Rootborn Defenses

Instant

Populate. Creatures you control are indestructible this turn. (To populate, create a token that's a copy of a creature token you control.)

Discussion (51)

SaberTech on Yikes! Humans!

2 weeks ago

You being thankful for my help is honestly good enough for me.

I like the process of tinkering and upgrading decks, and you happened to upvote my Zada deck at a time when I was getting a bit tired of working on my own. That gave me an excuse to come look at your decks and your main page said you are always looking for synergies so I took that as an invitation to offer some suggestions. I'm glad I could help a bit.

As for other cards you could potentially cut to make room:

The Wanderer Is kind of expensive and slow. It costing 5 mana but only being able to exile creatures with power 4 or greater also seems low value for the cost. I'm not sure if you face a lot of red board wipes in your meta, such as Blasphemous Act, but if you don't then its passive ability likely isn't going to do much for you.

Hermit of the Natterknolls  ^Flip is really unreliable as a form of card draw. It can act as a deterrent against counterspells and instant speed removal but as a card draw engine it gives your opponents too much influence over your opportunities to draw cards. It seems like an easy swap for Beast Whisperer or even Harmonize to me.

I'm curious about how well Hunting Grounds has been working for you. It looks like the most common way you would reach threshold is if your creatures die since you only have a moderate amount of fetch lands, instants, and sorceries. But if you are playing out your creatures and they die, then how often do you still have creature cards in your hand to put down off Hunting Ground's trigger once you reach threshold? I don't know how it has worked out for you thus far, or how it will work out once you have more card draw in the deck, but I think that's a card to take note of to evaluate just how much work it is actually putting in for you during games.

Faith's Reward is a useful card when your deck has a bunch of permanents with ETB effects, but you don't have too many of those and it doesn't give you back any tokens that died. It does bring back other permanents too, but you don't really have too many of those in comparison to creatures. When you are producing a bunch of tokens you are better off just giving your creatures indestructible instead. You have already added in Unbreakable Formation, so a better replacement for Faith's Reward would be Akroma's Will since it can also potentially help you close out a game, but it's kind of pricy to buy. More budget options would be Make a Stand or Rootborn Defenses, and they don't require you to hold up as much mana open either.

Spackle on Suggested Decks For a Gift

1 month ago

Thanks for the comments!

Wow. After looking at that burn deck I understand what sergiodelrio was getting at. I think I was being a naïve. That other mono-red hollow deck looks pretty interesting though and probably more our level/slightly above.

The deck below is a rough outline of what I can remember for a white deck I put together. I think its fun because I plays differently in a lot of situations. The amounts aren't exact. There is some other stuff in there I can't remember like a life boost (I think a creature or two that gives life upon sacrifice). For deck building we generally build with what we already have (I have bought specific cards before to be really annoying such as Armageddon). So I typically don't have enough cards to reliably power combo, though its likely I'm not clever enough yet to recognize the potential with what I have. To compete against this he usually whips out a blue deck with tons of counters, clones, and stealing. They are roughly even. A red deck in the theme of burn has also been used (mana vaults, sol rings, fireballs and goblin gernades etc).

Creatures Kor Skyfisher x 3-4 Wall of Omens x 2 Crumbling Colossus x 2 Master Splicer x 2 Razor Golem x 1 Soltari Priest x 2 Soltari Monk x 2 Soltari Champion x 2 Mentor of the Meek x 2

Spells Armageddon x 2 Wrath of God x 2 Enlightened Tutor x 2-3 Rootborn Defenses x 1-2 Eye for an Eye x 1

Artifacts Nevinyrral's Disk x 1 Elixir of Immortality x 1 Mimic Vat x 1-2 Sol Ring x 2-3

Land Drifting Meadow x 4 and Misc.

Side board -- all available cards.

LynxGoddess on Mighty Morphin' Aura Rangers Battlecruiser

2 months ago

Cool concept! It's clear you're telling a story with your deck and I think you've done really well in representing it through your card choices. I'm not to familiar with the Power Rangers myself, so I'll give some advice but I'll also expect you to only listen to what makes sense to you! ;)

Your plan seems to be to get Siona on the table and start playing big auras to suit up several creatures and make them scary threats - fitting the theme you're going for. That's gonna be pretty hard and costly in many games since you will need to spend a lot of mana to play these auras and won't have much resources (mana, cards, protective spells) to keep your rangers alive, while those rangers dying to a kill spell will cost you several cards if you've played the auras on them. I'd look on a few options to give your rangers more chances to shine.

1. Cheaper auras that you can play earlier. They will not have as much of an impact, but they will give you everything you need most of the time and will do so many turns earlier. (Angelic Gift, Alpha Authority, Daybreak Coronet, Gryff's Boon, Bonds of Faith etc.)
2. Auras that don't lose you resources. By drawing a card on entering the battlefield, letting your creature draw cards or returning from the graveyard you can keep your momentum goingeven if a ranger bites it (this also makes it less attractive to kill them in the first place). (Rune of Might, Rancor, Conviction, Keen Sense etc.)
3. Introducing more interaction, mainly in the form of protection. (Veil of Summer, Heroic Intervention, Rootborn Defenses etc.)

