Reforge the Soul

Sorcery

Each player discards his or her hand and draws seven cards.

Miracle symbol:1[[symbol:R (You may cast this card for its miracle cost when you draw it if it's the first card you drew this turn.)

Discussion (51)

slashdotdash on Golos attempt II

1 week ago

Hey there Kronhamilton,

First of all, I like the improvements you’ve made to your deck. It’s already looking a lot slicker and I can see you’ve made some very fun looking changes to how the deck plays.

You’ve got a nice array of threats (I always love to see the Bringers and Ur-Dragon) and a decent amount of ramp which are both a big plus. Additionally, you’ve got the beginnings of some nasty graveyard synergy shaping up, which looks really, really cool as a sort of plan B.

That being said, I’d like to make a few suggestions to help guide you toward a more consistent and powerful Golos deck. Please remember that these suggestions are just my informed opinion, and that I totally respect whatever deck choices you decide to make. I really just want to help you get comfortable with deck building and learning what to look for in a ‘good’ or ‘bad’ card.

Broad Suggestions

I would encourage you to add 2 Lands, 3 Removal cards, and 8 Draw cards. I’d also think about adding 2 more Ramp cards, but that is less critical to the overall health of the deck. Your Threats look great and I think your Sweepers are also appropriate. Anything that synergizes with your graveyard backup plan is great.

There are a couple of things to think about as you play this deck; 1. “Am I happy or sad to be holding this card in my hand or drawing it off the top of my deck?” – If a card seems to constantly be ‘the wrong card’ for the situation, or you can never seem to cast it, or you always play other cards instead, or you tend to die while holding a certain card, then you probably want to think about how well that card fits in your deck and whether or not you should cut it or modify the deck to support it. 2. “What ongoing advantage does this card give me?” – Some cards seem like a decent card based on having decent power/toughness, a fair cost, and some neat keywords or abilities. Just having those upsides alone though doesn’t make a card truly powerful. Instead, try to think about what ways a card can synergize with your deck to create crazy effects or otherwise how it will become more dangerous as the game progresses (like a Quartzwood Crasher, Scute Swarm, or Giant Adephage). Additionally, try to find cards that do multiple things such as Chasm Skulker which gets bigger when you draw cards and also explodes into tokens when it dies, or even Ravenous Chupacabra which deals with a threat and also acts as a blocker when you are facing pressure. The key is finding a way to levarage the most amount of value in each individual card – even a 2 mana ramp spell will set you up to play all of your future spells 1 turn earlier than normal for the rest of the game, which can be an insane advantage when you think about it. 3. “Am I out of options?” – If you can’t seem to find a solution to a problem or you’re ‘running out of steam’, then it is likely that you need more card draw and more ways to create ‘engines’ that accrue value. An example of an engine would be Fertilid + Evolution Sage or Rampaging Baloths + Elemental Bond or Kruphix, God of Horizons + Victory Chimes or Atraxa, Praetors' Voice + Ajani, the Greathearted or Anointed Procession + Endless Ranks of the Dead or Search for Azcanta  ^Flip or Deadbridge Chant or Mind Unbound, etc.

Ramp

Your ramp looks pretty good with 10 dedicated Ramp cards. I’d suggest adding 2 more Ramp spells to really help speed things up early. Examples would be Kodama's Reach, Llanowar Elves, Wild Growth, Farseek, Rampant Growth, Springbloom Druid, etc.

Ramp - 10

• Fertilid

• Palladium Myr

• Solemn Simulacrum

• Cultivate

• Arcane Signet

• Commander's Sphere

• Ketria Crystal

• Raugrin Crystal

• Savai Crystal

• Sol Ring

Not Ramp

• Azusa, Lost but Seeking - you don’t have enough land + card draw to really capitalize on Asuza’s ability.

