Phyrexian Altar
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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
Tiny Leaders Legal
Vanguard Legal
Vintage Legal

Phyrexian Altar

Artifact

Sacrifice a creature: Add one mana of any colour.

legendofa on Eda, Mother of the Lost

1 week ago

I'm going to stand by what I said earlier and say this doesn't need any more restrictions. I get you don't want to roll up with an overpowered custom Commander, that's a bad look, but I think it's still slightly overtuned.

Eda has a lot of great self-synergy. Working through a sequence, let's say you cast Experimental Aviator to get some tokens, and pay the for offspring. From there, you gain 5 life from five tokens entering. You then populate the Aviator offspring token to get another Aviator and its tokens, gaining another 3 life.

Net result at what I see is the most efficient possible token generation rate (5 mana for a creature + two tokens), you spend eleven total mana to gain 8 life and create nine creatures. I can't find a direct comparison quickly, but this passes my personal feel test.

At the lower end, let's start with Memnite. Pay for offspring, you get two creatures for two mana. Populate the token, and the net result for least mana spent is for gaining 2 life and three creatures. Not super efficient.

I'm choosing examples that keep the process simple. If you choose, like, Gruff Triplets + Phyrexian Altar, you can completely change the math. But I think these examples illustrate my thought, that even with the best possible single-card outcome, you seem to be in pretty fair territory.

YamishiTheWickedOne on What is a Man? (a hyper aggro Edgar Markov EDH)

1 week ago

@Vessiliana anything you'd recommend cutting to keep Phyrexian Altar? Not quite sold on Ripper but I'll keep testing. Citadel on the other hand is functionally a 6 mana "I win" button. Been testing it out and I think that should give you an idea of how I feel about that card in Edgar.

AstroAA on All the combos

3 weeks ago

Personally I'm a massive fan of anything involving the card Aluren. In addition, Enduring Renewal is a pretty funny card to use with sac outlets like Ashnod's Altar and Phyrexian Altar. Pair all the cards together with a creature less than three CMC you can get infinite mana, ETBs, death triggers, etc.

Quickspell on [Primer] Slimefoot and Squee's Corpse Catapult

1 month ago

This sounds fun! My favourite card is Atsushi, the Blazing Sky. Ever since it was printed, I have tried to make it a consistent wincon. I have searched every possible way (manually, without looking online) to come up with a way to break it and use both it’s abilities to win. There are multiple, but without heavy tutoring they are hard to pull off.

I finally found a solution in Slimefoot and Squee. With Phyrexian Altar you can just win the game.

Here is how:

  1. Cast Slimefoot and Squee
  2. Cast Atsushi, the Blazing Sky
  3. Cast Phyrexian Altar
  4. Sac S&S + Atsushi to the Altar to make two mana and create three treasures.
  5. Use the mana and two treasures to reanimate both creatures.
  6. Repeat 10K times. Each time you will be left with an additional treasure.
  7. Repeat again, but this time have Atsushi exile cards. You will loose treasures, but you have enough and can make new ones inbetween.
  8. Repeat any number of times to exile your whole deck.
  9. Cast everything with your treasures.

Since you have the altar, you might as well add Atsushi:)

YamishiTheWickedOne on What is a Man? (a hyper aggro Edgar Markov EDH)

1 month ago

I know Phyrexian Altar is standard but I've been thinking of cutting that for CN. I do kinda want to lower my curve where possible.

TypicalTimmy on Card creation challenge

2 months ago

Myzocom, Renewal of Decay

Legendary Creature - Fungus Shaman

You may cast creature spells and enchantment spells from your graveyard by paying life equal to their mana value in addition to their other casting costs.

Whenever you cast a spell from your graveyard, create a 1/1 green Saproling creature token. If the spell you cast is legendary, create three of these tokens instead.

3/3

Want to know why this guy is insanely broken and would never be printed as is? Ornithopter exists, as does Phyrexian Altar or any other sac outlets. Enjoy infinite mana with infinite tokens, which can cause infinite triggers from all of your creature and enchantment based ETB effects.

To make him "playable", it would have to limit to 1 cast per turn. That way you break super easy infinite loops. Of course you literally have the same loop anyway with Gravecrawler and a zombie online, so it doesn't really matter. The difference is, this is your Commander - meaning you always have access to him which makes it significantly harder to actually stop your unending gameplay.

Although, give it some time and I'm sure WOTC will print something like him just because of the nature of power creep.

