Secrets of the Golden City

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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
Pauper Legal
Pauper Duel Commander Legal
Pauper EDH Legal
Pioneer Legal
Planechase Legal
Quest Magic Legal
Tiny Leaders Legal
Vanguard Legal
Vintage Legal

Secrets of the Golden City

Sorcery

Ascend (If you control ten or more permanents, you get the city's blessing for the rest of the game.)

Draw two cards. If you have the city's blessing, draw three cards instead.

carpecanum on how to draw bugs

2 years ago

Kumena's Awakening and Secrets of the Golden City . It should be pretty easy to hit City's Blessing once you make a bug ot two.

Omniscience_is_life on I'm new and on a …

3 years ago

and will be the cheapest colors to play, as they have so many amazing options that some of the good ones that are slightly overshadowed stay pretty budget.

You can have a pretty decent cheap ramp package in Simic, with cards like Rampant Growth , Cultivate , Talisman of Curiosity , Growth Spiral , etc. plus card draw in the form of Beast Whisperer , Secrets of the Golden City , Windrider Wizard , et al. So that just makes everything easier, having a good baseline.

BUT, the MOST important thing you can take away from this--play the COMMANDER you want to play. Your commander is the card you will be casting in 99% of games, and as such you really want to love it. I would say take a half-hour or so scrolling through all these cheap legendary creatures (you can change the dollar amount of the cap I set, but for the reasons I said earlier your commander is definitely something worth investing a little into)... and just see what sticks out to you.

Optimator on

3 years ago

Drop Faerie Tauntings , Ashiok, Nightmare Muse , Traumatize , Trepanation Blade , add about one or two more ramp and two more card-draw at least. I almost always run 8 pieces of ramp and the prevailing wisdom is 10. Same for card-draw: I aim for 8, many aim for 10. Extra ramp is great with Oona's ability and card-draw can draw you into lands and just generally smooth everything out.

Reconnaissance Mission would be good. Treasure Cruise is often almost an Ancestral Recall and is budget too. Even though you're running Blue , Read the Bones is a great rate, as is Night's Whisper . Divination , Concentrate , and Tidings are all great on a budget, if a bit unexciting.

I love Keep Watch , Borrowing 100,000 Arrows , Theft of Dreams , Insight , Windfall , Plea for Power , Curse of Verbosity , and Manifold Insights but they are swingy. High ceilings, low floors. The mana cost on them is what makes them so good.

Midnight Clock is budget right now but it's starting to make waves. Get yours now while they're cheap. Ramp AND draw! Great on a budget.

Secrets of the Golden City and Kumena's Awakening should usually be City's Blessing-ed. I like Kimena's a lot on a budget (along with Patient Rebuilding ). Rush of Knowledge is decent if you have Oona out. Fathom Trawl is a guaranteed three non-lands, though it might be a bit lackluster with so many faeries. Not a bad card though. Mind Spring is great with ramp.

Drawn from Dreams and Dig Through Time are probably better than Diabolic Tutor until you have a game-winning card in the deck like Coat of Arms or some combo pieces (of which all are out-of-budget). I'd say drop Diabolic Tutor . Diabolic Vision is all right on a budget, as is Pilfered Plans , Forbidden Alchemy , and Notion Rain . We can probably do better, even on a tight budget.

Soul Ransom is kind of faerie-ish. Pact of the Serpent maybe?

With all your fliers, Rogue's Gloves and Mask of Memory are fantastic card-draw cards. Mask of Riddles is cute. Curiosity and Curious Obsession are decent but dangerous. Chart a Course is decent with fliers. Whispering Madness can be good with fliers too.

I have mixed feelings about Opt , Serum Visions , Sleight of Hand , Ponder , Preordain , Portent . They certainly don't hurt but they're bad late-game. I run them in some decks. Consider them if most of your card-draw is expensive. Brainstorm is a bit of a trap unless you have ways to shuffle your library and get rig of unwanted cards. This usually requires fetch lands like Polluted Delta and is better in 60-card formats.

Rain of Revelation , Archmage's Charm , Fact or Fiction , Succumb to Temptation , Precognitive Perception , Frantic Search , Pull from Tomorrow , Gush , Village Rites are all good for being instants so you can leave counterspells up and if you don't need them you can draw. That's one of the reasons a card like Anticipate looks weak but is nice for keeping counterspells open. Fact or Fiction is particularly good and is considered a staple in many formats, including EDH.

I would swap out Dimir Locket and Dimir Cluestone for Mind Stone and Prismatic Lens . Maybe Star Compass if it is in budget. I know you need your colors but 3-mana mana rocks that don't have huge upside are sooooo slow. Arcane Signet is probably out of budget, which is too bad. Is Wayfarer's Bauble still expensive? Probably. Worn Powerstone and Hedron Archive maybe? Oona isn't cheap and you want mana for her ability if push comes to shove. Trinket Mage is ramp because it can snag Sol Ring , making it the same rate as Explosive Vegetation and Hedron Archive .

TheVectornaut on Blue-Black Deck

3 years ago

I'd start by identifying what you want the main goal of your deck to be. I see two main ideas here that could be built around.

