Savage Surge

Instant

Target creature gets +2/+2 until end of turn. Untap that creature.

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
Gladiator	Legal
Highlander	Legal
Historic	Legal
Legacy	Legal
Leviathan	Legal
Limited	Legal
Modern	Legal
Oathbreaker	Legal
Pioneer	Legal
Planechase	Legal
Quest Magic	Legal
Tiny Leaders	Legal
Vanguard	Legal
Vintage	Legal

Discussion (7)

TheVectornaut on the akroan war

3 years ago

Generally, the abilities of sagas are intended to synergize with each other. For instance, Chainer's Torment raises your life total to give you a larger token, History of Benalia creates knights that it can buff, and The Binding of the Titans puts cards in the yard so it can interact with them later. Thus, it stands to reason that The Akroan War was designed to force your opponents' creatures to attack specifically so it can then damage them on your next turn.

At the beginning of your next first main phase after you play The Akroan War , you'll put a second lore counter on the enchantment, causing the second chapter ability to trigger. This forces opposing creatures to attack each combat if able. However, attacks can only be declared during the combat phase of the player controlling those creatures. For example, in a 3 player game where you have 2 opponents, the first opponent will be forced to attack with all of their creatures (that are able) during their combat phase. That opponent doesn't have to attack again on the second opponent's turn or your turn since that would violate the rules of combat. Then, the second opponent is forced to attack during their combat phase. If your opponents gain extra turns or extra combat phases, they will be forced to attack then as well. Finally, it will be the start of your turn again and the effect will no longer apply.

Once you move to the precombat main phase of that turn, you'll again put a lore counter on the saga and trigger the third chapter ability. This will cause all tapped creatures to damage themselves by the relevant amount. This will probably include many of your opponents' creatures that were forced to tap on their turns because of the prior ability. If they tried to dodge the forced attack by tapping their own creatures before combat, they will still get hit by the Solar Blaze effect. However, if the creatures had vigilance, summoning sickness, were untapped by something like a Savage Surge , or were otherwise unable to attack and/or remain tapped, they won't get hit. Note that your creatures are also subjected to the effect, although they'll likely be untapped at this point. If you can find a way to tap down the creature stolen by The Akroan War 's first ability before your first main, you might be able to kill it before you're forced to give it back. Once the final chapter ability has resolved, you will sacrifice the saga.

TLDR: Creatures tapped during attacks provoked by the second chapter ability will usually be victims of the third chapter ability. Sleep effects are not required, although they could still be useful if you're trying to build a deck around Sunblast Angel effects like this.

I'd normally include the relevant rulings here, but I find the saga rules text needlessly hard to parse. If you're still confused about any of the rules, let me know.

WhatevWorks on Help with a Marwyn brew

5 years ago

PlatinumOne, the amount of mana generated by targeting Marwyn, the Nurturer or Viridian Joiner with two or three copies of Savage Surge / Aim High / Gift of Growth is more than enough on T3-4 to storm off with a Rishkar's Expertise or some such, then chain untap/buff spells and draw-based-on-power spells until Marwyn swings for lethal and you've got a Whispersilk Cloak in hand with 50 green mana floating. If an Elvish Archdruid list gets lucky, it might be able to land an Eldrazi titan by turn 4.

Tyrant-Thanatos on Pattern Recognition #64 - Dominaria …

6 years ago

Small nitpick, no big deal, but in regards to Gift of Growth: Green actually has a pretty decent history of untapping creatures. Instill Energy, Vitalize, Seeker of Skybreak, Burst of Strength, etc. Plus effects like Seedborn Muse and Curse of Bounty.

Blue is definitely better at untapping things, but Savage Surge was a thing in RTR, so Gift of Growth is strictly better than an already existing green card.

Other than that, great read as always.

Firebones675 on Trostani's Growth

7 years ago

Just wanted to clarify something i said earlier. I'd look for around 36-38 lands total. This would include the nonbasics you have already. The amount of basics varies from deck to deck with 5 color decks only having a handful where 1-2 color decks tend to have more

You'll still need to make other cuts too but here are some that come to mind.

Attended Knight: you have a lot of ways to make tokens already, this is one of the weaker ones so i'd start here.

Centaur Healer yes it gains a bit of life but it's still only a 3 mana 3/3 with no abilities once in play.

Emmara Tandris if this said it made them indestructable insead then maybe but as it is for 7 mana i'd want more than this

Ephemeral Shields cute combat trick don't get me wrong but i think you can do without it

Savage Surge: if you're using this as a a pump spell/ a way to eat an attacker Spidery Grasp is probably better. If the intent was for your commander, i'd much rather run Thousand-Year Elixir.

Divine Favor is too inefficient

Pheres-Band Warchief with only 7ish other ways to get centaurs out it's a bit questionable

Siege Wurm: not a bad card by any stretch especially if you can get it down quickly but it is a bit outclassed by some of the other creatures already in the deck

Trostani's Judgment yes it populates but it's slow and expensive

Rootborn Defenses I know a lot of people that like this card but personally i'm not a huge fan. When it's good, it's great but otherwise do you really want to hold up 3 mana for the rest of the game just in case you need to cast it? I suppose you might be doing that anyways with your commander but the point is that it's a bit more situational than i would like.

Selesnya Guildmage It's a mana dump late game but that's about it. not very efficient.

