Orvar, the All-Form

Legendary Creature — Shapeshifter

Changeling (This card is every creature type.)

Whenever you cast an instant or sorcery spell, if it targets one or more other permanents you control, create a token that's a copy of one of those permanents.

When a spell or ability an opponent controls causes you to discard this card, create a token that's a copy of target permanent.

Tokens

• Copy Clone

Legality

Format	Legality
1v1 Commander	Legal
Alchemy	Legal
Archenemy	Legal
Arena	Legal
Block Constructed	Legal
Brawl	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
Modern	Legal
Oathbreaker	Legal
Pioneer	Legal
Planechase	Legal
Pre-release	Legal
Quest Magic	Legal
Standard	Legal
Vanguard	Legal
Vintage	Legal

Discussion (45)

Khurgar on Modern Lands

2 weeks ago

Allright, so here's the "how the fk does it work?" part.

The deck is a prett slow one that takes some time before it really activates, so several cards both in the main deck and side board are there to mitigate the pressure that we might suffer from early plays. Lightning Bolt, Fire / Ice and Arboreal Grazer fills these slots in the main deck.

What the deck wants to do is generally to discard lands with Seismic Assault to deal damage to the enemy, then use cards such as Wrenn and Six, Life from the Loam and Slogurk, the Overslime to recur those lands to your hand again.

Trade Routes is used for 3 reasons. The first is pretty straight forwards, use your land cards in hand to generate new cards. Second use is to be able to play your channel lands early in the game to give mana while being able to pick them up later in the game to use their channel effect. And the third one is to make Slogurk, the Overslime to grow rapidly. If you discard a land and opt to dredge a Life from the Loam, Slogurk, the Overslime can grow anywhere between +1 to +4 +1/+1 counters for a single mana, ontop of digging for utility lands that you can return later.

Sadly I have not had a lot of time playtesting it, and I think that the sideboard needs a lot of work. First and foremost I feel like I have doubled down a bit too hard on artifact hate, albeit with a lot of cards with multi purpose.

Anyways, the rundown of why I included the cards are as follows: Damping Sphere was included to stop decks such as tron and titan, and it also works well versus decks such as breach or storm or other more jank combos such as neobrand.

Pithing Needle and Relic of Progenitus dont need explaining.

Brotherhood's End was included to deal with asmo decks, affinity, prison tron, goblins, merfolk and other similar decks to these.

Force of Vigor is in the deck solely because I have no way to stop a turn 2 kill from hammer, other than blocking with an Arboreal Grazer. I am strongly considering cutting it though.

Haywire Mite is included to stop Kaldra Compleat, but will probably see play in the same games that my other artifact and enchantment hate cards.

Otawara, Soaring City is just so that you are more likely to draw them, especially in matchups where they run pithing needle to stop Boseiju, Who Endures, but is also really good for returning combo pieces to hand, or just big beaters like murktide. Its also really good vs tokens.

Boseiju, Who Endures just a really solid card, deals with most problems the deck faces, such as graveyard hate and blood moon effects.

Bojuka Bog is a fantastic card in this deck. With this card and Trade Routes you can exile your opponents graveyard every turn if you'd like, although it is only in sorcery speed.

Cards that I would like to experiment with: Expressive Iteration is a card that I am gonna experiment with in place of Fire / Ice. I think that Fire / Ice is much better at stalling out the game, but expressive is such a valuable card to have in the mid game.

Academy Ruins and Buried Ruin to be able to get artifacts back from the graveyard.

Shadowspear to deal with agressive matchups where the opponent have no good way of dealing with my constructs or Slogurk, the Overslime.

Orvar, the All-Form versus decks that enjoy discarding your hand, so generally versus decks that runs archong or liliana.

I hope you enjoyed the read, give me some thoughts in the comments if you have any =)

Archon_Bel on Ephara Remastered *PRIMER FINALLY*

1 month ago

Nice to see another Ephara player lol. Here are my thoughts:

1. Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite- I ran this version of Elesh for a time. She is a powerful card, but I never found she really did much for the deck when I ran her. In my experience, 7 mana was too high a cost to pay for no recurrable effect (I prefer to have effects that I can reuse by flickering), and it usually left me with less mana to spend during my opponents’ turns, which I found to be more important than being able to swing for damage. Why not run the new Elesh Norn, Mother of Machines, instead? She pairs a lot better with our EtB effects.