The first is dealing unblocked damage by disincentivizing blocks with deathtouch. Darkblade Agent , Eternal of Harsh Truths , Graveblade Marauder , and maybe Blightsteel Colossus (with enough reanimation) fit this archetype. Because of the two "blade" cards, there is some overlap with the second archetype which I'll cover next (and if you keep them, cards like Notion Rain , Mission Briefing , Thought Erasure , and Discovery / Dispersal are likely to get more mileage than Divination or Secrets of the Golden City ), but there may be even better ways to profit from unblocked creatures. Curiosity enchantments like Curious Obsession , Sixth Sense , and Keen Sense are frequent accompaniments to the Invisible Stalker s and other bogles of the world, and Bident of Thassa is a strong option for those going wide. I like Quietus Spike as a sort of midway point between Basilisk Collar and Master of Cruelties in decks like these too. Other beaters to get in with could be Tomebound Lich , Oona's Blackguard , Dimir Cutpurse , Looter il-Kor , Shadowmage Infiltrator , Surrakar Spellblade , Wharf Infiltrator , or Virtus the Veiled if he's legal in whatever format this is for. More generic deathtouch synergy could include Hooded Blightfang , Viridian Longbow , Thornbite Staff , Psionic Gift enchantments, and any source of first strike. Finally, I like Cipher as a way to gain advantage from repeated attacks, so maybe a Hidden Strings or Paranoid Delusions could come in handy.

The second main idea is to stack the graveyard(s) with as many creatures as possible to extract value from Undergrowth and similar mechanics. Avatar of Woe , Lotleth Giant , Trepanation Blade , Teferi's Tutelage , and some of your Disentomb effects fit here. Major threats in these kinds of decks include Wight of Precinct Six , Jace's Phantasm , Consuming Aberration , Mirko Vosk, Mind Drinker , Fleet Swallower , Nemesis of Reason , Bonehoard , Mortivore , and Nighthowler . If you want to focus on your own graveyard, green is a great color to dip into as I alluded to earlier. Ghoultree , Boneyard Wurm , Jarad, Golgari Lich Lord , Splinterfright , Nyx Weaver , Nemesis of Mortals , Spider Spawning , and Kessig Cagebreakers are just some of the tools you get access to. Golgari is also the king of Undergrowth, so Hatchery Spider , Izoni, Thousand-Eyed , Molderhulk , Rhizome Lurcher / Undergrowth Scavenger , Kraul Harpooner , and Necrotic Wound are on the table. If milling your opponents is more your thing, some staples to consider are Thought Scour , Sphinx's Tutelage , Drown in the Loch , Traumatize , Fraying Sanity , and the crab duo. Jace's Erasure , Psychic Corrosion , and the Tutelage pair benefit the most from other draw synergy, and Visions of Beyond is an obvious inclusion if that's the route you take. Either way, I'd cut down to only the most efficient of your reanimate to hand cards and the like since you don't want to be stuck with a fist full of them and no creatures in the graveyard to target. Speaking of cuts, for maximum power, it's usually correct to play as close to the 60 card minimum as possible. Picking a single strategy to hone in on should make it easier to whittle down to the most important 60 in the deck.

If you have questions, let me know. Good luck with your build!

Alkadron on Sprite and Early

3 years ago

Hello!

In my experience, Lotus Petal, Miscalculate, and Brainstorm are really underwhelming in this format. The conditions that make them great cards in other formats just aren't present in PDH most of the time.

Winged Words and Secrets of the Golden City are generally much better than Brainstorm.

Doublestrike spells are good enough that I'd consider running more of them, like Uncaged Fury.

Into the Roil is outstanding, I'm glad to see it on your list. Did you know there is another one?

Confound is a tiny bit more versatile than Keep Safe, since it can shut down your opponent putting auras on their stuff. Probably wise to run both.

Ruffigan on Fastest Pauper Deck in the West

4 years ago

Looks pretty good. I think Flux, Tolarian Winds, and Mystic Remora would help out digging through the deck. Might also consider Secrets of the Golden City.

Apollo_Paladin on No one can stop the wall!

4 years ago

Saw this got a recent comment so I thought I'd take another look.

The only real place for improvement here I can see here is that it's up at 72-cards. I haven't played the deck so I'm not sure I can accurately assess ALL of which cards are your key win condition(s), but there's some things that do stand out to me that you could adjust to trim it down (and increase the chance/speed of getting your key cards out):

  • Tower Defense This could trim down to x2 or x3, and possibly even get moved out & into the Sideboard unless you know you're going up against a Flying deck.
  • Secrets of the Golden City I'd drop this completely since you can get a lot of card draw out of Arcades, the Strategist and all the cheap Defender Creatures (not to mention mana generators) you have in this build.
  • Tangle Angler It's hard for me to suggest removing him completely even though he doesn't really fit -- just because I love surprising people with it in Casual/Legacy sometimes myself. I'd definitely drop him down from a 4x-copy by losing a copy or two given his high mana cost, though (compared to the rest of your creatures).
  • Commune with Nature You could probably get away with dropping a copy or two of this as well. If you can increase your chance of getting Arcades in play, then this becomes pretty much moot.

In any case, I really (really!) like what you've done with this deck. Nice job!

Gattison on The Spell-Slinging Slasher

4 years ago

I could come up with a few ideas, yeah. Browbeat, for one. Maybe Foresee, Rain of Revelation or Sift. Secrets of the Golden City? Tezzeret's Gambit?

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