Soul Warden

Creature — Human Cleric

Whenever another creature enters, you gain 1 life.

Combos

• Darien, King of Kjeldor + Soul Warden

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
Historic Brawl	Legal
Legacy	Legal
Leviathan	Legal
Limited	Legal
Modern	Legal
Modern Beyond Horizons	Legal
Oathbreaker	Legal
Pauper	Legal
Pauper Duel Commander	Legal
Pauper EDH	Legal
Planar Constructed	Legal
Planechase	Legal
Premodern	Legal
Quest Magic	Legal
Tiny Leaders	Legal
Vanguard	Legal
Vintage	Legal

Discussion (41)

kamarupa on Population Bomb

1 week ago

Nice work! I guess you really deserve some props, as I've seen plenty of people on here that aren't new list decks as certain formats but still include cards that aren't legal in that format. So that's why I asked.

In terms of advice, I probably have more than you want. For starters, I'm not sure a Populate/Tokens deck is going to be what I would consider "fast-paced." It may or may not keep up with a Goblin deck - it would really depend on the caliber of each deck and to a lesser degree, the player piloting that deck. When it comes to speed, I think of low MV infinite combos, burn, Elves, +1/+1 counter Humans... So if you're really looking for speed, then there may be better place to look.

That said, if it's not so much speed, but a tokens, and tokens that can maybe compete with a fast paced Goblin deck, I think that is probably possible. As it stands, it looks like you've got a fairly budget brew going, though I notice a few pricier spells in the sideboard. So I'll be mentioning both cheap and pricier spells and let you decide where you want to draw the line.

For starters, land is one of the best investments you can make. All decks need it and the better lands you have to choose from, the more solid your decks' foundations will be. In my opinion, there is no point in spending big bucks on spells when your land base can't consistently cast them. www.managathering.com is an awesome resource to find lands. It didn't exist when I first started brewing, but I go there all the time now, namely because I just can't remember all the card names like I used to, lol. Ideally, you want lands that don't enter tapped, especially if you're going for speed. If you can afford them, Temple Garden & Windswept Heath are the perennial favorites. But Razorverge Thicket, Overgrown Farmland, and Branchloft Pathway  ^Flip are all decent. I recommend 22 lands for a "fast deck" - IE a deck with an Average MV of 2 or less (2.05 is close enough). Much greater than 2 average and I'd recommend 23-24 lands. Which stinks, I know, because the more land you include, the less spells you get and more likely you are to get mana screwed. But I've found that if you ever want to reliably cast spells that are 3 or more, you're going to need those extra few lands. Even with mana ramp, 16 is not enough land.

Typically, Artifact/Enchantment removal spells go in the sideboard. And typically, people run 4x creature removal in the mainboard: Any of the following would be good: Winds of Abandon, Sheltered by Ghosts, Path to Exile should be in the mainboard.

Druid's Deliverance is fun, but even in decks where I include Fog, I rarely include more than 1 copy. At double the MV, Druid's Deliverance is either going to tie up your mana (slowing you down), and/or delay instead of remove, and/or get cast just for the populate, which you already have spells for. So I'd suggest cutting it 1 copy.

Fight as One is... a decent spell. Heroic Intervention would be better. Since all but 1 of your creatures is white, Brave the Elements would be more versatile and cheaper and Tamiyo's Safekeeping is just cheaper. In my experience, 1 is the MV that is best for protection spells because it doesn't need as much mana to be available - that is - they're just more versatile. And I usually only include 1-2 of such spells.

I'd just cut Selesnya Charm. It just doesn't do anything that well and it's single use doesn't make it valuable enough to include.

Call of the Conclave is similar to Selesnya Charm - tokens aren't much about how big so much as how many. Repeatable token generators are going to be bigger threats than single-use spells.

The thing with Populate is that it doesn't really give you much oomph unless you've got bigger tokens. So you're not wrong looking for tokens that are on the bigger size. But since tokens are easy to get rid of and impossible to bring back, most people ignore the Populate mechanic altogether in favor of making lots of tokens as quickly as possible and at instant speed if they can.

Thraben Doomsayer is pretty good, though I do hate the 3MV casting cost. But you can make tokens at instant speed, which is great, and you can do it every turn.

Lingering Souls is one of the best token spells because you get so many for not that much mana, though you don't have the black mana here to make it worthwhile.

Tocasia's Welcome is great card draw for tokens, namely if you can create a token on your turn and your opponent's turn.

Creatures that care about ETB triggers are really good with tokens, too. You really can't go wrong with Soul Warden and/or Soul's Attendant - with 6+ Soul Sisters, I'd imagine a Goblin deck would find it very difficult to hit you for more life than they cause you to gain. And if you can gain enough life, Speaker of the Heavens gives you tokens that are worth Populating.

Growing Ranks is pretty good, but at 4MV,it's on the slow side.

Overrun is a good spell here, and I think you've got the right number.

Wake the Reflections is ok, I guess, but again, only copying 1 token just isn't as good as it might seem. At least it only costs you 1 to cast. The question is whether its actually powerful enough to be worth including, verses using that space for more token spells.

Something like Ephemerate or Cloudshift would probably be good with Hare Apparent

I like Finneas, Ace Archer, but I don't like it enough to overlook its Legendary status to run 4 copies.

Broad-stroke advice: 4x creature removal, 2x protection spell, 1x fog spell, 22x lands, 2-3x card advantage spell, 12x token generators, 8x ETB trigger spells. That leaves you with about 10 spells to lean into a mechanic like populate or more removal, etc, etc.