2. Lavinia of the Tenth- Cool card, and I get the concept behind her inclusion, but I personally never ended up running her. I prefer to remove creatures with stuff like Skyclave Apparition or Reflector Mage, or even just spot removal, than temporarily stopping them while keeping them on the field.

3. Ledger Shredder- I don’t really see what this card does for you. Like with Elesh Norn, I think it’s better to run creatures with EtB effects you can reuse with flicker effects.

4. Nezahal, Primal Tide- Same as above, plus the casting cost is way too high for my liking. Why not run something like Deadeye Navigator instead if you want a repeatable blink?

A few cards I’d recommend are Ephemerate, Momentary Blink, and Ghostway. The first two are very good instant blink cards, useful for reusing stuff like Reflector Mage on the spot for removal or Cloudblazer for some draw before your turn. You also get two uses out of them, so they’re good value and flexible cards. Ghostway is slightly better than Teferi's Protection in this deck imo, since you not only save your creatures, but you get their EtB effects again at end of turn. You don’t have the added benefit of protecting yourself from damage, though, so for that, I’d recommend Selfless Squire. Very underrated but super useful card in my experience; I once stalled a game out against a board full of 30+ dragons and only 3 life because of this card lol. Not a one-off occurrence either, as I’ve had several games where I’ve been able to keep myself from certain death by constantly flickering her effect; she’s incredible when combined with Archaeomancer and Ghostly Flicker!

Other creatures I’d recommend are Watcher for Tomorrow, Cloudblazer, and Saltskitter. The first two are great value engines with Soulherder and Thassa, Deep-Dwelling. I held off for a long time on using Saltskitter, but when I did, man did he put in the work. I was pretty much drawing cards every turn. There’s also Orvar, the All-Form, though this pretty much does the same thing as Displacer Kitten. Having those extra bodies is nice, though, so it’s up to you. Could even just run both lol.

Oh, and you may as well add Altar of Dementia to complete your Reveillark and Karmic Guide package.

tl;dr focus more on creatures with EtB effects for more flicker value, and a few more blink spells.

wallisface on Test of Talents vs. Hallowed …

1 month ago

It’s also probably worth noting here that the absolute best sideboard card for hosing creativity decks is imo Orvar, the All-Form. Just let them do their thing and then best them to death with a copy of their own Archon.

seshiro_of_the_orochi on Card creation challenge

2 months ago

Orvar Ignited {3}{U}{U}

Legendary Planeswalker - Orvar

Planeswalker-Changeling (This permanent is every planeswalker type.)

~ enters the battlefield with X loyalty counters, where X is the number of different planeswalker types among permanents you control. If X would be greater than 10, it is 10 instead.

-1 You may Discard two planeswalker cards with the same name. If you do, Search your library for a planeswalker card and put it onto the battlefield.

-10 Return any number of planeswalker cards from your graveyard to the battlefield. You get an emblem with "the legend rule diesn't apply to planeswalkers you control."

x

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I think I fulfilled the challenge. The ultimate still works in EDH, and copying this in for example in Orvar, the All-Form is an instant ultimate, but then again, whenyou can pull this off while also filling your yard with Walkers, you earn it.

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Create a card named Wrecking-Paw.

zapyourtumor on Murky Waters

2 months ago

Think Twice definitely takes me back to an older era of modern when that card was playable lol. I still strongly think you should just go full dimir since you're already halfway there for the reasons I already outlined earlier, but I can also understand wanting to stay "mono blue". If you never want to go topdeck mode though, I think you should 100% cut the otherworldly gazes and trim down on FoN + thought scour.

I would 100% go 4th Archmage's Charm over Dismember, second best mono-blue counterspell in modern ATM (imo Drown in the Loch is a contender for second best outside of mono-blue).

Snapcaster mage is kind of slow, but I think he is still playable in these types of lists just because Snappy into Cryptic or Archmage's Charm etc feels so good. You probably need more lands to support him though since he's a very mana hungry card. Going up to 4 consider is very reasonable though, I think its a far better card than scour in this deck, hands down.