Speaking of which, that's your next challenge. Let's see an Aura called "Power Creep".

10,000 bonus points if the card feels like it would belong in a new D&D set.

DreadKhan on EDH Merens Reanimator

3 months ago

The OG Fetches are very good cards in almost any deck, and as I mentioned in my first post, I don't know if it would be easy to improve this deck without either adding Fetchlands or increasing the power level.

The easiest way to increase the power level a deck like yours is to add a combo, but your present power level is high enough that you'd need to add a fairly efficient combo, something like Protean Hulk to find a complete combo (ideally via a single pile), this would leave you at a strong 8, not quite cEDH but it's fairly hard to make Meren a cEDH deck at this point, her ability is too slow/grindy for cEDH games. cEDH Meren lists are likely to make use of something like Razaketh, or possibly a Phyrexian Devourer combo. Razaketh uses something like Life / Death to turn your lands into creatures so you can keep tutoring until you find both your combo of choice as well as the mana to play it. Razaketh decks love stuff like Lion's Eye Diamond, which is extremely pricey and does very little other than combo off. You'd also want Dark Ritual type cards, and possibly things like Lotus Petal and Elvish Spirit Guide. The main problem with Razaketh is getting him out early, but something like Final Parting can get you there by putting Razaketh in the bin and a Reanimate into hand. Similarly, you can reanimate a Protean Hulk (which you then sacrifice) to tutor up a game ending combo, the advantage of Protean Hulk is that it's easier to cast when you're desperate, but the upside of Razaketh is that you can tutor up any cards you want, Razaketh just gives you a new hand in exchange for a few creatures. I think Protean Hulk is the best of the lot, but Phyrexian Devourer isn't a bad option, you use Triskelion with it by getting both into your graveyard, with a Necrotic Ooze on the battlefield, you then just exile cards to put counters on your Devourer, and the only real drawbacks are your limit on individual MV (Devourer dies if it gets too big), and you'll need enough total MV to actually kill everyone (this isn't too hard if you go off fairly early, but it can suck if you take all game to get into position and can't kill everyone because you don't have enough cards left. Another upside to Devourer is that Triskelion also wins the game with Mikaeus (you ping Triskelion with the last counter so it dies (without any counters left) and has Undying). Oh, with Protean Hulk the 'smallest' pile I am familiar with involves Disciple of the Vault, Melira, Sylvok Outcast, Lesser Masticore, and Carrion Feeder/Viscera Seer, with that pile you don't even need Activated Sleeper to nab a second Protean Hulk (with only 3 MV after you account for the Sleeper). The main drawback of this pile is that the cards are individually bad IMHO (I would run Feeder and Seer, but none of the others fit in a generic Meren deck), and the lack of redundancy (Melira and Masticore aren't used in a lot of other combos in Meren decks afaik) makes it less stable than some lists. The final one I feel is worth mention is Demon of Dark Schemes, Mitotic Slime, and Phyrexian Altar nets you infinite mana, ETBs, death triggers, Energy, and all the creatures in each graveyard can be reanimated by you. The nice thing about the Demon is that it's only 6 mana (so technically Hulk can find him), and it can do a lot of work in certain situations since it can wipe small creatures as well as reanimate cards from anyone's graveyard. It's one of the better generic reanimation effects that can go infinite, and it's sheer range of utility makes it worth looking at even if you didn't use Mitotic Slime. The Slime btw is very good in most Meren decks since it offers a plethora of tokens for only 5 mana, while Phyrexian Altar (or Pitiless Plunderer) are both amazing cards in a deck like this.

If you feel like adding a combo, I wouldn't have more than ~2 trees/paths to work with, unless the cards are shared between multiple lists.

I can go into more detail if it would be helpful, I have a Meren deck on here you could take a look at, it's a lot more combo oriented than your list, but it's combos aren't optimal, they're all made with stuff I already had.

IHATENAMES on Sidar Jabari Knight Combo

4 months ago

Profet93

I see a few Cathars' Crusade + Basri's Lieutenant + sac outlet and any other nontokeln creature with +1 counters Inf tokens and more

Phyrexian Altar + Haakon, Stromgald Scourge + 1 drop knight 2 life per etb ltb trigger some effects can reduce life loss/kill opponents

Note to brewer

I think Ashnod's Altar might be not worth it here. You might be better with another free sac outlet like Viscera Seer or more reanimation like Victimize

Happy brewing!

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