Selesnya Evangel: too slow

Kazandu Tuskcaller. Can be great if your opponents let it live but having only 1 toughness and the need to invest 6 mana into it before it has any ability is a bit awkward. Most times i've played with it people let you spend your turn leveling it up and then kill it before you get much in the way of tokens.

As i said you'll still have plenty of cuts but these are the one's i'd start with.

JohnnyCRO on BG Infect

7 years ago

FIrst off I'm really glad you and your friend both apprechiated my help with his deck.

Now, onto this.I see you're playing lots of creatures with infect, but the thing is, you need 10 of their damage to go through. So you have to start as early as possible, before they can establish blockers. And finish soon, so they can't kill you before your infect does the thing. Next problem is how you win via infect. Each creature with infect is a win condition of its own, but none of them have haste. Let's say you drop Swarmlord. You've probably tapped out for something that will eat a removal ASAP.

Secondly, most infect decks I see are and, unfortunately from experience, I know why that is so. Black gets you removal, but blue makes your things unblockable. There are plenty of cards like Distortion Strike that don't care if your opponent has 1 or 10 creatures, none can help them.

Cards you need whatever you do with the deck;

4x Blossoming Defense - hexproof. And buff. And only one mana so it's playable early.

3-4x Vines of Vastwood - a bit more expensive Defense

2-3x Groundswell - potentially better giant growth.

Burst of Strength, Savage Surge and Sheltering Word are clearly inferior to the mentioned cards; they do less for more mana. And since you want to be fast, lesser costs are important. Use those slots to experiment with few of the mentioned cards. Predator's Strike might be considered necessary evil because you can't be sure you'll manage to remove opponents' creatures in time and this one solves that.

In black your removals should be as cheap as possible and preferably instant, so keep that in mind when tweaking the deck. Swarmlord is unnecessarily big pseudo-finisher and should probably be avoided.

And next, lands. IDK if you need more than 24 in here, you just need some kind of duals. Playing basics is ok and all, but you can do better, even though / lands can get significantly more expensive than less popular combination of /. 4 Blooming Marsh will cost you some bucks and if you can't cheaply get them, that's cool. Same for 4 Woodland Cemetery. Their / equivalents are twice cheaper. Why? Because / is less popular in both commander and standard, so any lands I'd usually call budget options are more expensive in /.

But there still are options like Temple of Malady, Golgari Guildgate, Golgari Rot Farm...look into that and I'm sure you'll find a few lands you like. In the end you should have around 15 basics maybe.

If you do wish to try out /, there are many great versions on this site and I'm sure those can be a good starting point.

person.jr on GRUUL AGGRESSION

7 years ago

you should consider Savage Surge and/or Burst of Strength to strengthen your defensive options

TheAmazingSalsa on First plains/forest

8 years ago

Ok, it's your first deck and I respect that, and please do not take it as me being a douchebag, I really just want to help you out!

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You said in your description that you wanted life gain, but your deck is heavily centered around heavy hitters and not much about lifelink. I would say that you're better off with aggro rather than lifegain, but I'll give you some suggestions:

LANDS

Drop the 2 Opulent Palace, get 3 more Blossoming Sands, and you're running way too many lands, I suggest you drop 9, so your deck has 60 cards exactly, more than that will just throw you off your game.

CREATURES

Nothing that has constellation will do much for you, because you simply don't run enough Enchantments, so I'd cut Eidolon of Blossoms, Humbler of Mortals and Harvestguard Alseids, they'll just be dead cards most of the time.

You should choose 2 heavy hitters for your deck, I'd say keep the Woodborn Behemoths and drop Wardscale Dragon, Ulvenwald Mystics  ^Flip and Duskdale Wurm.

Also, there are cards that just don't do enough, or cards that can be replaced with much better and cheap (as in, less than 50 cents at your local game store) cards that will make your deck be more efficient, those cards are: Dragon Bell Monk, Highland Game, Kitesail Scout, Oreskos Sun Guide, Oreskos Swiftclaw, Satyr Grovedancer, Soulmender and Trained Caracal.

This will leave you with 14 cards that you can fill with:

4x Sunblade Elf

4x Ajani's Sunstriker

3 more Sedge Scorpion

3x Ajani's Pridemate

INSTANTS

there are some instants that are just underwhelming, they seem good but they won't do much and they can be switched for much better cards that fit your playstyle. I would drop Hold at Bay, Pressure Point, Savage Surge and Strip Bare.

I prefer Giant Growth over Titanic Growth, you should run a playset of one of the cards, but that's really up to you!

this will open up 5 spots, my suggestion is:

1 more Shape the Sands

4x Giant Growth or Titanic Growth

SORCERIES

Lose Incremental Growth, it's just too expensive to be useful in a deck that's not centered around counters, Phytoburst is weaker than Titanic Growth and similar cards, so I wouldn't keep it. As for Commune with the Gods and Alive / Well, they feel useless in this strategy.

Seek the Horizon is worse than Explosive Vegetation, but, again, that's up to you.

This will open up 4 spots, here are the suggestions:

2 more Lay of the Land

3 more Explosive Vegetation

ENCHANTMENTS

I'm going to be blunt, they're all terrible. I'm sorry to be a dick like this, but not one of those enchantments will do much for you, except for Bound in Silence, but Pacifism is essentially better.

My suggestion is, drop all of those enchantments and get 4 Pacifisms.

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I'm sorry this became a huge text, and I'm terribly sorry if I came off to strong, I only mean to help! Much love!