also synergizes with your card draw effects.

Have you thought about switching out some copies of Nissa for Wellwisher? Wellwisher lacks Haste, but it comes out sooner and counts as an elf (it's almost always less life, but might give more offense).

Really neat take on Elves, Green isn't known for this kind of thing, but maybe it should be!

wallisface on Do I Need Eight Loci …

1 year ago

Looking at the actual Locus decks, you need stuff like Crop Rotation, Once Upon a Time, Candelabra of Tawnos and Expedition Map to make it work. I’d suggest that if you’re unable to commit to the shell Locus needs to actually do something meaningful, to either switch to Tron lands or ditch this fast-mana plan.

Balinor5 on

1 year ago

Since you're going more green than colorless in this deck, you may want to replace the Ancient Stirrings with Once Upon a Time, since you could whiff on the Stirrings.

I think a couple copies of Sylvan Scrying would be your best bet to get the lands you need. Since Yavimaya, Cradle of Growth is Legendary and you'll be able to find lands, I think two copies would be plenty, especially if you work in Sylvan Scrying. Since you are running green, I'd consider replacing two copies of Yavimaya with 2 copies of Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx. The Boseiju's are great since they have that channel ability.

You have a lot of "play extra land" abilities... too much IMO. The Arboreal Grazers are great early game, but are dead cards later. Unless you run a single copy of Assault Formation. That wouldn't affect your other creatures, but it kind of takes the deck in a different direction. However, if you have tons of mana, you could really boost your creatures through that last ability.

I think you need to find the right balance though playtesting for your Grazers/Azuza/Explore.

I'm not a fan of Turntimber Symbiosis  Flip for what it does. If you have the $$$ Green Sun's Zenith is way better. You'd probably only need to run 1-2 of those, since they recycle themselves, and you can replace the other two copies with Regrowth for renewal or Heroic Intervention for protection.

Lastly, I think you should try to find a way to fit in one or two copies of World Breaker. He does so much work, and if you're dumping lots of lands, you can bring him back from the graveyard.

Not sure what the right answer on your 4x Amulet of Vigor. They are key to get the deck going fast, but later on they are dead cards. Maybe bring it down to 3 copies or even two and try to work in a copy of Bow of Nylea (great all around support card all 4 modes are good for you, and the static ability is amazing with all your trample) and maybe Nylea, God of the Hunt.

Hope this helps give some ideas... The short of it, is that I think you may have too much "play an extra land" and need to watch the potential for late dead cards. Otherwise, it looks great. Primeval Titan is perfect in a deck like this.

DreadKhan on Ajani W/G/R - My First Deck - Legacy i think

1 year ago

If you want to run only 18 lands, you might want to look at some more ramp. An old staple for budget play is Rampant Growth, but Harrow might also be worth a look, since it can fix your mana effectively. There are also options like Farhaven Elf to consider if you really want the body, or Springbloom Druid, in a pinch you could try Silverglade Pathfinder, but it's very slow in Legacy.

Not sure if it's out of your budget, but some White removal might be good in here, the best option is Swords to Plowshares or Path to Exile, but Generous Gift is versatile (and you shouldn't be too worried about a 3/3 compared to what you blew up), but there is also Fateful Absence if people run Planeswalkers. If you want really cheap cards, you might try Oblivion Ring, though that isn't always a permanent solution, it is cheap and versatile.

It's definitely on the pricey side, but Toski, Bearer of Secrets is probably a lot better than Rigo, who won't work with your 1 power creatures after they get a +1 counter on them, Toski pays you for each creature that hits. Ohran Frostfang is arguably even better, but it's more mana and easier to remove, Toski is Indestructible. If you use Toski, you could run x1 of him and use 1 or 2 Time of Need to help find him more consistently. It can also find Djeru, or any other Legendary creature.

A card I like on a budget is Blossoming Bogbeast, the +2/+2 and trample buff is pretty big, and if you've got some other way to gain life before you attack, you can make the bonus much bigger. Trample often ends games much quicker. It's clunky, but it's a pretty cheap repeating Anthem effect.

Another good staple to look at might be Once Upon a Time, which is amazing in the opening hand usually, and reduces how many hands you have to mulligan compared to just running a land or creature in my experience. Like Gitaxian Probe, it got banned in other formats but it's used in Legacy sometimes.

I hope you can have some good games with your new deck!

cyeRunner on 【Emotional】▷ RANT ◁ WOTC's GREED has RUINED MAGIC!

1 year ago

I think WotC has lost track of what they want to do with modern, there are a lot of cards on the banlist because they can be cast without using mana: Once Upon a Time, Mental Misstep, Gitaxian Probe, Dread Return, Blazing Shoal and Eye of Ugin making your Eldrazi-Spells free.
Legacy should be the format of free spells; Not modern and printing the Evoke Elementals in a Set designed for modern contradicts that philosophy. The Evoke cost should have included //// in addition to the exiling of the card in hand.