Surgical Extraction plays a slightly different role, and is definitely weaker than Ego against decks like Rhinos, Creativity, Grinding Station etc, especially since the deck runs no discard you need to counter/remove the cards before extracting them. If you need to stay mono blue, surgical is obviously the only one you can run, but in that case I would just replace it altogether with other sideboard cards in mono blue. For example, Invasive Surgery/Test of Talents for rhinos and creativity, Orvar, the All-Form for creativity, and you already have Pithing Needle for grinding station and stuff.

zapyourtumor on Murky Waters

2 months ago

Card Suggestions Show

I've listed all these below with explanations, I just have to put them at the top so I can check mark them as suggestions. Drown in the Loch, Fatal Push, Inquisition of Kozilek, Damnation, Unmoored Ego, Sunken Ruins, Ledger Shredder, Aether Gust, Mystical Dispute, Remand, Spreading Seas, Memory Deluge, Orvar, the All-Form

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I think the main decision you have to make with this deck is whether you want it to be a true control deck or a tempo deck. A true control deck would try to trade one for one and build card advantage before dropping a threat like Murktide or Jace or simply winning with Snappy beatdown. A tempo deck on the other hand would try to turbo out a quick Murktide and then protect that threat.

Mixing control and tempo is nothing new, and it sometimes works quite well. But because a lot of the cards from each type of deck don't necessarily go well together, you can sometimes end up in an awkward situation.

Here, you definitely have a mix of both types (which, I'd like to emphasize, is not necessarily bad). Archmage's Charm, Counterspell, Cryptic Command, Snapcaster Mage, Devastation Tide and Jace, the Mind Sculptor are all heavily control-flavored cards in your deck. They all either break even or generate card advantage, or massively stall out the game.

On the other hand, Force of Negation, Otherworldly Gaze, Thought Scour, Spell Pierce, and Subtlety are all tempo-flavored cards.

The problem with this combination in this deck is that half of your cards aim to turbo out a Murktide Regent as fast as possible with Otherworldly Gaze and Thought Scour and then protect it in the short term with cheap spells like Dismember, Force of Negation, Subtlety, and Spell Pierce. The main problems with these cards is that they are pretty terrible topdecks late game. Scour isn't too bad because it cantrips, but topdecking a Gaze when you really needed a counterspell or card advantage engine or a Murktide would probably feel terrible. And all the control-type cards aim to reach that stage of the game.

One example of a problem that arises when you try and combine these two archetypes is in the manabase. Tempo decks typically don't need many lands; depending on the deck's mana curve, we are generally looking at 19-20 lands, and occasionally even 18 or less. On the other hand, control decks almost always want at least 22-23 lands, sometimes up to 24-26 lands in order to reliably play their more expensive spells on curve like Archmage's Charm, Cryptic Command and Snapcaster Mage, and to also always have mana held up during their opponents turn for a reactive spell.

Of course, many cards fit very flexibly into both tempo and control decks, for example Counterspell is just so strong it works in both, while Consider being a cheap cantrip also fits into both types. So in my opinion one of the most important decisions you should make, if you want to make the deck more cohesive and just function smoother as a whole, is whether you want to lean more towards tempo or control.

Quick disclaimer: I think it is definitely possible to make the deck more competitive while keeping both tempo and control aspects; however you should probably then trim both the very slow control-leaning cards (Cryptic Command, Devastation Tide, Jace, the Mind Sculptor), and the cheap tempo-leaning cards (Otherworldly Gaze, Thought Scour, Force of Negation) and replace them with cards more towards the middle ground. The rest of the cards, like Archmage's Charm, Subtlety, Force of Negation, Spell Pierce, Dismember, and of course Murktide Regent are all flexible enough that they can slot into both types of decks.

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The second important decision to make is what secondary color, if any, you want for your deck in order to complement the primary color (blue). The main issue with mono blue control is that you have very few ways to deal with resolved permanents, which is why most players typically splash white or black (or occasionally red). Blue only has access to bounce spells, which are decent in tempo decks but generally bad in control decks because they are card disadvantage (and also terrible late).

