Path to Exile

Instant

Exile target creature. Its controller may search his or her library for a basic land card, put that card onto the battlefield tapped, then shuffle his or her library.

Discussion (51)

jordanalessi on Opinion: Banning Tutors in EDH

5 days ago

DrukenReaps:

• I really love your view of tutors changing the game from being something that is high variance to something that forces players to make a high amount of choices. Seeing the tutor mechanic through that lens makes me value it a whole lot more. Thanks.

enpc:

• Great point about "next best set". I think that applies to anything on the banlist. People use Flash because it's legal. If flash gets banned, they'll go to the "next best set" of wincons.
• Great point about Path to Exile & Lim-Dul's Vault. I guess a definitive ban list would be necessary. :(
• I agree that card draw would become the new tutor... but card draw isn't nearly as consistent or efficient as tutors. I think replacing tutors with card draw would create a gap in consistency that would allow for a wider range of strategies to be viable.

fadelightningmm:

• Your argument of tutors forcing ppl to make better deckbuilding choices doesn't hold up for me. With that logic, unbanning everything on the entire banlist would "force people to make better deckbuilding choices".

TypicalTimmy:

• We can't ban two card combos, because there will always be a "next best" option.
• Two card combos aren't the problem. The problem is the speed and consistency at which they can be assembled, which forces the format into a stale place where decks aren't built with synergies, there is little variance in viable strategies, and nonblue decks aren't viable. I think if there is less variance in the format, people will get bored of it quicker and the format will shrink instead of grow.
• Card draw and scry effects will not do "just as good" as tutors. Tutors are way more consistent & efficient than card draw.

Nodrog666 on Numot Stax

6 days ago

Hey man! Good first draft! I like some of the ideas in here. I have some constructive criticism for you, so, as brutally honest as I will be with my suggestions, keep in mind I’m just offering my best advice on how to improve this list. I tested this deck a bit and here’s some thoughts I have:

More Tutor / Draw: You’re running very little card advantage, which I noticed when I was testing this deck. There isn’t enough dig or deck manipulation going on here. Basically every time I found myself durdling. Here are some suggestions:

• Sensei's Divining Top
• Scroll Rack
• Crystal Ball
• Courier's Capsule
• Wheel of Fortune
• Windfall
• Stroke of Genius
• Mystic Remora
• Mulldrifter
• Ponder
• Jace Beleren
• Long-Term Plans
• Fabricate
• Land Tax
• Academy Rector
• Idyllic Tutor
• Madblind Mountain
• Fetch Lands. Literally any fetches.

More spot removal: Your deck doesn’t have a lot of ways of dealing out targeted removal. Mass Land D and other sweeper spells are great and all, but you also need ways of handling individual problems as they arrive. Here are some suggestions I have:

• Path to Exile / Swords to Plowshares
• Seal of Cleansing / Dispeller's Capsule
• Return to Dust
• Crush Contraband
• Capsize
• Boomerang
• Shattering Pulse
• Shattering Spree
• Oblation
• Chaos Warp
• Lightning Bolt
• Pongify

More Persistent harassment: You’re running MLD, Tax, but you aren’t running a whole lot of effects to consistently torment the opponent. Smokestack, Pendrell Mists, Kataki, War's Wage, Manabarbs keep pressure on your opponents. Even just running more stuff to slow things down (Winter Orb, Tangle Wire, Kismet, Rule of Law, Stranglehold etc.) would be useful here.

Consider less creatures, more enchantments: Hatebears are cool, but consider the fact that they are easier to kill than their enchantment counterparts. Magus of the Moon dies much easier than Blood Moon and you want these effects to have a good return on investment. This one is more food for thought than actual criticism.

Suggestions for cuts: Hall of Heliod's Generosity (?): It’s a great card, but right now you aren’t running enough Enchantments to justify it. Most of the time it’s going to just tap for colorless. If you run more Enchantments, it’s a keeper! (I think I’m going to try and find a slot for my own deck)

Jhoira, Weatherlight Captain: This is pretty vestigial. It’s not really pulling much weight. Cut it.

Karn, Silver Golem: See above.

Remorseful Cleric: This is too squishy. Run Tormod's Crypt instead. Just as easy to recur (moreso, in fact, cause Academy Ruins sees it) and it lowers your curve.

Tomik, Distinguished Advokist: I get what you’re going with here, but you’re blowing up your lands anyway, making them untargetable is kind of moot. There’s a bunch of hatebears I’d rather run in this slot.

Burning of Xinye / Wildfire: These are weak, you can do way better for MLD in your colors. Add Sunder (Cheaper at Instant speed!).

Saltblast: This card is kind of bad. Costs waaay too much for targeted removal. Also, is completely dead against decks that run white. I’d honestly remove this and replace it with Wrath of God instead.

