Selfless Squire

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Legality

Format Legality
1v1 Commander Legal
Archenemy Legal
Canadian Highlander Legal
Casual Legal
Commander / EDH Legal
Commander: Rule 0 Legal
Custom Legal
Duel Commander Legal
Highlander Legal
Legacy Legal
Leviathan Legal
Limited Legal
Oathbreaker Legal
Planechase Legal
Quest Magic Legal
Vanguard Legal
Vintage Legal

Selfless Squire

Creature — Human Soldier

Flash

When this enters the battlefield, prevent all damage that would be dealt to you this turn.

Whenever damage that would be dealt to you is prevented, put that many +1/+1 counters on this.

Grimyard on Jenara +1/+1

11 months ago

I should have mentioned this one last time too, but Selfless Squire could also be a good pick. It prevents damage at flash speed and gives you more +1/+1 counters on it whenever you prevent damage. Even if it's your only damage prevention, it might be worth it here. The only downside is that it costs 4 mana total.

Archon_Bel on Ephara Remastered *PRIMER FINALLY*

1 year ago

Nice to see another Ephara player lol. Here are my thoughts:

  1. Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite- I ran this version of Elesh for a time. She is a powerful card, but I never found she really did much for the deck when I ran her. In my experience, 7 mana was too high a cost to pay for no recurrable effect (I prefer to have effects that I can reuse by flickering), and it usually left me with less mana to spend during my opponents’ turns, which I found to be more important than being able to swing for damage. Why not run the new Elesh Norn, Mother of Machines, instead? She pairs a lot better with our EtB effects.

  2. Lavinia of the Tenth- Cool card, and I get the concept behind her inclusion, but I personally never ended up running her. I prefer to remove creatures with stuff like Skyclave Apparition or Reflector Mage, or even just spot removal, than temporarily stopping them while keeping them on the field.

  3. Ledger Shredder- I don’t really see what this card does for you. Like with Elesh Norn, I think it’s better to run creatures with EtB effects you can reuse with flicker effects.

  4. Nezahal, Primal Tide- Same as above, plus the casting cost is way too high for my liking. Why not run something like Deadeye Navigator instead if you want a repeatable blink?

A few cards I’d recommend are Ephemerate, Momentary Blink, and Ghostway. The first two are very good instant blink cards, useful for reusing stuff like Reflector Mage on the spot for removal or Cloudblazer for some draw before your turn. You also get two uses out of them, so they’re good value and flexible cards. Ghostway is slightly better than Teferi's Protection in this deck imo, since you not only save your creatures, but you get their EtB effects again at end of turn. You don’t have the added benefit of protecting yourself from damage, though, so for that, I’d recommend Selfless Squire. Very underrated but super useful card in my experience; I once stalled a game out against a board full of 30+ dragons and only 3 life because of this card lol. Not a one-off occurrence either, as I’ve had several games where I’ve been able to keep myself from certain death by constantly flickering her effect; she’s incredible when combined with Archaeomancer and Ghostly Flicker!

Other creatures I’d recommend are Watcher for Tomorrow, Cloudblazer, and Saltskitter. The first two are great value engines with Soulherder and Thassa, Deep-Dwelling. I held off for a long time on using Saltskitter, but when I did, man did he put in the work. I was pretty much drawing cards every turn. There’s also Orvar, the All-Form, though this pretty much does the same thing as Displacer Kitten. Having those extra bodies is nice, though, so it’s up to you. Could even just run both lol.

Oh, and you may as well add Altar of Dementia to complete your Reveillark and Karmic Guide package.

tl;dr focus more on creatures with EtB effects for more flicker value, and a few more blink spells.

Tyrant-Thanatos on Does WotC Still Support Defensive …

1 year ago

I'd argue that WotC still supports defensive play, but they've stopped supporting defensive effects that are static. The problem with effects like multi-blocking is that your opponent can see them, and will simply adjust their attacks accordingly. There's no interesting play there. It can be effective, but it doesn't feel rewarding to use, and it can feel very frustrating to be up against, because it often means you just can't, or shouldn't, attack at all.

Selfless Squire was reprinted in C21, and I think it's a good example of how WotC designes defensive cards these days. Fog effects like this sit in your hand, they're plays the opponent doesn't see coming, and actively benefit you, instead of just stalling out the game.

plakjekaas on What are some combos that …

2 years ago

Pariah on a Brash Taunter. Then Arcbond. Then any damage to it will start a loop, because Arcbond damages all players, and Pariah redirects the damage to Brash Taunter again.