Here, I see you kind of "splashed" black, but your only maindeck spell with black pips uses phyrexian mana anyways, while the only black spell in your sideboard can be casted with only blue mana. In my opinion, since you already have black lands, I would commit fully to a UB manabase by including a few more fetches (U fetches since that's your main color) because it gives you access to a lot of strong options:

Drown in the Loch is a really good spell doubling as both removal and countermagic at only 2 cmc, and only gets stronger as the game goes on. Fatal Push is another great removal spell which is generally stronger than Dismember, although it needs at least around 7 fetches to show its full potential. You can also run discard like Inquisition of Kozilek, although that is more tempo/midrange-esque so it may not be a great fit for this deck. Black also gives you an actual boardwipe in the form of Damnation, which is definitely a lot stronger than something like Devastation Tide since it gets rid of the creatures permanently and indirectly generates CA by trading with multiple enemy creature cards. It also doesn't hit Jace. If you don't think you need it in the mainboard, it can be a great sideboard inclusion. Lastly you have access to some sideboard options like Unmoored Ego.

If all of the blue pip spells like Counterspell and Archmage's Charm have you worried about mana fixing issues, you can run the filter land Sunken Ruins which is great in these types of decks to ensure you can cast both BB and UUU spells.

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Those two main points aside, I have a few other card suggestions I think could work well here, some of which lean more control and some which lean more tempo.

Ledger Shredder is a great card which leans a bit more towards tempo but unlike Gaze/Thought Scour it helps turbo out a Murktide while also growing into a significant threat itself.

Aether Gust and Mystical Dispute are decent color-specific sideboard cards.

Remand is a tempo-leaning card that is generally not great in pure control lists, but could be good here if you decide to stick to the turbo murktide strategy.

Spreading Seas is probably the best sideboard option mono-blue has against Urza's Saga.

Memory Deluge has a bit of antisynergy with Murktide, but a very good digging spell if you decide to go towards control.

Orvar, the All-Form is another great sideboard card which instantly turns the tables on any Creativity player thinking they auto won the game after cheating out an early Archon of Cruelty.

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If you made it this far, thanks for reading all of my comments. I like the deck and I'm excited to see where you can take it in the future. Happy brewing!

veritablecvn on Timing interaction between Orvar, the …

2 months ago

The ‘Legend Rule’ is a state-based action so it does not use the stack. Here are three of the relevant rules:

704.1. State-based actions are game actions that happen automatically whenever certain conditions (listed below) are met. State-based actions don’t use the stack.

704.3. Whenever a player would get priority (see rule 117, “Timing and Priority”), the game checks for any of the listed conditions for state-based actions, then performs all applicable state-based actions simultaneously as a single event.

704.5j If two or more legendary permanents with the same name are controlled by the same player, that player chooses one of them, and the rest are put into their owners’ graveyards. This is called the “legend rule.”

Here is how I understand the interaction you are describing resolving based off of the above rules: You cast Jump targeting Inga Rune-Eyes causing the Orvar, the All-Form trigger to be put on the stack and a round of priority. The trigger resolves and the copy of Inga Rune-Eyes enters the battlefield triggering the scry three to be put on the stack and a round of priority. State-based actions are checked and the legend rule applies so you choose an Inga to save and then you put the other one into the graveyard. This causes the draw three trigger to be put on the stack and a round of priority. The draw three resolves and you draw three, there’s a round of priority, and then the scry three resolves and you scry three.

CamraMaan on Timing interaction between Orvar, the …

2 months ago

Orvar, the All-Form and Inga Rune-Eyes are in play, and after two of my opponent's creatures die in combat I cast Jump targeting Inga, which will give it flying and then make a copy of Inga from Orvar. When that copy enters the battlefield I will get a scry 3 trigger, but the Inga copy will be immediately sacrificed due to the legendary rule, which will trigger Inga again for me to draw three cards. So the timing question regards when the triggers for the scry 3 and draw 3 take place, since the sacrifice of Inga is automatic and therefore should go on the stack before the scry 3 trigger resolves... So do I get to scry 3 first, then draw three, or am I stuck drawing three before I get to scry...? Thanks in advance!