Perhaps losing the bigger spells would feel like the deck loses its identity - and then they should stay in. But if it feels like they arrive too late or get stuck in your hand, then maybe the card in your hand should be some other card that does more for you when you need it? Try things out and see what sticks, perhaps something I said has caught your eye! :D

Davinoth on Trostani's Eternity [Life Gain EDH]

3 months ago

     TheMeadiator: Thanks for the suggestions and upvote! It does tend to pop off pretty quick haha, with reasonably good recovery from wipes and no reliance on any one strategy to find a win. =)

     I really resonate with a lot of your suggestions! Wurmcoil Engine is one of my favourite cards (full stop haha) and originally had included Phyrexian Altar and Ashnod's Altar in the build with this type of token generation in mind. In the end I opted to play more around effects that produced tokens as a result of gaining life or instant speed activation. Alas, a great seller of the wurms is their wipe protection, something I was conscious of when veering away from that strategy, and included Hangarback Walker and Lifeblood Hydra for that kind of coverage. :)

     Heroic Intervention is maybe my only hard disagree. It can save my other permanents from removal and wipes for one less mana, so in that regard I consider it to be integral to the deck. However I've been seriously considering cutting Unbreakable Formation in favour of Rootborn Defenses if I can't find a way to include all three of them lol.

     Aura Mutation with Divine Visitation and/or Parallel Lives/Anointed Procession/Doubling Season is pretty nutty, and I highly recommend haha! I had originally cut Sundering Growth for Aura Mutation haha though I was thinking about cutting Aura Shards (less likely) or Dismantling Wave to put it back in.

     Sorry to hit you with the wall of text haha, great suggestions and thanks again! =)

TheMeadiator on Trostani's Eternity [Life Gain EDH]

3 months ago

This is so great! I really like Trostani. I made a wurm deck with her at the helm. Wurms have really great synergy with her because of their big butts and the propensity for breaking into tokens for her populate effect.

I don't know how you feel about wurms, but Worldspine Wurm is beautiful, and Wurmcoil Engine of course is good. Also Penumbra Wurm works well and is a bit more budget-friendly.

For additional populate effects (and therefore lifegain), you could look at Rootborn Defenses in your maybeboard instead of Heroic Intervention, Sundering Growth instead of Aura Mutation, and Growing Ranks is a really great enchantment that could replace more expensive duplicating spells if need be.

Anyway, really fun deck that looks like it could get out of control really fast.

TheMeadiator on Chorus of Wurms

6 months ago

Oh I definitely like Sundering Growth and Rootborn Defenses - those are great includes. I also like Second Harvest and Wurmweaver Coil . Definitely something to consider...

As much as I love Roar of the Wurm it does feel redundant with Crush of Wurms . Yes, it's cheaper, but if I'm spending all that mana on a sorcery, I may as well get 3 for 1, right?

The vanilla wurms are in there for curve and for things like Descendants' Path , and just so I don't get knocked around before I can come online. Wurms are not fast lol. Ideally, there would be better cheaper wurms, but most good wurms start at 6 cmc.

Thanks a bunch for the suggestions! I will definitely pick some of those up on my next order.

keltis on Chorus of Wurms

6 months ago

Seeing the deck laid out, a couple of things come to mind. — These cards fit with the Wurm + Token Theme . Symbiotic Wurm (not wurm tokens, but still a good boy.) Roar of the Wurm Wurmweaver Coil Second Harvest

— Treat things that generate Token Wurms as functional "creatures". That way, you don't have to slot in vanilla wurms, and can instead run a few more populate cards, or token mechanic cards.

— On Populate, easy replacement could be swapping Naturalize with Sundering Growth

— Predator's Rapport ... in your BEST case scenario, 30 life isn't anything to sneeze at. HOWEVER: if you aren't building around life-gain, it's not a great card on its own. Try Rootborn Defenses , which is super versatile on offense and on defense, and grows your army.

plakjekaas on Amass

6 months ago

If Dreadhorde Invasion made an army in your upkeep and put a +1/+1 counter on it, and in your following main phase you cast a Realmwalker , next upkeep Dreadhorde Invasion makes you put a +1/+1 counter on an "army you control". At that point you can choose to put the counter on the token, or on the Realmwalker . Do note that the Realmwalker will not gain Lifelink when it has 6+ power, only Zombie Tokens will.

"Be the target of a card with populate" sounds confusing, because populate doesn't target, as you can see on Rootborn Defenses . When you cast a card with populate, you may choose to copy your army token. You will create a 0/0, which will die as a state-based action, and trigger Blood Artist , for example. If you'd actually want multiple army tokens for some reason, you're going to need a Glorious Anthem of sorts, and then cast your populate card.