Karn, the Great Creator: Not doing enough. I see the combo with Mycosynth Lattice, but Hellkite Tyrant is a much better combo.

Elspeth, Sun's Nemesis: This card isn't great. If you want Elspeth, put in Elspeth, Knight-Errant or Elspeth, Sun's Champion instead. Both make tokens as a +1 ability.

Empowered Autogenerator: Too slow, too expensive. It’s not as good as it looks. Ideally, rocks should slot into the 0-3 CC range. If you desperately wanted something in the 4 slot, why not just run Thran Dynamo instead? It’s more consistent.

Firemind Vessel – See above.

enpc on Opinion: Banning Tutors in EDH

6 days ago

I am firmly of the opinion that this is a terrible idea. And there are a few reasons why:

If you only ban some tutors, all that's going to happen is that people are going to move to the "next best set".Can't run Demonic Tutor? Just run Grim Tutor. Can't run Grim Tutor, just run Diabolic Tutor or Dark Petition. If you start banning some of the tutors, people will just roll over to the next available option.

If you're going to ban all tutors, then you can't do it by rules text. Ban lists are supposed to be black and white, not open to interpretation. So just banning all cards that contain "search" and "library" in the rules text would also mean that (as well as banning all land ramp), you would be banning cards like Path to Exile and Assassin's Trophy. You also have cards like Lim-Dul's Vault. It's a tutor, is it banned? You MUST have an exhaustive banlist, thats why 99.99% of games/formats within said games have exhaustive lists.

And if you're going to ban all tutors, then draw card becomes the new tutor. All of a sudden, every deck contains blue because they want every cantrip/draw effect available because nobody wants to topdeck. And now since every deck contains blue, you'll see a lot more of a rise in counterspells because more decks are running blue.

On top of that, without tutors, you've made every commander game basically double in length. I don't know about you, but I personally have a busy life and only get to play magic once/twice a fortnight (if that). And I really don't want to spend the whole night playing 1 game of commander where I previously would have gotten 2-3 games in.

Even if aggro suffers somewhat under tutors, getting rid of them would kill the combo archetype. And you would just see combo decks crammed to the brim with redundant pieces/lots of card draw/counterspells to try and counteract the loss of tutors. But it would generally make them unplayable. Not to mention that voltron would suffer as well - voltron needs tutors to assemble its lethality, otherwise it just folds to battlecruiser style decks.

Oh and the other thing - not everybody hates tutors. I for one enjoy having access to them in my deck. I like the idea of being able to make a 100 card singleton deck more consistent. That's why you see poeple running functional reprints of cards and lots of similar effects. While there is a part of the communtity that just wants to play top deck big smashy cards, you'd find that that isn't the majority of players (but that people who are content with the format as it is are generally just less vocal).

If your playgroup doesn't want to play with tutors, that's great for you. If your playgroup wants to enforce any other house rules, again, I'm happy that you're all in agreement. But the long and short of it is; a format is healthiest with a small a banlist as possible. And on top of that, sweeping decicisions like this which make group A happy generally royally screw over group B. The RC has already indicated that if poeple don't like something, the easiset solution is to house rule. But don't try to enforce that crap on the rest of us. And if people just want to play a card game with big, smashy creatures, then go play Yugioh or something.

morgud on Elusive Mono-White

1 week ago

Nice suggestions but without 12 instants I find myself dead drawing Isochron Scepters. I wouldn't mainboard Winds of Abandon since it's too situational and more expensive CMC than Path to Exile while cheaper sideboard board wipe options exist (like Wrath of God or Phyrexian Rebirth).

Andromedus on Elusive Mono-White

1 week ago

Very cool deck. I would consider one or two Winds of Abandon as late game insurance (example: sliver decks) but it's not immediately clear what it would replace, possibly an Isochron. I would also consider replacing two Path to Exile with two Spirit Links, Spirit Link is 80% as effective at nullifying creatures, doesn't ramp opponent mana, and opens up your life gain possibilities immensely against decks with few creatures where path could be a dead draw (spirit link stacks with lifelink). I realize that path can give you the mana needed for Rest for the Weary but I would argue the trade-off is worth it. Regardless I do like this concept, bravo.

LeoSushi on Atraxa v1.0

1 week ago

Starting with wraths. Cut them all. I'd go with Planar Collapse, austere command (Or Catastrophe), and Nevinyrral's Disk.

For single target removal I'd add Dismember, Path to Exile, Swords to Plowshares, Pongify, Rapid Hybridization, Cyclonic Rift, Darksteel Mutation

Lets see, You want protection for your general and board. Lightning Greaves, Swiftfoot Boots, Diplomatic Immunity, Mother of Runes/Giver of Runes, Counterspell. Swan Song, Drown in the Loch are usually the best in their field.