• Empowered Autogenerator – this card is vastly too slow to be considered a true Ramp card. At best I would call it a ‘Ramp Support’ card, because it is there to slowly help you in the late game, not propel you in the early game like a true Ramp card (Rampant Growth, Farseek, Fertile Ground, Llanowar Elves, Wild Growth)

Draw

Overall, I think your card draw package needs a little bit of love. I want to note I see a lot of ‘looting’ effects like the ones on Teferi, Master of Time or Obsessive Stitcher and while these cards are great for a graveyard strategy they still don’t count as card draw. I’d keep most of these ‘looting’ type cards, but try to find cards that get you about 2 or 3 cards such as Harmonize, Concentrate, Escape to the Wilds, Urban Evolution, Moldervine Reclamation, Deathreap Ritual, Recurring Insight, Mind Unbound, Underworld Connections, Cloudblazer, Mulldrifter, Drawn from Dreams, Return of the Wildspeaker, Harvester of Souls, Momentous Fall, Dream Trawler, Keeper of Fables etc.

Draw - 2

• Bringer of the Blue Dawn (nice)

• Reconnaissance Mission

Not Draw

• Barrin, Tolarian Archmage – drawing 1 card does not really count. If anything, Barrin is like slow, bad removal for dealing with your opponents’ stuff temporarily. If you’re interested in reusing Golos’s land finding ability I would recommend playing Soulherder instead.

• Solemn Simulacrum – He has sort of ‘incidental value’ with his death trigger but doesn’t actively net you a bunch of cards like Keruga, the Macrosage or Beast Whisperer. Sad Robot is still great though.

• Titanoth Rex – still keep this guy because he is a threat that isn’t dead in your hand on turn 5.

• Void Beckoner – same story as the Rex

• Teferi, Master of Time – Teferi’s great, but he is really at his best when you’ve got 4-7 card in hand so that you can throw a bunch of big threats to the graveyard and hopefully draw a reanimation spell. Other than that, Teferi isn’t going to refill your hand so he doesn’t count as true draw.

Removal

Your removal package looks like it needs a couple more additions to keep your deck responsive and able to handle imminent-doom type threats. It is worth noting that cards like Blatant Thievery or Mythos of Illuna can save you in certain situations, but be wary of their crazy mana costs and the fact that they are not instant-speed answers. Examples include Mythos of Nethroi, Beast Within, Price of Fame, Reality Shift, Terminate, Return to Nature, Putrefy, Utter End, Eat to Extinction, Murderous Rider, etc.

Removal – 4 (aim for 7)

• Mortify

• Despark

• Barrier Breach

• Disenchant

Cuts

There are several cards that I would consider cutting first when modifying the deck.

• Lukka, Coppercoat Outcast - he relies very heavily on luck and only interacts with creatures. This makes him good with only 30% of your deck. Additionally, Lukka can’t ‘protect’ himself like Garruk can (making tokens to block for him), nor does he have an immediately accessible removal ability like Teferi. Overall, Lukka is interesting but a little lacking in consistency, defensibility, and power.

Azusa, Lost but Seeking – you don’t have enough land + card draw to really capitalize on Asuza’s ability. Yes, you can use the double lands (like Gruul Turf) to bounce a land to hand and then play that land with Asuza, but realistically that’s such a narrow and relatively tame synergy (in this non-landfall deck, that is) that you would be better off playing a Farseek or a Rampant Growth or even a Fertile Ground.

• Sparkhunter Masticore - This little fellow has a major drawback and no seriously crazy abilities that make him worthwhile. Yes he can deal with planeswalkers, but so can a Murderous Rider or an Eat to Extinction. Yes he can be an indestructible 3/4, but you have to pay 3 mana just to make him indestructible. Under normal circumstances that’s 6 mana for a 3/4 that dodges death one time - a 3/4 just isn’t fantastic. The biggest bad news about this robocat is its “additional cost to cast” ability which means that even if you hit it with Golos’s ‘Rainbow Wheel of Death’ ability, you still have to discard a card for a 3/4. I just honestly think you’d rather have a removal spell (Beast Within, Mythos of Nethroi) instead of this cat any day.

