Pithing Needle

Artifact

As Pithing Needle enters the battlefield, name a card.

Activated abilities of sources with the chosen name can't be activated unless they're mana abilities.

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
Tiny Leaders	Legal
Vanguard	Legal
Vintage	Legal

Discussion (46)

psionictemplar on FNM - First Time Playing …

1 month ago

I would like to start by saying that by I am guessing you are not intending to participate in these settings very often. With that consideration in mind I am also guessing that you probably do not intend to spend a considerable amount of money to acquire upgrades, so I will attempt to keep my suggestions relatively cheap but useful. First upgrade I will suggest is removing all the creatures you currently have in the sideboard since I don't really think they give you any noticable benefit over what you currently run. In their place I will suggest a couple copies of Akroma, Angel of Fury as a late game beater against the white removal decks and decks with counterspells. My 2nd quality of life suggestion is changing the copy of stone rain to Molten Rain since the mana cost isn't an issue and it gives you an additional source of damage (4 if you count torbran). I recommend upping the count on these to 3 so that you are more likely to draw one when it is more relevant, using the slots no longer being used by the sb creatures. My final suggestion would be to increase the copies of abrade in the side to either 3 or 4 and add a couple Pithing Needle by cutting the copies of thundering rebuke/soul sear for them.

Khurgar on Modern Lands

2 months 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 =)

SufferFromEDHD on Nazahn | LIpgrade Logic

2 months ago

Grand Abolisher or Dosan the Falling Leaf great hatebears that control spells.

Manglehorn punish opponents for playing similar strategies.

Phyrexian Revoker is Pithing Needle on a stick.

zapyourtumor on Scam Rack

5 months ago

I actually really like the inclusion of 4 Voidwalkers since it gives the undying cards another target besides Grief, especially since one voidwalker can cast cards exiled with a different Voidwalker (or its past dead self).

Having so many fetches in mono B for deck thinning is probably not necessary imo. I would probably put like 2-3 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth along with 3-4 Urza's Saga. Urborg also goes pretty well with a couple horizon lands like Silent Clearing. Force of Despair is a cool card that a lot of 8rack players were excited to test out when it got spoiled, personally I don't think running 3 copies is a great idea in a deck already pitching cards to Grief but you could maybe run 3 combined between mainboard and sideboard.

Path of Peril is a really funny boardwipe since a) you can sack your Dauthi anyways and b) it doesn't hit Grief. Obviously some antisynergy with Saga but its probably fine if you sequence plays correctly.

This is definitely a deck where I would put some copies of Surgical Extraction in the sideboard.

20 lands is probably on the low side, although you aren't running any Raven's Crime. Need testing for that one.

The tweaks I'd make before playtesting would probably be:

Mainboard:

-4 Bloodstained Mire -4 Verdant Catacombs -2 Force of Despair -2 Shrieking Affliction

+2 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth +4 Urza's Saga +1 Godless Shrine +1 Silent Clearing +1 Pithing Needle +1 Nihil Spellbomb +1 Path of Peril +1 Bloodchief's Thirst/Funeral Charm/Dismember idk

Reasoning: with Saga, you can cut on Afflictions since you can tutor racks more consistently, Needle and Spellbomb are just mainboard saga target staples, and then some other removal to replace Force of Despair. Funeral Charm can let a big construct through with Urborg. What removal you choose to run is probably meta dependent.

Sideboard:

This is definitely a lot more meta dependent so I can't comment as much.

Here Necromentia can probably be replaced with Surgical Extraction.

Go Blank is decent grave hate but can be replaced with extra Nihil Spellbomb or 4 Leyline of the Void, personal preference. Also good to note that Go Blank can sometimes be too slow (vs grinding breach) and also doesn't shut down some decks as effectively as leyline like Murktide, Scam, Grinding Station, Yawgmoth, Living End, etc while Leyline stops all of those in their tracks.

Delirium Skeins is a sideboard card against Leyline of Sanctity if thats ever a problem.

Path of Peril or Bontu's Last Reckoning can replace Damnation if you find yourself badly needing a t3 boardwipe.

Collective Brutality classic sideboard card against burn, and probably much better than March of Wretched Sorrow in 95% of situations.

You can also move the Spellbomb + Needle package to the sideboard if you think mainboard is too crowded with the scam package.

zapyourtumor on Murky Waters

5 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 How Not To MTG

5 months ago

Necrogen Spellbomb is cute but a really weak card even with saga. I recommend 1 Pithing Needle and 1 Nihil Spellbomb in the main, both are really useful and the spellbomb can be cycled if graveyard hate isn't needed. To be honest, I know you want a lot of artifacts to tap for Herald, but Necrogen Spellbomb and Chromatic Star are probably getting sacrificed anyways so I don't think they are worth including. Grief is also kind of a bad card if you aren't building around it with flicker effects or like in BR scam decks so I'd cut both copies. And since Herald is a fat 7 cmc creature I'd definitely go down to 3, and maybe 2 copies. Most 8rack players have tested Davriel, Rogue Shadowmage since it was released and agreed that it isn't that good. 1 copy is sometimes played though.

I would probably replace them with removal like Bloodchief's Thirst, Fatal Push, and maybe 1x Dismember, and you also probably need the 8rack classic Raven's Crime which is absolutely amazing when getting mana flooded.

There is also the nonbo of Ensnaring Bridge preventing your Herald and constructs from attacking, which is why most rack players running saga cut down on mainboard bridge copies, but on the other hand ensnaring bridge is an artifact that taps for herald.

Also neither Animate Dead nor Dance of the Dead are legal in modern. A way to reanimate herald with Persist after discarding it with lili sounds interesting but probably not feasible unless you find a few other ways to discard herald. And at that point you'd be trying to fit too many things into one deck.

Madhava on glissaboyzz

7 months ago

I'd recommend Karn, the Great Creator x4. Move one of your Liquimetal Coatings to sideboard so Karn can fetch it for you, for those times when you can't seem to draw into any. Liquimetal-Coat one of opponent's lands, then use Karn's +1 ability to turn the artifact-land into a creature with power/toughness 0/0. Which dies instantly due to 0 toughness. Use in tandem with Glissa to blow up two lands per turn instead of one.

Then you could add more sideboard artifacts for Karn to grab; Batterskull is a nice finisher. Ratchet Bomb in case you need removal. Ensnaring Bridge for when you're getting overrun. Pithing Needle for opponents' walkers, et al... whatever you like.

These aren't exactly cheap... but replacing a few Forests with Boseiju, Who Endures may be a helpful upgrade as well.

PurePwnage on Nimble Obstructionist Vs Tale's End

7 months ago

I tend to fixate on mana efficiency and card selection that aligns with your decks mana curve. Tale's End is lower to the ground and can stop early game fetch land and plainswalker activations and trades fairly evenly with counter magic. Nimble Obstructionist seems pretty good on the surface because it provides an "instant speed" evasive body, but unless there's a way of cheating it in early it's a T3 or later at best. Which IMHO seems very clunky for the same reasons the even more powerful Vendilion Clique fell out of favor in modern. If a 3/1 flyer with flash and a Thoughtseize like effect isn't played in modern mainboards/sideboards, I question the value Nimble holds in the limited available sideboard slots. Pithing Needle seems really only valuable in terms of shutting down plainswalkers because it can only be cast on your turn and your opponent can react to it entering the battlefield. It's the one Mana difference that makes Tale's End much more flexible and versatile than Nimble Obstructionist.