Regarding the pricing: I agree on your point that there are too many mythic rare pushed card that make the mondern High-Tier decks too expensive and WotC should change something about that. The pricing and the fact that Modern went from a turn 4 format to a turn 3 - 2 1/2 format makes Pioneer more and more attractive.

Regarding bans: there are currently 2 engines that dominate the Metagame:

  • The 4c Elementals using Omnath, Locus of Creation and Wrenn and Six for Value and the free Evoke Elementals for Interaction represented in the 2 decks 4c Elementals and 4c Blink:
    I think Omnath needs to go for the following reasons: it replaces itself, provides t5 enough mana to also play Fury or Solitude, can be pitches for the Evoke costs and gains life against aggro decks. That's just too much for a single card, especially if you compare it to our Lord and Savior.
  • The other is the UR engine around Ragavan, DRC and Expressive Iteration presented in decks like Murktide and Death's Shadow:
    The problem with these decks is that they are too effective in what they do in comparison to decks of the same arctype not running that engine, so they just need to be turned down a bit.
    For this reason i'd like to see Mishra's Bauble go: Pushing cards like DRC, Expressive Iteration, Unholy Heat and Ledger Shredder from "good" to "too good" makes this card a reasonable ban without destroying the decks.
  • On a personal note: I'd like to have Teferi, Time Raveler banned. Interaction is what makes this game fun and having a card that says "I play magic, you play Hearthstone" is the opposite of that.


Thank you for coming to my Ted talk.

Andramalech on Gaia-Post

1 year ago

Balinor5 that is a really great observation! I did intentionally keep the deck colorless as a core theme, but this is the first time I've considered using green due to how explosive that value is-- it simply can't be understated, using Arbor Elf to untap for value would be a fast (and better) way to pull this off.

I would most definitely be a player to use Ancient Stirrings, Once Upon a Time, and the pivotal Yavimaya, Cradle of Growth. So, I tip my hat for the suggestion for sure.

Another player in my group runs mono G tron-post, and we've been incredible rivals for many years; this deck is kind of a "anything you can do, I can do better... without colors." But all in good fun. I appreciate your feedback and I'm going to consider using green in the future! And maybe just a thought.. Yavimaya Hollow?

DreadKhan on Incredible budget combo elves

1 year ago

If you're expecting to get Staff of Domination out, I feel like even a single Ezuri, Renegade Leader is probably about as much 'brute force' offense as you need, this would also free up cards vs using x4 Forerunners that could be too small vs life gain decks, infinite mana and Ezuri is infinite trample damage off of even 1 untapped elf. I also run Blossoming Bogbeast as an infinite finisher, but I have x2 Primal Command to recycle my graveyard while gaining life, making the Bogbeast potentially infinitely big. Primal Command is a really, really versatile card, even if it's a 5 mana spell, it's a great tutor if you've got tons of mana, it can remove annoying things, gain some life and even as noted recycle a graveyard, yours or someone else's. I use a Instill Energy as both an untapper (can be huge ramp) or as a haste source, at which point Bogbeast itself can swing to close.

It usually feels pretty good to have Once Upon a Time in an opener, it can burn you but rarely enough that it turns a lot of otherwise bad hands into solid keepers.

I'm also not sure about Steel Leaf Champion, I feel like you'd be better off with some Joraga Warcallers, these can protect your board from things like Plague Engineer, and are another potential payoff for infinite mana (though it won't give trample). I actually ended up running x2 Jagged-Scar Archers, which can be bigger than Champions while also hating on flyers like Murktide Regent, Delver of Secrets  Flip, or Dragon's Rage Channeler.

I don't love Gelatinous Genesis in here because I don't see any way it can win the turn you cast it, so I'd cut them for something that can do so. I run Terastodon as a big clunky beater option, it can put out up to 18 power for 8 mana (costs me lands, but who cares in Elves?), or it can give my opponent some chumps if they have stuff I want removed (useful if they have exact mana and you expect a Wrath, this can make that Wrath uncastable in time for it to matter). If you use Genesis with 9 mana up, you make 4 4/4 bodies, I'm not sure that's as good as making a 9/9 and blowing up stuff (or just taking the obviously better 9/9 + 3 3/3s), but unless people in your meta do not use Wraths or Ensnaring Bridge type effects, it's worth taking a look at over Genesis. In the event you have infinite mana, you'd have been better off with an Ezuri, which can close that turn, or a Terastodon if you couldn't swing for some reason to clear the field/prevent a retaliatory wipe.

Interesting take on budget Elves! Hope some of my ideas are in your range

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