• Pursued Whale - While this whale is kinda cool and he does force combat, he is just sorta expensive for what he does. 7 mana for an 8/8 is pretty standard and giving your opponents tokens (that they could just attack you with or sacrifice to an effect) can be a bad idea in some situations, such as when they have an Beastmaster Ascension or a similar effect on the field. While his semi-hexproof ability (3 more mana to target) seems nifty, that is one of the only really powerful highlight abilities of this card, meaning that ability is protecting a relatively low-powered card. A couple immediate alternatives come to mind for me; Geode Rager to force combat AND keep you safe, and Dream Trawler for a flying, hexproof, lifelinking, card drawing threat.

• Renata, Called to the Hunt - She just isn’t fantastic. You aren’t playing a devotion centric deck in which she might become a 10/10, and your strategy doesn’t really care about 1/1 counters either. I would consider replacing her with a Harmonize or another 3 or 4 drop with more impactful abilities. Heck, even another reanimation spell could be nice like Unburial Rites or Grave Upheaval since your deck seems to have some tendency to but things in the graveyard for later.

• Lorescale Coatl - Cards like this (or his bigger cousin Chasm Skulker) are really designed for “wheel decks” that play “wheel effects” like Windfall or Reforge the Soul. He is fine, but really not much better than that. If you want a threat that can grow faster and do more important things, try Managorger Hydra or even Scute Mob.

• Colossification - This aura is too expensive, taps your creature down, and worst of all is an aura. Auras are generally quite bad because your opponent can destroy your creature and the aura attached to them with one spell – and odds are they’ll do that because it is usually too juicy not to. The fact that you can’t attach Colossification and attack immediately means that your opponents will have a full turn to deal with it before you get a chance to use it (and keep in mind your Colossified creature needs to survive 3 opponents’ turns!). This means you’ll most likely run out of cards in a hurry without accomplishing anything.

• Door to Nothingness - Unlike Progenitus, you can’t reanimate the Door, nor can you get its full value off of the Rainbow Wheel of Death. The only time this card does anything at all is when you literally have 10 mana of the exact color combination necessary to use it. It’s still your call, and I know some people make it a goal to Door their opponents, but be warned: you probably don’t have as much ramp as you need to make this work well. I’d consider supporting this crazy cards (and your many expensive threats for that matter) with a few more ramp spells – Boundless Realms, Migration Path, Circuitous Route, Kodama's Reach, Explosive Vegetation, Zendikar Resurgent

• Azor's Gateway  ^Flip – This card belongs in a very specific variant of Golos. That variant is the Minamo, School at Water's Edge Golos deck which also runs stuff like Vizier of Tumbling Sands, Fatestitcher, Kiora's Follower, and other payoffs like Jegantha, the Wellspring, or Captain Sisay. Especially considering that Sanctum of the Sun (the flip side) adds X mana of only 1 color, I think this card is just rarely going to work like you want it to unfortunately.

• Lathliss, Dragon Queen - Basically, you only have 3 other dragons in the deck so I would either exchange a bunch of cards for more dragons or cut Lathliss, since she will rarely be able to use her best ability (5/5 tokens). Keep in mind, you could also run a bunch of cards with the ‘changeling’ keyword if you wanted to get really funky, in which case you may as well also play stuff like Yuriko, the Tiger's Shadow, Reaper King, Crested Sunmare, The First Sliver but that’s a very slippery and insane slope that I’m not sure you want to get sucked into.

Summary

Nice changes Kronhamilton, I can see that your deck is really starting to shape up as a rampy graveyard-mingling Golos deck, and that’s really cool. I encourage you to try and pay attention to what situations you find yourself in, as that’s often the best way to tell what cards you need to cut or add to the deck for it to work best. As a default, I’d consider making a few of the changes I mentioned in the Broad Suggestion section, as those changes should just generally help with your deck’s consistency.

Please do let me know how you decide to tune your deck – it’s really fun to watch honestly, and I’m always down to help advise you. Other than that, take care and enjoy Golos!