Please don't think what I write is definitive or that I'm insisting. Ignore whatever you want. I'm just throwing out my thoughts, hoping something might be useful for you.

Doombeard1984 on my soldiers deck

2 months ago

Hello,

So having a look, I think there are a couple cuts that could be made without much pain.

1. Endless Atlas - {2}{T}: conditional draw 1 is really not very good. You have better draw on board, and if you are spending mana on this, then you are more than likely digging for an answer.
2. Heliod's Intervention - You have better removal on board, and you have lifegain as well.
3. Soul Warden/Soul's Attendant - Contentious choice I know, but hear me out. I know you gain more life than most due to the token generation, but aside from that it does not do much, is not a soldier, and there is no wincon related to this. At the very least, I think you could drop one of them.

Just my opinion. Good luck in making the cuts, know it can be hard to make the decisive choice. Good luck with the deck +1

Neotrup on Primal surge stack interactions.

3 months ago

Gahrzerkire The permanents enter one at a time. This is different from something like Genesis Wave. Permanents revealed (and therefore entering) later will not see the ones that entered earlier, so something like Soul Warden will only trigger off later permanents, not earlier ones. That said, all of the triggers will be added to the stack only after Primal Surge finishes resolving, and may be added in any order, so you can resolve the first one that entered before resolving any others, or after resolving all the others. You'll notice that was included in my initial answer: "That said, all the triggers go on the stack at the same time, so you are of course able to order the stack as you choose." You are correct that they will need to wait for Primal Surge to fully resolve before any trigger is put on the stack.

Field of the Dead will only trigger once there are 7 or more differently named lands, so if you cast Primal Surge while only controlling Forests, you'll miss a bunch of triggers. Again, this is different from something like Scapeshift where all of the lands enter simultaneously.

The important thing to notice is that Primal Surge directs you to put the card onto the battlefield then repeat the process, instead of having you put all of the cards onto the battlefield after you've finished the process. Spells can contain multiple steps that will trigger abilities at different times. When this happens, the triggers wait to be put on the stack until after the spell has fully resolved, but resolving the spell still takes those multiple steps sequentially. Another example of this would be something like Austere Command where you destroy different sets of objects twice. If you destroy enchantments and creatures mana value 3 or less, Fecundity would not trigger while Femeref Enchantress would trigger, because the steps do happen sequentially. You would still need to wait for Austere Command to finish resolving before Indebted Spirit's trigger is put on the stack, so the token it creates would not be swept up in the second mode.

Craeter on Ode to the Oregon Trail

6 months ago

Cool theme, what a classic and great to see in MtG. Also love how you've assigned roles to your cards, very cool. Cleric Class is a better version of Sunbond, the set came out ~6 years after so it's power creeped. I see you have Soul Warden and Essence Warden, there is also Soul's Attendant if you've got the room for it for extra redundancy. What purpose does Famished Paladin have? Seems like it's just a 3/3 for 2 mana, doesn't seem very useful but maybe I'm missing something. Blood Artist could also be good here, it's basically a better version of Nadier's Nightblade. These are just a few optimization tweaks I think would help, overall the deck looks great.

Crow_Umbra on Why Do Soul Warden-Type Effects …

7 months ago

If I'm playing a non-rotating format like EDH, then I still have access to Soul Warden & the other sisters.

I won a game a couple weeks ago via making multiple copies of Guide of Souls over the course of the game & using Energy from creature ETBs to make thopters with Whirler Virtuoso, & created an "infinite" loop of life gain, & net Energy cultivation.

I think as long as you can ultimately be proactive with your own strategy, you should be fine.

legendofa on Why Do Soul Warden-Type Effects …

7 months ago

I think it's mostly because the other cards have other synergistic effects on top of life gain.

If you break Soul Warden into

• "Whenever another creature enters the battlefield under your control, you gain 1 life.

• Whenever another creature enters the battlefield under another player's control, you gain 1 life."

and replace the second sentence with a different ability, changing the mana cost as needed, you get Prosperous Innkeeper, or Guide of Souls, or Distinguished Conjurer, or Elas il-Kor, Sadistic Pilgrim, or whatever.

I would say it's mostly to diversify the ability while keeping it in the 1-2 mana range and reducing reliance on opponents to help.

DemonDragonJ on Why Do Soul Warden-Type Effects …

7 months ago

Soul Warden is an iconic card, to the point that other creatures with its ability are compared to it or regarded as variations of it, but I have noticed that recent variations of Soul Warden typically trigger only when creatures enter the battlefield under their controller's control, not when creatures enter the battlefield under the control of their controller's opponents, with that ability being somewhat rarer, recently, so I wonder why that is, as I feel that it is a perfectly valid strategy to benefit from one's opponents' actions.

What does everyone else say about this? Why is it that recent variations of Soul Warden trigger only from their own controller's creatures, and rarely from their opponent's creatures?

TheRoaringRegisaur on Ajani's Pride

7 months ago

Also, since it's a modern deck, I'd add some Soul Sisters (Soul Warden, Soul's Attendant). I also like Lunarch Veteran  ^Flip, but he's not as good. With all these Clerics/Angles, consider Righteous Valkyrie. Daxos, Blessed by the Sun is another worthy consideration. ... Instead of Revoke Existence, I really like Banishing Slash, even if you don't get the token from it. From the same set, Eiganjo, Seat of the Empire is a great land with good utility. Also, if you wanna drop Scoured Barrens/Blossoming Sands entirely, I'd look at Kabira Crossroads. And although it's not actually out yet, you'll want Essence Channeler from Bloomburrow.