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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 |
| Planechase | Legal |
| Premodern | Legal |
| Quest Magic | Legal |
| Vanguard | Legal |
| Vintage | Legal |
Pentagram of the Ages
Artifact
, : The next time a source of your choice would deal damage to you this turn, prevent that damage.
![Den of the Bugbear feature for Goblin Bombardment [Several commander options]](http://static.tappedout.net/mtg-cards-2/adventures-in-the-forgotten-realms/den-of-the-bugbear/femme_fatale-den-of-th_WU6ytLX.png)
FormOverFunction on The Great Planeswalker Debate
1 year ago
(1) Everything Caerwyn said. Very accurate and well-explained. (2) I would like to carry the Luddite torch further by saying “I remember back when the players were the only planeswalkers.” I like to joke that Dreadbore should just insta-kill your opponent. (3) My biggest complaint is more focused on the soft (non-mechanics) end of the spectrum. Rightfully or wrongfully, I see planeswalkers as the beginning of the end of the players-in-the-spotlight era. When I started playing, the players were mighty wizards grabbing unexpecting thrulls out of Breeding Pits and flinging them at each other. One might have gotten their hands on an ancient Pentagram of the Ages somehow. How does it work? No idea! Who made it? No way of knowing! But that wizard has it and will be that much harder to defeat. Maybe the other wizard dug up Urza's Chalice. Who’s was Urza? An ancient dude of great power, from ages ago. Important? Sure, but not as important as how that wizard is about to use it! All that other stuff was forever ago, and your defeat is staring you in the face here and now! You get the picture. Today, with WOTC so heavily invested in these planeswalkers and their stories, we are (as nearly as is possible in a build-your-own-deck game) locked on the railroad tracks of their stories. It’s approaching the point, with the way the cards appear to be created, that you’ll need to read the book to find out how to make the deck. You may be chuckling at that, but I don’t see it being that far off. When WOTC just dumped a bunch of Earth Elementals and Giant Growths in your lap, the game seemed WIDE OPEN. Sure there were stories and books and names like Llanowar and Serra that hinted at enormous story arcs, but you were still just two wizards slugging it out somewhere else. Using the tools you had available. To wrap this up: planeswalkers, in my mind, cemented the railroad tracks in place that dragged -us- planeswalkers off stage. Forced us into the front row seating of a sub-off-Broadway performance that simply cannot live up to what our imaginations had been building for years... about characters that either never meant anything to us before, or are weak shadows of what we had imagined. It’s just super disappointing to pull the D&D/role playing/imagination out of this game, especially when you consider that it was likely an accidental byproduct; a necessity borne of their inability to do more at the time (I think they probably would have started the game this way if they had the resources). It might be difficult for everyone to relate to this, but it’s a little like the Atari game Pitfall for me. The game is repetitive and hollow by today’s standards; the maps are random/inconsistent, and the only skill used is jump. As a younger lad, though, my mind was ROARING while I played it. Imagining swinging from vines over giant scorpions and scooping up piles of treasure was at the front of my mind, leveraged exponentially by the box art (treat yourself to a viewing of all the different pieces of original Atari box art sometime- it’s gorgeous stuff). Now, everything about a video game is there. In front of you. Once you’ve seen it, heard it, and defeated it, you’re done and it is (usually) discarded as flavorless gum. At risk of being overly dramatic; that’s sort of what planeswalkers have done to magic for me. I am not a fan. (TLDR: planeswalkers represent the growing pre-chewed and pre-arranged feeling I get from magic these days and I don’t like them and I’m old and get off my lawn)
FormOverFunction on Why Are Secret Lairs So …
1 year ago
Niko9 I’m 100% on the same page: much of the modern magic card art is WAY too perfect. Anything more perfect than Pentagram of the Ages is sort of suspect lol
FormOverFunction on What are your hopes / …
2 years ago
I’m super glad that people who liked the first kamigawa get to go back, but I’m sitting that one out. That set is pretty much in the middle of when I left magic. It bothers me, because there are a lot of cool cards and interesting characters (I’m assuming) but that era isn’t really my thing. I think it comes down to my getting into magic when most of the game was just a bunch of weird, seemingly unrelated things that you (a planeswalker) discovered on your journeys (like Pentagram of the Ages, Goblins of the Flarg, Castle) and had to sort of cobble together on your own. When weatherlight came around I had the (probably unreasonable) feeling that I was being railroaded into playing magic in accordance to a movie I hadn’t seen... which left a pretty bad taste in my mouth. In a weak defense of myself, this was before everything about all the characters and plots and whatnot were posted on an internet, and unless you were really interested in seeking that stuff out, it literally did not exist. All you had was the flavor text on the cards as hints about things that happened (could be recently, could be LONG ago like the Brothers War). It still makes me sad, because there’s a lot of good stuff there... it just isn’t for me. To reiterate: I dislike it when folks bad mouth things that they don’t like in a way that infers that the thing is genuinely bad or wrong. I don’t want this post to come across that way. What I do want is to share my experience so that I don’t seem unreasonable, and also to help figure out why on earth there are magic cards that I somehow don’t like. It’s very strange.
tiffanyann on
CATCH THESE HANDS ♡ (YUSRI FOOT FETISH) (UPDATED!)
2 years ago
Hmmmm...stuff like this?
FormOverFunction on Did People Like the Mystical …
2 years ago
I think (most) of the MA art brings us back to what helped make magic popular: the weirder more conceptual art, less of the digitally-polished photo-realistic stuff. An example of that difference is Dramatic Reversal and Pentagram of the Ages . That squad-photo is almost identical to what you would expect to see on an Avengers-themed tissue box; “Hey kids! You recognize these characters! Tell your parents to buy these Kleenex(tm) brand facial tissues!” The artifact is weird; no one knows who it is in the picture and there’s no discernible way to see how the item would even work. And the painting itself looks like a relic you might have dug up out of the sands of an encroaching waste ;p I’m not the target market for these new cards, and I’m unhappy about how they are (to some extent or another) cutting the local nerd shops out of the loop, but I love getting back to those artistic basics.
Spirits on
Heartless Hidetsugu, the Maniac $50 EDH
5 years ago
Hi Funkydiscogod,
Thanks for the suggestion,
I've added it to my maybeboard, Grafted Exoskeleton is $1.50, so in a $50 budget restricted, it takes a significant role. It can eliminate any players with 20 or more life.
Another issue is that I have very limited protection, 6 to be exact. Only 3 of them, General's Regalia, Glacial Chasm, Pentagram of the Ages will work with Infect, Basilisk Collar, Fortune Thief, and Loxodon Warhammer won't. General's Regalia and Pentagram of the Ages have high activation costs too. Both of my budget tutors only pull Basilisk Collar or Loxodon Warhammer.
I would have to 1) Have enough mana to cast Heartless Hidetsugu, 2) Haste (If a cost like Swiftfoot Boots), 3) Equip Grafted Exoskeleton , 4) Protect (General's Regalia or Pentagram of the Ages ). Worst case need CMC12 to utilize.
I need Expedition Map to pull Glacial Chasm but at $3.65 it's tough.
I need some better protection, but need budget protection. If I can shore up, to 5 or 6 protection that protect against Infect then I think I can make it a viable play.
Snacrifice on
Nowhere to Hidetsugu (Budget EDH)
6 years ago
Fun deck!
I think you'd get a lot of use out of General's Regalia or Pentagram of the Ages to stop yourself from dying as well. I'd drop Bubbling Cauldron, it's too slow and costs mana TBH. Pristine Talisman would give you consistent life gain and more mana if you wanted something with life gain, and doesn't much change price numbers.