Best,

-Slashdotdash

Monomanamaniac on Brain Getting Too Big

1 week ago

Cards to play: Psychosis Crawler which will reward you for drawing by dealing damage. Ob Nixilis, the Hate-Twisted is the better ob nixilis for this deck. Whispering Madness, Dark Deal, Reforge the Soul, Magus of the Wheel, Incendiary Command, Wheel of Fate, Time Reversal, Echo of Eons are all wheel effects that make your opponents suddenly draw a ton of cards that will then let you deal damage to everyone. Prosperity Will have everyone drawing equally. Izzet Signet, Dimir Signet, Rakdos Signet, Arcane Signet are decent mana rocks you're missing. Arcane Denial counters a spell and lets them draw and replaces itself. Stormfist Crusader howling mine effect but punishes at the same time.

Cards to take out. Pillage Very inefficient. Quest for Ancient Secrets Very slow. Sadistic Sacrament not really what this deck is truly wanting to do. Shrieking Affliction 99/100 games your opponents will have more than 1 card in hand. Darksteel Plate just too expensive to be good for this deck. Ob Nixilis Reignited not as good as the other ob nixilis. Cerebral Vortex not usually going to deal massive damage and only damages 1 opponent. Painful Quandary I like this card and probably wouldn't get rid of it, but your opponents will usually have the card to discard. Crawlspace not really going with your overall game plan, it does slow your opponents down,but not by enough. Nin, the Pain Artist it's a lot of mana to sink into an effect like this. Curse of Fool's Wisdom only targets 1 player, it's really too limited. Torbran, Thane of Red Fell a lot of your debate sources are black, this is decent with your commander but not much else. Reverberate I didn't see a huge number of decent targets forthis spell and it doesn't do a whole lot of good. Darksteel Ingot I don't personally like seeing 3 cost mana ramp, I'd suggest replacing it with a signet.

I would like to say that I really like your deck, it's an interesting take on an interesting commander. This is meant to be constructive and all with the best intentions.

ZerglingRushWins on Xenagos, God of Revels and obscene power

2 weeks ago

Hi Profet93. Thanks for dropping by and for the great suggestions.

About Deflecting Swat, yes, I've been considering to remove Red Elemental Blast to try it out. However, almost all combo decks in my area use blue to finish off the table. It has been a tough choice but I will definitely find a spot for the Swat.

About card draw, yes, this is a tough spot. Life's Legacy but being sorcery speed while requiring sacrifice as a cost really hurts in my area, had too many 2 for 1s against counterspells and Notion Thief, also many of my beaters are often responded to during combat so I found myself with nothing to sac before I end my turn. Momentous Fall has allowed me to circumvent that a lot.

I am currently considering Reforge the Soul and Skullclamp (now that you suggested it). I think the later could be very useful, I could add Elvish Visionary and Sylvan Ranger to have mlre targets and help thin my deck further, those happen to be elves too so they would even help Titania.

A typical turn 1 to 4 secuence is T1 Dork T2 another dork /ramp / Tomb, T3 Xenagod, T4 Malignus / Phyrexian Hydra / Pathbreaker / Scourge of the Throne to try to kill someone and then move in to the next target. Combos start appearing on turn 5 but are not a main wincon here.

I used to run Yavimaya Hollow long ago, but for some reason it feels it worked better on decks such as Ruric Stax or Yisan for me. In addition to the Moon package factor, I rarely found myself with enough open mana to activate Hollow. Not that I ever felt like I truly needed it anyways.

I love Elder Gargaroth. However, the Hydra has been one of my best win conditions in spite of the hate it can pull. Being paired with Xenagod really helps. Also, I don't really have that many ways to kill multiple opponents at once. So I'd like to run both beaters first and see how well that goes.

Feel free to continue thr discussion, this has beem quite useful.

RNR_Gaming on Nekusar - USA: VOTE THIS NOVEMBER!

3 weeks ago

Narset, Parter of Veils - just trust me and try it. The slow grind is very satisfying. Windfall, Winds of Change, Dark Deal, Reforge the Soul and Wheel of Fortune are snap includes if you have them. Personal Tutor and Mystical Tutor are both awesome for consistency. Oh and Narset's Reversal is an absolute banger if you have a Library of Leng

MrXilas on Curious Artisan

3 weeks ago

I'm trying my best here because this deck is pretty cool, but here is what I can think of, unless you have specific reasons for them not being in there. Vandalblast instead of By Force. Another card pairing that might go well with this deck, assuming they are not too much mana Reforge the Soul and Nekusar, the Mindrazer.

hungry000 on Look Ma, No Lands!