As far as good cards you want Serra Ascendant, Smothering Tithe, Reclamation Sage, Birds of Paradise, Rishkar's Expertise, Plaguecrafter, Guardian Project, Beast Whisperer, Narset, Parter of Veils, Triumph of the Hordes, Pathbreaker Ibex, Eldritch Evolution

jakeyuki12 on Boros Aurelia

1 week ago

@DespairFaction Hey PJ! Thanks for the feedback.

All the hatebears have been performing really well so far. Just having an early aggressive and evasive creature that can hold equipment and get the train going, the fact that it slows down opponents makes them great.

Captain Lannery Storm has always been a great card in my deck. Turn 3 when she comes out I can always seem to find a free attack that helps me ramp early on. Swiftblade Vindicator has been excellent as it holds equipment incredibly well. I don't think the low toughness has ever been a problem for me, so once again an early, aggressive creature is just what this deck wants. As for Wayfarer's Bauble (Commander's Quarter's echoes are heard in the distance) I've always liked how it can get a land. Drawing it late game is just like drawing a copy of Rampant Growth late game, something that never stops us from running it.

Winds of Abandon has actually incredibly overperformed in this deck. The floor of the card is a bad Path to Exile (which is still great) while the ceiling is a one-sided boardwipe that can only be protected against by a counterspell or Teferi's Protection. It's the white version of Cyclonic Rift. Not nearly as powerful, but I'll take one-sided exile board wipes any day. With that in mind, I really like all the pieces of removal I've got in this deck, what I really was talking about is that I want just one or two more slots I feel to get just a tad bit more instant speed interaction in the deck.

The draw power of the deck works really well. Outpost Siege has always been ol' reliable for me. The way I play this deck, a steady flow of a bit of impulsive draw every turn is exactly what I want. Commune with Lava,Prophetic Flamespeaker, and Light Up the Stage could probably get me more impulsive draw, but I don't like overextending in this deck, and I feel the Siege tends to be more reliable every turn. Tome of Legends does seem like it could be pretty good in this deck considering how often our general attacks. Let me know how that one works for ya.

The deck doesn't tend to struggle with other aggressive/stompy decks because of all the board wipes that are in the deck. I think Winter Orb probably works better in the weapons of war build than this build since the larger focus on equipment makes getting Sword of Feast and Famine easier.

The creatures are definitely the cards in this deck that I feel are most flexible. Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite is an amazing card, and I've definitely thought about picking it up and trying it before, it could probably swap places with Urabrask the Hidden. I really wanted Neheb, the Eternal to work, but every time I played it I rarely had anything to do with the red mana haha. All in all though I want this deck to be aggressive, so I don't want the top end of this deck to get too heavy, or I find my hands getting more and more clunky.

I do have to point out though that this isn't a deck meant to compete with cEDH decks. If you stuck it in a cEDH pod and have a strong, competent pilot really thinking about and making the correct plays, it would definitely seem really threatening to all the decks that aren't used to the aggression, but it could never win as fast as it relies on combat damage. I think it would sneak out 1 in 5 games in a cEDH pod. If we were to use the command zone deck rating scale, I would say this deck edges on the end of optimized, an 8.5 or so. I will say that adding back Helm of the Host would probably make this deck a tad stronger, but I took it out because I got bored of it haha.

So, TL;DR, I'm feeling pretty good about most of the deck, the creatures are the ones I feel best about swapping out, and I feel I want a few more pieces of instant speed interaction.

xaarvaxus on First actual EDH deck, i guess

1 week ago

Ashiok, Dream Render's hybrid mana symbols give the card blue/black color identity and thus makes it ineligible in an Orzhov deck.

Swords to Plowshares and Path to Exile are creature removal that should be strongly considered for any deck that can run them. The low, low CMC and instant speed combined with exiling the target remain unmatched. You can easily make space for Swords [if you're only going to run one, pick Swords first as the additional matters far less than the land granted] by cutting Fruit of Tizerus. Despite being able to recur it with escape, doing only 2 damage to one opponent in a multiplayer format is far too little return for your investment of mana and cards in graveyard.

Sol Ring is flat out the best card in the format so unless you have a house rule in the local meta that it is banned, you should be running it.

I don't know that you're running enough auras or equipment to get much mileage out of either Sram, Senior Edificer or Danitha Capashen, Paragon. If you want to go this route, you can consider finding space for: Darksteel Mutation as it is good turning opposing commanders into statues, Blackblade Reforged, Sword of the Animist for some ramp, Swiftfoot Boots for the haste and protection, Whispersilk Cloak for evasion and protection, Angelic Destiny because a flying 3 headed dog that is now also an angel is just awesome.

Other inspiration can be drawn from the listings at EDHREC but so far the handful of people submitting decks have gone very stax-y and that may not be your cup of tea.