Ponder

Sorcery

Look at the top three cards of your library, then put them back in any order. You may shuffle.

Draw a card.

Legality

Format	Legality
1v1 Commander	Legal
Archenemy	Legal
Arena	Legal
Block Constructed	Legal
Canadian Highlander	Legal
Casual	Legal
Commander / EDH	Legal
Commander: Rule 0	Legal
Custom	Legal
Duel Commander	Legal
Freeform	Legal
Gladiator	Legal
Highlander	Legal
Historic	Legal
Historic Brawl	Legal
Legacy	Legal
Leviathan	Legal
Limited	Legal
Oathbreaker	Legal
Pauper	Legal
Pauper Duel Commander	Legal
Pauper EDH	Legal
Planar Constructed	Legal
Planechase	Legal
PreDH	Legal
Quest Magic	Legal
Tiny Leaders	Legal
Vanguard	Legal
Vintage	Legal

Discussion (51)

ninjachicken on Bonewand

3 days ago

That is very fair points to make for sure. It does suffer some from finding the Sphinx-Bone Wand. But to try and make up for that almost every card in the deck does let you filter through your deck. I was trying to compensate for the high card cost of the Sphinx-Bone Wand by adding in the Everflowing Chalice along with the storage lands with tons of Proliferate. What would you remove to run Fabricate in the deck since it does already have Ponder in it?

SaberTech on Dissident Storm

1 week ago

Alright. It's harder to pull off a storm deck in Commander but there are things you can do.

The easiest way to storm in Commander is with the Isochron Scepter + Dramatic Reversal combo. The Scepter copies the imprinted spell, but you cast the copy so it counts towards your storm count. Running this combo requires you to run a bunch more mana rocks though, because you need to be able to produce at least 2 mana off of the rocks just to get the engine going, plus more mana if you want to produce infinite mana off of the combo. I don't know what your budget is like or if your group allows proxies, but at higher level tables you'd be looking to run cards like Mana VaultGC and Grim MonolithGC since those produce 3 mana all on their own. Beyond that though, you would definitely want to be running the talismans like Talisman of Dominance. Everflowing Chalice is another good option for storm because it's on rate if you only kick it once or you can just play it for free un-kicked to increase your storm count. Whichever rocks you end up running, you'll need a good number in the deck to support the combo.

The Dramatic Scepter combo also works well with Wishclaw Talisman. Activate the Talisman, then with the ability on the stack you activate the Scepter to untap the Scepter, the Talisman, and your mana rocks. While the first ability is still on the stack, activate the Talisman again and repeat the cycle. You'll be able to use up all 3 wish counters yourself and in the end you just pass a useless Talisman to the opponent, although after tutoring three cards you should just be winning that turn. The combo also just kills if Guttersnipe is out.

Running a bunch of mana artifacts (that don't enter tapped) has another benefit in that you can run cards like Paradoxical Outcome, Hurkyl's Recall, and Retract. You get to tap your rocks for mana, bounce them back to hand, and then recast them to increase your storm count and hopefully even net extra mana, although that requires more artifacts that produce more mana than they cost like Sol Ring, Mana VaultGC, and Grim MonolithGC.

Another combo card you could be running is Chain of Smog, which combos with Professor Onyx as long as you keep targeting yourself with the Chain and its copies. The copies won't count towards your storm count, but they will get you a bunch of treasure tokens off of Storm-Kiln Artist. You would have an empty hand, but you would have the mana to cast Kess and then cast a card from your graveyard. Ideally, you would be running wheel effects like Wheel of Fortune to immediately refill your hand and keep your plays going. Storm decks typically like to run wheel effects. On the more budget end of things, you could at least be running Windfall and similar effects so that you can match your opponents' hand sizes after emptying your own.