This usually wins the game, but my opponent had a Selfless Squire and then the 2 of us drawed while the rest of the table died.

plakjekaas on Technically not infinite combos

2 years ago

aholder7 it's plakje (= slice in Dutch) kaas (= cheese in Dutch), don't try to make me look like a jackass over here :P

The whole "doesn't feel fair" but unable to actually explain why is an excellent point. Because your point 1) and point 3) contradict each other. Let's see what happens when you cast Gideon's Sacrifice and Arcbond on the same, Indestructible creature (it's usually Brash Taunter in my deck) and then any 1 damage is dealt to a permanent its controller controls:

1] Gideon's Sacrifice redirects the 1 damage to Brash Taunter.

2] The damage triggers Arcbond, which makes Brash Taunter deal 1 damage to each other creature and each player, including yourself. It also deals 1 damage to target opponent from its own ability.

3] The 1 damage at yourself is prevented by Gideon's Sacrifice, and dealt to Brash Taunter instead. Oh look, we're already back at step 1].

And I can't stop it. The loop keeps itself going, and it's truly infinite. I got foiled once, by one of my opponents having Selfless Squire, which meant the game ended in a draw, because when I killed all other creatures and players, there was no way for me to stop, I had no answer for my own creature. The loop wasn't progressing the boardstate anymore, but the stack was never empty, so I couldn't pass my turn.

As said in my previous post, I've never had negative responses at going off with this. It's a great introduction to infinity, because it doesn't feel never-ending, your life total dwindles with every iteration of the loop. Yet it is a feedback loop that feeds into itself, keeps itself going but doesn't spiral out of control, yet it blows up the entire world. It's completely stopped by Swords to Plowshares on the Brash Taunter. But the damage Brash Taunter needs to start the loop, is usually combat damage... which makes it ok due to rule 2)? I do agree with rule 4) though, if I would use Sunforger repeatedly to find Arcbond, Gideon's Sacrifice and a Lightning Bolt to start the loop, that feels a lot less earned.

People usually don't know what they're afraid of, and protest against what they don't want to learn to understand. And when you see someone try for 20 minutes to piece something convoluted together the way TypicalTimmy describes, only to end up botching the win, in an ungodly amount of different steps that you can't be bothered to keep track of, yet you're hogging all of the gametime with your game of solitaire, that's how you alienate less experienced players and bully them into big creatures - combat only battlecruiser magic, making them feel too dumb for the intricacies that actually make the game more interesting and enjoyable if you take your time mastering them. Being able to explain how your cards win the game is vital, if your argument is: "I saw someone else play these cards, they win the game, trust me", showing you yourself don't even care how the game works, then why should your opponents be ok with that? They're not having fun, they're not even seeing you have fun, they just feel robbed of the game they thought was going well until someone threw a wrench in everything.

Yet when you enthusiastically explain how you found the perfect, underplayed cards in the bowels of your binder that synergize very well together, even though the EDHREC page for your commander doesn't mention any of these cards, that end the game in two or three simple steps that keep repeating themselves, you're showing that you actually used creativity and effort, way before you even sat down to play this specific game. That is something people will respect, especially if they can see you're excited to pull it off this time, because it doesn't happen every game.

As I said before, I believe the line is defined by effort spent, playtime hogged, and opportunity to interact. Yet the ultimate goal of EDH is having fun, and when you're seen to have fun playing your combos, that will get you a lot more leeway about how you're actually winning the game. There's no general solution, no hard definition, of what's ok and what isn't, because there's as many ways to have fun as there's magic players, and there's cards to satisfy all of them. Communication and compromise are key, not everyone can have fun all the time every game. I try to optimize for the most amounts of fun had by the most players when building my deck, because I want to keep playing with these people, more than I'm trying to pubstomp and be the very best, like no-one ever was.

Your mileage, of course, may vary.

Dumannios on [Primer] I'm Darien you to hit me!

2 years ago

user:Azeworai I've been a bit busy so I hadn't taken the time to take things into consideration yet. Nice to meet a fellow mono-white entousiast. Thank you for the suggestions!

Day of Judgment is not a bad idea. I've got a spare copy so I'll swap out Wrath of God for it and see how it does. I don't play against regenerate very often so I don't think the 'can't be regenerated' effect of Wrath will be missed that heavily.

As for Crackdown, that card looks really solid, but I don't think it will fit in this deck. I'm looking at it the same way as you're looking at Selfless Squire. I want to get hit as long as it's not heavy commander damage. (when Darien is out anyway) Squire is just there to save me from lethal damage which it has done a pretty fair amount of times. But I will keep it in mind and maybe cut it when a more fitting card for the deck comes out.

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