4 weeks ago

My biggest gripe with your build is that it doesn't play 4 Recross the Paths. With Recross, you get to play the sideboard Coco combo (Collected Company + Undercity Informer + Thassa's Oracle) to get around Leyline of Sanctity, which is a meta sideboard card right now. This is the biggest reason to play Recross; as your deck is now you have literally no way to get around Leyline besides casting Street Wraiths and Spirit Guides. Recross also lets you play one or two Reforge the Soul, which just becomes "2 mana: I win the game" since you can stack a combo hand with Pact of Negation/Veil of Summer for protection underneath it.

That said, I think the blue splash for Force of Negation is unique, and Serum Powder helps with the loss of Recross. However I think you need 3-4 enchantment hate spells in your sideboard at the very least, because Leyline is really crippling.

This is the build of Charbelcher I'm playing right now: Flip Land Charbelcher! [ZNR]. It's great that there are a bunch of ways to build the deck.

jakeyuki12 on Zirda, the Dawnwaker Competitive (Combo/Stax)

4 weeks ago

I've got a few suggestions for your value engine Zirda.

First and foremost: your card draw. The first problem with it is that a lot of what you labeled card draw..... well isn't really card draw since while you are drawing cards it doesn't actually net you any cards (you lose a card to get a card, net zero cards that way). The cards that do net you cards are very, very, very inefficient. I can see you're trying to take advantage of Zirda's ability to draw cards, but you're taking bad cards and making them mediocre.

If you want to use Zirda to make drawing cards easier, I've got a few suggestions. First off, Endless Atlas is a much, much more efficient option that becomes even more efficient when Zirda is out. Besides that, the best options for drawing cards that Zirda makes more efficient are equipment. Mask of Memory, Sword of Fire and Ice, even Rogue's Gloves. After that, you'll have to look at other sources of card draw. Red has excellent options in both wheel effects (Wheel of Fortune, Reforge the Soul, Magus of the Wheel actually synergizes with Zirda!) and in impulsive draw (Light Up the Stage, Tectonic Giant, heck even Experimental Frenzy could be better since Zirda makes blowing itself up easier).

I do think your ramp package because of Zirda is much more solid and efficient. Additionally, I think you've got the right idea with running creatures that can pump out tokens for mana (which Zirda reduces). I recommend leaning into that. Heliod, God of the Sun is another excellent creature that does that.

Lastly I recommend improving your removal package. White has access to the best removal in EDH. Swords to Plowshares and Winds of Abandon I consider staple level in decks that have white (aka any deck with white should strongly consider them).

DadHumanPraetor on Angels Of Aggression

1 month ago

Your average cmc is over 4, thats really high. I would recommend cutting 6 high cmc creatures for Talisman of Conviction Boros Signet Arcane Signet Boros Locket Fire Diamond Marble Diamond locket is bad but the 2 cards can help later in a pinch. Also try to find some lower cmc spells to swap for some fatties Maybe include Speaker of the Heavens and Bishop of Wings or other angel relevant clerics. Do you have a meta that supplies enough time for Burnished Hart ? I find it to be incredibly clunky, its 2 turns to play 2 extra lands. I would just add Myriad Landscape to the mana base and swap the burnished hart for Knight of the White Orchid Legion's Initiative can protect your team from a wipe. Leaving mana open is hard in Boros, but losing creatures with limited card draw is very bad. Eerie Interlude and Unbreakable Formation or Teferi's Protection can also protect the team if there is a board wipe. And now the important part. Herald's Horn and Vanquisher's Banner since your tribal red has wheels and impulse draw like Reforge the Soul Magus of the Wheel there's Mazemind Tome 4 scrys for 2 mana is a fair rate and if you need cards or have the mana open go ahead and draw. Stolen Strategy Grenzo, Havoc Raiser Rogue's Gloves Chandra, Torch of Defiance Mask of Memory can all get you cards just off the top of my head but Im sure scryfall or looking through some other gisela decks will render many more options as well. Cheers good luck with your Angels!