Chain of Smog + Archmage Emeritus will basically let you mill through your deck at the cost of emptying your hand. You'll be forced to discard the cards that you draw off of Emeritus. However, If you run a copy of Unearth in the deck then you can draw and discard your deck, use Kess to cast Unearth from your graveyard, and bring back Thassa's OracleGC for the win. It's a risky line though because you won't have access to any counterspells to protect it.

Unearth is still worth considering for the deck in general since it can get back several relevant creatures in case they are countered, it's a 1 mana spell for storm count, and at worst you can cycle it away to draw a card.

Another combo I can think of based off of cards already in your deck is God-Eternal Kefnet + Scroll Rack + Time Warp (or any other extra turn card that doesn't exile itself). You use Scroll Rack to make sure that Time Warp is the top card of your deck. When you draw, Kefnet sees it and copies it. You cast the copy, and then before the end of your turn you use Scroll Rack to put Time Warp from your hand back on top of your library. Rinse and repeat for infinite turns.

Beyond that is typical storm stuff:

• Ritual Spells like Dark Ritual, Rite of Flame, and Seething Song are good for generating bursts of mana, especially since Kess can cast them again from the graveyard.
• Cheap cantrips like Ponder and Thought Scour help to dig through your deck while adding to your storm count.
• Cards like Bolas's CitadelGC and The Endstone keep the card train rolling.

If all of that is sounding really expensive, Stella Lee, Wild Card and Veyran, Voice of Duality are known commanders for their own unique storm decks. You can find lists at various budget point for them online. Zada, Hedron Grinder can also play as a budget, glass-cannon style goblin storm deck.

Optimator on Stand and Deliver

1 month ago

Brainstorm isn't very good unless you are top-deck-manipulating or have fetchlands to bury bad cards.

If you're looking to smooth out your draws, Ponder and Preordain do a better job. Opt and Consider are not bad, and Serum Visions is okay.

NV_1980 on Ur-Dragon - cEDH

1 month ago

I'd recommend you try and play-test this on the site. I just did and if cEDH is anything like I remember, this is nowhere near competitive yet. I tried to draw twenty or so starting hands as well as the following 5 cards but very few examples yielded anything resembling useful actions before turn 5.

In order to make this truly competitive (which is admitedly hard for most 5-color decks), you need more 0-mana rocks, like the really expensive ones like Lion's Eye DiamondGC and Mox DiamondGC and/or your land-count needs to increase by 4 or 5 and/or your cheap ramp (sorceries?) need to increase and/or the amount of tutors you're using needs to increase.

Also, for a competitive deck, this one is way too low on its (cheap) draw options. Just saying. Stuff like Preordain, Ponder, etc.

Good luck.

enraged on snow? localized entirely on our kitchen table?

2 months ago

Very cool deck idea!

I feel like Swords to Plowshares and Path to Exile are almost necessary in white...

I really like cantrips like Ponder and Preordain in my blue builds because getting the right cards at the right times can simply be game changing.

Lots of power here and not a tremendous amount of synergy, but I do feel Isu is a powerful commander that can just run the game.

Balaam__ on Fire Storm

3 months ago

Ponder isn’t Modern legal, the closest you’ll get is maybe something like Serum Visions.

Edit-disregard the suggestion, you already run 4x. There might be other similar spells but sadly nothing quite as good as Ponder.

ElJefefe on Arcades, Wallwhack and Gatekeep

3 months ago

Hey indieinside!

Thank you for the input (I'm new to the site). I was Pondering Fog Bank but I'm not sure if it might end up negating its own combat damage, it there an upside to it that I'm not seeing? I think I need to cut down on the amount of lands and will likely take out some of the more expensive cards to start with a budget friendly version then replace those with some other cheap defenders.

Cheers!

jethstriker on Pre Pioneer

4 months ago

legendofa nicely covers the specifics of this theoretical format. Although we may need to add the following cards to truly match the Modern ban list at the time these exact same list of card pool are legal:

Blazing Shoal

Cloudpost

Green Sun's Zenith

Ponder

Preordain

Rite of Flame

Punishing Fire

Wild Nacatl